With Zecco there are no minimum balances to open an account. To get 10 free trades a month a $2,500 minimum is required. They have very little fees with the exception of a 30 annual fee on IRA accounts. When I signed up for Zecco the paperwork was a nightmare but I think they’ve fixed that now. They seem to be adding more and more to their offering and will be a viable broker into the future.

Start an Account with Zecco

There have been over 10,000 books written on personal finance. This video summarized the main points into three major areas of personal finance. The CEO of Mint.com talks about making smart decisions that have greater impact in the long run. Things like renting instead of buying, investing early in life, having a credit card that pays out rewards, and other personal finance tips are discussed.

In this video a couple are having a hard time making ends meet. They continue to get more bills and have tried a number of things like pulling out loans to make payments on their existing debt. The author of a new system teaches them a sure fire way to get out of debt. The ideas are strange to the couple but the author helps them understand tips like: “If you don’t have money, don’t buy stuff.” and “You make sure you have money, then you buy stuff.”

In speaking to an MBA class Warren Buffet provides great words of wisdom. He talks about what makes a wise investing decisions. In this video talks about the idea of investing in a person you know. Would you pick the smartest? The most social? What qualities do you look for? Hopefully you become the type of person that you would like to invest in.

Words of Wisdom

• “Japanese companies earn very low returns on equity.”
• “Time is the friend of a good business and the enemy of a bad business.”
• “If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense - and the odds don’t matter.”
• “I was going to do the same things when I had a lot a money as when I had very little money.”
• “You are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume.”
• “The beta of a stock doesn’t tell you the risk of a stock. It doesn’t tell you a damned thing about the stock.”
• “Taking a job you don’t like is a little like saving up sex for your old age.”

The “Money as Debt” video describes what money actually is. The video explains how money is being created through debt. The video provides a history of money and how bankers have created money. Modern financial policy and fiat money principles are not sound or logical. This video goes in depth about how the current financial system works.

Mint - This is the most popular free solution online. Mint automatically pulls in your financial information from a variety of different sources. It keep tracks of checking balances, credit card bills, stock trades, and home loans. Best of all Mint categorizes your expenses and lets you see your spending habits at a glance. Mint also provides recommendations for new credit cards, new savings accounts, and other services that could save you a lot of money. Mint has the easiest interface and provide a lot of value for the price…free.

Quicken In the last year Quicken became free. To make a profit Quicken evaluates the information you enter and suggests some of it’s personal finance products. One thing that makes Quicken unique from Mint is the software download and installation. Personally I prefer online access because when you have a hard drive go out losing all that work can be really disappointing. If you choose the internet route I would choose Mint; they are easier and have a better interface and you won’t be up sold…ever.

GnuCash - Built for Mac, Windows, and Linux. GnuCash is ideal for personal and small business. It can track bank accounts and investments. It is freely licensed under the GNU GPL.

Grisbi - Grisbi is an open source personal accounting app released under the GPL licence. Grisbi is simple, intuitive, and very powerful if you spend a little time on the setup. Made for Windows and Linux. This is not considered freeware but it is free. Open source software is made possible by developers donating their time for the betterment of an application.

Getting fat is expensive. Weight loss shouldn’t have to be. Why spend a lot of money on equipment, gym memberships, and special diets when there are a lot of great free weight loss tips that work wonders.

This is a lot like the personal finance tip, spend less than you make, in reverse. If only switching the two could be easier.

Routine is the most powerful weight loss tip. The Grand Canyon was carved out of stone by the persistent routine of rivers and streams. The day you make up your mind to lose weight it’s really easy to get excited. In the excitement a lot of goals, equipment, and extreme measures are taken. After about a week or two most people are back in their old routine and all their goals fade into the past. If you make a single weight loss goal forget about how much you want to weigh or anything else. The one goal you should have is to stick with a routine for a very long time.

