Despite my occasional self musings of “is Costco membership worth the annual fee?” – overall, I have to say it is. Despite the inevitable problems associated with visiting such a popular and heavily frequented destination for hordes of bargain hunters and bulk shoppers, when you go to Costco you know the product prices will be competitive, the return policies will be ultra-liberal, and the customer service will be top notch. And no, this is not a sales pitch. I’ve visited other warehouse stores like BJ’s Wholesale and Sam’s Club – however, none of them can quite measure up to the overall offerings of Costco in my opinion.

Is Costco Executive Membership Worth The Higher Annual Fee?

A few years ago, I finally upgraded my Costco membership level to premium black card status – signing up for the higher priced Costco Executive Membership. Despite the higher annual fee for Executive Membership ($100) versus the cheaper basic Gold Star membership ($50), because of the higher reward features and extra conveniences offered by the higher membership tier, it actually makes more financial sense to go premium. Yes, Executive Membership costs an extra $50 per year, but the program offers a feature not available to ordinary white card members – a coveted 2% cash back reward rate on all Costco purchases. So long as you are able to  spend $2,500 or more in a year at Costco stores (or at least $200 or so every month), the premium membership pays for itself in the long run. Spending at least $2,500 per year will net you at least a $50 rebate check that ultimately pays for the additional cost of VIP membership.

Costco Executive Members also receive additional warehouse benefits and greater discounts on Costco services. While all current Costco members already enjoy discounted rates on services for home, automobile, health, and dental insurance, not to mention discounted savings on subsidized credit and identity theft prevention services, Executive Membership provides for even better deals and offers. The more notable perks include lower prices on check printing, extra savings on payroll services and identity protection, exclusive sign up bonuses for money market and online investing accounts, free roadside assistance for vehicles covered through Costco’s auto insurance program, and special benefits on travel packages. Here are some of the offer details for Costco Executive Membership participants:

• Up to 20% off auto and home insurance premiums via Ameriprise,
• Free roadside assistance for Costco covered vehicles, and home lockout assistance for covered homes,
• $60 sign up bonus for new Capital One bank accounts, and
• $60 sign up bonus for new ShareBuilder investment accounts with 25% quarterly rebated savings on qualifying transaction charges.

To figure out if it makes sense for you to upgrade to Executive Member level, ask yourself this question – do you spend more than $200 every month at Costco locations? While college students and single individuals who only occasionally buy bread or milk a few times a year from Costco stores may find it more difficult to hit the $200 monthly spending mark, young couples and families with children who spend extra sums on bulk packages of meat, paper towels, and/or baby products should easily be able to meet that amount with little effort. Additionally, if you are ever in the market to make a big ticket purchase (sofa, notebook computer, or new LCD TV), it might be worth it to upgrade since the Executive Member 2% cash back savings will instantly pay for the additional cost of membership.

Of course, what you really ought to try to do is earn at least $100 a year in rebates (via $5,000 total spending per year, or $417 a month) so that what way, your entire Costco membership can be obtained for free, rather than just a reimbursement of the additional Executive Membership portion. With the 2% rebate rate that the Executive Member program offers, this feat is definitely more accomplish-able, especially for heavy spenders.

Costco Executive Membership’s Refund Policy Is Satisfaction Guaranteed

If you’re still on the fence and wary of forking over the additional $50 fee for the higher membership level, Costco’s stated 100% satisfaction guaranteed and refund policy should easily sway you. The company explicitly indicates on its website and at its stores that they will refund your membership fee in full at any time if you are dissatisfied with your experience or results.

For example, let’s say that after you upgrade to Executive Membership, you discover that you shop at Costco less than you initially thought, and ultimately fail to meet the break even threshold of $2,500 a year (the point at which the 2% cash back Executive level rebates pay for the extra cost of membership itself). Hypothetically, let’s assume you only spent about $1,500 at Costco for that first year and racked up only $30 in Costco purchase rebates. By walking up to the customer service desk and demanding satisfaction due to the fact you weren’t able to profit from the Executive Membership, Costco will refund you back the difference of $20. While this refund policy is not expressly stated in such terms anywhere on the website or at Costco stores, this policy has been confirmed and verified as official and pursuant to the company’s satisfaction guaranteed policy for premium membership. Frankly, I can’t think of any real reason not to upgrade to the Executive Membership, other than your preference to reap some minimal interest income from the $50 you might earn if the funds were kept in a high yield savings account or CD deposit.

Ultimately, Executive Membership is a win-win proposition for both you the customer and Costco. You get the benefit of a risk free cash back rebate program and Costco acquires a new customer who’s eager to potentially spend more to take full advantage of the higher 2% reward rate on every dollar spent at Costco warehouse locations.

Even Without The Executive Membership Upgrade, Current Costco Members Can Still Earn 1% Cash Back On All Costco Purchases

Regardless of whether you are an Executive Member or not, if you are an existing Costco member or even a first timer who is contemplating signing up for basic Costco membership, you are eligible to earn 3% back on already heavily discounted Costco gas and 1% cash back on all of your other Costco purchases with the Costco TrueEarnings Card from American Express. Once properly linked to your Costco account, your American Express True Earnings credit card serves as your 2 in 1 membership card – with your account information and photo displayed on the back of the card for your convenience. The co-branded Costco Amex card (which waives the annual fee with a paid Costco membership) features the following attractive purchase reward structure:

• TrueEarnings Card From Costco and American Express: Unlimited cash back for the following purchases – 3% for gasoline, 3% for restaurants, 2% for travel, and 1% back for everything else, including purchases made at Costco stores.

Unfortunately, the story of Michael Jackson is also one of great tragedy. Aside from the eccentricities of his life and the untimeliness of his death, the man was a text book case on how absolutely not to live one’s life. Despite building a massive music empire with an iconic brand unto himself, and despite raking in more than hundreds of millions of dollars as one of the most successful pop music artists of all time, Michael Jackson was more than $500 million in debt at the time of his death, according to The Wall Street Journal. Despite his celebrity fame as a money making machine, a great deal of multi-million dollar financial and legal troubles followed him his entire life. Well known for his insatiable and outrageously lavish shopping sprees for toys and priceless antiques, he leaves behind a mega mountain of debt and an unfinished comeback tour he had hoped would cure his financial troubles once and for all.

Unfortunately, even if Michael Jackson had lived on for many more years and had successfully raked in millions more from his concerts and performances, I still believe he still would have eventually left this Earth utterly in debt and plagued with financial issues. The man was an absolute music god, but a complete failure in the personal finance department. Living to great excess and spending grossly beyond one’s means with no accountability, and perhaps blindly assuming the financial windfalls will never end – are recipes for financial disaster. It’s not just the celebrities either. Even those who suddenly win the lottery and find themselves instant millionaires have the potential to lose it all if they aren’t careful and diligent with their investment strategies, savings, and even income tax responsibilities. Hopefully we can all learn something valuable about the need for proper personal financial management from the tragic life and unfortunate passing of Michael Jackson.

My Current Net Worth and Financial Status Update Compared To Last Month

Tracking My Income and Expenses With Free Budgeting Tools

Working that full time job, and finding ways to generate a steady income stream and make money are important endeavors, but so is finding an efficient and cost effective way to track those expenditures as well. There’s no way any reasonable person can expect to save money for the long haul if he or she is spending more than what he or she makes. You can’t expect to save or plug up those cash leaks if you don’t know where your daily funds are going. While I utilize a wide variety of account aggregator programs like Yodlee-powered Fidelity Full View and free Quicken Online to chart my bank account and credit card balances, I utilize various free budgeting software tools to help me track my spending habits.

Seeking Growth Opportunities In The Stock Market Via ETF’s

Investing in exchange traded funds (ETF’s) is the easiest way to put your money to work in the stock market without the expenses of mutual funds or the volatility risks of individual stock picking. Frankly, I’ve given up trying to buy and invest in individual companies, acknowledging that there is just too much unpredictability and uncertainty with any one particular company’s operations and disclosures. I’ve been burned too often and am finally starting to learn my lesson after all of these years. For now on and indefinitely into the future, I intend to stick solely with broader index funds that track major market indexes and industry sectors.

This month, I’ve finally transferred the vast bulk of my cash and savings account balances into my online brokers in anticipation of imminent index fund trading opportunities. However, I’ve yet to invest the funds and they continue to sit as brokerage cash reserves, waiting for me to pull the buying trigger. Call it market timing if you wish, but I’m just waiting for a good opportunity, or at least until the market settles down a bit more. I think the massive and irrationally exuberant run up in March is due for a significant series of pull backs between now and September.

Checking My Free Credit Reports and Free FICO Credit Score

For many years now I’ve lived in apartment rentals, hopping from one place to another as my various jobs necessitated. However, while I am currently still a renter, I’m gradually contemplating the prospect of becoming a first time home buyer within the next 6-12 months. It’s actually somewhat ironic since only 1-2 years ago, I was griping vehemently that home prices had soared to such ridiculous levels that the American dream of owning a home was starting to fly beyond the reach of most average citizens. It’s interesting how much the housing market has deteriorated (finally approaching rational equilibrium) and how significantly my personal financial balance sheet has improved since then.

With a thriving buyer’s market and home prices at historical lows that continue to drop, I’m in absolutely no rush to buy. While I’m still in the very early stages of interviewing real estate agents and scouting locations, I’m eager to get the ball rolling in anticipation. First thing’s first – I’ll need to know where I stand credit report and credit score-wise. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to get my three free credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and obtain my free FICO credit score from myFICO.com via a variety of cancellable trial offers.

