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

Like many new “Web 2.0 ish” 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). No need to fork over any credit card, the service as promised, is free.

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.

This post "Quizzle.com Free Credit Report, Score, Home Value, & Budget" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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.

This post "E-Trade Bank Online Savings Account Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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.

This post "BillShrink.com – Find Better Cell Phone Plans and Credit Cards" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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.

Updated 9/14/2011: Quicken Online, for those that didn’t know, has basically been updated & replaced by Mint.com. It has same functionality and more features.

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.

This post "Quicken Online Now Free" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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)

This post "KnowBeforeYouApply.com: Get Free Credit Grade" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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.

This post "Chase Freedom Credit Card Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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?

This post "Upromise.com Review: Free College Savings" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

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.

This post "Zecco.com Trading Review – Random Margin Calls & Outages" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Lending money to strangers online could be pretty silly or pretty awesome depending on which website you’re on.

I first read about Kiva.org from Ramit’s Friday Entrepreneurs back in August of 2006.

First impression? Pretty neat. Bookmarked it, fell asleep, and soon forgot about it.

Yesterday, with an In-N-Out burger in one hand and a greasy mouse in another, I trolled Bloglines and came across another pf blogger’s post on Prosper.com — which I promptly typed into Wikipedia’s search box to see how Prosper has changed since launch. (Anyone else type things into the Firefox search box while they read articles or watch TV?)

While reading about Propser’s shady handling of its online forum, I noticed the “See also” link to Kiva in the Wikipedia entry.

“Hmm, I wonder how’s Kiva coming along?” I thought to myself as I click on the link and flicked the onions out of my burger.

Minutes later, before I even finished my juicy burger and strawberry shake, I found myself lending money to strangers online — all it took was only a few minutes.

Microcredit what?

Kiva.org is a non-profit organization that partners with microfinance networks across the globe to provide microcredit to low-income entrepreneurs. In gist, microcredit is the lending of very small amount of loans. It’s like letting your friend Bob borrow $50. Except Bob isn’t going to use the $50 to buy a PS3 game — he’ll be using the $50 to further his business and create more wealth.

Easier than Buying that Beanie Baby Off eBay

Lending money to various entrepreneurs across the globe is incredibly easy. You browse through the list of lenders by clicking the “Lender” tab, pick the listing you want to lend to, select your amount, click “Loan Now” put in your PayPal info and you’re done.

Borrower Listing Page

Lender’s Profile Page

After you’ve extended the loan, you will receive email updates in regards to the status of the loan and the progress of the business in which you’ve extended the loan to.

The flow of money is fairly simple. You extend the loan via a credit card transaction; Kiva collects the fund (100% of which goes to borrower, since Paypal is waiving transaction fee); the funds are transfered to the field partners which administers and collects the loan repayment; you receive your repayment into your account and you can withdraw the amount or lend to another borrower.

Not Really a Handout

Loans extended on Kiva won’t generate interest for the lenders (although the microfinancing field partners of Kiva do charge interest to borrowers), thus if you lend money on Kiva — you will only get your principal amount back. There is of course the risk of the loan defaulting, in which case you may lose your money.

With those in mind, why should anyone lend money?

Kiva’s pitch: By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Hence, “loans that change lives.”

My opinion? Sounds good to me. On one hand, you’re helping someone. On another hand, you’re not exactly giving a handout — these are loans that should be repaid, after all. Plus, more often than not, these loans are a means for them to produce more wealth and value — not to pay off debt incurred from excessive shopping.

Thus far, Kiva has had a pretty amazing repayment rate of 100%, an on-time payment rate of +99%, and the microfinance institution that Kiva partners with are required to meet Kiva’s due diligence standard.

Microfinancing isn’t without problems, borrowers can easily use their funds on transactions other than the ones stated, and microfinance institutions can’t always find the perfect borrowers. Still, as a website that utilizes the Internet to increase the reach of funding for microfinancing institutions across the globe, Kiva is doing a pretty spiffy job.

Related Links

• Kiva.org on PBS Frontline
• Where to Microfinance?

This post "Kiva.org — Lending $25 to Celina in Kenya Just Got Easier" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

This is an in-depth review of myFICO FICO scores provided by Fair Isaac. If you’re purchasing a FICO score, don’t forget to check for myfico promotional code before you buy! This review was written when myFICO.com previously offers Experian FICO scores to consumers, unfortunately as of recent development, an Experian FICO score can no longer be purchase at myFICO.com.

FICO scores are a lot like lottery tickets. You’re paying for a bunch of numbers that will become meaningless (sort of) in the future. One of them can potentially save you thousands of dollars, while the other is a complete utter waste of money.

What’s a FICO Score?

There are about seventy-two hundred articles about FICO scores on the web (yup, counted). If you’ve read at least four hundred of these articles on FICO scores, you can skip ahead and go straight to the review. If not, you’ll be able to pick up some basics on FICO credit scoring by reading this explanation section.

FICO scores are a set of three numbers that represent your credit worthiness; they are computed by the Fair Issac Corporation. Each of the score is derived by your credit history from each major credit reporting agency: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Because your credit history may vary from one credit reporting agency to the next, your FICO scores may be different from one another. The scores will also change when the information in your credit report are updated as time pass.

Thus, FICO scores are a type of credit scores. For the banks and lenders that do use FICO scores, your scores can affect the bank’s decision in whether to extend you credit and the amount of interest you’ll be charged. The FICO score ranges between 300 and 850. The higher the numbers, the better your credit worthiness and the more likelihood you’ll be approve of credit and the more favorable your interest rate will be.

In a nutshell, understanding your FICO score can help you understand the type of loan you should be able to acquire. This means if an auto dealership’s finance department is giving you an unfavorable interest rates, you’ll know it. Understanding how some factors influence the score can also help you obtain the best possible score before you apply for a mortgage, in which a large difference in score can mean an extra percentage or two in the mortgage loan — potentially thousands of dollars in the long run.

FICO Scores = Credit Scores, but Credit Scores ≠ FICO Scores

This is where it gets a bit silly and confusing. You should realize that although FICO scores are a type of credit scores, not all credit scores provided out there are FICO scores. The exact algorithm used by Fair Issac in computing FICO scores are a closely guarded secret, and because of this credit scores from other sources are not the same as FICO score, even if they are similar in numbering ranges.

Getting a “FAKO” score (a score not computed by Fair Issac) from Company X is mostly a waste of money. If a particular lender does not use the score you obtain, then your scores are pretty much worthless. It’s like running to the creditor saying: “But Bob says my credit score is 1,000!” Pretty silly when the creditor doesn’t know or care who Bob is.

Fair Issac claims that 90% of the largest U.S. banks use FICO scores. Whether your actual prospective lender uses FICO score as a factor or not is up to them, though at the end FICO scores are a good indication, and one of the industry standard in knowing where you stand in terms of credit worthiness.

myFICO FICO Scores Review

myFICO.com’s FICO Deluxe / Complete

Price: $47.85 (one-time purchase)

Promotional Code: FICO25 for 25% OFF

What you get:

- All 3 credit scores & report.
- Viewable for 30 days from date of purchase.
- Explanation for factors affecting each of your scores.

Buying the score is fairly straight forward. You click on purchase, input the discount code, fill out your personal information and pay Fair Issac via credit cards. You’re require to open an account so you can log-in and view the scores and report, all standard stuff.