If you have a broken system, or a system that is doomed to make you fat, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle all the way. What is a system? A system is like routine but it also includes mindsets, friends, and behavior. If you really want to lose weight you have to change the system. In a way it’s much like quitting smoking. There needs to be a system level upgrade for this to work longterm.

Peer pressure and companionship are very powerful forces in our lives. Sharing a goal to lose weight with a friend can be a source of motivation and support. Even better, involve your friends, join a team, or make it interesting with a bet (the more money the better).

If you make a change make it something you can do for a very long time. You shouldn’t dread your diet or workout routine. Try to incorporate changes that will stick. If you make sacrifices, make sacrifices that don’t hurt too bad. An example of this is when I made the goal to run every morning. The first week was no problem. The second week got even harder. There were some mornings I didn’t want to wake up and get ready. Sadly my routine died in the second week. There was one thing that made it die, the challenge was too much for me. The solution to this was easy. Instead of running everyday I made the goal to get out the door everyday. If I felt like running, fine. If I wanted to walk for half an hour that’s fine too. This flexiblity made this much more manageable. I can see myself doing this for a very long time.

A recent study found that it doesn’t matter what kind of fad diet you try. The bottom line is calorie intake. It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you’re eating less.

For people who are trying to lose weight, it does not matter if they are counting carbohydrates, protein or fat. All that matters is that they are counting something.

While the diets were not named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which emphasizes low carbohydrates; Dean Ornish, which is low-fat; or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. After two years, every diet group had lost — and regained — about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned.

The lesson, researchers say, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how. Source New York Times and HarvardScience

It’s been shown that those that follow Atkins diets tend to eat 20-30% less calories. This is a result of shortage of acceptable protein in everyday life and due to boredom with an all meat diet. Most diets limit calories by cutting out major portions of available calorie sources. By cutting out all sugars and carbs you’ve cut out 80% of casual calorie consumption for most people. The same idea works with scheduling or portion control. In addition to cutting out boredom and over eating you might also include some type of routine you need to follow before eating. Here are a list a ways to limit calories in a major way.

Make a commitment to avoid butter on things, deep fried foods, junk food, or potato chips. Because fats are so concentrated with calories you have to eat much more to feel full. You could easily eat three to four times more calories because it tastes better than normal food and it takes the same amount of mass to fill you up. Avoiding fats can cut hundreds of calories out of your diet and leave you feeling healthier too.

Soda pop, juices, and alcohol have a lot of hidden calories. Eliminating calories that you drink will have a major impact on your weight. Try to drink water when possible. The relationship is still unknown between diet soda and obesity but there is a connection. Try to avoid all forms of good tasting drinks and stick to old fashioned water.

Another tip that works is cutting out over processed breads and snacks. Avoiding white bread and eating whole grains is more nutritious and helps you feel full longer.

There have been a few stories lately of Vegans (more strict vegetarians) killing their babies with non-animal product diets. The babies starve to death because the parents won’t provide the nutrition the babies need. These are extreme cases but it can be argued that animal products can provide important nutritional values.

To lose weight you might consider cutting out red meat, pork, or fast food meat. Another possibility is cutting meat out of every meal except dinner.

One easy test for this is counting they number of steps it takes for the food to get to your mouth. If all you need to do is open a wrapper and eat, the food is highly processed. The more steps required to prepare a food the better it probably is for you.

Another aspect of overly processed food is the amount of nutrients the producers remove in order to preserve texture, flavor, and shelf life.

Restaurants have one goal in mind and that’s to make sure you enjoy your food. Part of making your taste buds happy means adding extra sugar, salt, & fat to your meal. You might be surprised to know that a Big Mac has 9 grams of sugar in it. When you make food at home you generally use 50% fat than what restaurants think is normal. Packing your own luck can save you a lot of calories and help you slim down. It will also save you a bundle from a personal finance perspective.

Scottrade strikes a good balance between quality and value. They have the most physical branches than anyone else online. This gives them an edge with customer service and convenience. With their online set of tools Scottrade is one of the best brokers around. Scottrades biggest downside is that they are more expensive than other brokers with comparable service.