Currently, I also utilize myFICO ScoreWatch to track my credit score changes and avoid identity theft. Recently my FICO score dropped down to 791 (scale of 300-850), due to an increased credit utilization on one of my reward credit cards. Hopefully after paying it back in full my FICO will return back into the 800’s. As a prospective home mortgage rate seeker now, I want to boost my credit score as much as possible for the next few months.

Buying A New Home – Detached Single Family Home Or Town House?

As a newbie first time home buyer, I’m still scratching my head and going back and forth between the pros and cons of buying a detached single family home versus buying a town house. I’ve already ruled out condominiums as I feel they make comparably worse investments for the long run with all things being equal – so right now my focus is on free standing houses and townhomes. As a single guy who probably won’t be getting married anytime soon for the next few years, I don’t really need all of the extra space that a detached home could conceivably provide, however I do like the extra privacy and parking conveniences that one affords. This is definitely one decision I’ll be pondering for quite some time as I spend my next few months talking to real estate agents and pouring over listings on real estate sites like Trulia.com and RedFin.com. Advice anyone?

Since I was a little kid, I’ve always dreamed of hitting it big and winning the lottery. I’m not talking about winning the Texas Holdem poker pot at your buddy’s house, or lucking out at grandma’s Bingo night, but rather about  landing one of those mega jackpots – the ones you see on TV that feature the screaming people holding the oversized checks – the Powerball’s and the Mega Millions lotteries. Alas – I’ve yet to experience success in any type of sweepstakes or lottery drawing other than that one time I won my elementary school’s carnival raffle as a kid (and even then my “prize” was simply a free lunch and movie date of sorts with my school principle). But certainly one can dream right?

For many people, winning a multi million dollar lottery jackpot is truly the ultimate once-in-a-lifetime fantasy. In light of spiking unemployment rates and the ongoing recession, some people now even see lotteries as their best and only chance to ever gain a personal net worth of a million dollars or more. But unfortunately for them and the millions of people who participate in the daily and weekly lottery drawings, the odds are astronomically stacked against them – so much so that their chances of being struck by lightening or even drowning in their own bathtubs are much higher than that of ever winning. Participants of the popular Powerball lottery currently face an unfathomable 1 in 195 million chance for the top prize. Players of Powerball’s biggest rival, the Mega Millions game, face slightly better odds at 1 in 175 million, but still face a daunting uphill climb to the pinnacle prize.

Play The Lottery Only If You Can Afford It, and Play Only For Fun

The terrible combination of staggering odds and irresistible lures of behemoth jackpot rewards of $300 million or more is precisely why these multi-state lottery games have exploded in popularity over the years, and are now legalized and widely available in the majority of U.S. states. Rather than raise taxes and offend mainstream taxpayers, state governments seem content now to fleece the participants of lottery games with heavy taxes to pay for government expenses like new prisons, new schools, and public transportation costs.

Unfortunately, it’s also been said that state lotteries and legalized gambling activities sanctioned by politicians and governments are nothing more than taxes on the poor and the addicted. A variety of online statistics show that nearly 20% of lottery players contribute more than 80% of the revenue that multi-state lottery games rake in – and that disproportionately, the majority of participants are lower income, minority men who have less than a college education (which explains why it always seems like those on the lower rung of the socio-economic ladder tend to win these lotteries on TV). While wealthier folks do occasionally snap up lottery tickets for amusement purposes, it’s frequently the financially poor and downtrodden who pump their weekly pay checks and life savings into chasing the elusive and nearly unattainable lottery windfall.

When it comes to playing the lottery, there are two important rules of thumb – play only if you can afford it, and secondly, play only for fun. A live lottery drawing is a wonderful rush of adrenaline inducing amusement, but remember, it is just a game – one with such distantly long shot odds that even with the advantages of multiple lifetimes, the odds of winning it all are still incredibly slim. Furthermore, be forewarned that while money can certainly solve a wide host of life’s problems, bear in mind that too much of it at once has been known to inflict massive chaos and misery on those who are ill prepared to handle the emotional windfall and public attention that ensues. Don’t believe the Powerball curse? Don’t believe that all of your fair weather friends, envious enemies, distant uncles, and hand out desiring cousins will be coming out of the wood work to clamber for some of your new found cash? Then take a look at this news story of 8 recent lottery winners who won the lottery but ultimately squandered their new found fortunes, filing for bankruptcy years later. If their testimonies don’t dissuade you from playing the lottery and hoping to land it all, you might as well follow these lottery pointers for the most efficient path to winning the jackpot:

The Not-So-Secret Secrets To Winning The Lottery:

1) You Must Play To Win: Like many things in life, you must pay to play, and assume some measure of risk for the big pay off. Each Powerball and Mega Millions ticket only costs a $1.00 to play, but if you don’t actually go out to your local supermarket, gas station, or convenience store to purchase one, you have absolutely zero chance of winning, no matter how slim the odds are to begin with.

2) Buy Just One Ticket Or Two Tickets Every Week (At Most): The key to winning a major lottery is to always be a participant and prospective candidate to win by simply playing. There is no sense in ever buying multiple tickets to any one lottery drawing to increase one’s odds. With Powerball odds of 1:195 million and Mega Millions odds of 1:175 million, changing that 1 into a 2 or 3 isn’t going to make a noticeable dent in your long shot odds. There is no appreciable statistical difference between odds of 1 in 195 million chances and 5 in 195 million chances – your odds are still incredibly slim. However, there is a huge difference between odds of zero in 195 million and 1 in 195 million. The key to winning the lottery is to just be a player, not try to increase your odds of striking the jackpot. Think of it this way – with a single ticket, your odds of losing are likely 99.99999%. Even with hundreds of ticket entries, your odds of losing likely only improve marginally to 99.99998% – still pretty unfavorable. But with that one lone ticket, at least you have a chance.

3) Lottery Numbers Are 100% Random: Presuming that there is no hidden conspiracy among the lottery conductors to rig the lottery balls and barrels in those live drawings – the presumption is that the final lottery drawing numbers are determined by random luck and chance. Unless you can somehow calculate wind velocity, drag, angle, and physical trajectory to such a degree that you can mathematically calculate how the individually numbered ping pong balls will end up in the lottery machines, there is no sense trying to predict the final number.

If you opt for the self selection method when picking your numbers during the ticket buying process, there is no sense fussing to ensure that you have a broad mix of numbers with an ample mixture of high and low numbers, or odds and evens. The final selected numbers are determined at random – plain and simple. Feel free to pick your lottery numbers based on your own propriety formulas derived from special dates and numbers such as birth dates, wedding anniversaries, and juxtapositions of your house number or a family member’s age. But if you want to save time – go with the automatically generated number options. Or in the alternative for better tracking purposes, you can stick to playing the same sequence of numbers your entire life. Randomly generated and self selected numbers all stand the same equal chance of winning. Unlike the creation and algorithm generation of credit card numbers, the outcome of lottery numbers follow no precise formula.

4) Past Number Results Have Zero Bearing On Future Results: As I indicated above, lottery results are generated at random depending on how the numbered balls land during those televised drawings. The lottery machines do not search for particular numbers or combination of numbers which have not been selected in the past. They have no memory of past results. There is no real meaningful pattern in past and future lottery numbers and you will be better off saving your money rather than going out and buying useless books on lottery number picking strategy.

5) Lucky Charms and Lucky Numbers Are Useless: Go out and purchase rabbit foots, four leaf clovers, and kidnap leprechauns all you want – they are simply amusing talismans that have not been proven to yield any tangible results beyond abstract and completely unverifiable notions of luck. Seek lottery number inspirations from your dreams and prayers, or go with numbers that you found luckier than others if that will make the lottery game more inspirational or exciting for you. But do bear in mind – it still boils down to pure 100% unadulterated luck and good fortune.

6) Reduce Your Lottery Odds By Playing the Quick Picks: In almost all cases, the scratch off tickets that you frequently find in supermarket vending machines and at gas stations feature better odds than your run of the mill Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets. The potential jackpot pay outs for the quick pick scratch offs are much lower, but the odds are much better than those for the mega multi-state lotteries.

Instead Of Gambling Your Life and Betting Against The Odds, How About Playing The Sure Thing?

The sight of that beaming person on TV holding up that gigantic check and presenting all those zeros for all to see is no doubt quite a tantalizing scene. It certainly is an infectious and dazzling lure, and a very powerful television media message to those of us sitting on our sofas at home watching the spectacle. But frankly, such a fruition in our own lives is not statistically realistic and within the realm of practical possibility. It is certainly tantalizing enough of an incentive that I am personally willing to pluck in my fistful of dollars for a few lottery tickets whenever the Powerball or Mega Million jackpots rise to ungodly sums every blue moon, but in terms of my day to day life, I try to focus on the lifestyle decisions that emphasize savings and paying down debt that really do matter. Certainly, go ahead and play for fun on occasion if you wish, but don’t make it into an addiction or bad habit, especially if you can’t afford the financial cost of even putting food on the table. If you truly want to jump start or improve your financial life and fix those money troubles, there are things you can do today where the odds of financial success are not so prohibitively onerous. Yes, those actions are not as sexy or glamorous as the dream of winning the lottery, but the favorable results of those actions are more within the realm of possibility for people like you and I.