Before you receive your report and scores, you’ll be asked a series of question based on your credit history, to determine your identity. In the event that they’re unable to verify your identity online, you can call a number provided on-screen, in which a service representative will confirm your identity.

I. The FICO Scores

The website interface is pretty easy to navigate. Upon log-in, you’ll be presented with your FICO score and the date the scores are obtained. Next to the score is a spiffy certification-for-the-real-deal.

The Login Page

Clicking on each of the score will bring you to the FICO Score summary page. You can check out an example of such a page here. The FICO Score page explains in detail what the score means to you, it will basically tell you how good or bad your credit is, and how likely it is for you to obtain credit base on the scores. There is also a summary of factors that affect your score, in which the positive and negative factors are listed and briefly explained.Clicking on the “Top Positive Factors” and “Top Negative Factors” page will give you further details on the factors that affect your score. For FICO score newcomers, this page can be pretty informative, especially for those taking steps in improving their credit.

Your FICO Score Page

How Lenders See You Page

The “How Lenders See You” page is another informative page, giving you a low down of how you are seen in the eyes of lenders. This includes your risk factor and a ball park interest rate for various different type of installment loan. Examples listed are a 30 year mortgage; a 15 year home equity loan; and a 48 month auto loan.

The interest rate numbers provided on this page appears to be up-to-date and sourced on the day you purchase the score, as my numbers are clearly higher than the one shown in the example page. Also in the “How Lenders See You” page, Fair Issac provides you with an extreme example of how your credit score can affect the rates you pay: If you score dropped from 792 to 510, you would pay $464 more each month in interest.

The last tab within the FICO score section is the “FICO Score Simulator.” The simulator provides an estimated score base on a list of what-ifs, such as “what if you pay down your balances on your credit card.” You can also click on the “simulate best action” button to see which action might result in the best improvement of your score. The simulator is pretty basic, with no-brainer what-ifs such as “what if you max out your credit cards.”Overall, the FICO score section is informative. Each of the information presented to you is accompanied by a decent amount of explanation to help you better understand the factors that influence your score.

II. The Credit Reports

The credit reports provided by myFICO.com are woefully basic and lacking in information. The first few tabs are self explanatory. “Negative Items” show things such as bankruptcy, collection, and delinquencies — if any. The “Inquiries” section shows the number of recent inquires resulting from you apply for credit. You should note that shopping for the best auto or home loan within a certain time period will not result in multiple hits of inquires to your credit report.

The “Accounts Summary” page simply lists a few stats that are important. You’ll see the number of accounts you have, the number of accounts with balances, number of accounts that are negative, the total balance on all accounts, and the length of credit history.

Clicking on each of the accounts listed will show you a wee bit more information on each account. You will see information such as the type of account (revolving or installment), the credit limit or high balance on the account, the minimum monthly payment or the terms of the account.

There isn’t much that can be mentioned about the credit report section of myFICO.com. Compare to the individual reports you receive straight from each credit reporting agency, the report shown on myFICO.com is a definite reader’s digest version.

Take the inquiries section for example. In the myFICO.com report, you only given the hard inquiry information, while soft inquires are not listed. Compare to a report from a credit reporting agency, the credit reporting agency may show you all the soft inquiry within the past year.

Because myFICO.com utilizes one interface for all three different report, some of the information provided (such as credit limit and high balance) may be unclear and difficult to compare. To really get a clear look at your credit report, especially for the task of fixing potential mistakes, you are much better off requesting each individual report from each of the respective credit reporting agency. Don’t forget they’re available free once per year.

III. Different Scores?

As you can see from the picture above, my Equifax and TransUnion score are different by about 28 points — although a fairly significant amount in terms of FICO score, for my particular situation the score difference aren’t too striking.

One of the advantages of obtaining your three FICO score is the ability to quickly see the possible differences in your credit report. As the scores are computed base on the credit report from each perspective agency, the resulting score can show you which report may be similar and which report may differ greatly.

In my situation, the extra 28 points can be attributed to one authorize user account that’s shown on the Equifax report, but not on the TransUnion report. The inclusion of this one account resulted in an extra $15,000 difference in credit limit, and also a difference of almost 11 years in credit history. A pretty significant difference!

If you want to read more about the importance of different credit score, you should check out the related post linked below.

IV. No Report, No Scores

There’s a certain caveat you should know about getting your FICO score from myFICO.com. If for whatever reason a credit reporting agency has blocked off your ability to receive a credit report online (thereby forcing you to request the report by snail mail), Fair Issac will also be unable to get you the score from that particular agency, since the scores are dependent upon the information within the report.

This is the reason why my scores from Experian are not shown above, because Experian has recently prevented me from obtaining my credit report via the online method.

When you try to purchase all three score in a situation like this, you’ll receive an unable to confirm identity message from myFICO. If calling the number provided doesn’t resolve your problem, you can simply try ordering each score individually to see which of the agency may be the source of the problem.

V. Not The Only Factor

You should know that although FICO scores are one of the more widely used scores by large US banks, it is NOT the only factor a lender use to determine your credit worthiness! Just because you have ass kicking FICO score does not mean you’ll never be rejected for credit. Besides other factors such as income and actual credit history, many large banks also have their own scoring system in determining credit worthiness.

Overall Impression and Conclusion

The expensive price tag, when compare to other available credit score can be attributed to the fact that FICO scores can mostly only be obtained from Fair Issac. If you were already planning on getting your credit score, you should obtain them from myFICO, as scores from other sources may not pertain what-so-ever in the eyes of your potential lenders.

If you have never, ever, taken a peak at your FICO score before, the price tag may be a fair deal — especially if you read all of the information provided to you. The FICO Score pages do a great job explaining the details of a FICO score, specifically, your FICO score.

For the people that are improving their credit, scores from myFICO can be a great indicator of how well you’re doing in your credit fix. You should note that fixing bad credit takes time, and forty bucks can add up quickly over time; so you should request your score in moderation, and only when you know significant changes have been made to your credit history (e.g. bankruptcy finally removed from your credit report).

Other people that will find FICO scores extremely helpful will be those shopping for a home or auto loan. Knowing your FICO score will insure that you’re less likely to accept unfavorable loan terms due to lack of information.

If you already know your FICO score and have not made any significant changes to the way you manage your credit, than you definitely don’t need to obtain your FICO scores.

If you’re buying the FICO scores for the credit report, you will be sorely disappointed. The information provided are basic at best — they’re more of a tacked-on bonus, which makes the scores themselves even more expensive. Remember, you can always obtain credit reports for free once per year.

Finally, if you’re running a crappy personal finance blog and have finally ran out of crap to make fun of, and you decided to actually provide some information to your readers (specifically a review on myFICO.com), you will most likely have to shell out the dough for the scores.

Pros:

• Scores are the real deal
• Scores are more relevant compare to other offerings
• Great information for beginners
• Helpful gauge in credit improving process
• Helpful guide in shopping for auto/home loans

Cons:

• Come on, $47.85? (or $38.28 with discount)
• Too little credit report information
• At the end, just one of many other factors

This post "myFICO.com Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Anyhow, lot’s of financial accounts, too much hassle to keep track of them individually.

What do you do?

In comes Yodlee, an online banking account aggregation service, which also happens to be utilize by many major financial institutions. Yodlee is free to sign-up and use, and the only reason why you don’t hear about them too much is because they do not market their product directly to the consumer.