Scottrade is slightly more expensive than other discount brokers. Any additional fees are kept to a minimum and many costs found in more expensive brokers don’t exist. Most notably is their no fee IRA, no fee for inactiviy, and no minimum balance. Their no

Stock Trade (limit and market) : $7.00
Broker Assisted Trade: $27
Options $7.00 + $1.25 per contract

Mutual Funds (No Load, No Fee): Free
Mutual Funds (No Load): $17

IRA Fees: None
Inactivity Fee: None
Closing Fee: None

Minimum Initial Deposit: $500

Scottrade offers a full range of investment products including: stocks, options, mutual funds, IRAs, ETF, and ESAs. Their fixed income products include: US Treasuries, bonds, and CDs.

Scottrade has led the pack in real-time, up to the minute, reporting tools. They continue to push the envelope with their ScottradeElite trading platform (but you need $25K to access it). All of their tools have ample video tutorials and documentation to help first time users get started. Their web trading platform is also quite nice with fully customizable columns, reports, and charts.

In addition to software they also provide free access to Dow Jones News.

Scottrade’s network of brokers is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because you can talk to a real person very quickly. It’s bad because they want you to use that instead of resolving many problems through email. They have also made parts of their online program lazy because of the dependence on these branches. To get your money into and out of Scottrade is a real pain. With no electronic transfer to and from a bank account you need to send your money to a Scottrade office for processing. To get your money out you need to request a check. With electronic transfers it cuts the time to a third of what you’d expect at Scottrade. UPDATE: Scottrade now accepts and supports ACH deposits and withdrawls. There was a time they didn’t have this option.

No automatic dividend reinvestment (DRIP) is kind of a downside too. If you invest heavily in dividend stock and like reinvesting the dividends Scottrade might not be for you.

For more advanced trading Scottrade’s system and customer support can be lacking. If you are an experienced trader executing non-traditional trades Scottrade might not be equip to help you much. If, on the other hand, you are a executing standard trades they will work great for you.

Scottrade offers a competitive investment service and at $7.00 a trade they are hard to beat. The biggest complaint with Scottrade is that they don’t serve the more sophisticated or advanced trader very well. But for 95% of active traders Scottrade is one of the best options around. I still prefer TradeKing or Zecco because they provide the same level of service with less commissions. With that aside they provide a great value and offer a wide range of investment vehicles.

There is a quick way to find out if a site is secure. Look for HTTPS:// instead of HTTP:// in areas of the website where you are entering sensitive financial information. It is common for most websites to switch to their secure pages only when nessicary. You usually won’t see https:// until you’re in the checkout area. If you are entering your credit card information always check before proceeding. If there is no https your information can be easily stolen. When a page is secure it encrypts the data going to and from that page. So even if your data was intercepted it could not be read.

Look for https and the little lock

If you are entering your credit card information make sure the page is secure. If the page is not secure your information can be easily stolen. Secure pages encrypt data going to and from pages.

Comparing prices on websites isn’t as easy at might first appear (especially if your searching for a non-standardized item). The first step is to narrow your search to exactly what you want. Find a part # or a model # and search for it in a comparison shopping engine. I prefer Google Products but there are others as well. They have an incentive to place higher paying vendors near the top of the list and their products seem to be less organized.

Avoid the lowest priced vendor (unless you’ve bought from them before). Most of the time they will require that you buy the warranty, a bunch of accessories, and join some mailing list to get the “lowest price”.

Using RSS feeds and some basic filters you can have deals come to you when they are ripe for the picking. Automatic deal finders using RSS is an easy way to get low cost gifts and surprizes for yourself. You will need to be patient but the wait is usually well worth it. Hot items like the Nintendo Wii won’t likely drop in price but just about everything else goes on sale periodically.