If you really want to improve your monetary situation, instead of chasing the unattainable home run hit of a lottery jackpot, why not pay yourself the money you would have spent on lottery tickets by saving it or investing it for the future? Try depositing the cash you have set aside into a high interest savings account or opening a discount broker account and investing the funds in the stock market. With high interest bank accounts and tax advantaged investment options like Roth IRA accounts and 401k’s, there are numerous ways for you to take advantage of the amazing power of compound interest to grow your fledgling investment into a lottery jackpot size reward many years down the road. As some financial pundits and gurus have astutely pointed out, if you take that $150.00 a year you would have spent on lottery tickets and put it into a tax deferred IRA or 401k plan at age 30, you’ll have grown it to $28,000 by age 65, assuming a reasonable 8.00% rate of return. To turn your investment into a hefty $500,000 nest egg, you’d only have to save away a little less than $100.00 a month starting at age 21. Think of it – which one of these two scenarios is more likely – that you will be able to find an extra $100 a month lying around to save up or invest, or that you will hit the 1 in almost several million odds of even snagging the lower end 6 figure lottery jackpots? Play the lottery for amusement purposes if you wish to be entertained, but don’t make it a fool’s bet for your financial salvation.

Save The Environment and De-clutter Your Life By Reducing Junk Mail Trash

According to online statistics from sources such as the Center for a New American Dream (CNAD), a non profit organization based in Maryland whose stated mission is to protect the environment by helping Americans develop sustainable consumption habits – simply by eliminating the amount of junk mail you receive every day can significantly reduce the amount of energy and natural resources you consume, as well as greatly reduce the landfill space usage and carbon footprint that you leave behind. For example, according to numbers provided by CNAD, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and various sources, did you know that:

• The average American household receives unsolicited junk mail equivalent to 1.5 trees every year, which comes out to more than 100 million trees for all U.S. households combined – the equivalent of deforesting the U.S. Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
• 5.4 million tons of bulk catalogs and other direct mailings wind up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream every year – paper products which take as much energy to manufacture as 660,000 SUV’s consume in a single year, and not even including the energy needed to print and transport them all.
• American consumers throw away 44% of bulk mail unopened, while recycling only 32% of all that bulk mail – spending the equivalent of 8 months per lifetime opening junk mail letters and packages.
• The process of manufacturing and recycling bulk paper parcels wastes more than 28 billion gallons of water every year.
• Taxpayers spend more than $370 million every year just to collect and dispose of all the paper based junk mail that doesn’t get recycled.

While I’m by no means a tree-hugging hippy, at some point the issue of junk mail just gets to become too much of a colossal waste of environmental resources, not to mention a tremendous mis-allocation of time and money that could be better spent elsewhere. It’s time for each of us to cut back on the number of postal junk mail that we receive. Together in aggregate, we can indeed make a huge positive difference in the world. Besides, reducing junk mail solicitations can also greatly help us streamline and declutter our already complicated lives. Assuring that you only receive letters that are important to you, it also helps to reduce the chances that vital pieces of mail get lost in the shuffle amongst all of those weekly circulars, bulk catalogs, and credit card envelopes cramming up your mailbox.

Protect Your Mailbox Privacy and Prevent Identity Theft By Being Pro-Active

Because the whole concept of direct marketing is such an incredibly incentivized and lucrative business proposition for the mass mailing companies, it’s nearly impossible to stop the junk mail stream completely. Everytime you sign up for a new credit card, subscribe to a magazine, purchase an item from a catalog, donate money to a charity, fill out a product warranty card, or buy a new car – you are potentially offering up your name and address to the direct marketers. Not only do these casual exchanges have the potential to lead to more junk mail down the road if you allow your personal address to be used in that way, they are also breeding cesspools for potential identity fraud and privacy violations. To stem the flow requires a multi-pronged attack that entails that you not only take pro-active actions, but also adopt preventative measures. Remember, contrary to popular belief, there is no actual legal right to automatically opt out of all junk mail, however we do have the right to be free of unwanted solicitations once we’ve properly and duly notified the junk mail spammer.

For starters, I recommend that you not waste money on programs out there that purportedly offer to help you remove your name from the junk mail offers and mailing lists, as you can easily do it yourself for free and with minimal effort. But if you wish to automate the opt out process and perpetually keep yourself off such lists, you may wish to try out junk mail prevention services like Tonic Mail Stopper (formerly called Green Dimes). However, note that even with the use of online programs that automate the process, like trying to get rid of roaches, there is just no easy way to permanently halt the unwelcome torrent of junk mail that surges into your mail box on a daily basis. The nearly unstoppable junk mail solicitations simply have an uncanny way of showing up even after you’ve seemingly snuffed them out at their source. Fortunately, there are strategies and tactful ways to combat the junk mail problem.

Steps To Fight Back and Reduce The Junk Mail That You Receive

1) Remove Your Name From the Direct Marketing Association’s Mailing List: Consumers receive the vast majority of their unsolicited junk mail from just three sources: the DMA (advertising letters, flyers, and brochures), the Abacus Catalog Alliance (retail store and online catalogs), and the major credit report bureaus (credit card applications and insurance offers). If you do nothing else, I highly recommend that you at least take the time to visit the Direct Marketing Association’s DMA Choice registration page, and get your name placed onto their do-not-mail list. DMA member merchants are required to update their mailing lists regularly and stop marketing to consumers that have opted out.

Getting onto the DMA do-no-mail list is one of the easiest things you can do to significantly reduce the junk mail that you receive. You will be able to remove your name and mailing address from the national mailing lists of a great number of direct marketing companies this way. While wiping your name and address from their roster is quick and easy, bear in mind that your online removal request is only valid for 3 years and you’ll have to re-register again after that time. There is absolutely no fee for online registration, but mail in submission requires a $1.00 check or money order processing charge.

• Register Names Of Deceased: The Direct Marketing Association also gives friends, relatives, and caregivers the ability to remove the names of deceased family members and other individuals from commercial marketing lists via the association’s Deceased Do Not Contact (DDNC) registrar (no verification fee). I haven’t tried myself, but I wonder if it’s possible for very-much alive consumers to intentionally placed themselves onto the list and pretend to have died to rid themselves of junk mail. It’s worth a shot I suppose although I haven’t really thought out the potential consequences of such a creative approach. If you’ve placed yourself onto the Deceased Do Not Contact list before, please share your results!

2) Remove Your Name From the Epsilon Abacus Cooperative Mailing List: Abacus, a division of Epsilon Data Services runs perhaps the largest database of mailing addresses out there for its members, mostly catalog and retail companies. Merchant members of the Abacus Cooperative contribute information about their customers and transactions  in exchange for information about other customers that may be interested in their products. As such, Abacus retains a pretty accurate database of consumer spending habits and personal contact information. Opting out is easy and signing up allows you to permanently halt the catalog mailers from the association’s members. Simply visit the Abacus Opt Out page and follow the appropriate instructions, or e-mail abacusoptout@epsilon.com with your full name and current address to request permanent removal.

3) Opt Out Of All Pre-Approved Credit Card Junk Mail: Visit OptOutPrescreen.com to stem the flow of pre-approved credit card solicitations clogging up your mail box. The website is the official Consumer Credit Reporting Industry homepage to accept and process requests from consumers to opt-in or opt-out of firm offers of credit or insurance. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the credit reporting companies of Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and even little known Innovis are permitted to include your name and address on marketing lists used by credit card issuers, mortgage brokers, and insurers to make offers of credit or insurance that are not necessarily initiated by you. However, they must also abide by your wish to opt out and put an end to these credit card pre-approvals if that is your wish. Simply visit the OptOutPrescreen.com website to get your name deleted from their lists for a period of 5 years or longer. If you desire permanent removal, simply select the mail-in option (I highly recommend this). To submit your request, you will need to provide your full name, mailing address, birth date, and social security number. Unfortunately, this service is not currently available for businesses or companies.

4) Opt Out Of All Flyers, Brochures, and Coupon Packs: Some people like receiving weekly flyers and monthly coupon books filled with assorted promotional offers from local stores and companies. I on the other hand hate receiving them and regard them as junk mail. These types of bulk mail bundles generally involve envelopes containing a wide array of ads and coupons for locally based stores and services such as window replacement, carpet cleaning, air duct services, car washing, restaurants, and even promotional leaflets for various acai berry scams. I have yet to find any of these coupons useful.

Most of these coupon booklets are usually generically addressed to “current resident” or “current occupant” and sent out en masse with no personalization of any sort. They also frequently contain postcards with ads, often accompanied by pictures of missing children. In almost all cases, the name, phone number, and sometimes even the website address of the company that issued the junk mailer will be printed on the bulk mail package itself or on the accompanying card that contains your mailing address. Simply call or send a letter to the company directly to have your name and address taken off the bulk mailing list. For your reference, here are several of the biggest bulk coupon book marketing companies out there:

• Valassis, aka. Red Plum Coupons: Get yourself removed from Valassis or Red Plum’s coupon book mailing list by filling out and submitting an opt out request at the Valassis Consumer Support page, or by calling 1-888-241-6760. It takes about 5-6 weeks to process.
• Val Pak Savings Coupons: You can opt out of Val-Pak’s ubiquitous blue envelope packs by visiting the Cox Target Media mailing list removal request page. Be sure to input your address information exactly as it is printed on your ValPak envelope to ensure proper removal.

5) Ask Magazines and Charities Not To Sell Your Name Or Address: Tell magazines that you subscribe to and charities that you donate to the magic words – that you don’t want them to “sell, rent, share, or trade your name and address” with other businesses or charity organizations. 