The gist of it is really simple. You register for an account at Yodlee, add in your financial accounts, click the update button—and bam, all your account informations are updated and you are now in financial organization bliss.

Two Choice of Yodlee

Yodlee MoneyCenter

Yodlee Dashboard

There’s really no difference in features in the type of Yodlee you choose, except for the way the information are presented to you. If you prefer an all-in-one screen view, you should go with Dashboard, if not stick with the single format view from MoneyCenter.

How To Sign-Up With Yodlee

1. Head over to Yodlee’s Financial Application
2. Pick the format you like and click Log Me In
3. Click on the Registration link above the log-in
4. Fill in all your info and click register

Done deal.

Using Yodlee and its Features

Adding accounts is also fairly straight forward. Click on the Add Account Tab and type in your financial institution’s name to search for it, or click on the popular account tab to see if your account is listed there.

Types of accounts you can add:

• Banking Accounts
• Credit Card & Reward Accounts
• Telecommunication Bill Accounts
• Payment Service (PayPal) Accounts
• Investment and Insurance Accounts
• Loan and Mortgage Accounts
• And even web-based E-mail Accounts!

Yodlee contains a BillPay service, where you can make payment to some of the accounts you’ve added, such as credit card bills and cable service bills; pretty handy! Another semi-useful service is the Yodlee Financial Calendar, which allows you to see when the bills are due on a calendar map.

Yodlee BillPay

Yodlee Financial Calendar

Besides the features listed above, there is also a Net Worth tab that shows your net worth in a bar graph format. You can also check out the spending report, although it isn’t too accurate unless you actively manage the categories for each specific transaction. You’ll find that many of Yodlee’s features are similar to those of MS Money and Inuit Quicken.

Even More Yodlee Choices

With their recent update, Yodlee has been noted to be slow to access for some user. As you can tell from the above pictures, some of the sample accounts I added were having trouble updating. For those with significant access problem with Yodlee, you can try their service from various other financial institutions:

• CompassBank MyCompass (Yodlee 5.0)
• Harris TotalLook (Yodlee 5.0)
• National City My Accounts (Yodlee 4.0)

Of course, signing up service in these other institution will require you to trust your information with their database and security. If you’re a HSBC or Bank of America customer, you should check out HSBC EasyView and Bank of America’s My Portfolio.

Paranoid Users Beware

The problem with an financial account aggregation is that all your password and information for each of these financial accounts are stored in one central location. Not a good thing if you don’t trust Yodlee’s security capability.

There are a couple of things you should know about Yodlee though. First, many of the largest financial institution utilize Yodlee technology for their online account services. If you’re banking at Bank of America, Citi Bank, or HSBC—you’re already using Yodlee services. In fact, those respective banks probably offer a similar account aggregation service on your online account, powered by Yodlee.

Second, under federal banking regulations, you have quite a few rights when it comes to electronic fraud. As long as you’re up top of things and notify fraudulent activities fast (within two days), you’re only liable for up to $50. Within sixty days, the cap rise to $500. Anytime over that though and you’re sorta SOL.

Still Pretty Damn Convenient

Fact of the matter is, an online financial aggregator is flippin’ convenient. For me and many others, it’s well worth the small risk. There really shouldn’t be any big problem if you take basic precaution with your private information and be proactive about the security of your computer.

Without online aggregator service like Yodlee, life can be hectic. Let’s face it, no body likes logging into sixty different accounts everyday just to make sure their significant other didn’t blow all their money on Texas hold’em.

Related Links and Resources

• Why I Use Yodlee Account Aggregation from MyMoneyBlog.com
• My Second Love Affair With a Web Application
• Q&A on Yodlee from Fatwallet Finance Forum

This post "HOW TO: Keep Track of 95% of Your Financial Accounts in One Place with Yodlee" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

HSBC Direct started offering their online savings account back in 2005 with little fanfare, but they have since become much more well known through the years.  This is an in-depth review of the HSBC Direct Online Savings Account, with screenshots of account usage and bank transfer from over three years of account ownership.

You can read the entire review from start to finish, or skip all the way to the summary for a list of pros and cons.  If you have any feedback on the HSBC Direct Online Savings Account or this review, feel free to leave a comment below.

Account Opening Process

Opening an account at HSBC Direct should be a breeze for most people. You fill in the usual personal information and type in other information requested. HSBC’s opening application distinguished itself with a few convenient features:

1. You can save the application and finish it later
2. Different options for linked account verification

When you open an online savings account such as HSBC Direct, you will usually have to link the savings account to an existing checking account. To verify the linked checking account, most banks will usually do a two deposit verification method. In this method, two small trial deposit will be made to your checking account, which you later verify the amounts to confirm your identity as the account owner.

One of the account verification methods is an “instant verification” process, which simply requires you to input your online account information (the login & password) of the checking account being verified. The instant verification is limited to the Yodlee online banking solution, an online banking method that most major banks utilize.

The rest of the account opening process is smooth, albeit slow. Unlike ING Direct, which allows you to open an account without waiting for any mail — a problem with many online-only-accounts from traditional bank, is that the account opening process still heavily relies on snail mail.

HSBC has the same problem, but fortunately the mails were sent within a reasonable time period. You should expect to receive six separate mail piece:

1. Temporary login for online access
2. Temporary password for online access
3. Account number and ABA routing number
4. A letter informing you that the ATM card is on its way
5. The actual ATM card
6. The PIN for the ATM card

You will need all of the mail above, except #4, to have full access to your account. The time frame for the mail to arrive will vary depending on your location. It took about 12 business day for me to receive all the mail from New York to California. It’s understandable that this information was sent separately, as privacy and security is important — but HSBC can probably streamline the process better & faster.

Account Access and Interface

When I first got an account at HSBC Direct, the domain HSBCdirect.com was not setup yet — in fact, it wasn’t even called HSBC Direct yet. It took a bit of digging to find out where to login to access my account. Today, all you have to do is head to HSBCdirect.com and the link for account access will be on the front page.

The first page you’ll see when you login is fairly straight forward. You will be greeted by an Account Summary page, which gives you a quick summary of your account balance as of today. Click on the left picture below to see the Account Summary page.

The Accounts Detail page is self explanatory. You will see balance information such as bank balance, available balance, last state date, year to date interest, and the last nine transactions on your account. If you wish to view previous transaction, you will have to use the transaction search function, which allows you to search through different date and amount ranges. One feature that’s lacking is a daily update of interest earned for the month. You can click on the right picture above to see the Accounts Detail page.

You can also export your account data and specific transaction date ranges into three different file formats. HSBC supports Quicken (qfx, qif) and MS Money (ofx). Your account statements can be view with the eStatements tab, which also allows you to save & print the statement in pdf format.

Online Bank to Bank Transfer

This is the meat of an online savings account, the online transfer capability. Clicking on the Bank to Bank Transfer tab will bring you to an annoying Security Key screen. In order to create a Security Key, you will need your ATM card number and its PIN number, both of which will arrive via snail mail. In another words, you won’t have full access to your account until you receive both of those mail piece. You are required to use the virtual keyboard to input your security key. HSBC requires a certain length to the security key, so it can become quite a hassle to input the key. Click on the left picture below to see the Security Key interface.

