One of the best thing about the current trend in the world of software as a service is the increasing abundance of free financial services.  You’ll find one such service provided by Quicken Loans at Quizzle.com, where you can get free credit score, report, and home value. Super sweet.

Like many new websites, Quizzle has a clear emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. Slap in your zip code, fill out the personal information, answer a few credit-related questions to verify your identity (soft credit inquiry) — and within minutes you’ll have access to the free credit score, report, and home value (or if you rent, value of home you can afford).

Upon initial login, you’ll be greeted with a Quizzle score, which is formulated base on your overall home and money performances: credit, rainy day fund, budget, mortgage, and home affordability.  If you rent like me, you may not have a mortgage factored into your Quizzle score. [Click image above for larger screenshot]

Free Credit Report and Credit Score

Quizzle’s free credit report and score offering is actually pretty decent.  The credit report, although not as in-depth as a specific report from Experian, has all the necessary information you need to have a proper understanding of your credit history.  At the summary tab, you’ll find details of your personal information along with a list of financial accounts on your credit report.

Navigating through each tab in the Credit page will reveal a list of open accounts, closed accounts, negative accounts, and whatever public records that may or may not be on your credit report.  You’ll also be able to see the recent hard inquiries on your Experian credit report (soft inquiries were not listed).

The free credit score is straightforward: Quizzle provides you with a score from the ranges of 360 to 840 while giving you a grade rating from A to F (just like back in school, yay!).  The score isn’t a FICO score, but its free and gives you a general guideline of where your creditworthiness may stand.

Estimated Home Value and Home Affordability Value

If you own a home, Quizzle will provide you with an estimated home value and an appreciation grade using the automated valuation model.  Like Zillow.com, Quizzle will provide you with data about your home, giving some brief info on living area in sq ft., bedrooms, lot area in sq ft., and the year the house was built.  You’ll also see the home purchase history, estimated available home equity, and comparable home sales in the area. Although I don’t have a screenshot of this function, you can visit Quizzle’s tour page and click on “more info about your home” to see an example.

If you don’t own a home and you rent, Quizzle will spit out a simple affordable home caulation, based on your household gross, debt, and estimated down payment.  Thanks to Quizzle, I now know home ownership in my area is never within reach! Yay. (Slightly kidding, as Quizzle didn’t factor in assets that aren’t being calculated).

Budget Calculators

The budget section at Quizzle is fairly simplistic (in a good way). Quizzle will give you a brief look at your available cash by subtracting your living expenses and debt from your household income.  This is based on your initial input, but you can further refine the income, living expenses, and debt section by heading into each of the tabs — add, edit, and remove necessary information.

For example, in the debt section, Quizzle will automatically input all the balances from your credit card accounts based on your credit report — but since the credit report may be outdated or inaccurate, you can adjust and fine tune the amounts to your actual debt responsibilities.

Mortgage, Refinance, and Home Equity Loans

The mortgage section of the site will depend again on if you already have a mortgage or you’re looking for one.  If you’re looking for a mortgage, Quizzle will calculate a few different mortgage recommendations based on numbers you input.  Utilizing offers they have from the Quicken Loan program, Quizzle will provide the usual recommendations of fixed loan, ARM, and variance of interest-only loans.

If you already have a mortgage, Quizzle will provide you with some recommendations on refinance loans and home equity loans.  They give you a general guideline if you need to take out a home equity loan to pay off other higher interest debt, but you definitely shouldn’t rely solely on Quizzle’s recommendations to acquire a mortgage, refinance, or apply for a home equity loan.

You should be aware that the mortgage section of Quizzle is where the site generates potential revenue in return for providing the free service.  Just something to be aware of if you choose to use the “contact an expert” option when you check out the mortgage recommendations. Even with refined and accurate recommendations from Quizzle, you’ll be well served if you do additional research by trying other comparison services.

Rainy Day Fund

The last section of Quizzle is the Rainy Day Fund (emergency fund).  It is calculated based on 4 months net income and Quizzle will either give you a pat on the back for already hitting the 4 months net income goal for the rainy day fund, or give you other recommendations on what you need to do to build the emergency fund.  Not a mind-blowing feature, but a nice touch and good reminder on the importance of a well funded emergency fund.

Overall Quizzle.com Impression

Try as you might, you’ll find little to complain about at Quizzle.com.  They offer exactly what they say they will: a free credit report and score, along with free estimation of your home value, and a free budget tool.  The site is easy to use and navigate, and has enough information for you to dissect your current financial situation, especially if you carefully edit and input all your financial information.

Quizzle’s free report and score can be a nice supplement to the three free annual credit report you’re already entitled to from the credit reporting bureaus. Of course, if you’re not comfortable with giving out your personal information to a third party site, you won’t be using Quizzle.com to get the free credit report and score; never mind their mortgage recommendation services.