6) Remove Yourself From Sweepstakes and Prize Drawings: The chances of ever winning are incredibly slim and not worth the hassle of having to deal with future junk mail solicitations. Besides, the main purpose of these contests and reward promotions is for companies to compile mailing lists of prospective customers, not to award prizes. Always avoid participating in any such offers unless you have the option, based on contest rules, to completely opt out of being placed on a mailing list. To get yourself removed from the major sweepstakes and prevent your address from being passed on to other companies for the purpose of receiving future marketing offers, contact the following:

• Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes: Call: 1-800-645-9242 or e-mail privacychoices@pchmail.com
• Readers Digest Sweepstakes: Call 1-800-310-6261 or send a letter request to Reader’s Digest customer service at: Reader’s Digest, PO Box 50005, Prescott, AZ 86301-5005

7) Avoid Filling Out Product Warranty Or Buyer Registration Cards: Contrary to popular belief, those product warranty registration cards that come with the products you buy have less to do with warranty coverage than they have to do with allowing the company to update their mailing lists. A product warranty is effective the moment you purchase the product and is almost always valid whether or not you return the product warranty card (as long as you have a proper receipt). You may have noticed that many of these registration cards frequently ask for lifestyle and personal interest hobby type information, along with details about your household makeup, your income bracket, and other seemingly irrelevant data. This is to allow the company to better categorize you into the proper demographic list for future marketing solicitations, and has little to do with the underlying warranty.

8) Refuse To Accept Junk Mail By Returning To Sender: Here’s a tip to combat against other unsolicited junk mail offers not covered by the items listed above. When junk letters arrive in envelopes that specifically indicate “change service requested” or “address service requested”, it means that you can refuse to receive the letter and have it returned to the sender on demand. Simply write “Refused – Return To Sender” or “Return To Sender – Refused By Addressee” on the envelope and drop it unopened back into the outgoing mailbox to have it sent back to the sender. In most cases, this will cause the sender to remove the address from its bulk mailing list. Additionally for such letters or bulk mailers where there is indication on the face that return postage is guaranteed, you may also wish to write “Remove me from your mailing list immediately” on the face of the envelope to punctuate your point. Remember, all such returned letters to the sender must be unopened so be certain of the nature of the contents before rejecting them.

9) Beware Of The U.S. Postal Service’s Change of Address Cards: One of the biggest and sneakiest secret of all – is that the United States Postal Service is perhaps one of the biggest exploiters of your mailing information out there. The Post Office generates a very large amount of income from selling the mail forwarding database that it regularly updates. Every time you move and fill out one of those permanent change of address cards or mail forwarding forms at the Post Office, your new mailing address information is almost always immediately offered to prospective direct mail marketers for a price. I’ve tried contacting the post office to compel them to stop giving out my new addresses to companies – but it’s been a pretty futile gesture on my part.

One way to get around this is to submit a temporary change of address for a long period of time such as 6 months. Your new address information is not passed along to businesses for temporary moves, only permanent ones. If you are willing to manually contact all of the legitimate companies that you do business with or have accounts with to advise them of your new permanent address change, this is one way to prevent the Post Office from updating the junk mail marketers of your new location. Of course, make sure all of your friends, relatives, and bill collectors know of your new address.

For consumers who wish to forcibly stop the flood of sexually explicit mail to their residence, one way is to submit a USPS Form 1500 (Prohibitory Order Application), which notifies the senders to cease and desist their mailers to you. I have yet to hear of anyone using this powerful tool to stop an overly aggressive (but non-sexually based) bulk mailing company’s marketing attempts, but it certainly is another potential way to discourage junk mail companies from cluttering up your mailbox.

10) Opt For Electronic Statements, and Stop Receiving Paper Bills: It’s time for everyone to join the modern era and put an end to paper statements by banking online and accessing their monthly bills and statements via the Internet. Not only do paper statements generate an inordinate amount of trash and clutter, these paper based bills are yet another opportunity for businesses to send you more junk through the mail. Contact your banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies, and utility providers – and sign up for automatic debit payments and electronic billing as soon as possible. Along with the reduction in clutter and paper usage, you’ll also save a lot of money on stamps by going paperless.

While I have written about the best online discount brokers in the past – reviewing what I believe to be the top brokerage companies out there for new stock and fund investors – it’s always good to check out what the financial experts have to say on the subject. For almost two decades now, the editors at SmartMoney Magazine have been reviewing and releasing their annual list of the best stock brokerage companies, thoroughly researching and comparing the candidates based on a variety of key competitive factors. For customers and broker firms alike, their award wining list is always a popular read.

In this year’s 17th annual broker survey, SmartMoney updated its ranked list of the best and worst brokers after conducting a variety of performance based tests and undercover research as well as reviewing the responses to surveys by the online brokerages themselves. As the folks at Smart Money remarked in this year’s review – “no detail was too small” – as they poked and prodded the various available trading tools and features, even going so far as to go incognito – calling customer support lines and posing as prospective brokerage customers, while jotting down comments in regards to the quality of the phone service they received. For new and seasoned investors, this list serves as an excellent jumping off point for those on the fence and not sure which investment broker to go with or to switch to. While the exact sequencing order of the rankings is always debatable, the list gives a great overview of who’s hot and who’s not in terms of touting the complete package in all facets. The table below is self explanatory, but I’ll comment on a few names that I feel merit some mentioning.

E-Trade Is Selected As the Best Overall Online Broker

To absolutely no one’s surprise (certainly not mine), E-trade was chosen as the top discount broker for year 2009 by SmartMoney. Ranked high in every category, with excellent customer service and an affordably low $9.99 commission structure to boot, the E-Trade brokerage company definitely deserves the top spot. One of the best features of E-Trade is its status as a true one-stop shopping destination for brokerage and online banking services. Along with its highly rated broker conveniences and extremely broad portfolio of mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and ETF’s to choose from, ETrade also offers a wide array of FDIC insured products with its highly recommended E-trade banking service, complete with high interest savings accounts and high yield certificates of deposit.

Special Offer: ETrade is currently offering 100 free trades for new customers.

TradeKing Remains A Solid and Legit Top Tier Brokerage

Despite dropping one spot down from its previous 2008 Smart Money ranking, TradeKing remains a consistently solid high performer. Compared to E-trade, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab – TradeKing offers the lowest commission fee rate by far at only $4.95 per trade. Only Just2Trade, SogoTrade, and Zecco Trading (with its free monthly stock trade deal) offer lower prices, albeit with much lower reputational scores. They only major downside with TradeKing is its lack of a fully developed and integrated online banking system for those who want their banking and brokerages services in one place. But those who simply want a deep discount broker that features a wide selection of extremely user-intuitive trading tools with an impeccable customer service reputation can’t go wrong with Trade King.

Results Of Smart Money’s 2009 Broker Survey (Rated On A Scale Of 5 Stars)

Compared to the previous year’s 2008 Smart Money rankings, this year’s 2009 broker survey featured top five results that stayed pretty much the same, albeit with a slight shuffling of the deck. In 2008, the top five in ranked order were E-Trade, Fidelity Investments, TradeKing, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab. This year, Charles Schwab, with its new and improved website, hopped up from 5th place to beat out TradeKing and Ameritrade for the coveted 3rd place finish. Etrade and Fidelity, with their robust and huge mix of product offerings and funds remain solidly in 1st and 2nd place respectively. As the table above clearly demonstrates, with the top 5 brokers securely entrenched, the up and coming basement-dwelling brokerages still have quite a ways to go.

OptionsXpress – Excellent Online Tools, But Only Average Customer Service

As the Smart Money review noted, OptionsXpress rated well and received high marks for its online trading tools. However, the online brokerage retailer was docked points for providing only limited hours for phone based customer support. The editors also remarked of at least one instance where testers were put on hold for a longer than desired period of time when they called in for assistance. While OptionsExpress offers a large array of powerful investment analyzers and online technologies for stocks, futures, mutual funds, and bond trades that cater to savvy statistic-loving investors, its customer service offerings can still use some work

ShareBuilder (ING Direct) – Great Bank, But Brokerage Needs Improvement

Previously stuck at the bottom of the pile, ING Direct’s ShareBuilder discount brokerage firm has jumped up three spots after finally adding a large selection of mutual funds into its investment product lineup. However, its requirement of extra fees for access to premium research that other broker alternatives offer for free keeps it from advancing further in terms of ranking. Currently, one of ShareBuilder’s biggest selling points is its unique automatic investment feature, which allows online customers to buy stocks, mutual funds, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) on a regular basis so they can take advantage of dollar cost averaging as stock prices change and fluctuate over time. For now at least, ShareBuilder seems content in its marketing approach of appealing primarily to hands-off type investors looking for a low cost, almost automated brokerage solution without all of the added cost of having extra bells and whistles attached.

Zecco Trading – Free Trades Cater Only To Individual Stock and ETF Traders

Smack near the back of the bus is Zecco. You might won’t find Zecco at the top of any best brokerage list. In fact, the company is almost dead last on the list due to its lack of sophisticated fund selections or premium research material for investors – despite its unique reputation as a super deep discount commission fee provider. For now, the company seems all too comfortable nestled in its niche as a purveyor of free commission trades to those who who primarily dabble in individual stocks and ETF’s with little need for extraneous research material. While Zecco used to shine and dominate the deep discount brokerage market with its unlimited free stock trades, this deal now requires a minimum $25,000 balance to qualify for – and only for a recurring 10 free trades per month. Customer service has improved with faster response time, but I don’t think Zecco is going to be leapfrogging E-Trade, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or TradeKing anytime soon.