If you don’t mind buying used you can also set up a way to search through Craiglists for misplaced bargins. Many times people will post items you want in strange categories or forget to write a good desciptoin. Other bargin shoppers will miss those deals and you’ll have the item delivered to your feed reader.

Finding a deal website with up to date offers is a good way to browse for things like laptops, HDTVs, cameras, or other everyday electronic items. All of my laptops and computers come from sites like this because they usually offer more power and features for much less.

Keep records of your reciept page, the items ordered, and what credit card you used. If you want to return an item or dispute a charge you’ll need all the information you can. Most merchants make it easy to return or cancel an order. For infrequent purchases it’s best to have a folder in your email labeled ’shopping receipts’ to stay organized. If you buy from individual stores, through Amazon or Half.com, keeping these reciepts will be cruitial.

TradeKing offers the most competitive package compared to all the other online discount brokers. TradeKing’s interface is straight forward and easy to use. I’ve been using them for a few years now and their service is amoung the best I’ve tried visa vis Zecco, Scottrade, Sharebuilder. If you are looking to make a lot of trades their $4.95 fee per trade is unbeatable. They are also friendly to the beginner trader with $4.95 broker assisted trades, no inactivity fees, and top notch research tools.

I would recommend TradeKing to anyone getting into the market for the first time, seasoned traders, IRA account holders, option and day trader If you look around I’m sure you’ll agree that TradeKing has earned all five stars.

Stock Trading (Market) $4.95
Stock Trading (Limit) $4.95
Broker Assisted Trade $4.95 (Lowest anywhere)
Option Contract $0.65 (Only Zecco beats them at $0.50)
Margin Rates ($0-$49,999) 6.50% ($50K-$249K) 5.50%

Mutual Funds No Load Purchase/Sale $14.95

Bonds $4.95 per bond
Treasuries $24.95 per transaction

Certificates of Deposit (CDs) $24.95 per transaction

Inactivity fee: None
IRA annual fee: None

No Minimum Balance

Check Writing - Write checks directly from your account. This is a newer feature that most top end brokers offered to their clients.

If in depth reports and research is your thing TradeKing has you covered. Their tools include: Options Pricing Calculator, Probability Calculator, Profit + Loss Calculator, Options and Strategy Scanners, Stock, ETF + Mutual Fund Screeners, Fixed Income, Maxit Tax Manager, AutoTrade, and Extra Hours Trading.

Education includes: Technical Analysis Education,Educational Videos and Webinars, Intelligence Reports, Live Events, & Webinar Instructions.

Research resources include: Market + Company Overview, Watchlists, Up to the second Quotes, Free MarketGrader research, Interactive Charts, Option Chains, Technical Analysis.

TradeKing also has a robust community of active traders that can help or give you ideas on trading.

TradeKings website is easy enough to use and navigate that finding answers is easy as pie. In case you need help you can access their award winning customer service through phone, chat, and email. When I had a question on my account they answered my email within five minutes. The wait time on the phone is less than a minute on most days.

Best of all you can talk to an actual broker and if you need to execute a trade it’s still only $4.95

If you are an old person that likes names like Vanguard or Charles Schwab then I can understand that. But paying 3 to 4 times more for the exact same service? There is no reason for that. In these troubled times our stock portfolio is already taking a hit. Paying all the fees and extra padding other brokers stack on doesn’t make much sense.

If you are going for the bear bones best price, Zecco is for you. If you want something in the middle between discount and full service broker TradeKing and Scottrade are great. If you are wanting more specialized option trading I would suggest optionsXpress.

Visit TradeKing

]]> http://moneytipcentral.com/tradeking-review-online-broker-ratings/feed http://moneytipcentral.com/tradeking-review-online-broker-ratings http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MoneyTipCentral/~3/PneWzJ2SBeI/inflation-in-america-what-will-hyperinflation-look-like http://moneytipcentral.com/inflation-in-america-what-will-hyperinflation-look-like#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:03:49 +0000 Matt http://moneytipcentral.com/?p=893 Poor economic thinkers have dominated America for the last 100 years. Their short-cuts and market manipulation will be the collapse of the US monetary system. Since most economists in power are Keynsian econmists it’s only a matter of time before they drive this boat to the bottom of the ocean.