Quizzle’s overall revenue model appears to be referring potential customer to their Quicken Loan offerings in mortgages, refinance, and home equity loans — which makes perfect sense as Quizzle should be able to acquire more targeted customers that converts better. In short, if Quizzle continues to provide valuable free analytic, tools, and estimation along with refining their loan recommendations, this should be a clear win-win situation for both the mortgage-related consumers and Quizzle.

Pros:

• Free credit report and score. No strings attached.
• Free estimated home value via AVM method.
• Decent and free budget calculators.

Cons:

• Mortgage, refinance, and home equity recommendations can be more refined.

Choosing a high-yield online savings account can be quite a headache, so hopefully this review will help you in your search for an online savings account.

As with all federal savings bank, E-Trade Bank is a member of the FDIC (certificate #30746), with all deposits in E-Trade banking accounts insured up to $250,000. E-Trade currently offers a few different options for their banking products, including high-yield savings & CDs, and high-yield checking.  For this review, we’ll be taking a look at the high-yield Complete Savings Account.

E-Trade Complete Savings Account Features:

• No minimums or account fees. FDIC insured.
• Yields more than 8x the national average.
• Easy access to money with Quick Transfer.
• Secure electronic statement.

Account Opening Process

After opening more than eight other high-yield online savings account, you’ll start to appreciate online accounts with simple opening processing. E-Trade made the account opening process fairly painless. You start with the usual personal information, follow by a quick identity verification (no hard credit inquiry, screenshot below).

Once you verify your identity, your account will be opened and you’ll be presented with a screen providing you with your Complete Savings account number. It is recommended you print this page or write down the account number so you can immediately set up your online account functionality.

Within about a week or so, you’ll receive a mailer from E-Trade Bank. This was a pleasant surprise as most other online savings usually don’t bother to follow up with a banking and website usage guide.

The E-Trade’s Banking Quick Start Guide provides you with three quick step to get you started. 1) Log-on to account 2) make a deposit 3) maximize your money (by setting up automatic savings, online bill pay, etc.).  Included in this mailer is also a sheet of deposit slip for those that needs it, pre-addressed envelopes,  account agreement terms, privacy statement, and rate and fee schedule.

You’ll also find an “Account Holder Signature Card” in the mailing, which you’ll need to sign and mail back to E-Trade to complete your account opening. If you forget to send in your signature card, E-Trade will send you another mailing in about a few weeks to remind you.

Account Usage and Transfer Speed

Although E-Trade’s site has more navigation and menus that you’d clear to examine, once you’ve logged in, the account usage is pretty easy and straightforward. You’ll be presented with an overview page, listing the type of accounts you have (screenshot below), along with a Quick Transfer interface, giving you quick access to the ability to transfer your funds in and out of E-Trade.

E-Trade’s Quick Transfer setup is the same as any other Automated Clearing House transfer setup, put in the routing number and the checking account number for the banking account you want to link to your E-Trade account, and you’ll be presented with two methods to verify your external accounts (screenshot above).

You can choose the instant verification method which takes only a couple of minutes, and is available if your financial institution has an online website. You provide your website username and password and E-Trade will verify your account ownership.

If you’re not comfortable with the online instant verification method, you can use the good old deposit verification method, which entails E-Trade making two small random deposits into your external account, which you’ll have to verify. The deposits usually takes about 2-3 business day to show up.

Once you’ve finished setting up the Quick Transfer accounts, you’ll find that E-Trade fund transfer is one of the fastest in the industry. Tested fund transfers usually gets withdrawal from external account at the very next business day (if you initiate transfer before 4 P.M. EST), and is cleared for withdrawal from your E-Trade savings on the evening of the 3rd business day after the day of deposit.

Without a doubt, E-Trade’s fund transfer is as fast ING Direct’s transfer speed (if not faster), and E-Trade clearly beats out HSBC Direct or FNBO Direct in terms of fund transfer speed.

Customer Service and Overall Impression:

Contacting E-Trade is straightforward enough. If you click on the “Online Service Center” link on the upper right hand corner of your screen, you’ll be brought to the Service Center page, which includes a link for you to send a secure message to an E-Trade representative.  Some basic questions regarding withdrawals and transfers were sent to customer service for testing, and an E-Trade customer service representative was able to reply (correctly) to the question within about 48 hours.  Not too bad, but nothing stellar either.

Customer service is of course, a your-result-may-vary issue that deeply depends on the complexity of your question or problem.  If you need immediate customer service, you should consider calling E-Trade Bank at 1-800-387-2331, from 7 A.M. to midnight ET.  You can also fax E-Trade Bank at 1-800-664-4641.  Take note that these customer service numbers are different than those of E-Trade Securities.