Once you have input the security key, a new window will open up with the Bank to Bank transfer feature. In this page, you can add, remove, and transfer funds between accounts. The interface is straight-forward, adding accounts requires the usual two trial deposit verification. A great thing about HSBC’s Bank to Bank transfer is that it allows an unlimited amount of accounts linked. You can add your checking, savings, and brokerage account from various financial institutions. The Bank to Bank electronic transfer service is provided by CashEdge.

Be aware that some accounts cannot be linked to the HSBC Online Savings Account, such as the ING Direct Oranges Saving Account. According to HSBC, members of the CashEdge network can exclude themselves from being linked. Apparently ING Direct excluded themselves to be linked (an understandable action to prevent easy withdrawal of account funds to their competitors). You can click on the right picture above to see the Bank to Bank Transfer interface.

Bank to Bank Transfer Speed

Up untill this point, everything about HSBC Direct is decent enough. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a perfect banking experience, so here’s the drawback to the HSBC Direct account — the online bank to bank transfer speed. Compare to other competitors ACH transfer speed, HSBC’s transaction speed is ridiculously slow. Through my various transfer to and from various accounts, the transaction speed of HSBC is usually slower by 1-2 days, and at times, 3 days slower. Whenever I push a transfer from another source to HSBC Direct, the deposit will show within a reasonable 1-2 business day time frame. However, if the situation is reverse, and I pull the amount from that account to HSBC, via HSBC’s Bank to Bank transfer feature, the same transaction takes an extra business day or two.

There is a great HSBC Direct transfer speed experiment that can be found over at MyMoneyBlog.com. In the experiment, Jonathan conducted various transfer through different financial institutions. The result is quite interesting and correlates with my experiences with HSBC Direct. You should definitely check out Jonathan’s post for more information.

The lowdown on the transfer speed is that HSBC is probably keeping a day or two of interest through the ACH — interest that you’re not earning. When you utilize the Bank to Bank Transfer, you should pay close attention to HSBC’s transfer schedule, and make due sure you initiate transfer before the 8 PM EST cut-off. Looking at HSBC’s transfer schedule, the best days to initiate a transfer would probably be Sunday through Tuesday.

Customer Service Functionality

You can contact customer service via the Bank Mail interface in the online account, or by calling HSBC at 1-800-975-HSBC. The call center is 24/7, although the quality and availability of support will vary depending on the time called. Your best bet for non-emergency inquiry would be the online Bank Mail feature. Response time for my test questions were within a reasonable 4-8 hours time frame. Answers provided were thankfully not robotic responses. The response to my basic question about how-to use a function was written clearly and straight-forward.

Contacting customer service via phone definitely leaves a lot to be desired. The wait time at peak business hour can be quite long (over 10 minutes) and at times, you may reach a customer service rep that’s not knowledgeable on the HSBC Direct Online Savings Account. According to Gethuman.com, the fastest way to reach a human operator at HSBC is by calling 1-800-477-6000 — press 1, 3, then 0. It would be great if HSBC eventually introduces a specific number to reach operators that specialize in HSBC Direct specifically.

Overall Account Impression

As mentioned, HSBC’s questionable ACH delays can be a big turn-off to many, but in my opinion it isn’t a major issue for a savings account. It would have been great though, to use HSBC Direct as a central hub to transfer funds, thanks to the account’s unlimited account linking capability.

HSBC Direct’s APY rate is consistently competitive among other no fees, no minimum accounts. They have stay within the market’s rate, and at times have lead the pack. Although you are required to have $1+ to receive the current APR, unlike Emigrant Direct, your account at HSBC Direct will not be closed if the balance reaches $0. I’ve had $0 balance at HSBC without issue, but to be safe and avoid hassle, you should still leave a small amount in HSBC Direct.

If it wasn’t for the slow ACH transfer speed and a few other minor quirks such as the Security Key interface, HSBC Direct would be a pretty sweet high-yield online savings account. That said, HSBC Direct is still semi-sweet — like, kettle corn sweet.

Pros:

• Competitive high-yield rate
• No fee, no minimum, FDIC insured
• Unlimited account linking
• Decent account opening process
• Functional, error-free site

Cons:

• Slow ACH speed compare to competitors
• Hassle access to ACH due to Security Key
• Snail mail required for account opening

• HSBC Direct – Official Site
• HSBC Direct opening process
• HSBC Direct review – Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

This post "HSBC Direct Online Savings Account Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

The Total Money Makeover:
A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

Author: Dave Ramsey

Publisher: Nelson Books

ISBN: 0785263268 – Hardcover, 244 pages

Dave Ramsey hates debt.

If I was debt, Dave Ramsey will smite me down where I stand.

Just like the authors of the other book reviews I’ve done, I’ve had no prior experience with Dave Ramsey’s previous work (I was illiterate till recently). The only reason I picked the book up from the library was because I thought the guy on the cover was Steve Jobs (turns out he’s not).

As I’ve mentioned, Dave Ramsey doesn’t seem to be fond of debt. There’s a good reason for that – he use to be in the debt hole himself. In fact, he was bankrupted. He went from fairly rich at 26, to fairly poor within a few years. After declaring bankruptcy, he took a hard look at himself and how he handled his money.

Ramsey started the second chapter of the book discussing the effects of denial on those with debt. He challenges you to take a look at your own financial picture, and examine if you’re in the hole or not. The book continues on with two very important chapter, specifically, the chapter on Debt Myths and Money Myths.

In Debt and Money Myths, Dave Ramsey lays out many of the common myth that can be often associated with debt, or general money matters. The Debt Myth chapter is basically focused on tearing down the often sold debt ideas within our society, while the Money Myth chapter focused on the financial mentality of people.

Here are some noteworthy ones:

Debt Myth: Make sure your teenager gets a credit card so he or she will learn to responsible with money.

Truth: Getting your teen a credit card is an excellent way to teach him or her to be financially irresponsible.

Money Myth: I’ll just file for bankruptcy and start over, it seems so easy.

Truth: Bankruptcy is a gut-wrenching, life-changing event that causes lifelong damage.

Money Myth: I can’t afford insurance.

Truth: Some insurance you can’t afford to be without.

Many of the debt and money myth are pretty solid, although I do question some of his debt myths. Specifically the anti credit card platform. One of the debt myth Dave Ramsey argues against is the fact that debit cards do not have more risk than credit card. I agree with that point, but he also failed to mention the broader protection afforded by credit cards. Of course, the benefits of credit cards can easily be overshadow by irresponsible usage.

Continuing on, the rest of the chapters lays out Dave Ramsey’s plans for attacking debt and building wealth, which he calls the “Baby Steps.”

The Baby Steps can be lay out as this:

1. Start an emergency fund of $1,000.
2. Pay off all debt fast using the “debt snowball” method (except mortgage).
3. Build emergency fund to cover 3-6 months of expenses.
4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and other pre-tax retirement accounts.
5. Save for your child’s college fund
6. Pay off home early
7. Build wealth and give! (Mutual Funds & Real Estate)

Couple things about the baby steps. They’re pretty solid besides a few things. His college saving suggestions are all pretty dead-on, except for the out of place mention of serving in the National Guard as a means to pay for college. I have nothing against military service, but an important decision such as that should warrant more discussion, instead of a simple one sentence mention, as Dave Ramsey did in the book.

The methods to build wealth (or lack thereof) via mutual funds and real estate is also questionable. I understand that the book centers around debt reduction, so the wealth building portion of the book can be lacking – but suggesting mutual fund without providing more insight can be a bit misleading. If a person is not careful in his selection of funds, he can easily be losing money through fees. Not to mention the fact that many mutual funds have poor track records in beating the market.