Inflation is a tool to transfer wealth from producers to worthless beuricrats. As the government gets more despererat they will continue to create paper money until the whole system is insoluable. As the American dollar weakens foreign countries will send back the devalued curency. When this happens you could be spending $100 to buy a gallon of milk. Your wages will stay the same. You can image how bad the problem could be.

Hyperinflation In Germany

German Children Playing With Money

Woman Burning Paper Money for Heat

Wheelbarrow of Worthless Money

Sweeping paper money from the streets

Recent Inflation in Zimbabwe Africa

Man carrying arm loads of cash

Zimbabwe Paper Money Used as Toilet Paper

List of countries which experienced hyperinflation

Angola 1991-1995

Argentina 1975-1991

Austria 1921-1922

Belarus 1994-2002

Bolivia 1984-1986

Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1993

Brazil 1986-1994

Bulgaria 1996

Chile 1971-1973

China 1948-1949

Free City of Danzig 1922-1923

Georgia 1993-1995

Germany 1922-1923

Greece 1942-1944

Hungary 1945-1946

Israel 1970-1971

Japan 1948-1951

Krajina 1992-1993

Madagascar 2004-2005

Mozambique 1977-1992

Nicaragua 1987-1990

Peru 1988-1990

Philippines 1942-1944

Poland 1989-1991

Romania 1998-2005

Russia 1921-1922 and 1992-1999

Turkey 1990-1995

Ukraine 1993-1995

United States 1861-1865

Yugoslavia 1989-1994

Zaire 1989-1996

Zimbabwe 2004-2009

With fiat money there is almost a gurantee of hyperinflation given enough time. To defend yourself buy things with intrinsic value (e.g. food, shelter, gold, silver, land). Things with inherent worth will always be worth something. The same can’t be said for paper money.

]]> http://moneytipcentral.com/inflation-in-america-what-will-hyperinflation-look-like/feed http://moneytipcentral.com/inflation-in-america-what-will-hyperinflation-look-like http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MoneyTipCentral/~3/KDaMUoIhtuw/compare-prices-on-websites-compare-stores-items-rating-specs http://moneytipcentral.com/compare-prices-on-websites-compare-stores-items-rating-specs#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:09:12 +0000 Matt http://moneytipcentral.com/?p=387

Price shopping online is an important step to get the best price on new purchases. Finding the lowest price from a dependable website is critical. How do you find trusted items, ratings, and specs?

Narrow your search down to a specific item

If your want to compare prices you need to find the exact product you want. Say your looking for an MP3 player. If you try to compare the prices on the generic term ‘MP3 Player’ you’ll have a hard time pinning down the exact price. Instead, try to find the exact make, model, and brand of MP3 player. You’ll have much more luck knowing you want a 8 GB ipod touch then using a generic search for an MP3 player. This same principle works on all levels, even shopping and negotiating for a new car.

Comparing Ratings & Specs

Once you have your exact product name and description it’s time to read some reviews. When comparing reviews it’s best to have a couple products you want to compare. It might also be good to compare a similar product with differing features. There are a few websites I depend on for ratings and specs. Amazon, NewEgg, and the Manufacturer website are all good resources. You’ll soon find that some reviews and ratings are intelligent and others are…not. Some users will give a vacuum a bad rating because it’s not a toaster. It pays off to dig deeper and see why a product has a good or bad rating. As the number of reviews on a product increase the likely hood of poor reviews unduly effecting the rating is unlikely.

Another quick and dirty way to compare ratings is to simply type your products in a search engine. Your search query might read something like “product I v.s. product II”. There are a lot of websites dedicated to answering your questions.

Search on comparison shopping engines

Once you have your specific product type your search into a comparison shopping engine. In some cases you’ll see the prices here are much less then what you could find any where else.