Overall, E-Trade’s Complete Savings account is a no frills high-yield online savings account.  It’s account opening process was easy to navigate, and they provide you with useful literature and instructions by paper mail once you’ve signed up. The annual percentage yield rate has been competitive with other high-yield savings, thus making rate-chase a lesser issue.

If you’re already an E-Trade brokerage customer, you’ll have instant access to your cash to/from your savings to your brokerage account.  If you’re looking for a new savings account, you should have little issues with E-Trade’s offering — whether you’re a veteran online banking user or a newcomer.

E-Trade Bank Online Savings Review Rating:

Pros:

• Account opening a breeze. Useful account usage literature provided after sign-up.
• Rate has been consistent and remains competitive, if not the best at times.
• Transfer speed is one of the fastest, compared to other high-yield online savings.
• Perfect for those with an E-Trade Brokerage account for faster fund transfer between savings and investment accounts.

Cons:

• Customer service via phone is a bit lacking.
• E-mail customer service is better but response time could be faster.

Frequently getting overage charges from your cell phone plan? Billshrink.com may be able to help you sort through hundreds of different cell phone plan and help you find the best plan to save you money.

Billshrink is pretty easy and straightforward to use. Choose the service that you want to compare (wireless or credit cards), input your calling or spending pattern and Billshrink will spit out a list of possible alternatives.

You can also get a bit of phone usage analysis and better accuracy on cell plan comparison when you upload your phone bill to Billshrink. The site didn’t work too well for me as I already have a low price, discounted T-Mobile plan through Freelancer Union. The monthly bill of $36.85 is also a bit off since my plan was recently pro rated. If you have a regular consumer cell phone plan, you should definitely see better saving results.

As you can tell, I don’t use too many minutes or text messages. Lack of friends and all.

Heck, most of the calls is from the probational officer. Damn you James, I’m staying away from trouble, stop forcing me to call you already…

Features of Note:

• Get quick cell phone usage analysis by importing your bill. See who you call the most and which calls are costing you money.
• Sort through different plans from across different networks and choose the best rate.
• Estimate additional cost for extra features on cell phone plans.
• Compare and contrast best credit card for your spending pattern.
• Let Billshrink “watch your back” and get notification when better rates and service are available (plans and credit card terms changes all the time).
• Choose the type of phone you want to use and get even more specific comparison for plans that support the phone.

Billshrink can work fairly well if you’re not satisfied with your cell phone plan or not earning the proper rewards from your credit card spending. If you’ve already went through the process of doing heavy research to get the best cell plan or credit card — then Billshrink wont really help you save additional money (most likely the case if you’re reading a personal finance blog).

The credit cards comparison section is very detailed in terms of how they calculate the rewards; whether its point or miles, Billshrink converts them all into dollars so you can better compare the offerings.  Problem is, how the calculations are presented can be a bit confusing. If I had to re-read some details a few times just to understand how the calcuation works, then others that are less financially geeky may not be willing to take the time to understand the differences.

Despite that minor drawback (and I’m sure they’ll tune the site as time pass), BillShrink can be particularly helpful for the less research inclined. If BillShrink can continue to provide fast, easy, and objective recommendations, then it has the potential to establish itself as the place to go for service recommendations.

Pros:

• Best for people looking for quick ways to identify best service for them.
• Easy to use, especially if you import your cell phone bill.
• Notification service lets you know if there’s better offerings out there.

Cons:

• Credit card comparison calculations are a bit confusing.

In a move to no doubt better compete against other free online personal finance management tools, Quicken Online is now free (axing away the monthly $2.99 fee). I took the beta for a test drive sometime last year, but haven’t really checked back as I seriously had too many different tools to use.

The above screenshot has one credit card account added (well technically three, with two balance transfer cards in the Chase account).

Geared for the fast and simple crowd, Quicken Online is fairly easy to use. You add in financial accounts of your choice (banking, credit, some investments), and Quicken Online will quickly chug out data on if you’re living within your means (money in vs money out).

Features of Note:

• Quicken Beam: Access your balance info faster via a smartphone friendly site: m.quicken.com or text BAL to 636363 to quickly get your balances.
• Set monthly budget at the My Budget tabs for categories you want to track.
• Am I Living Within My Means calculation on front page. Works well enough if your cash flow is simple and straightforward.

Once accounts are added, the last 90 days of data will be grabbed and chugged into your Quicken Online account. Transactions are categorized well enough, but you’ll most likely have to tweak quite a few transactions. You won’t be able to import data from your other Quicken products, but Quicken Online isn’t really designed for in-depth personal finance analysis anyway.

You can only add in major investment accounts, as I don’t see too many other discount brokerages listed in the add accounts page. Which is well enough, as besides balance and transaction listing, there’s not much you can do when you add in investment accounts.

