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It’s been awhile but it’s back and ready for some more craptacular mentions!

Infomercial Products

So I was digging around the house looking for my $50+ Honda service manual that I misplaced (brake job time), and instead of finding the big giant green book, I found a dust-covered “Bagless Stick Shark Vacuum” box.

My digital camera went AWOL so here’s a poor quality picture from the cell phone camera.

Smiling Host Says: Buy me or I’ll be in your dreams!Anyway, this thing really sucks. What I mean is that it’s craptacular. It overheats easily because it’s so small, doesn’t do its job well, and cleaning the filter is really a big hassle. It’s a real good waste of money, especially if you already have a working vacuum machine (and we do). Now before you flame me for buying it, please realize that I didn’t make the purchase.So I did a search online and the first result I found on the Bagless Shark was a website of a guy destroying his Bagless Shark. Neato.I know I’m generalizing things, maybe not all infomercial products are a waste of money, but the ones I’ve come across sure seemed that way. I’m still not sure why people buy products from these infomercials. The over enthusiastic host showing off the products on TV scares me big time; their smiles make it really hard for me to sleep at night. *whimpers*

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This reminds me of an event from long ago, when I was watching TV with an old friend of mine.The “Garden Claw” infomercial was on. She got really excited about it and wanted to buy it. It really surprised me because she lived in an apartment without a lawn or a garden.Damn those mesmerizing infomericals.

Spending too much money on software? If you’re thinking about blowing a butt load of money on some specialize software, you might want to see if there’s an open source alternative first. Open source projects are basically software that are developed in part or in whole by the public. You can read the Wikipedia definition for more information.

Although open source software isn’t exactly like free software, they’re still free to use.Till this day I’m still amaze at the rapid development of the open source community, and the features and functionality within these open source projects. If they love what they’re doing, people simply work harder and better. Many of these open source software easily beats retail alternatives.

Here are some examples of great open source software.

• OpenOffice.org – Very similar functionality as the (expensive) Microsoft Office packages, contains file compatibility to the MS Office suite.
• Scribus – Powerful PDF creator/editor much like the very expensive Adobe Acrobat.
• osCommerce – A powerful e-commerce and full-feature online store management software. Low budget for your online business? This is worth checking out.
• Media Player Classic – One of my favorite video/audio media player.
• FFDshow – Great multi-platform video/audio decoding/encoding software that also supports DivX and Xvid formats.
• Mozilla Firefox – Quite possibly one of the best Web browser out there. If you ever worry about spyware and online security issues, get Firefox.
• WordPress – A great blog writing platform that million of us love and use.
• BitTorrent – The famous and popular P2P file sharing program.
• phpBB – Looking to start an online message board/forum? phpBB is a powerful open source, fully customizable bulletin board package.

The list can go on and on. I can’t even recall how many open source software I’m using right now. Here are some useful links to search for open source/free software in many different categories:

• Wikipedia’s Open Source Software List
• SourceForge.net – World’s large open source development website, hosting hundred of thousands of open source software

Well the 8th Carnival of Personal Finance is up. I wanted to host one before, but I thought about it and realized I shouldn’t. There’s too many things to keep track of! Props to all those that have hosted so far and upcoming host. Can’t believe its the 8th week already.

I have been pilling up debt on my credit cards lately via balance transfer and 0% offers, so my FICO (credit) scores will be taking a nice deep dive. In fact, I believe once all the credit reporting agencies have a full update of my current balance, it’ll tank even more. Here’s a snapshot of my TransUnion score via Providian’s FICO score tracking.

Years ago I applied for a PayPal credit card issued by Providian, I changed my mind and didn’t complete the online application, but they sent me the card anyway (gee thanks). There’s little point to cancel it so I’ve sock-drawer it since.

Sometime between years ago and today, Providian introduced free FICO tracking for all their credit card customers, and that’s what you’re looking at above. There are a few things to note about the Providian FICO tracking. Your credit score may change daily and Providian gives little detail what date these scores are based on. This means your May 2005 score may actually be your April 2005 score. In either case, don’t rely on this to make any major credit decision. You can simply use this as a nice reference.

Here’s what happened during those time frame:

Oct 04: Received 0% balance transfer checks from my Bank of America VISA card. The offer last for 6 months. I utilized 98.7% of the card’s credit limit ($7,800) and took out $7,700. They money was sittin in an ING Direct Orange Savings Account earning interest (and tax).