The complaints (on Baby Steps) aside, Dave Ramsey’s method of debt reduction, although at times a bit aggressive, can be implementable. Each of the Baby Step he list are important aspect in a person’s financial life, and his emphasis on emergency funds are well appreciated. As you read through each of the chapter on the Baby Steps, Dave Ramsey explains the importance of each step and supplements his points with stories from real life families. This brings me to another problem with the book. Of the 244 pages, many of them are riddled with excerpts of stories after stories. In fact, the last few pages of the book contains even more Total Money Makeover stories. Showcasing result is fine and dandy, but too much of it can become unnecessary fluff.

My beef with the book doesn’t stop there, unfortunately. If you’ve read Dave Ramsey’s previous book Financial Peace before, you really don’t have to bother with this book. While I was reading The Total Money Makeover, I checked out some of his previous work so I can compare and contrast. It didn’t take me long to realize that The Total Money Makeover is simply Financial Peace repackaged, with plenty of fancy products supplementation. The Financial Peace University, My Total Money Makeover website, and the Total Money Makeover Workbook are all clear examples of excessive fluff.

It’s a bit silly to tell people to avoid buying into debt, and then have the last few pages of your book looking like a late night shop-at-home infomercial. The book’s tag-line of “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else” didn’t really help in negating the infomercial feel too.

Still, some of the content in The Total Money Makeover aren’t total crap. Yeah, the extra product placement towards the end is a real turn-off. Sure, repackaging a previous written work as a new work is a bit shoddy, but within all the fluff and the “You can do it!” cheerleading, there are some meat to be found.

If you’ve already read his previous work, then The Total Money Makeover isn’t a necessary read. If you’re wallowing in debt and you haven’t read his work yet, The Total Money Makeover can be a helpful reference in adjusting to the right direction of debt mentality – but be careful to not rely on it (and its supplemental products) as a guide to building wealth.

Pros:

• Good at dispelling many debt and money myths
• Works well as a motivational tool in debt repayment
• A debt reduction method that looks to be solid
• Places emphasis on the importance of emergency funds

Cons:

• The anti-credit position is a bit overbearing
• Way too much stories making up the content
• Very similar to previous work
• Too many product placement & supplementing programs
• Careless mutual fund suggestions
• Depth-less wealth building content

This post "Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Nothing beats starting an article with a rhetorical question:

Do you ever wonder what’s going on with your credit report and history? Ever wonder when your credit card provider will report the updated (higher) balance to the 3 credit reporting agencies? Ever wonder which of the 3 credit agency gets the updated balance first. Ever wonder what a credit report even looks like?

If you’re like me, you’ll be a bit curious too (or obsessed).

If you didn’t know, your credit history and your credit score changes frequently. This makes perfect sense, since our financial picture changes daily. One day we’ll have more money, the next day we’ll have less. The same applies to what goes on your credit reports. One week you may have lower balance thus higher scores, the next month you may have higher balance – thanks to your spouse giving little Jimmy that VISA he wasn’t ready for, thus reducing your score and getting a surprising slap in the face when you got rejected while trying to refinance your mortgage…

*ahem*

So who wants a slap in a face? I know I don’t.

Thus the best way to keep on top of what’s going on and avoid imaginary slapping of the face, is to utilize a daily credit report update service. You should note that these services are different in that they offer you daily updates of your credit report, instead of a single snapshot like other types of credit report. Since your report changes daily, having a service that can track daily changes will be especially useful for those in the process of credit improvement.

There are lots of daily credit report services out there, and one of the more popular services amongst the online credit forum users would be the services offered by Trilegiant.

Trilegiant is a big company that provides many different products and services, which ranges from shopping, health, entertainment, to consumer protection services. One of their forefront credits monitoring service would be PrivacyGuard.com

Here’s the Better Business Bureau’s Information Page on Trilegiant.

This review will cover services from each of the website below:

• Credit Keeper
• Privacy Guard
• Credit Alert
• Privacy Source for Bank of America

That’s quite a lot. But if you check these websites out, you’ll find that they’re pretty much all the same, Trilegiant basically just slapped together different color schemes. In fact, there’s quite a lot more of them out there. Check out the example below:

The main focus will be Credit Keeper and Privacy Guard, two services that I had subscribed to for a period of a little over a month. There has been lots of changes to Credit Keeper and Privacy Guard since my subscription, which was cancelled back in May of 2005. As mentioned, all of the websites above have the same color scheme; they also have the same features and services overall except for Bank of America’s Privacy Source which has a different contact number for customer services.

Each of the services have different pricing, which is a bit strange since they’re all from the same company (Privacy Source’s different pricing is understandable though).

Here are the current terms and pricing:

• Credit Keeper – 1 month free trial, afterwards a $9.95 monthly membership fee
• Privacy Guard – 2 months trial for $1, afterwards a $12.99 monthly membership fee
• Credit Alert – 2 months trial for $1, afterwards a $12.99 annual membership fee
• Privacy Source – 1 month trial for $1, afterwards a $129.99 annual fee

Each of the websites above also offers other different type of reports and scores. The main focus we’ll be going over here would be daily monitoring and daily credit report updates.

THE SIGN UP PROCESS

Is quick and painless. You provide your usual information and you’ll be good to go. They automatically generate a User ID for you, which contain parts of your last name and randomly generated numbers. You’ll also have an account number emailed to you, which you should keep for future reference (when you want to cancel the service).

NAVIGATING AROUND THE SITE

Could be a lot easier. Although the site presentation is fine, finding what you need is definitely a problem due to poor link placements. A lot of people (including me) seem to have problems finding out what to click to pull the daily credit report.

As you can see from the picture above, to request your credit report you’ll have to click on the “My Benefits” button and then click on the “Triple-Bureau Credit Report” link on the left. Afterwards you should click on “Request Report,” which will bring you to the report request screen.

If you check out the pictures, you can see why this may confuse people a bit, because the page looks like another sign up form. This page contain lines for you to input your credit card number to make payment (not shown in pictures), but you do not need to input them to request your report. Those that read more carefully will notice that the report is $0.00.

So to request your report, simply click on the check box shown (the service provides only one “What If” score, if you want more, you need to pay $6 for it). After you click on the box, fill in your social security number and click submit on the bottom. This will pull up your credit report for the current day. You should note that you can only request one report per day.

WHAT THE CREDIT REPORT LOOKS LIKE

To view a sample of the credit report provided, click HERE!

The first page you will see is the Credit Score tab. This shows your three score from the three credit report agency. You should note that this is a “FAKO” credit score, a score that’s computed by Trilegiant, but not by Fair Issac – which is the credit score company that most mortgage lenders rely on.

Although the scores are FAKO score (term use to indicate fake credit score) instead of FICO score (the real deal from Fair Issac), it does have some uses in the sense of giving you a feel of where you stand. FAKO scores are not computed using the same formula Fair Issac, thus they can be widely different from the real FICO score. You shouldn’t take FAKO score at face value and you shouldn’t rely on them to make major credit decisions. If you want a real credit score that most lenders use, check out www.myfico.com.

Now let’s take a look at the other tabs. Clicking on the Personal Profile Tab will show you the personal information that is contained in your credit report. You will see what each of the three credit agency has on their file. As you can see in the sample, there may be variance from one agency to another. This is perfectly normal.