Quicken Online is overall pretty light when compared to Quicken’s desktop offerings. There’s a small categorization bug where they listed a Jack in a Box transaction as a monthly bill, but other than that minor quirk the service can be attractive for those needing a simple personal finance solution, especially considering the new free price tag.

Look for a full review in the future when I get around to taking it for a deeper test spin.

If you don’t want to deal with the process of researching your credit worthiness before you apply for credit, this new service may just be what you’re looking for.

A fitting name for the service, as it gets you a credit “grade” in seconds, then provides you with a list of credit cards and home loans that you may qualify for (home loan portion didn’t seem to work for me when I tried this). Click on the picture above to see a snapshot.

Launched just recently in early September 2008, KnowBeforeYouApply.com is owned by Centrro Inc., a financial-search company founded in 2006, with one of the founder being the creator of the website OSpace, one of the first internet provider of credit reports back in 1997 (the service was later acquired by Experian).

Cliff Notes:

• You’ll have to provide your personal information: name, address, and last 4 digit of your SSN to do the credit pull.
• The credit pull is done on your behalf so it won’t lower your credit score.
• You can receive free monthly credit “grade” rating if you invite three friends to join (otherwise updated every 90 days).
• KnowBeforeYouApply doesn’t mention which of the three (or all) credit bureaus it use to pull your report.
• Offers presented doesn’t guaranteed approval. Remember, just because you have a high credit score/rating from whatever party that provides it (this includes a real FICO score), other factors are involved in granting credit (especially installment loans such as home or auto loans).

Pros:

• No need to provide your full social security number to use the service.
• Quick and easy, does exactly what it says.
• Free avenue to track your general credit worthiness movement.
• Useful place to drop by to have an additional peace of mind before you apply for credit.

Cons:

• Personal information on yet another website.
• Offers may not tailor specifically to your needs, so you should still do your own research.

Similar Services:

• BillShrink.com Reviewed
• Quizzle.com Reviewed
• CreditKarma.com (will post review on this soon)

When you consider the myriad of rewards credit card out there, it’s no wonder Chase introduced the Freedom Rewards Card. With over 15 bonus reward categories and the ability to switch from cashback to point-based reward system, the Chase card is aptly named for its versatility (if not a bit cheesy and designed a bit fugly).

If you’ve had the unfortunate experience to have been subscribed to this blog for over a year, you may remember that I wrote a “preview” to the Chase Freedom card back in 2007. As promised, here’s a full detailed review for those that may be interested in a decent cashback rewards card.

Quick Facts: Chase Freedom Credit Card

• Comes in Visa Signature or regular Platinum if you don’t qualify for Signature card.
• No annual fee for either version of the credit card.
• Good to Excellent credit needed to apply, 680 to 720+ in FICO score.
• Chase will pull any of the three credit reporting agency to get your credit info.
• Variable APR with the a current APR of 14.99% (like many rewards card, a bit high)
• If you apply with FICO scores below 650, some delinquency on your credit history, and was declined, you may be able to ask for reconsideration by calling the number on the rejection letter.
• Save time and trouble by converting one of your old Chase credit cards into the Freedom rewards card.

Applying for the Credit Card

A quick scan of the credit pulls database shows that those receiving an approval without issue have 700+ in FICO score, with no blemishes on their credit history. These people generally received instant approval or approvals within a few days.

Those with some minor blemishes on their credit history and lower FICO score will most likely get the “notification within 30 day” notice, but unless you have major delinquency on your account, you should be able to get approval without issue (and especially on reconsideration).

If you have any doubts to your credit standing, you should NOT apply for this rewards card, as it is a prime card that requires good to excellent credit.

Most Chase credit cards (non co-branded ones) can be converted to the Freedom card without issue, so if you want to enjoy cashback, you can easily call customer service and ask them to convert your old Chase card into the Freedom Rewards card (my card was converted from a plain vanilla, 7.99% fixed APR, Chase Visa card into the current Chase Freedom card).

If you already have a Chase card, converting to the Chase Freedom is my recommended method to get the rewards card, as it’ll save you the hassle of applying for new credit and avoids the opening of yet another revolving account on your credit report.

Rewards Structure: Bonus Categories and Cashbacks

We’ll mostly look at the cashback aspect of the rewards card, as cold-hard cash is always better than points. With cashback, you can buy the crap you really want instead of being limited to the selections in Chase’s rewards catalog.

You earn 1% or 1 point for each $1 in purchases. You’ll earn an additional 2% or 2 point for purchases made in the top three bonus categories where you spend the most.

Bonus cashback: When you accumulate $200 in cashback, you can claim a $250 check, in essence making this card into a 3.75% / 1.25% cashback rewards card.