After months of bank failures and gloomy economic news, we finally have some good tidings from our federal government. No, it’s not another round of stimulus checks for those of you who have been hoping and waiting with bated breath, but rather, it pertains to the FDIC insurance that guarantees the safety and security of bank deposits.

The current increased FDIC insurance limits of $250,000 were scheduled to be rolled back to the previous $100,000 limits on the last day of 2009. However just recently, Congress voted to extend the deadline for four more years – through December 31, 2013. Those of us who have significant amounts of money in the bank or sizable funds invested into long term certificates of deposit (CD rates) undoubtedly have been nervously eyeing the impending December 31 expiration date of the $250,000 threshold. Thus this news ought to come as a tremendous welcomed relief. Those of us who have been considering renewing our certificates of deposit can now consider maturities with a longer time horizon without fear of falling outside of federally protected limits.

Avoid Banks That Are Not FDIC Insured, Or Credit Unions That Are Not NCUA Protected

As many of you may know, if you have money in a bank account, your bank deposits are generally insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) up to the maximum current limit of $250,000. Similarly, if you have money saved in a credit union account, your deposits are insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for the same amount as well. As federal government run entities, the two organizations jointly share in the responsibility of  insuring and regulating the stability & financial health of our nation’s banks and credit unions. All legitimate banks and credit unions operating in the United States are duly members of the relevant regulatory agency. If you are not banking at an FDIC insured institution, you’re taking a huge risk. Banks that are not FDIC insured are either international banks or scams (yes, bank Ponzi schemes do exist). While most reputable international banks offer some protection through their own governmental authorities, you will want to do everything you can to steer clear of the uninsured but high yield dealers calling themselves banks.

FDIC and NCUA deposit insurance offer the maximum peace of mind assurances available as they are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. In the event of a bank or credit union failure, insolvency, or bankruptcy, the FDIC and NCUA have an orderly and systematic system in place to ensure a seamless and disruption free resolution. When banks fail, the FDIC takes over. They may sell the failed bank to another more stable bank (purchase and assumption method), or they may liquidate its assets and issue full payouts to customers (pay off method), making up any shortfall of funds from its own coffers. During any bank failure proceedings managed by the FDIC and NCUA, all interest income accrued up to the date of bank failure are guaranteed and paid out as well. Contrary to popular opinion, the FDIC and NCUA resolution processes are almost always very orderly and expedient, with little lag time and disruptions to account access during the resolution transition phase. For most customers in such an occurrence, a bank failure is a non-event as they are almost always permitted to continue using their customary bank services including checks, debit cards, and electronic transfers as before. At some point however, customers may be issued new cards, checks, or online banking information.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 in response to the massive number of bank failures during the Great Depression era, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) now services as a safety net for bank deposits in the event of a catastrophic insolvency emergency or rare run on the bank. Currently, FDIC insurance provides up to $250,000 worth of protection per depositor, per insured bank for the following accounts:

• Checking account (negotiable order of withdrawals)
• Savings and money market accounts
• Certificates of deposit and other time deposit accounts
• Cashier’s checks and other checks drawn on the member bank’s accounts
• Certain investment retirement accounts (IRA’s) in deposit based accounts

Not everything is covered. As a general matter, financial investments and bank conveniences such as – stocks, bonds, money market funds, annuities, insurance policies, and even bank safe deposit boxes are not covered by the FDIC.

Because the general coverage limit that FDIC insurance provides is $250,000 per depositor per bank, there is no sense in opening multiple accounts of the same type at any one bank to circumvent this restriction. The only way to exceed this mark yet remain fully protected under permissible limits is to either spread your money among different banks, or if you wish to stick with a single bank – open multiple accounts with different deposit categories of legal ownership. The FDIC recognizes eight different ownership categories – single accounts, certain retirement accounts, joint accounts, revocable trust accounts, irrevocable trust accounts, employee benefit plan accounts, corporation/partnership/unincorporated association accounts, and government accounts. As each of these different account ownership categories qualify for its own $250,000 insurance limit,  it is possible to have total deposits of more than $250,000 at any one insured bank and still be fully insured. To demonstrate, here’s an example and run through of how a married couple could hypothetically insure up to $2 million at any one bank:

• Husband and wife each deposits $250,000 in separate individual accounts
• Together, they have $500,000 in a shared joint account
• Individually, each has $250,000 in separate IRA deposit accounts
• Each also sets up a $250,000 revocable trust account, payable on death, naming the other one as beneficiary

Avoid banking with institutions or organizations that are not covered by federal government insurance. Particularly if you are a high yield savings account or bank rate chaser like myself, more likely than not you’ll come into contact with online banking names like Dollar Savings Direct, EverBank, Ally Bank, or even E-trade – bank names that are either unfamiliar to you or names whose reputations or stability concerns you haven’t fully vetted yet. While most reputable banks will clearly display their FDIC insured member logos, it’s always important to confirm this fact for yourself. Verifying your bank’s FDIC insurance coverage is easy – simply call the FDIC’s telephone number at: 1-877-275-3342, or preferably, visit the online FDIC Bank Find page. To find an institution by FDIC certificate number (every FDIC member institution carries one) or to search via geographical or statistical criteria, simply click on “More Search Options” via FDIC Bank Find for more choices. As the Bank Find website notes, the service can also help you answer pressing questions such as – Is my bank insured? Where are my bank’s branches located? Where is my bank’s home (main) office located? What is my bank’s web site address? What happened to my bank (historical list of events)? Does my bank have a new name? And Is my bank still open?

National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)

All legitimate credit unions in the United States offer deposit insurance protection for their account holders via the NCUA. The National Credit Union Administration is the independent federal agency that supervises and regulates the operations & stability of all federal not-for-profit credit unions.

Like the FDIC, the NCUA’s insurance limits are guaranteed by a federal fund that’s backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, and as such, are 100% safe from catastrophic loss or insolvency. Now that the $250,000 coverage limits provided by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund have been extended through December 31, 2013, credit union customers should be able to rest easier. Hopefully the higher protection limits will be extended into indefinite perpetuity or made legally permanent. Beats me why the FDIC and NCUA haven’t already done so.

If you have an account at a credit union, chances are your funds are protected by NCUA member insurance, with account protection rules and different account ownership categories that are similarly set up to run as that offered by FDIC insurance. However, to be sure, it’s always important to confirm that your credit union is a legitimate entity and fully insured before doing business with them. If you are unable to find a NCUA member placard logo displayed anywhere on the credit union’s website or store front, I’d recommend that you confirm its membership by calling the NCUA’s telephone number at 1-800-755-1030, or by preferably visiting the NCUA’s Is My Credit Union Federally Insured lookup page.

After a rather bumpy ride over the last few years, the financial institution formerly known as GMAC Bank is now Ally Bank. In mid-May 2009, the former financial lending and banking arm of General Motors took the first of what it hopes to be a series of reinvigorating steps towards distancing itself from the much criticized and tainted image of the now bankrupt auto maker.

Since then, many of you may haven noticed their recent aggressive purple-themed advertising blitz on TV spots and online ads. With the launch of Ally Bank, the company is undertaking a massive promotional effort to differentiate itself from the collectively damaged reputations of other struggling online banks in the hopes of  positioning itself as a commercial advocate of honesty, transparency, and accountability. Though the former bank has been struggling mightily in the midst of the worst economic recession and subprime mortgage crisis in decades, now that it’s flush with bailout funds courtesy of the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the new Ally Bank is now sufficiently stabilized to concentrate on growing its depositor base and rebuilding its image.

Currently, Ally Bank’s interest rate offers are extraordinarily competitive and have been consistently dominating the high end of the bank rate spectrum. If you are willing to accept the view and belief (as you perhaps ought to) that the government’s FDIC insurance protections are more than adequate to guarantee the safety and security of your banking assets in the case of any unforeseen scenario, Ally Bank’s high interest account rates alone ought to be worth some measure of consideration. Whether Ally Bank’s quest to transform itself will be successful remains to be seen. However, in terms of the top rates alone, Ally ranks among the very best online banks, as you won’t find too many non-teaser rate offers that can match the consistency and aggressiveness of Ally Bank’s high interest deals. In terms of product lineup diversity, the bank also touts a few special banking products not readily found elsewhere – most notably, the Ally Bank No Penalty CD. Other offers include:

1. Online Savings Account – The high yield online savings account from Ally Bank earns a very high interest rate – much higher than other banks.
2. Money Market Account – With no account minimums and no monthly fees, the Ally Bank money market account offers versatile check writing and free ATM fee reimbursement privileges.
3. Classic CD – The classic fixed interest certificate of deposit from Ally Bank offers a variety of high yielding CD rates for different term limits, all with no minimum deposit requirements. Interest is compounded daily for maximum earnings.
4. No Penalty CD -  The highly coveted No Penalty CD from Ally Bank allows you to withdraw your money and put it anywhere, without the hassles or shortfalls of an early withdrawal penalty. This special CD offer has no fees of any kind and offers high fixed interest rates with no minimum deposit stipulations.

Ally Bank’s High Interest Rates – An Illusory Scam Or A Legitimate Offer?

