Popular Science

If you have not ever read an issue of Popular Science - you are missing out. Each issue is packed with futuristic ideas that might change our world, close-ups are provided into the tech gadgets we use, or the jobs that keep our worlds running smooth. My favorite part of the magazine is near the back and is the How 2.0 section aptly named the Tips, Tricks, Hacks and Do-It-Yourself Projects section.


In the April 2010 issue they covered things like making an atomic clock, compressed air fires, award winning Transformers Movie inspired projects, and Virtual PC's. In the article they covered Microsoft's Virtual PC which is available as an integral part of Windows 7. However, I thought they were remiss in not mentioning some of the other options. If you have ever wanted to try out Linux or if you have ever wanted a repair tool then Knoppix and Ubuntu should be on your list. Ubuntu comes in a full OS or like Knoppix can be booted and ran directly from the disk. I used this feature on occasion to familiarize myself with the Linux operating environment and to just generally try out new things.

Writing Tips

I get a little surprise every month when the latest issue of Popular Science arrives in my mailbox. It is a fun magazine to read. It's all about big dreams and big ideas. The magazine offers a variety of articles that range from the quick to the more in depth stories. This format makes it perfect for any moment you have to flip through to find something for your moment.

I was intrigued by a small article near the back of the April 2010 issue titled 5 Things to Help You Write Your Masterpiece.
1 - Start somewhere. Anywhere. We all need to Practice, Practice, Practice. They suggested a collaborative story website protagonize.com. I have also found onemillionmonkeys.com and occasionally writers will host a collaborative story on their blog.

2 - Focus. They mentioned minimalist word processors like Dark Room and WriteRoom. "The bare bones text editor nix the features you don't need so you can focus on getting the words down."  Personally, I thought, well, maybe that is why Rachelle likes her Dana so much - it is just a text editor, very basic and to the point.

3 - Their advice for getting an agent was to register for free access to LiteraryMarketPlace.com, a giant database of publishers and agents, searchable by city and genre. For a substantial fee you can actually get their contact info.

4 - Getting published: Go to Poets & Writers web site, pw.org, which lists summaries of more than 450 fiction , poetry  and essay journals which let you submit your work online and find information on writing contests and MFA programs, etc.

5 - Copyrights: Go to Myows.com to defend against plagiarism.

Rachelle Christensen has been putting together some of her tips that helped her publish her first book on the national market. 

Discover Card $75 Signup Bonus

It pays to Discover. That is there slogan, and this time they are living up to it with a new promotional code. In fact, Discover Card will pay you a $75 cashback bonus if you apply online using the promo code: DADN. You can also apply by phone, 1-800-210-9022, and referencing this invitation code: DADN. This reward is for new cardmembers only. 
The Fine Print -

Get a $75 Cashback Bonus when you apply by June 18, 2010 and make a total of $500 in purchases with your new card within 3 months of being approved. Promotional reward will be applied within 8 weeks. This promotional reward is in addition to the Cashback Bonus earned on all purchases.

There is no annual fee on this card. It is their popular 5% Cashback Bonus card that offers rewards in categories like travel, gas, groceries, restaurants, etc. However, the categories eligible for the full 5% reward change quarterly and/or monthly. Otherwise, as is standard, all purchases earn an unlimited 1% Cashback Bonus.

Discover also partners with some retailers to increase your Cashback Bonus rewards. Sometimes you can turn your $40 Cashback Bonus into a $50 gift card at participating retailers. In the past, you could even find deals to double your Cashback Bonus.

How to Get Paid to Bank

You've got a job and you've got your bills. And therein lies the problem. The amount leftover after the bills isn't enough to satisfy you wants. Savvy personal finance says you have two options. Increase your earnings or spend less than you earn. I am always on the lookout for different ways to increase my earnings. The first place to increase your earnings significantly comes from your current income source -  your job. Brush up that resume, or ask for a raise. In the meantime, there are other methods that are great for boosting income. Sell you stuff! Then go online and open a few bank accounts. 

Yes, believe it or not, banks are increasingly using the tactic of offering up cash incentives and rewards to lure in new customers. Make sure you do your homework first if you are currently looking to open a new checking or savings or brokerage account. There are lots of lucrative first time customer rewards. In fact, to help you get started I have started to list the current bank deals that I am aware of on my Free Money Bank Deals page.