Merchants that fall into the bonus categories are:

• Grocery store (no warehouse clubs or discount stores, or departments of superstores)
• Gas and convenience stores
• Quick service payment/fast food restaurants
• Telecommunications
• Cable/satellite and TV/Internet service providers
• Video rentals
• Department stores
• Dry cleaners
• Drugstores
• Movie theatres
• Pet supply stores and veterinary services
• Beauty salons and spans, or gym/recreation membership
• Local and suburban commuter passenger transportations (ferries, bridges, tolls, parking garages, taxis/limos)

The trick in receiving the extra two percent in cashback (or points if you’re into that), is for the merchants to classify their merchant location as one of the following categories above.

Generally, if you’re buying groceries at a supermarket, or gas at a gas station, you’ll receive the bonus cashback without issues. However, if you buy groceries at a Walmart Supercenter, or gas at Costco, you won’t receive the bonus cashback.

Caveats: Although there are no cashback limits to regular purchases, there is a monthly $600 limit to the bonus categories; so in short, you can only earn about $18 in bonus cashback per month. If this limit is a concern, you can always supplement your cashback earnings with the Discover More Cashback Card. You should also note that the cashbacks and points on the Freedom card also expire in 36 months or 60 months, respectively.

Tracking and Requesting Cashback

Thanks to Chase’s new online account website, you can easily see your monthly cashback earnings once you’ve logged into your online account.

As you can see above, there is about $178 accumulated in my Freedom Visa card. In addition to the previous $250 check already requested, this puts my total cashback since owning the rewards card to $428. Not too shabby for a year of frivolous spending.

Cashbacks can be requested within this page whenever you reach $50 in cashback. You can also request a check at the $100 or $150 level. But you mightas well save up to the $200 level so you can request the bonus cashback of $250.

As the screenshot shows, you can also switch your rewards system from cashback to points in this online account page. This way, instead of cold hard cash to pay off the hitman, you can now save yourself some trouble and just give your in-laws Macy’s gift cards.

Visa Signature and Additional Card Benefits

The rewards card comes in a Visa Signature or regular Platinum (if you don’t qualify for Signature). Visa Signature benefits includes: concierge service, no pre-set spending limit, emergency cash disbursement and card replacement, warranty manager service, purchase security and other common credit card benefits such as lost luggage reimbursement and auto rental collision damage waiver.

The Visa Signature concierge service is provided as a complementary service by a third party, Mondial Assistance. Although I’ve initially read good things about the Visa Signature concierge service, after a few trial runs via phone and email request, I’ve found the concierge service to be nothing extraordinary.

Generally, for fast prompt response to inquiries, your best bet is to phone the Visa Signature concierge service. You can expect decent service for restaurant recommendations and reservations in major cities or travel arrangements.

If you’re emailing for information or request, make sure to clearly state what you need and the timeframe of the request as that may help speed up the response time (2 out of 4 of my email request went unanswered).

There are two benefits that are actually fairly hot: Purchase Security can potentially reimburse you up to a maximum of $500 per claim in the event of theft, damage due to fire, vandalism, etc. within the first 90 days of date of purchase. Warranty Manager Service allows for you to register a product and extend a manufacturer’s warranty for an additional year, for products with manufacturer’s warranty of less than three years.

With these two benefits, you wouldn’t have to worry about your brand new laptop being stolen within 90 days of purchase, or the battery bursting into flames six days after the warranty expires!

Online Account Usage and Features

Chase’s online account usage is actually decent and there are a few handy features you may be interested in. You can setup personalized alerts to get notification to various email accounts, text messages to cell phones on different type of scenario and conditions (account overdrawn, balance above XX amount, activity on account of more than XX amount, etc.)

Along with personalized alerts, you can also setup automatic monthly bill payment with the online account. The type of bills you can setup to pay varies from your auto insurance to your telecommunication bills. If you don’t already have automatic bill payment setup at your respective services, this will be a good place to have everything centralized, into one account — plus, it’ll help you accumulate cashback faster.

click to enlarge

Like many other online accounts, you can view your past recent statements, check your balance, pending charges, available credit, payment status and due dates. In addition to recent statements, if you sign-up for Chase’s paper-less statement system, Chase will store your statements up to six-years. During the end of each year, you will also see a year-end summary, detailing your crazy spending.

click to enlarge

Chase Customer Service

There are a few different methods to contact Chase if you have questions regarding your Chase card account. You can use the secure message center in the online account page, or if the matter is more pressing, you can contact Chase at the number on the back of your Chase Freedom card or the number on the credit card statement.

Depending on the time of the day, your call may be routed to the call center abroad, or you may reach a stateside representative. Issues that require more care will generally need a specific department from Chase, which are usually only available stateside and at normal business hours (for example, if you have an issue with a bill payment, you may not be able to reach help during the middle of the night).

I’ve had a situation where I accidentally made a significantly large payment to the wrong Chase Freedom card (I have two), and needed them to make the credit payment adjustment. To Chase’s credit (crappy pun not intended), the problem was resolved after two quick calls, with a prompt fix to my accounts within 24 hours.