Let’s focus on Ally Bank’s greatest and most dominant selling feature – its consistently favorable high yield savings account and CD rates. Despite the depressed state of interest rates across the board, Ally’s current rates have always remained one of the highest. Its perpetual financial issues have forced Ally to continuously offer very competitive interest rate yields to attract new account depositors. Interestingly, it’s these same perpetually high rates that have been recently raising the ire of competing banks, who via the American Banking Association (ABA) lobbying group have complained to the FDIC that the extraordinarily high deposit rates offered by Ally Bank are unfair due to its status as a recipient of subsidized federal taxpayer funds. Ally Bank has responded to the conflict by accusing the other banks of wanting to stifle competition to the detriment of consumers.

It may be a rather draconian way of looking at it, but I feel Ally Bank’s loss is our potential gain as prospective banking customers. Ally Bank’s continued desperation to acquire new deposits and stay sufficiently capitalized, and its willingness to continuously shell out the highest rates to accomplish this objective – is our potential windfall as interest rate seekers. For the foreseeable future, I don’t believe Ally Bank’s rates will plummet any time soon. So long as it continues to be closely monitored by federal government regulators and continues to stay aggressive in its ambitious plan to re-invent its brand, Ally Bank will continue to be a top tier destination for aggressive rate chasers. Let’s just hope the bank can ultimately turn things around and not meet the same failed fates as IndyMac Bank and Washington Mutual.

Ally Bank’s Quest To Build A Better Bank – With No Minimum Deposits, No Fees, No Minimum Balances, and Improved Customer Service

So what’s your personal take on Ally Bank’s recent name change from GMAC Financial to Ally? Great decision to rename itself and shed the tainted reputation of its former self – or merely putting lipstick on a pig as some people have put it? Personally, as a former long standing GMAC Bank customer, I’m extremely pleased that Ally Bank’s decision to overhaul itself included a major name change. While a name change in of itself isn’t capable of changing the corporate culture or altering the pre-existing way of doing things, at the very least it’s a significant gesture that the bank is trying to go in a different direction.

Hoping to improve its relationship with customers and usher in honesty and openness, the new Ally Bank has rewritten its explanations of financial terms in very simple language, curtailed much of its former usage of disclaimers, and pretty much done away with old school tactics such as implementing introductory teaser rates, monthly fees, and minimum deposit requirements. With these changes, the bank has also tweaked its best product features to make them more attractive. Currently, you’ll find that Ally Bank sits at the top or near the top of all ranked reviews of the best money markets, the best high yield savings accounts, and the best CD rates for everything from 6 month to 12 month certificates of deposit. The savings account and CD rates that Ally Bank touts is frequently many times over the national average – topping even the offerings of the best online banks.

Ally Bank has also drastically overhauled its customer service system – installing and heavily promoting its laudable 24 hour, 7 days a week customer service accessibility. In fact, this improved feature is pretty much plastered everywhere on the new Ally Bank website. To test out Ally Bank’s new customer service improvements, I purposely called a few times at weird hours of the night and a few times during office hours. In response to my cadre of banking questions, I received pretty targeted and courteous answers (something I don’t always get from more established banks like Citibank). Of course, despite the company’s financial difficulties in the past, the former GMAC Bank’s customer service reputation has always been generally well regarded in most editorial reviews. Here a quick run through of Ally Bank’s best new features:

1. Promise of the Best Rates: Ally Bank has indicated that it is committed to consistently offering the best savings products featuring the best rates. Historically, the former GMAC Bank has delivered, and at present is still delivering on this promise.
2. No Fake Teaser Rates: Ally Bank states that it will no longer be offering introductory “bait and switch” teaser rates that start very high but later crash. Let’s hope Ally can indeed keep those rates perpetually high.
3. No Minimums: There are no more minimum deposits or minimum balances required at Ally Bank. Feel free to open a new account with a whopping $0.00
4. No Sneaky Disclaimers: More transparency on rates and terms along with less usage of confusing legalese and jargon.
5. No Penalty CDs With No Strings Attached: One of Ally Bank’s best new features is the no withdrawal penalty certificate of deposit. Customers can withdraw funds prior to the maturity date without paying a fee and transfer the funds to any account at any bank without penalty charge.
6. Sleeping Money Alerts: In an effort to encourage customers to continuously seek out higher rates, Ally Bank will send out notices to customers when funds have been idle and could be earning a higher rate of return.
7. 24/7 Customer Service: Ally Bank now offers around the clock 24 hour, 7 days a week access to a live call center agent for customer assistance help. Just dial (1-877-247-ALLY)

Full FDIC Insurance Limit Protection With Ally Bank Up To $250,000

If you are like many of the high interest rate seekers out there drawn to the new Ally Bank because of its exceptionally high rates, you ought to be mindful of the online bank’s viability issues and ability to stay operational. Despite the name change, Ally Bank is still the same struggling GMAC Bank, at least until its aggressive marketing allows it to snag more customer deposits and become better capitalized. Until then, the possibility of an Ally Bank failure is always a real and serious concern.

But fortunately, like most reputable banks out there, Ally Bank accounts are fully insured and guaranteed by the United States government’s FDIC insurance – confirmed as FDIC certificate 57803. Based on recent changes with FDIC regulations, bank account deposits at FDIC insured banks are now insured up to $250,000 through December 31, 2013. With FDIC insurance, your Ally Bank savings and CD accounts are completely shielded from loss and backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government to be safe in the event of any unforeseen banking collapse. So long as you stay within the $250,000 FDIC limits, irregardless of what happens to Ally Bank, there really is no need to be nervous – your assets are fully protected. If you are unsure about putting your money into the hands of a newly renamed bank with a past, there are plenty of other highly rated banks to choose from – albeit touting rates that aren’t as lucrative or as high as that offered by Ally Bank.

Extra Information and Resource

• Ally Bank ABA/Routing Number for direct deposits and ACH transfers: 124003116
• Ally Bank Customer Phone Number: 1-877-247-2559 for 24/7 assistance
• Ally Bank E-mail: customercare@ally.com

As of mid-May 2009, GMAC Bank is now officially called Ally Bank. With a new aggressive marketing blitz on cable TV channels and via Internet ads, the new purple themed Ally Bank is embarking on a quest to rebrand its image and change the public’s perception of its former beleaguered self. Touting the new banking persona as a new and better type of bank – an ally and friend to consumer customers of sorts, AllyBank.com’s new banking slogan is – “No minimum deposits. No monthly fees. No minimum balance. No sneaky disclaimers.”

Sporting a very impressive array of high yield savings accounts, money market accounts, and high interest CD rates, Ally Bank is hoping to win the public over with its dazzling new message and cache of revamped services. Looking back at its history, the bank formerly known as GMAC Bank has certainly had quite a rough and tumultuous ride to get to where it is today.

Ally Bank – Starting Anew With A Fresh New Name and Top Tier Rates

For those not in the know, Ally Bank used to be GMAC Bank, a bank built on the troubled and rather shaky foundations of GMAC Financial Services – the banking, savings, and financial lending arm of currently bankrupt American vehicle manufacturer General Motors (GM). Originally established as a lending authority to provide automotive financing loans to car buyers and auto dealerships of GM brand vehicles, GMAC has been hit particularly hard by the housing crisis and subprime mortgage meltdown. The resulting economic recession, coupled with surging unemployment rates and the collapse of consumer spending, which in turn has had a significantly negative impact on automobile purchases – have all severely hit the company’s bottom line, pushing it to the abysmal financial brink.

On the verge of collapse, GMAC Financial was one of many financial institutions that ultimately converted itself from a loan issuer and servicer into a new bank holding company (dubbed GMAC Bank) to make itself eligible for the federal government’s infamous taxpayer-funded Troubled Asset Relief Program (also known as TARP). But saddled under the burden of its toxic cache of bad lending decisions and struggling under the weight of its subprime home mortgage loans, not to mention the operational losses of billions of dollars, the converted GMAC Bank has since embarked on a rather valiant but desperate quest to save itself by building a new reputation as a legitimate deposit institution. To start anew and completely re-design its banking image, in the middle of May 2009, GMAC Bank dropped its own namesake moniker from its brand, officially changing its name to Ally Bank in order to shed the reputational baggage of its former connections. Only time will tell whether the newly minted Ally Bank’s ambitious plans will prosper and succeed.

For now at least, Ally Bank remains one of the top online banks in terms of offering the best high interest savings account deals and high yield CD rate offers – pretty much continuing where GMAC bank left off. Despite its troubles, GMAC had always offered top interest rates for its banking products – and Ally Bank appears to be no different in this positive regard. Due mostly to its ambitious plans to establish itself as a leading and reputable provider of high interest banking products, if I had to project – I would wager that Ally Bank rates will likely stay perpetually high for quite some time. In terms of motivation to keep existing rates at their highest market peaks, Ally Bank’s shaky past actually works in the favor of prospective consumers. Desperate to capture the attention of skeptical new customers and convince them into becoming loyal bank depositors, Ally Bank is likely going to have to keep its interest rates high to achieve its lofty new business acquisition and retention goals.

Ally Bank.com’s New and Impressive High Interest Banking Products

Along with the notable name change, Ally Bank has also significantly improved its banking website and modified its product offerings to comport with the new and improved image. The company has made drastic upgrades to its customer service features – now offering zero wait time, 24 hours, 7 days a week telephone customer support (1-877-247-ALLY) – boldly plastering this new convenient feature on every page of its online banking website.