GetRichSlowly recently asked the readers, "Ask the Readers: How Do You Choose a Savings Account?" For me, it was moving to a new area that opened up my eyes to different service providers and a few hundred dollars. Bank of America offered me $100 to open a new checking account online with no fees. SunTrust offered me $150 to bank with them and use their billpay service. And BB&T is still offering $100 to new customers who open a banking account. ING Direct is also offering a free $50 for new customers. There are plenty more including brokerages like TradeKing's free $50.

How do you find the banking bonus deals?
I find out about these primarily by visiting the actual bank either online or through their physical brick and mortar branches. From there it is advertisements, SlickDeals, FatWallet, and personal finance blogs like MyMoneyBlog. There appears to be an exhaustive list on iBankBonus.

Is it worth it?
In the last year, I was given nearly $1,000 to open up a new account and do business with various banks and brokerages. All that income is reported to the IRS via a 1099-INT and subject to taxes. But aside from the monetary gain, the greatest benefit came from the ability to pick the bank that worked best for me. It was like they were offering me cash to come take a test drive of their services and see how they stacked up against the competition. How well was their billpay setup? How easily could I transfer in funds? 

Does it affect your credit score? 
Sometimes. Not every bank will do a hard pull of your credit score. If your checking account comes with an overdraft line of credit then they will likely do a hard pull. Each inquiry to your credit will ding your score. This will not be helpful if you plan on going in and getting a new loan for a car or house in the near term. You can read more about what affects your credit score.

Are you at increased risk of identity theft?
It is generally believed that the more you expose yourself the more chance you have of becoming a victim of identity theft. This might be true. Banks and other financial institutions are charged with safekeeping your information private but thieves do exist. That is one reason you should check your credit report at least once a year even if you haven't been opening new accounts for a few extra Benjamin Franklin's in your wallet.

What is the catch?
There is definitely a catch. They aren't likely to just hand over a free $100 for nothing. They want your business and your money. To qualify for your bank bonus you will likely have to complete a few small tasks. Banks usually require one of three things or a combination of them and include using their billpay service, establishing direct deposit, and/or using a debit card a set number of times per month. There may also be various time limits associated with each of these. SunTrust asked for 3 bill pays each month for 3 months. Brokerages similarly ask for a minimum deposit and sometimes executing a trade.

Do the rewards always come through?
Yes, as long as you meet all of the requirements. If you are going to sign up for a promotion be sure to print off or save the promotion page with all of the fine print. Then create a little to do list and keep to it.

What are the best deals?/What are the easiest way to make free money?
The best deals are those that just have a minimum deposit for a required time frame. For example, open an account and leave the money there for six months to a year. These offers can be thought of as lucrative one year CD's because you have to wait to get your principal back. Some banks will count direct deposits that come in the form of an ACH push from another bank.

Can I do more than one at time?
You are not limited to the number of offers you want to apply for. You will likely be limited in the number of direct deposits that you can do in a month. If you employer allows your paycheck to be split up and direct deposited into several accounts it will be easier to do two offers with direct deposit requirements. If you want to fulfill billpay requirements on more than offer - just split up payment and pay it multiple times or from multiple sources.

Any other tips?
Make sure you are aware of your limits. Some credit cards only allow a set number of payments during each billing cycle. Don't allow yourself to get so caught up in making an extra $100 that you miss a payment because you didn't understand the new banking system and get charged late fees. Don't make signature based purchases on your debit card on the last day of the month and expect them to show up as transactions for that month - they often take a day or two to clear and finally post to your account. 

Remember, while you might be upset the banks were all bailed out and are evil - they are only offering the money as a marketing ploy to gain you as another customer.

Have you switched banks recently? Tell us about your experience with new account offers.

Switching Banks

Adam Baker recently explored What Does It Take to Make You Switch Banks? over at GetRichSlowly. It is a good question and one that I think is worth the time it might take to investigate what you might be missing by not banking elsewhere. Adam talked about his own experience with the same bank for years and years even though he didn't really like the bank. Why? It was what his parents used and where he first started out.

To some degree I can relate with Adam. My parents set up my first savings account where they banked. Naturally, as I grew older and needed more services like a checking account and later a credit card - they all came from that bank.

I believe some people do not change simply because we naturally avoid change. Change is hard. Additionally, there is some amount of loyalty that is generated after being a customer for so long. Adam lists five things that might cause someone to finally have the motivation to change. Higher Rates, Customer Service, Length of History, Principle, Accessibility.