Your results with customer service will of course vary, but as with any calls to a nation-wide financial institution, you’ll get better results during non-peak hours, which is usually prior to 9 AM or after 6 PM.

Overall Impression and Recommendation

If the Chase Freedom rewards card was a complete crap, it certainly wouldn’t be in my wallet for over a year. As a cashback card, it is fairly decent in its percentages, and generous in its bonus categories.

The $600 bonus spending limit in the bonus categories can certainly be a drag, but for many people, spending $600 in some of these specific categories can also be difficult, so the spending limit will only be a negative factor if your spending exceeds the limit. For those people, they tend to use the Freedom rewards card as a secondary cashback card, mainly to charge for specific monthly expenses such as telecommunications, utilities, or veterinary services.

If your monthly spending limit in those categories doesn’t exceed the $600 cap, then the Chase Freedom can be a good primary cashback card, if you don’t already have a better cashback credit card.

Generally, if you’re already grandfathered in a 5% cashback card, or have a card that suits your spending pattern, then you should definitely stick with that particular card, and only consider the Chase Freedom as a secondary choice.

If you already have a plain-vanilla Chase Visa card, you can easily call customer service to have them do a product swap to the Freedom rewards card. This method is recommended, as you avoid opening another revolving credit line to your credit profile.

For those that are still using credit cards that offer little in terms of rewards and cashback and pay their bills in full monthly, you should consider getting a rewards card like the Chase Freedom, or a similar rewards card that suits your spending pattern.

There is of course one major point you should take note of before getting the Chase Freedom card or any other rewards credit card. As a financial tool, credit cards can easily be a double edge sword. Along with their benefits, rewards, and convenience — they can become a real financial burden with irresponsible use.

Like many rewards credit card, the Chase Freedom has a higher interest rate than normal prime credit card with lower fixed rates. Any cashback you earned will be a moot point if you don’t pay your bills in full and accumulate interest.

Having said that, if you can manage your credit and spend wisely and you already pay your bills in full each month without issue, there’s little reason why you shouldn’t utilize the cashback from the Chase Freedom rewards card. In the long run, $428 in cashback isn’t something life changing — but man, sprining for those extra-soft toilet paper with the cashback money sure is sweet.

Update: Because Chase has changed the rewards structure of the Chase Freedom Rewards card, the ratings below have been updated to reflect the new changes. Please check Chase’s official website for finalized terms and benefits of the current Chase Freedom rewards card.

Chase Freedom Review Rating:

Cash Back: 4 out of 5

Card Benefits: 3 out of 5

Interest Rate: 3 out of 5

Customer Service: 4 out of 5

Pros:

• Good online account interface with many useful features.
• Base cashback is unlimited and bonus cashback categories are numerous.
• Claiming cashback is straight forward — redeem at every $50 level, or save up to $200 for the bonus $250 check.
• Visa Signature benefit of Purchase Security and Warranty Manager is a plus.
• With good credit, you will often be presented with prime balance transfer offer within the online account page.
• It’s a Visa card, which means it’s accepted almost everywhere.

Cons:

• Bonus cashback is limited to $600 in spending per month.
• Cashback expires in 36 months and points expire in 60 months.
• High interest rate, not recommended as a balance carrying card.
• 3% International transaction fee = don’t bother taking this card with you abroad.

I opened my Upromise.com account almost eight years ago, and if it wasn’t for a recent email, I would have forgot that I had an account at the college rewards/savings site.

From their own words:

Upromise is a free service that helps families earn extra money for education. It’s that simple.

We do this by partnering with hundreds of like-minded companies who share our mission. Our partners agree to provide YOU, the Upromise member, with rewards for using their products and services… and these rewards go into your Upromise account, where they become actual savings for college, grad school or even paying down a loan.

In essence, you create a free account at Upromise, register your credit cards and grocery cards, and when you dine and shop for groceries, you receive a contribution to your Upromise account when you purchase products or services that partners with Upromise. You can then use the accumulated contribution on qualified college spending.

Free money for doing what you’re already doing? What’s the catch?

As long as you’re not swayed by the marketing, there really isn’t any real catch. Upromises’ aim for their partners is to create brand loyalty. For example, whenever you buy gasoline at an Exxon/Mobil gas station, you will get $0.01 credited to your Upromise account for each gallon of gas you buy. If all else is equal and you have a choice between a Mobil gas station or another branded gas station, you will have more incentive to pump gas at the Mobil station due to the Upromise program.

Upromise Main Portal Page

Credit Card and Grocery Card Link Page

From the screenshot on the top, you can see that I’ve accumulated $17.16 in my Upromise account (yeah, the $0.04 for orange juice is pretty sweet). Nothing exciting for an account I’ve had for over seven years — but then again, I’ve never consciously went and change my spending habit to buy specifically at any Upromise partnered companies.