Clicking on Credit Summary will provide you with a list of accounts from your credit report and the amounts owe on them. You can read the better description provided in the sample page. You will also see that the total amount dues and the account number listed may be different from one agency to another. Again, this is perfectly normal, and is one important reason why you should check your credit report.

Clicking on Public Records in the example will show the records for the unfortunate bankruptcy John Consumer had to file.

A very useful tab is the Credit Inquiries tab, which shows the hard inquiries that are shown on your credit report. Hard inquiries are those that can be seen on your report by everyone, while soft inquiries are those that can only be seen by you. One bad part about this credit report is that they do not show the list of soft inquiries.

Finally, we’re getting to the meat of the credit report. Clicking on Account History will give you a good glimpse into what accounts are shown on your credit report. You will see the current balance owe from each individual account shown in the report, and also your two year history of payment dates. On time payment are shown by the green OK circle, while late payments will be shown by a red circle.

The sample shown here does not provide enough information, but you can see that one of the accounts was reported by Equifax and Transunion, but not by Experian. Other differences you may encounter are the amount of balances, the payment history report, and the time when balances are updated. These discrepancies occur because certain creditors report to certain agencies. Some report to all, some don’t.

These differences are very important and they are one of the major reasons why a credit report pull is useful. Beyond getting your credit pull, consider getting your FICO score from Fair Issac by using this myFICO promotional code.

MY EXPERIENCES WITH THE SERVICE

All of the membership services I mentioned above offers daily credit monitoring from one single credit reporting agency, and daily credit report updates from all 3 credit agencies. Trilegiant has since then changed what’s available on PrivacyGuard, Credit Keeper due to abuse from members.

Because Trilegiant has been changing the services offered on each of their website so much, you should check each of the websites above to see what sort of services you’ll be receiving if you choose to subscribe to their service. The best bet is to call and ask for clarifications on the service you’re planning to get. Whether if reports are available daily, and if the reports are updated daily or not.

What happened was that some people wanted to see updates for their credit report so much that they resort to exploits to pull more than one report per day. It seemed daily credit report wasn’t enough, these people wanted hourly. I suppose if you’re doing some heavy duty credit improvement, you’ll need up-to-date information so you can make the best possible decisions. Still seemed pretty extreme to me though.

So during my subscription of Privacy Guard, they removed online credit report updates to stop the abuse (if you want a credit report, you’ll have to request it via snail mail). It’s pretty lame of them to punish everyone, seeing as how it was only a select few that abused the system. Although on the flip side, the people that exploited the system got their accounts cancelled. The rest of us just got our service changed.

Eventually I received a postcard from Privacy Guard, telling me that the information contained in my report will be updated monthly instead of daily. No more online daily credit report updates? No more Privacy Guard for me.

On the Credit Keeper side, all was well. I was able to continue to pull my credit report from all 3 agencies online daily.

The web server for the services were online and available the majority of the times, load time was fast and trouble free. There were rare down times, but usually if I come across a connection problem, it would be resolved within the hours.

Privacy Guard and Credit Keeper often tout the many “benefits” you’ll receive in subscribing to the service, some of which includes an interest calculator, which is fairly useful, but it’s a tool that can be found all across the web for free. Click on the picture below to see the calculator.

One notable benefit would be the free Drivers Record feature. Unfortunately for me, this was a useless feature, as you can see below:

Padded features aside, the features I’m paying for was working out well enough. (Before Privacy Guard changed the service anyway). Looking up daily updated credit report was very useful as I try to get a feel for how my credit issuers report to the credit reporting agencies. I found out that checking your credit report daily can get quite addictive – especially if you’re in the process of improving your credit. It’s nice to see the progress and results of hard work.

CANCELING THE SERVICE

Unless you’re rolling in money, you would probably want to cancel the service eventually. The canceling process is, unfortunately, not as easy as the sign-up process.

*looks of shock and surprise*

What? A company giving you a hard time when you want to cancel? Unreal.

When I received the postcard about the changes in Privacy Guard’s service, I immediately called to cancel, but it took long waits on the phone and many transfer to finally reach someone that can help me. Because I had two accounts with them, it complicated matters further.

As you can see in the pictures below, the charges made on my account was on 6/13/05, although I called days before to cancel, my refund was not processed till weeks later on 7/07/05.

On the flip side of things, the refund process with Credit Keeper went along without a hitch, which didn’t make much sense at all – since they’re both the same company, and customer service is handled by the same contact number.

As you can see above, the refund was processed within the same working week. Funky. Other than the semi-hassle experienced, there isn’t any major problem with canceling the service, as noted in the Better Business Bureau report.

THE CONCLUSION

Despite the many flunky incident involved with the Privacy Guard and Credit Keeper service, I would have to say that the overall experience was not that bad.

The information from the daily credit report updates are fairly valuable, and the layout of the credit report was well done. It was easy to read and easy to compare. Updates and changes to your report can be easily spotted from the Credit Summary page. This service is the perfect tool for those looking to fix their credit history, and people that are just generally curious

Although the cost of the service can eventually add up, the price of $9.95 per month, or $12.95 per month is actually pretty nice – especially for daily credit monitoring, and three credit report with daily updates.

The customer service was obviously lacking, but I didn’t expect much in the first place. Customer service for Privacy Source (for Bank of America) was reportedly better, as Bank of America has a different contact number (and possibly different service rep) for their service subscribers.

Canceling the service was quite a hassle, for I had to listen to the usual scripted speech of why I should keep the service, and the “benefits” I’ll loose if I cancel the service. The refund process was also inconsistent, but I eventually received my money back.

At the end I believe that the real benefit from the service outweighs some of the quirk. That’s the case for me anyway. If you’re in a situation where you require daily credit monitoring, and daily credit reports update – you should definitely check out Credit Keeper or Privacy Guard. (I’ll go with Credit Keeper since it’s cheaper per month, if you decide to keep using it).

Besides, you’ve got nothing to loose during the trial period: one measly dollar, some of your valuable time, and a little bit of your sanity as you try to call and cancel.

PROS:

• Daily credit monitoring
• Daily updates for 3 credit reports
• Well layout for credit reports with fairly detailed information
• Price for service is fair

CONS:

• Services provided seemed inconsistent
• Other benefits are fairly useless
• Hassle in canceling service
• Questionable sell tactics via BBB’s report

This post "Review: Privacy Guard and Credit Keeper" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Dave Barry’s Money Secrets:
Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar

Author: Dave Barry (really!?)

Publisher: Crown Publishers, Random House

ISBN: 1400047587

URL: www.davebarry.com

Milk came out of my nose.

While reading Dave Barry’s Money Secrets, I was having some cookies and milk – it was a horribly bad idea.

Luckily for me, I didn’t stain the library book.

I’m not too familiar with Dave Barry or his work, but after reading the introduction to Money Secrets, the genius in me has concluded that Dave Barry is quite a funny fellow. Anyway, Money Secret is a parody on money books, it is 240 pages long and uh, its shipping weight is 12.6 ounces.

Money Secrets contains 22 chapters dedicating to specific, important financial topics that are similar to the ones you’ll find in money books. It also has many pictures of Suze Orman, and a few pictures of Donald Trump. Why? Steal your own copy and find out.