There is one thing which caused me to not to shed any tears when I closed my first account. I had seen my parents do it before. Seeing my parents go through the process taught me that I could do it, too. However, to be honest, my biggest motivator to switch banks was accessibility because I moved away from home.

Moving opens up a whole new field of opportunities. It forces you to re-evaluate all of your relationships with health care,  finances, and social circles. Sometimes, this chance to rebuild is just what people need to discover what else is available and the freedom to adjust their priorities.

Not moving anytime soon? That is okay. You can still start fresh from where you are. Look at the connections you have and imagine you are searching for those services for the first time. Becoming aware of your current situation is the first step to making any progress towards change.

Coming up soon, I hope to profile my search for financial services that served me best. I have already started with my post on why I moved my IRA to Fidelity. Simply, the pain of the same was larger than the pain of the change. Additionally, I want to reveal how profitable starting fresh can be.

$50 Free Money at Ing Direct

Ing Direct has a $50 Free Money offer when you open a new Electric Orange Checking Account online. This offer has an implicit minimum deposit based on the requirement to make three signature based debit card transactions. I am a proud Ing Direct customer and have received more than one promotion from them. They sport no account fees, free bill pay, and a really nice web interface. I also love their person2person payment services. It is just like PayPal without the fees. Couple that with their savings accounts and the ability to open sub-accounts makes your banking experience easy and less stressful.

Use your Electric Orange Card to make at least 3 signature-based purchases in the first 45 days after your account has been opened.

If you want a savings account, too, you can always earn another $25 from a referral award. The referrer gets $10. Need a referral? Just ask.

Dollar Cost Averaging with SPY

I wanted to take a more definitive look into dollar cost averaging. Admittedly, the first time I explored dollar cost averaging, I picked a relatively new index fund without much history and the price data was gathered very roughly by manually reading values off a Yahoo! Finance Chart.


 
This exercise in the merits of dollar cost averaging use actual historical price data, ranging from January 1993 to April 2010, for the SPY index fund, which tracks the S&P 500. I wanted a more in depth view of the differences in yearly lump sum investing and monthly dollar cost averaging. What I found was that when the lump sum investing continues at a regular interval for several years – it becomes just another form of dollar cost averaging. The important point being the regular interval which occurs on autopilot and is not subject to our personal fallacies encountered in market timing. In summary, the plots that follow will illustrate that the normal investor can still dollar cost average even when there is only one investment per year. Think of the brokerage fees saved! Unless, of course, you are trading your ETF's for free already.


 
Dollar cost averaging works on whatever schedule that you can afford to set up. The smaller the frequency, the smoother your curve will be. 

The other point that this plot serves to illustrate is the basic premise behind dollar cost averaging. Every period you invest a set dollar amount. When the market is high, you buy fewer shares, but when the market is low, you buy more shares.

Date	# of Shares Purchased
4/2000	8.112
4/2001	9.197
4/2002	10.699
4/2003	12.346
4/2004	10.067
4/2005	9.465
4/2006	8.189
4/2007	7.167
4/2008	7.541
4/2009	11.621
Total	94.404

 

I'd like to focus this next portion on just the last ten years, or what many people like to call "The Lost Decade". I have found that many market analysts like to point out that if you had invested $1,000 in April of 2000, it would only be worth $949 today. Ouch! Why should we invest then?

While this statement is true, it should not bother the slowly marching forward dollar cost averaging portfolio owner. Why? Just take a look at the next chart that shows what each $1,000 contribution made to your total investment portfolio over the last 10 years.

 
Or, if you prefer, a nice pie chart.


 

 
The moral of the story: Slow and steady wins the race. The years the market was down the most, 2003 and 2009, are the years that contributed the most to the success of this fund. The years the market was up the most, and when herd mentality was gathering in more and more investors, in 2000 and 2006-2008, are the years that contributed the least to the success of this fund.

Free $50 Bonus at TradeKing

TradeKing is celebrating the birthday of Wall Street with a special $50 sign up bonus for new members that are referred by an existing member. TradeKing usually rewards friendship by giving you $50 for every friend that signs up. I believe that this promotion and their annual celebration of Friendship Week is the only other times that a new member can cash in on the free $50 bonus as well. 