As the new name is supposed to conjure up images of a neighborly local credit union that’s genuinely in tune with the needs of its customers, Ally Bank’s former features and previous limitations have been re-worked and re-tooled to offer up a seemingly better banking experience. Eager to re-brand itself as an honest, straightforward, and transparent bank, the folks at Ally Bank have completely done away with all minimum deposit requirements, monthly fees, and minimum account balance charges. New Ally Bank customers are now free to deposit as little or as much as they wish into their new online savings or CDs, as all account deposits now enjoy the maximum interest rate offered regardless of balance. Here are some of the new and very compelling bank deals and offers from Ally:

1. Online Savings Account – The high yield online savings account from Ally Bank earns a very high APY rate – much higher than its competitors.
2. Money Market Account – With no account minimums and no monthly fees, the Ally Bank money market account with check writing privileges can be opened with as little as $1.
3. Classic CD – The classic fixed interest certificate of deposit from Ally Bank with automatic renewal features is a high yielding CD with no monthly fees and no minimum deposit requirements. The CD account compounds interest daily for maximum rate earnings.
4. No Penalty CD – The new and unique No Penalty CD offer from Ally Bank allows you to withdraw your money and put it anywhere, without the hassles or shortfalls of an early withdrawal penalty fee. This special CD account has no fees of any kind and offers high fixed rates with no minimum deposit requirements.

FDIC Insurance Guarantees and Protects Ally Bank Customers From Loss

If you remain unsure and uneasy about the safety and security of money deposited with Ally Bank – you’re not alone. Despite the name change, Ally Bank is still essentially the same embattled GMAC Bank, but with a new shiny purple colored exterior and improved marching orders. Those who are concerned about the safety of their money in the event of a major run on the bank have good reason to be worried. Bank failures and financial instability are serious issues in this day and age, as several major banking institutions like IndyMac Bank and Washington Mutual have poignantly demonstrated in the past few months.

Fortunately, Ally Bank deposits are fully insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) up to the maximum coverage limits. FDIC insurance currently insures all of Ally Bank’s certificate of deposit options, online savings accounts, and money market accounts up to $250,000 per depositor. Per recent changes with FDIC regulations, bank account deposits at FDIC insured institutions are now insured up to $250,000 through December 31, 2013. With FDIC insurance, your savings and accounts are completely guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States government to be safe from loss and protected in the event of any catastrophic banking failure or bankruptcy. So long as you stay within those limits, you will be fine.

As a former GMAC Bank customer myself, I woke up one day to find that my accounts had been converted over to the new Ally Bank. The conversion was surprising but not unwelcome as I rather like the new and improved features. As my new Ally Bank savings account rates have remained high and stayed the same, I have little to complain about. But don’t take my word for it – if you are interested in Ally Bank, visit their new website at AllyBank.com and check it out for yourself.

For a more in depth critique and assessment of the newly renamed GMAC Bank, you may want to read my detailed Ally Bank review. Feel free to share your experiences and thoughts!

Thus, as far as I can tell based on current projections and observations, the only significantly damaging element that has the foreseeable potential to hurt me financially in a big way – is higher federal and state income taxes. Hopefully President Obama will play nice and leave existing federal tax rates alone and not implement any drastic increases. Yes it’s easy to get all orgasmically gun-ho about fleecing the higher bracket taxpayers to generate tax revenue to pay for aggressive governmental social projects, but let’s not forget that it’s small business owners such as myself who directly stimulate this economy via trickle down effects by generating new jobs, expanding our entrepreneurial expenditures, and purchasing/leasing real estate properties. Taxing small business owners beyond current levels is ultimately counter-productive to achieving economic recovery in my humble opinion. Do we not agree?

My Current Net Worth and Financial Status Update Compared To Last Month

Seeking Out High Interest Alternatives To Savings Accounts and CD Deposits

If you’ve got money in the bank, then you’re likely well aware that both online and brick & mortar savings account rates and CD rates have been plummeting for a while now. Unfortunately for those of us who are aggressive cash savers, things aren’t likely to improve anytime soon. So what’s one to do in our current predicament where high yield savings accounts no longer offer the same high interest rates we’ve come to depend on? While certainly one can opt to spend the extra cash savings towards paying down high interest debt such as outstanding credit card balances, home mortgages, or student loans – persistent rate chasers can always choose to seek out comparably risk free short term savings account and high yielding CD alternatives instead.

A few of the popularly rated short term savings alternatives I’ve been looking to are high yielding peer-to-peer loan investments from online companies like Lending Club, high interest reward checking account offers, and special rate deals from local banks and community based credit unions. All of these underused and under tapped alternatives currently offer APY interest rates that greatly exceed overall market rates and are definitely worth looking into. With average interest rate yields in excess of 9.00% APY (even after accounting for risk factors), P2P social loan investments on sites like Lending Club definitely deserve some extra mainstream attention.

Transferring Funds From Cash Savings To Investment Brokerage Accounts

While I remain unconvinced at the short term sustainability and authenticity of the momentary run up in the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 Indexes in the last few months, I must admit – the surge has been rather impressive. However, as as investor and trader who believes it’s important to remain vigilantly fearful when others are greedy, I hope to hold out for more positive economic news to back up this bullish stock market run before I make any decisions to start investing again.

For more than a year now, I’ve held back from investing into further positions – hoping to ride out the worst of this economic recession with my cash savings intact. Well so far so good as my savings account funds have been shielded from loss, but I think it may be time to start looking for opportunities again. At the start of this month, I transferred a large chunk of funds from my high yield savings accounts and expired CD deposits into my brokerage accounts. But for now at least, the newly added broker funds will be held in my money market sweep accounts rather than invested into any new stock, index, or mutual fund positions. I want to tread very carefully for the next few months and not make any hasty investment splurges that I’ll regret later.

Making Contributions To My Retirement Accounts (IRA, Roth IRA)

Despite whatever bearish or bullish sentiments I may personally harbor towards market investing at the present time, I still feel that it’s very important to continue contributing to one’s tax deferred retirement accounts (whether they be 401K’s, IRA’s, or Roth IRA accounts). As most investment retirement accounts like the Roth, are use it or lose it arrangements, failing to make the maximum IRA contribution limit for the year (it’s $5,000 for 2009) will only deprive you of future investment funds that could be growing tax-free. At the very least one ought to avail him or herself of the maximum contribution amount as there is no requirement the contributed funds must be invested right away – they can sit as idle cash in the broker account as long as the account holder desires.

My Monthly Credit Card Balances Are High, But I Always Pay Them Off In Full

You may have noticed that my total current credit card balance suddenly surged 4,204 % during the month of May. That’s because I’ve only recently returned home to the states from overseas. While I was away, I stuck with cash purchases exclusively, a practice that differs significantly from my U.S. consumer habits, which primarily revolve around credit card based transactions. However, the moment I returned home, my credit card expenditures reverted back to their pre-existing levels. But despite whatever balances I may carry on my credit cards, I always pay my card balances off in full every month, and have never paid out a single cent in hefty credit card overcharges or late fees, thanks to my pervasive usage of automatic account debit payments and crafty utilization of 0% balance transfer offers.

Speaking of credit cards, one particular cash back program that’s caught my eye recently is the new Charles Schwab Bank Invest First Visa Credit Card (link). Cardholders get 2% cash back on all purchases, with no cash back limits, no minimums, and no annual fees. Plus, for frequent international airline travelers like myself, the Schwab Visa Card impressively waives all foreign exchange transaction fees. The only catch with the Schwab credit card is that you must open or already own a Schwab One brokerage account where the cash back rewards can be deposited into every month. Charles Schwab offers great research tools for hardcore investors, but their trading fees are higher than I’d like.

While high yield savings accounts and CD deposits (with their formidable FDIC insurance guarantees of up to $250,000 and steady rates of return) will continue to serve important and irreplaceable roles as reliable short term cash savings options for consumers, those seeking a higher rate of return may want to start looking elsewhere. Despite this type of depressed market, a variety of rather compelling CD alternatives have emerged as serious high interest contenders, all worth a review.

High Yield CD Rate Alternatives May Not Be Fully FDIC Insured, But Many Still Offer Safety, Security, Liquidity, and Low Risk Opportunities

Before you decide to move away from traditional bank savings and CD accounts, it’s important to think about how much additional risk you are willing to assume in your new short term savings vehicle. If you want maximum protection from loss and want absolute peace of mind, then it’s best to stick with your existing flexible savings accounts and CDs, albeit at current unimpressive rates. But if you are willing to harbor slightly more risk or give up some liquidity (degree of immediate access to your money), investing in financial products such as peer to peer loans (as a lender) or money market funds may enable you to get a much higher rate of return, while still enjoying a historically proven track record of safety. But keep in mind that the potential returns on such savings alternatives like mutual funds, bonds, and p2p loans are higher because the account holder is agreeing to assume more risk than one would with a bank savings account or CD. Such alternatives do not get the same iron clad FDIC insurance protection of up to $250,000 that all reputable banks in the United States enjoy. FDIC insurance via the federal government ensures your bank based checking, savings, and CD accounts won’t be lost even in the event of a catastrophic bank failure or bankruptcy. While some of the high interest rate alternatives like credit unions and brokerage accounts still afford account holders a measure of protection against unexpected loss with their equivalent versions of the FDIC, not all such alternative investments do.

Please keep the risk, liquidity, and interest rate tensions in mind as you review the potential possibilities below in your pursuit of higher interest rate deals and offers. Stay away from much riskier and more potentially volatile investments like stocks, mutual funds, index funds, foreign currency CD deposit accounts, and gold investments. While these are great investment assets for portfolio diversification purposes, when it comes to savings account alternatives and comparables, you ought to stick with steady deposit options where the risk of loss can be greatly minimized and controlled.