Here are some of the chapters found in the book:

• How the U.S. Economy Works – Adam Sandler is involved
• Providing for Medical Care – You’ll need some leeches
• Teaching Your Children About Money – Let the little bastards starve
• Planning For Your Retirement – The financial advantages of early death

Personally I would love to list all of the chapters, as they all have hilarious captions attached to them, but that’ll just spoil the book for you. If you think finance is a boring subject, think again. From how to read an annual report to how to negotiate deals (Dave suggest carrying a machete with you), Money Secrets made me laugh so much that I almost choked on my cookies.

Other wacky stuff from Money Secret included suggestions on filing your taxes. Dave’s tip? Write your name on the tax form, followed by the word: DECEASED.

Har har!

Wasn’t that hilarious? I’d love to list more examples but I have a feeling I’ll just ruin more jokes.

Money Secrets also contained lots of nifty graphs and charts, a plus for literary challenged people like me. Here’s one where Dave shows why cigarettes are so expensive:

I can list even more graphs and charts, but at the risk of being sue and ruining more jokes, I think I’ll stop here.

So yeah, where was I?

Right right, funny book, funny man. I read it, I spit milk, and I laughed out loud. Good times.

The book can get a bit silly though. In some instances, I felt like I was listening to a joke told to me by my 10 year old cousin. But the silliness is kept to a minimum, so it’s not really a big problem. Another small problem is the price tag, the book’s MSRP is $24.95, a little bit on the steep side. ‘Course, no one pays retail anymore these days… and there’s always the library or the five finger discount (I suggest library).

To conclude this depth-less review, Money Secrets is a laugh out loud riot that’s appropriate for all some ages. If you’ve been stressing out about financial matters, you might want to consider picking up this book. It’ll help you laugh a little, or cry a little – especially when you realized that the examples in the book matches your financial situation.

That’s what I did. Tears are yummy along with cookies.

Pros:

• Freaking funny
• Freaking hilarious
• Freaking frequent mentions of toilets

Cons:

• Gets a bit silly sometimes
• Not enough mentions of toilets

This post "Dave Barry’s Money Secrets Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth

Author: Richard Paul Evans

Publisher: Fireside, Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 0743287005

URL: www.thefivelessons.com

I received a copy of the book via the publisher’s marketing department, whom I must commend for sending the book at such lighting fast speed. Thanks again for the book.

Before “The Five Lessons,” the only work I’ve read by Richard Paul Evans was his first book, “The Christmas Box” – a pretty good book and like many people I enjoyed it. As Richard Paul is a writer of inspirational and moral stories (mostly Christian themed), it was a bit interesting to see him write a book on the subject of money.

“The Five Lessons” is pretty short, at about 133 pages (24 of those forms), it’s a pretty quick read. The actual length of the book is at about 100 pages, with about 10 pages of resources & tips. I enjoy a long, entertaining novel as much as the next guy, but if someone is going to drill some important points to me, they better do it fast, sweet, and to the point. “The Five Lessons” did a pretty good job at that.

I’m not sure if these qualifies as spoilers, but here are the Five Lessons:

1. Decide to Be Wealth
2. Take Responsibility for Your Money
3. Keep a Portion of Everything You Earn
4. Win in the Margins
5. Give Back

The author divides each of the lessons as chapters, and smoothly lays out the topic to the reader. Each lesson is accompanied by decent stories to entertain, and mostly good examples to support and help explain lessons further.

“The Five Lessons” certainly doesn’t present anything new in the categories of money book (nor does it claim to), but if it was the first “money book” you’ve ever read, it’ll be a good choice – especially for those new to the genre. It covers many of the basic concepts in achieving financial independence: mentality of choices, control of cash flow, saving and investing, and wise purchasing decisions. All in a small 133 pages package. Not too shabby.

For those of us that have read many money books, it would be a good reminder. Many parts of the book reads like “The Millionaire Next Door,” emphasizing the fact that average people with average income can become millionaires with careful spending, saving, and investing methods.

Some of the examples given in the book made me raise my eyebrows though. His example on Xango Juice, a multilevel marketing company made me flinch a bit, as did his story on hypnosis; where he relates hypnotizing his friend to the bombardment of advertisement we receive.

Complaints aside, the book was right on target with its principals. You may see them under different name and phrases, but they are still the same concepts that you’ll need to take control of your financial life.

What I especially like was that throughout the book, the moral aspect of money, and its ability to influence both positively and negatively was discussed at length (for a 133 pg book).

At the end, “The Five Lessons A Millionaire Taught Me About Wealth and Life” is a pretty good book. It’s certainly not the greatest in the genre, but it’s definitely not the worse. There are plenty money books out there that takes 5 times as long to convey the concepts to its reader – and to the reader’s woe, at a much less entertaining pace.

Pros:

• Short & Basic
• Moral Values
• Not Boring

Cons:

• Short & Basic
• Some Questionable Examples

This post "The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me Review" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

ING Direct (the operating name of ING Bank, fsb) is one of the more well-known choices in online saving account.  ING has spent quite a few pennies to advertise and market their famous Orange Savings Account across the web, on many websites that deals with personal finance. You’ve probably seen their advertisement at site such as MSN’s Money section, BankRate.com, and if you use MS Money 2005, ING Direct is also heavily advertised within the program too. (An annoying “feature” of MS Money 2005).

So what is ING Direct? Unlike other banks, ING Direct has only a few physical locations. In fact, its three locations across the United States isn’t even really a banking center at all. They’re cafes.  While serving you some hot refreshment, they’ll tell you about the products and services they offer.  ING Direct is backed by ING (NYSE:ING), a global financial institutional. ING Direct isn’t a full service bank, they offer specific products and services, and the main one we’ll talk about today is the Orange Savings Account.

The Orange Savings Account is definitely one of the more popular online savings account, and to date, is still one of few places where I park my money.

You should realize that this is an online savings account, and one of the requirements to open this account is to have a pre-existing checking account from another bank. This is how majority of us will be accessing our money, via electronically transferring our money from our current checking accounts to the Orange Savings Account through the ACH (automated clearing house www.nacha.org).

Many people out there are still uncomfortable with the idea of an online banking account, or any online banking in general, but the truth is, they’re as secure (when precautions are taken) and safe as real life banking. In fact they’re easier, faster, and in my opinion more secure as there is less chance of human error (unless you input the wrong amounts in the transaction yourself).

Just like how you wouldn’t go around giving out the PIN number to your ATM/debit card, you shouldn’t go around spreading your online banking account name and password.

With the lack of physical locations and the fact that majority of transactions are conducted online, ING Direct saves money on the overhead cost and pass the saving onto the customer.

The rate for the Orange Savings Account is a variable APY (annual percentage yield).  Interest on the account is accrued daily, compounded monthly and credited to your account at the end of each month. The variable interest has been changing consistently upwards lately, as interest rate across the nation rebounds to more reasonable levels. (2.35% beginning 2005, 2.60% during Feb, a bump of 2.8% in March, and bumped again to 3.0% in April of 2005.)