Here is the fine print -

Here’s how it works:

If someone you refer funds a new account with at least $1,000 and executes a trade, we’ll deposit $50 each into both accounts. (Review full eligibility rules here.)
Your friends MUST click the link in our email for us to track them and for you both to receive your rewards. But don’t worry. We tell them that in the email they’ll receive.
This capital offer ends June 3, 2010, so gather your friends around the "virtual buttonwood" and start earning today.

 I like TradeKing and have been trading with them for almost three years now!  Well, I guess I didn't do much trading last year after some of my investments were wiped out! But who didn't have that problem? When I signed up I didn't get a cash offer. Instead, I received an awesome gift - The Options Playbook. This is a great resource for anybody that wants to learn about investing with options and how each of the strategies like Covered Calls, Iron Condors, Butterflies, Naked Put Selling, and all the rest, can be played out. The book also covers the Greeks. If you have ever wanted to invest in options but didn't know how this book will teach you how.

Need a referral so you can cash in on this great bonus offer? Just let me know.

Free Money Bank Deals

This will be a post that people can come to and find all of the latest free money bank deals.
I will also link to my reviews of how my experience with each of the bank deals went down and my review of the banking experience. Note: Some of these reviews are forthcoming. For now - the deals!

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TradeKing is celebrating the birthday of Wall Street with a special $50 sign up bonus for new members that are referred by an existing member. TradeKing usually rewards friendship by giving you $50 for every friend that signs up. I believe that this promotion and their annual celebration of Friendship Week is the only other times that a new member can cash in on the free $50 bonus as well. 

Here is the fine print -

Here’s how it works:

If someone you refer funds a new account with at least $1,000 and executes a trade, we’ll deposit $50 each into both accounts. (Review full eligibility rules here.)
Your friends MUST click the link in our email for us to track them and for you both to receive your rewards. But don’t worry. We tell them that in the email they’ll receive.
This capital offer ends June 3, 2010, so gather your friends around the "virtual buttonwood" and start earning today.

 I like TradeKing and have been trading with them for almost three years now!  Well, I guess I didn't do much trading last year after some of my investments were wiped out! But who didn't have that problem? When I signed up I didn't get a cash offer. Instead, I received an awesome gift - The Options Playbook. This is a great resource for anybody that wants to learn about investing with options and how each of the strategies like Covered Calls, Iron Condors, Butterflies, Naked Put Selling, and all the rest, can be played out. The book also covers the Greeks. If you have ever wanted to invest in options but didn't know how this book will teach you how.


Need a referral so you can cash in on this great bonus offer? Just let me know.


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Another new checking account opening bonus. This time it is worth one hundred dollars from BB&T.

$100 from BB&T.  Apply online with offer code: AFJAP
No monthly minimum balance or monthly maintenance fee is advertised on this account.
The fine print reads...

* In order to receive the $100 incentive, new clients must do at least one of the following: 1) Use BB&T online bill payment service to initiate 3 online bill payments (minimum payment of $10) from your new checking account within 60 days of account opening, OR 2) Enroll in and receive 2 recurring direct deposits (minimum of $10) to the new personal checking account within 90 days of account opening. Any accounts not in good standing, closed, and/or with a balance less than or equal to zero at the time we review account eligibility will not receive the $100 incentive. Normal minimum balance opening requirements apply. The $100 account opening incentive will be deposited directly to your account within 4 weeks of meeting the above requirements, and will be reported to the IRS as required by law. Offer is available to new clients that open a new personal checking account between 01/01/2010 and 6/06/2010 through BBT.com.

I have used this bank before, my review, and they seem to be a pretty good bank based on these recent awards. They used to be a S&P 500 Aristocrat up until last year, too.

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Ing Direct has a $50 Free Money offer when you open a new Electric Orange Checking Account online. This offer has an implicit minimum deposit based on the requirement to make three signature based debit card transactions. I am a proud Ing Direct customer and have received more than one promotion from them. They sport no account fees, free bill pay, and a really nice web interface. I also love their person2person payment services. It is just like PayPal without the fees. Couple that with their savings accounts and the ability to open sub-accounts makes your banking experience easy and less stressful.

Use your Electric Orange Card to make at least 3 signature-based purchases in the first 45 days after your account has been opened.

If you want a savings account, too, you can always earn another $25 from a referral award. The referrer gets $10. Need a referral? Just ask.

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