Savings by Company Page

Account Transaction Page

It’s interesting to see that the majority of the contribution was from Exxon/Mobil purchased, amounting at $10.19. At $0.01 per gallon, that’s over 1,019 gallons of gasoline pumped in the past eight years at only one particular brand of gas station. A hefty amount of gasoline indeed!

You can easily earn significantly more contribution ($100+) if you shop online through the Upromise portal, download the Upromise toolbar, or use the Citi Upromise MasterCard — but if you don’t want to fuss with any of that, you can simply add your most frequently used credit cards (or just grocery cards if you’re not comfortable storing your CC info) and forget that you ever have an account and simply let the contributions accumulate through gas, grocery, and dining purchases.

$17.16 is not an insane amount, but that’s 1/8th of a college textbook! Woot?

One of my hidden fetishes is to test-drive various financial services that can be found on the web. From financial management tools to low cost brokerages, you name it, I’ve probably heard of it or have tried it.

Having said that, my personal information is most likely riddled across the Internet by now, being just a few missteps away from identity theft hell. Thankfully I’m penniless, so the most they can steal from me is my sexy name, job prospect at the Department of Defense, and future livelihood.

I first learn about Zecco.com when they first launched back in 2006. Figuring they have had a year or more to mature their service, I signed up for a Zecco brokerage account about half a year ago. Or at least I thought I did.

Essentially, I filled out all my information, submit my account application and then… nothing happened. An email told me that I should get a follow-up email when my account is approved and open, but it never came.

Figuring they’re sorting things out on their end, I quickly forgot about my application, as the last thing on my mind was yet another online account I’d have to deal with.

So months later, I started to receive marketing and service related emails from Zecco, notifying me of new features, policy changes, etc. I guess my account was opened after all.

Just as I was about to lose interest in using the account, I received an email telling me that if I deposit and fund my account with $2,500, I would receive a $100 bonus. Never one to turn away free money (cheap ass alert), I quickly shoot off an email to customer service to inquire about my account status and trading key. Within a business day, I received a reply and was off to setting up my Zecco trading account.

Zecco Trading Brokerage Account

• 10 free stock trade each month for account balance of $2,500 or more.
• $4.50 each for additional trade per month, and for accounts with less than $2,500.
• No inactivity fee, no account minimum.
• No-load mutual fund at $10 per trade (online).
• Free ACH. Additional fees information can be found here.

The interesting thing about Zecco is that it’s two entity being served on one website. There’s the Zecco.com web portal, which handles the blogs, community forums, and social aspect; and then there’s Zecco Trading, the low-cost brokerage firm based in Ontario, CA that handles the brokerage accounts (back-end served by Penson Financial Services).

You’ll find this to be most evident in the community forum, where members often ask question related to Zecco Trading services, rates, and policies. The poor moderators often can’t answer user questions due to understandable regulatory and legal issues — quite a customer service mess when you try to mend an active online community with regulated financial services.

To be clear, this review will focus on the Zecco Trading brokerage account, not the social investing community aspect of Zecco.com.

Interface, Trading, and Depositing

Although not the prettiest or easiest of interfaces, Zecco Trading has improved a bit since launch. In fact, during the course of my account usage, they’ve revamped the ACH page to make depositing and transferring of funds much easier and more intuitive. Initial setup of a link account was a bit hard to figure out, but should be much easier and straightforward now with the interface ramp-up. Transfer was fast and cleared within 1-2 business day (although I believe initial deposit takes 5-10 business days to clear).

Not being an active trader, I can’t provide too many insight on the trade and quote system. Zecco claims the industry standard of 30 second for order handling, and my limit orders were executed fast within seconds of reaching their limit. There’s no Level II quotes of course, and no streaming quotes, so to get the latest real-time quote you’ll need to re-click the quote button. Modifying an order also seems to take awhile, so you’re probably better off canceling the old order and inputting in a new order. If any of this matters to you, then Zecco is probably not right for you (at least, as a primary trade account anyway).

Each trade executed will result in a paper statement being mailed, detailing the transaction. A fairly standard practice, but it appears there’s no option to turn the paper trail off or have users sign for electronic delivery of notifications and statements (an easy way to reduce cost for them so it should be a no-brainer, most likely something they’ll implement eventually). [Update on this below].

I made a few trades to give the service a test, and it was definitely refreshing to buy stocks without having to price in the commission charges (SEC fees are still there, of course). My last trade was an incredibly exciting one, a semi-short term treasury bond ETF (iShare SHY), to balance out my other ridiculously allocated portfolios.

This last trade highlights one good reason to have a Zecco Trading account: with trade commission out of the way, buying a lump amount of low expense ratio index or bond ETFs can be quite attractive — especially for retirement accounts such as IRAs.