There is no minimum balance required for the OSA (Orange Savings Account), and you don’t have to keep any specific amount to qualify for the rate of 3.80%

There are also no fees, no service charges, and no hidden cost. So it doesn’t matter if you open the account and deposit and keep $1.36 in deposit, there won’t be any maintenance fees on your account, nor would there be any service fees when you call to ask them how your $1.36 savings is doing. Like many national banks, the Orange Savings Account is FDIC insured. (ING Direct’s FDIC certification)

You have 24 hour access to your funds thru their online website or the interactive phone system, and you can also contact ING Direct sales associate during office hours if you prefer. (Seven days a week, 7AM to 9PM EST)

As mentioned above, the application process for ING Direct is straight-forward and easy. It took me around 5-10 minutes to setup my account. Although having high-speed internet and being familiar with online application process does help speed things up a bit. In either case though, even if you’re not familiar with some of the questions asked, there will be helpful information provided whenever you need it. You can always call the good customer service with any questions you have on account opening, I’m sure they’ll be glad to walk you through with it. One tip on opening the account online: when you choose the initial checking account to “link” to (more on this later), you should choose the checking account that you use the most. This allows for easier and quicker access to your funds.

Accessing your money in your Orange Savings Account works via linked accounts. When you first open the saving account, you have the option to add in the checking account you’ll like to have the OSA linked to. By inputting your account number, bank routing number, you’ll be able to electronically transfer your money from the OSA to your checking account. The Orange Savings Account allows for up to 3 externally linked accounts. One gripe about the linked account is that the first initial checking account linked is easy and straight forward. (Putting in your account number and routing number during OSA opening process) If you want to add more checking accounts, you’re required to mail a check of $1 to them from that particular checking account (noting in memo line that you want this account linked to account number XXXXXXX) this isn’t a terribly big issue, but it’ll be easier if they stick to the online linking process.

Once these linked accounts are setup, you can fund your account by transferring from your checking account to the Orange Savings Account. Transfers are typically done in 3-5 business days, although the transfer time varies from bank to bank. For me, a transfer from my OSA to my Bank of America checking is blazing fast. I usually see the transaction concluded within 1-2 business days. You can also fund your account by mailing checks to ING Direct, although I wouldn’t recommend this route. According to their disclosures, they’re not responsible for any lost and mishaps, even if they do take all necessary care and precautions in handling your checks. So the best way is to deposits your checks into your checking account, then transfer the funds. Another method for funding the account could be from setting up Direct Deposits from your employer or other income source. In setting up your direct deposit, you can also specify how much you want to be taken out of your paycheck.

When you transfer or deposit funds into your account, funds are subjected to a 5 day holding period before they become available. They begin accruing interest on the second day of transfer, but you won’t have access to the funds for security reason and float time. (Note that when new accounts are opened, initial deposits of funds won’t be available for 10 days).  You should also note that, due to federal law, you’re allowed to only transfer out of your savings account 6 times per monthly statement cycle. (Although you’re not limited to the number of transfers you can make into your savings account).  Because of these reasons, and the time it takes to transfer accounts, I generally consider my Orange Savings Account my “medium liquid” parking lot. This is where I park money that I know I won’t need for the next 1-3 months, but may need further down the road. For money that I need immediately, I just keep them in my checking accounts, or my credit union saving account that I have easier immediate access to. And for money that I “shouldn’t” touch in the near future, they’re allocated to other investment vehicles accordingly.

ING Direct’s customer service is also fairly good. Of the four times I’ve called to inquire about my account, I was greeted courteously and helped promptly. The wait on the phone was not long at all too; in no instances did I have to wait over 5 minutes.

Once on a particular day, I decided to pay off my $3,000 credit card debt, since the introductory 0% balance transfer rate was nearing the end. I initiated a transfer of $3,000 from my checking account to my OSA. For those that read it right, yes I transfer the money the wrong way around. I wanted $3,000 from my OSA to my Bank of America checking, so I can pay off the credit card via Bank of America’s Online BillPay. I didn’t realize my mistake till the next day (or rather 10 PM PST that very night, which is 1 AM EST for ING Direct), and I was a bit distressed since my checking account had only about a thousand in it, definitely grounds for a nice insufficient funds fee. So I woke up early in the morning (um, stayed up since I’m a night owl anyway), and called ING Direct at 4 AM PST (or 7 AM EST, their office hours). After a quick talk with a customer service rep, she told me she’ll forward the cancel transfer request to the proper department, although she can’t guarantee that the transfer could be stop in time. I told her to go ahead and try anyway, while I try to pull $2,000 out of my buttocks to avoid the silly $16 overdraft fee for my checking account. Thankfully for my butt, the transfer was stop in time when I check the account again at 4 PM PST that very day I called.

Besides the customer service, ING Direct’s website is also easy to navigate and use. Login in and out of your account is straight forward, though it can be tedious at times. There’s no password or login saving allowed (for good reasons), and you’re required to input your customer number; your PIN; and your zip code/birthdates/OR parts of your social security number. Transferring money via their website is fool proof (well, almost). When you initiate a transfer, there’s a confirmation screen before you press the “Submit transfer” button so you can verify the amounts and transfer locations.  Online accessibility features usual account stuff such as seeing your current balance, account activity, and monthly statement online.  You can also choose to have paper statement mail to you.  ING Direct does prefer you to use the online statement to save them money, and thus offer you an incentive to do so by entering you into a drawing when you stick with online statements. You can also download your ING Direct account statements to MS Money or Quicken. The website can be a bit cartoon-ish at times, but at least it doesn’t really hurt the eyes (unless you HATE the color orange), and there’s lots of other useful information like saving tips and saving education for kids. (www.orangekids.com) There’s even an ING Direct shop where you can purchase ING Direct gears such as shirts and even an Orange soccer ball! (I suppose for the hardcore ING Direct customers/fans.)

Overall I’m fairly happy with my Orange Savings Account.  I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a particular account such as this to place their money.  The $25 account opening bonus is definitely a nice incentive too. Their rates are definitely higher than the national average for savings account. Although there are other competitive rates that are higher than ING Direct’s. For example, Emigrant-Direct’s American Dream Savings Account (www.emigrant-direct.com) is currently at 4.0%, as is Capital One’s High Yield Saving Account which is at 3.45% (www.capitalone.com/savings). The online saving account market is particular hot and heavy right now, and competition is great for consumer like us.

At the end though, even with the higher rates out there, I choose to stick with ING Direct for many of the above mentioned reasons. There are also a lot of people out there that have accounts with different online savings account, and they move their money to whichever that has the current highest rate.  (Although some interest will be lost during the time for the money to transfer, etc.)  Personally even with the lower rate, I prefer ING Direct because it’s easier to access my money than some of the other accounts mentioned above. (A brief review of Emigrant Direct can be found here).  So if you’re shopping around for a higher yield online savings account, you should definitely take a look at ING Direct’s Orange Savings Account and see if it fits your needs. Although these particular accounts usually involve no fees and no catch, I would still recommend you to shop around and do research.  By choosing the right account for your needs the first time, you can save a lot of time and subsequent hassle.

Updated 7/21/05:
ING Direct has updated their rate to 3.15%, still lower than some of the higher rates out there.  I think I will still stick with ING Direct because their service is what I’m looking for, but I’m keeping an eye open for some other no minimum required saving account options.  One good alternative is HSBC’s Online Savings Account.

Updated 10/06/05:
ING Direct has updated their rate to 3.40% as of 9/20/05.  They are currently pretty far behind in terms of rates by similar competitiors.  Emigrant-Direct’s current rate is at 4.0%, while HSBC’s is at 3.75%.  I’ve decided to give ED a try again, and I’m in the proces of opening an account at HSBC.

Updated 01/14/06:
ING Direct has updated their rate to 3.8% as of 12/31/05.  It’ll be pretty silly for me to keep updating their rates.  You can always refer to the latest rate at ING Direct’s site.

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