Nov 04 – March 05: Edit: No major activities during this time. I paid minimum payment on the Bank of America balance transfer, and continue to charge and paid my other cards in full. I did receive a credit limit increase of $2,500 on my American Express Blue for Student card around Feburary or March, I can’t recall.

April 05: I paid off the 6 months 0% offer and other credit card debt. Edit: I also checked my credit history and realized I was an authorized user on a credit card I didn’t know about. My mom put me as an AU on a Citi MasterCard that had a $6,000 balance with a $9,000 credit limit. I removed myself as an authorized user from that account, and removed the account from my credit history. Credit score skyrocketed to above 750 on all credit agency. Here’s the score from 4/24/05.

The differences in the Equifax score is because there’s a positive credit card account in my Equifax report that isn’t shown on the other two agencies report. I’m an authorized user on my mom’s credit union VISA card. It has the longest history out of my entire report. The account was opened back in 1992, and has $13,000 in credit limit, no lates and all positive history. It currently has no balance on it. That’s the only difference between these reports, and it made a significant difference in credit score.

May 05: Applied for two new cards – AMEX Blue and Chase (Bank One) VISA. Took advantage of the Chase 15 months 0% balance transfer.

Jun 05: Received another 0% 6 months offer from Bank of America, taking advantage of it now. Same deal as above. Score didn’t immediately tank because of increased credit limit via AMEX Blue and Chase.

July 05: Score starting to slip. I applied for another card, the Citi Dividend MasterCard. Score should take another dive in the August update.

As you can see credit utilization is very important and it affects your score significantly. Anytime you get close to 50% utilization of your credit limits, you should expect your scores to take a hit. Generally in most scenarios, the lower your balance, the better your score.

I’m going to guess that my current score is actually lower than 723. The July score is most likely based on credit reports in the middle of June 2005, so my current score is probably around 680-700. My scores should recover and go up in about 6 months when I paid off my Bank of America 0% offer. It should also go up again in about 9-10 months when I pay off the Chase 0% offer. I’m not going to apply for any large credit loan in the foreseeable future, so everything’s peachy and right on track for now. Let’s see what happens 6 months from now!

Update: Jim’s post made me realized something is missing there.. I checked my old reports and remembered what happened. I’ve updated the post to include more information.

Things updated are:

• Added Nov 04 to March 05 information
• Additional info in April 05
• Added a note explaining the credit score differences

On my next update, I’ll try to provide more information; specifically how many accounts I have, the type that are (installment, revolving, etc.) their credit limit and balance. If you can’t tell, I use to be quite a credit nut.

I noticed a quick vote poll at CNN.com today, with a link to an article on how Americans are saving even less these days. Not something new really, but still a good reminder. The article pose an interesting question.

The savings of U.S. consumers are:

• a) at the lowest rate since the Depression.
• b) at peaks not seen even during the stock market boom of the late 1990s.
• c) all of the above.

Geez, I wonder what’s the answer.

Here’s a snapshot of the poll result as of that time. It looks like we’re either saving some money or having nothing left to save at all.

Ah, I have this one little bad habit – I tend to forget to turn off the lights.

It’s getting better lately but I still constantly get a reminder to turn off the light. Here’s another bad habit of mine, where I turn the light on even when I don’t need it! I can simply open the window blinds and let the sun light in. D’oh!

Here’s to reminding myself and others to turn off the light and use more energy efficient lightbulbs; there are many alternatives out there! I bet if I start paying for the electricity bill, I would pay more attention to the light switch.

Sorry mom!

I’m sure all of us get phishing emails. Because my email address are public, I get them by the boatload. The funny thing is, none of these are ever “on target.” They’re always telling me that my account at Blah Blah Bank is in trouble, but I never have an account at any of those banks. Plus, I use my private emails to register sensitive online accounts.

Recently I finally started getting phishing emails about Bank of America, which I do have an account at. Here’s something I never seen before – through javascripting, the URL/address bar of the fake website gets covered by a “floating URL” of the real site. According to statistics, the majority of phishing targetting Americans these days are from abroad. Out of curiousity, I traced that particular email to South Korea.

Phishing basically means fishing/harvesting for passwords, it orginated back in the AOL days, where AOL subscribers constantly have their passwords (and worse, personal information) stolen via phisers. For many of us veteran Internet users, we have seen phishing in many different forms. It’s a bit strange that a rarely used Internet slang became such a widely used conntation today. Unfortunately, instead of simply targetting AOL account password, phishing now targets more sensitive informations.

Here are some good sites to learn more about phishing and how to avoid them.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
• http://www.antiphishing.org/
• http://www.scientis.com/Security/Phishing.html