Google Products (that’s what they’re calling it now-a-days) is great resource. They include tax, shipping, and final cost. The products here are listed free and Google doesn’t make any money off how they display the results. Other comparison shopping engines charge for placement and might not have as many stores as you’d like to see.

Comparing the Best Stores & Prices

WARNING! Buying from a store with the lowest price can be extremely risky. As a general rule anything under 20% should be suspected as potential fraud. The exceptions to this is when the product is refurbished or used. When buying a new digital camera I nearly bought from one of these companies. Luckily I talked with my friend (who’s a great photographer) and he convinced me otherwise. Within 30 seconds of research we found tons of people who got scammed. If you’re tempted to go with the lowest price take the time to research. You’ll be happy you did!

]]> http://moneytipcentral.com/compare-prices-on-websites-compare-stores-items-rating-specs/feed http://moneytipcentral.com/compare-prices-on-websites-compare-stores-items-rating-specs http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MoneyTipCentral/~3/p43xmKFtc10/identity-theft-statistics-facts http://moneytipcentral.com/identity-theft-statistics-facts#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:10:59 +0000 Matt http://moneytipcentral.com/?p=365
Identity theft is a substantial risk in today’s world. Millions of people are effected every year. These statistics and facts will help you understand how big a risk it is and where the threat is the greatest. Hopefully you will be able to avoid potential identity theft from happening to you.

Who are victims of identity theft?

• In the United States 4-5% of the population are victims each year.
• 16% of identity thieves are known personally by the victim. Friends, family, relatives, neighbors, make up 16% of all cases.
• 56% of victims have no idea how their ID was stolen
• Victims are rich and poor, old and young. No one is immune from identity theft.

What types of identity theft are there?

• 37% of victims are credit card victims
• 39.5% of people are non-credit card account victims
• The remaining 23.5% of people have had new accounts or applications created using their information

What is the worst kind of theft?

• The opening of new accounts is the worst type of identity theft. Costing an average of $1,350.
• Opening of new accounts can take up to 6 months before anything is discovered. As compared with one week on existing accounts.
• Victims that had new accounts opened suffered additional problems beyond the cost of recovering their identity (see below).

What is the “best” kind of theft?

• Existing accounts are not as bad as new account creation, with only $500 in stolen money on average.
• Victims of existing accounts noticed the problem within a week on average.

How much does it cost to fix?

• Theives steal an average of $500, 50% time
• They can steal up to $6,000 ten percent of the time.
• Half of people involved had to spend nothing to fix the problem.
• Ten percent had to spend $1,200 or more to recover their losses and their identity
• The median time to fix the problem was 4 hours for most victims
• The most severe cases (only 5% of people) spend 130 hours to fix the identity theft problem.

What additional problems might a victim encounter?

Beyond fixing the immediate problem of having their identity stolen. 37% of all victims also encounter:

• Harassment from bill collectors
• Denial of new credit applications
• A lower credit score
• Existing credit cards being shut down or denied
• Inability to get new loans
• Having utilities shut off
• Being part of criminal investigations
• Being sued in civil suits
• Denied new banking accounts
• Insurance rates increase

Those victims that had new accounts created are 200% more likely to have these things happen to them. Those that had problems with existing accounts were half as likely to experience any of this.

Top States for Identity Theft
Victims Per 100,000 Population

Arizona 1427
Nevada 120
California 113
Texas 110
Florida 98
Colorado 92
Georgia 86
New York 85
Washington 83
New Mexico 82

What do ID thieves do most often when they open new accounts?

56% Buy goods and services
8% open new phone account
7% open new credit card accounts
3% get medical supplies & treatments
1% rental applications
1% obtain government benefits
1% Apply for a new job

Summary

Having your identity stolen to open new accounts is by far the worst type of identity theft. Monitor your credit history closely and try to catch things before they get really bad. The worst way to find out you’ve had your identity stolen is when you apply for a new loan or job.

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