Customer Service and Information Finding

One of the things that I hate the most is having to dig through a website just to find standard information. Things such as money market sweep account rate and their accompanied prospectus should not be difficult to find. It seems that Zecco would rather constantly point you to contact their customer service via email or phone, instead of having all the information in an easy to find location in the first place.

Having said that, all my instances of emailing customer service were without issues. I first emailed customer service about how I can setup my trading key, and was greeted with a prompt clear reply on how to get setup. Other emails about rates, minimums, forms were also replied with a timely and informative matter. This isn’t the case for other people on the web, so I was either lucky or others were unlucky.

Random Margin Calls and Outages

Talk about a deal killer. Before I even started actively making trades on my Zecco account, I received an email from Zecco Trading’s margin department, issuing me a maintenances margin call. For those that don’t know, a maintenance margin call generally occurs when your margin account value has dropped to such a value that your equity percentage fell below the minimum maintenance requirement. Basically, you borrowed money to buy stocks and your stocks dropped too much in value, now the broker is asking you to fund more money into your account or your assets will be liquidated and you’ll be sh*t out of luck.

Now, because of the generic name of the “From” line, I immediately thought that one of my brokerage account was compromised and someone went on a stock buying spree, as most of my accounts only had $15.36 available in cash (enough for four meals at In-n-Out).

Well, Cap, good old buddy, I thought to myself. This is what you get for having trillions of accounts — you’re bound to get screwed over one of these days.

Upon further reading of the email, I realized that the email was from Zecco, my recently funded account that I haven’t even executed a trade in yet. Thinking it to be an error, I logged into my Zecco Trading account to double check, and sure enough my account was still at its normal value.

Minutes later, I received another email from customer service, notifying me that they’d like to “recall” the margin call message. I guess it’s their way of saying, “Sorry, looks like we sent an alarming email to the wrong person. Our bad!”

A quick Google search reveals that I wasn’t the only one to receive such an email (and not just on that particular day). An instance of a customer service rep “fat finger” frequently hitting the wrong button? Whatever the case, projecting the image that you may not know how much we have in our account is never a comforting factor.

Besides the random margin call email, I also experienced a random website outage during weekday trading hours. Just a few weeks ago, Zecco’s site was down from unknown reasons. Upon visiting the site, I was greeted with a message that a “scheduled upgrade” was in progress. A scheduled upgrade on a Monday morning at 11 AM EST? Right…

The outage of course didn’t affect me as I don’t actively trade, but the downtime wasn’t acceptable either for an online-based brokerage.

Free Trade is Attractive but Service Quality is Questionable

It’s hard to recommend a Zecco Trading account to anyone, given my experience, but the fact of the matter is, the free trades are for real and do work. I can see a two types of users having this account:

• Someone that knows exactly what they’re getting into, and will utilize the 10 free trades to supplement their other online brokerages.
• A light long-term investor who needs the occasional trade and will never need more than the 10 free trades per month.

If I didn’t receive the mistaken margin call, and if the interfaces were more user friendly, I can easily recommend a Zecco Trading account as a potential IRA choice. For a retirement account, being able to make commission free trades makes many low-cost ETF much more attractive, especially if you can’t make large lump sum purchases. You can potentially have a very diversified portfolio for very little initial funding!

Zecco has had awhile to polish up their service since launch, but it seems that they’re expanding faster than they can service their current customers properly. Their initial offering of 40 free trades per month with no minimum balance required was indeed very attractive, but the change to only 10 trades per month with a minimum balance seems to have jaded quite a few people.

The website has been revamped quite a few times, they are offering more tools for their users, and it appears customer service is getting better and better. They have raised much more capital in recent months, so they certainly have the assets to improve their service and product, provided they hire the right people to execute. Still, I’ve been seeing their advertisement much more frequently on top-tier news/finances websites recently, so whether or not they’re spending their fund at the right places, and whether or not the business model is sustainable is something that remains to be seen.

Pros:

• Sure it’s not 40 free trade anymore, but 10 free trade is still 10 free trade.
• Fast customer service email reply (for me anyway).
• A nice community forum with smart members and moderators.
• Free trade / low commission makes various ETFs an attractive offer.

Cons:

• Seemingly unreliable and unpolished
• Numerous customer service complaint on web
• Difficult to find proper information on website
• May change amount of free trade per month again or require higher account balance.

Update on Paper Statements:

Funny thing. After I finished writing this review, I found out through browsing my blog feed that Zecco has now “allowed” their users the option of electronic statement and trade notification. It’s not too much of a choice though, as Zecco will start charging users $1.50 per trade confirmation and $2 per paper statement after May 30th.

I’m assuming they sent out the new changes and extra fees notice via email, but for whatever reason I didn’t get the notice. Still not sure why they didn’t limit cost and headache in the first place by having electronic delivery as an available default option.