List Of the Best CD Rate and High Interest Savings Account Alternatives:

1) Peer To Peer Lending High Yield Rates – If you’re searching for a way to earn a fairly steady average rate of return in excess of 9.05% APY, you may want to consider investing money with popular peer to peer online lending sites like Lending Club (see review). Lending Club.com’s online application is free and it doesn’t cost anything to sign up and review the online platform features for yourself. Social network lending, also known as P2P lending, offers a way for ordinary and willing consumers to lend money to cash strapped borrowers and local entrepreneurs at competitive interest rates. While the lending website administers the actual loaning process and handles the fees and charges with the borrower, it’s the consumer lenders like you and I who get to pocket the potentially high yield interest rate earnings. While per my review, Lending Club.com is one of the few P2P lending sites today that’s actually undergone and completed the SEC filing and quiet period process, other up and coming social lending alternatives include Prosper.com, PertuityDirect.com, GreenNote.com, VirginMoney.com, and Loanio.com.

While unlike savings accounts and CD rates, P2P lending loans provided by sites like Lending club are not FDIC insured or absolutely protected from loss, average interest rate yields have averaged over 9.00% APY over the past 18 months. Because as a prospective social loan investor you get to decide the quality of the personal loans you wish to extend, it’s possible to diversify your risk among numerous small loan accounts and vastly minimize your risk of loss. Much of this was learned from my own personal experience. As a Lending Club loan investor and participant for more than a year now, I have more than $1,000 invested into several high quality loans (loans acquired by borrowers with high FICO credit scores and trouble-free credit reports). My annual interest rate across all of my outstanding note investment have consistently earned me a steady 8.00% APY, with no defaults as of yet.

While I wouldn’t recommend plunging one’s entire life savings, emergency funds, or new home deposit, into Lending Club or peer loan investments, from a high yield savings account investor stand point, the potential interest rates they offer are rather compelling. The whole practice of social micro lending is still not fully in the eyes of the mainstream media yet, but this CD alternative is likely to grow in popularity in the coming years.

2) Online Savings Account Rates (Become An Aggressive Interest Rate Chaser) – Online savings accounts, high yield reward checking accounts, and certificate of deposit accounts offer something that no non-bank alternative can match – and that’s solid FDIC insurance protection from loss up to the $250,000 per account limit. If you’re determined to stick with the top online savings accounts due to the FDIC protections, high liquidity, and ease of transferability that they afford, you may wish to consider being more aggressive in your approach towards bank rate chasing. Aggressive interest rate chasers usually open more than a few (10+) high yield direct accounts with the top online banks, and monitor interest rate changes and fluctuations closely (almost obsessively) for the best deals. When there is a noticeable interest rate shift, aggressive bank rate chasers will quickly take advantage of free ACH features to execute an electronic bank transfer in pursuit of the higher rate account. Of course, when all rate offerings across the board are in the doldrums like they are now, this rate chasing strategy doesn’t always make sense. The hope for many is to simply capture those special limited time rate promotions by online banks looking for a surge in customer deposits and willing to entice with extraordinary rate offers.

3) CD Rates (Consider Longer Term CD Rate Offers) – Chasing higher fixed CD rates require banking consumers to sacrifice liquidity in exchange for higher potential interest yields. The basic premise behind certificate of deposit rates is that they offer progressively higher rates the longer you are willing to forgo access to your deposited funds. The longer the CD account term, the more interest rate money the bank is willing to provide you in exchange. Take the high yield Ally Bank CD rates for example. Their best saving account rates are currently around 2.25% APY, while their best 1 year classic CD’s are offering 2.80% APY. Extend the CD term to 2 years, and the CD rate jumps to 2.90%. Extend the CD deposit term even higher to 5 years, and the interest rate surges to 3.50% APY. If you truly want to maximize your CD rate yield, you will have to consider longer duration CD terms such as 3 or 5 year CD’s over short term 12 month ones.

Those rate chasers seeking to capture the high interest returns of longer term multi-year CD deposits can inject some liquidity into their fund accessibility by adopting the ever popular and highly touted staggered CD ladder strategy. Another way to maintain some liquidity but still earn high CD rates with longer term accounts is to look into a no penalty certificate of deposit such as the ones that Ally Bank and other online banking institutions provide. No Penalty CD’s offer high CD rates with the freedom of no-fee early withdrawal. Also, look out for frequent online promotions and special CD deals by up and coming online or local banks looking to snag new accounts and time deposit customers. Those special CD rate deals they tout frequently are 2 to 3 interest rate percentages above and beyond current market rates.

4) Credit Unions and Local Community Banks – While online banks (”Direct” banks) generally offer much better interest rates than traditional brick and mortar banks due to their substantially lower overhead costs, you can frequently find exceptional and even exclusive banking deals by going local. While local credit unions and neighborhood banks often have limited bank branch locations and access, they compensate for their smaller presence by touting checking, CD, and savings account rates that are as good or even better than those offered by the best online banks. But keep in mind, oftentimes, local credit unions and banks like SECU, Navy Federal, PenFed (Pentagon Federal Credit Union) cater to specific segments of the community such as teacher’s unions, state or federal government employees, public or private university employees, or members of the military – and thus often have stricter bank membership and account qualification requirements. But despite the extra hoop jumping and limited membership demands, the bank rate deals they dangle are worth it if you can find them and qualify. Best of all, credit union accounts are protected from loss by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an FDIC insurance-like entity.

5) High Yield Checking Account Rates (Reward Checking) – While high yield reward checking account rates have steadily declined the way savings and CD rates have, they remain much higher than even the best long term CD rates, frequently as high as double the top rates. However, most of these high interest checking accounts have several major account limitations and drawbacks. They frequently have stringent debit card usage requirements (at least 10 debit card transactions per month), and they usually cap checking account balances at a maximum of around $25,000 (although maximums as high as $250,000 can still be found). Balances are permitted in excess of the maximum limit, but only the funds within those limits will earn the highest special checking account rates. While I highly recommend taking advantage of reward checking account rates, I do recognize that they can be cumbersome alternatives for some consumers – primarily due to their strict debit card usage requirements. If you are a big credit card user like myself, being compelled to use a debit card to make a sizable number of monthly purchases can be a big burden.

6) High Yield Money Market Account Rates – If you wish to remain a high yield savings account rate chaser, you might as well take a look at high yield money market accounts as well. Essentially, money market accounts, or MMA’s as they are frequently called, are hybrid mixtures of checking accounts and savings accounts. While offering the high competitive rates of savings accounts, they also offer the check writing benefits of traditional checking accounts. MMA rates will rarely blow you away or wow you with their interest rate yields, but many local credit unions and online banks like EverBank have been pushing special high interest promotions for their money market offerings of late.

7) U.S. Treasury Bills, Notes, and Savings Bonds – Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, federal government-issued Treasury Bills and Savings Bonds enjoy rock solid protection against loss and forfeiture. Treasury Notes and Bonds are debt obligations issued by the U.S. federal government. The revenue generated from the bonds are used to raise capital income to pay for the federal government’s routine operations and expenses. Because of the lack of default risk, Treasuries typically offer lower interest rates than most other forms of securities, however the longer term notes and bonds offer pretty impressive rates that may sometimes match or even exceed ordinary bank rates. With their FDIC-like protections, Treasuries are worth a look. Check out TreasuryDirect.com for your Treasury security needs – it’s the only official financial website that lets you buy and redeem securities directly from the U.S. Department of the Treasury in paperless electronic form. But before you buy, remember to consider the liquidity issues and wisdom of locking up your money into long term Treasuries.

8) Consider Paying Off Credit Card Debt - If you are sitting on top of some idle cash or mulling what to do with the extra funds in your savings account that’s not earning the high yield interest rate you’d like, how about using the extra money to pay off some high interest debt, especially credit card debt if you have any. Besides, unless you’ve got a ton of cash in those savings accounts, chances are, an extra few interest rate points earned by shifting them into alternative investment vehicles isn’t really going to net you all that much in extra savings anyway. You might as well put it towards paying off debt like your high APR credit card balances, home mortgage obligations, or even your student loans. Don’t abandon the need to maintain at least 9 months – 12 months worth of emergency funds in your stable savings accounts and CDs, but using available funds to pay off presumably higher interest debt is always a good decision.

Please let me know of any more good deposit alternatives other than savings accounts and CD’s that offer higher rates but still offer a reasonably comparable level of safety.

I decided to open a Zecco.com free trading account a few years ago back – at a time when the deep discount brokerage was still offering free online trades with no catches and no account minimums. Since then, the company has undergone numerous changes and developments of its free trading policy, not to mention weathered quite a bit of critical commentary and press regarding its underlying free trade business model. I think it’s time I conducted a Zecco broker review and evaluated my Zecco trading experience as it currently stands. While I still use Zecco Trading and recommend it as a top online broker for individual stocks and exchange traded funds (ETF) to this day, due to some notable drawbacks, I have not yet made it my primary all in one broker account. But due to the attention that Zecco continues to receive among personal finance blog readers and new entrants to stock market investing, the low cost brokerage provider is worth a close review.

In case you were wondering, Zecco.com’s rather unusual name is actually derived from the phrase – “Zero Commission Cost”. The company is a low cost online brokerage that burst onto the discount broker scene several years ago vowing to change the brokerage landscape forever, while touting its unique offer of free monthly stock trades with no hidden catches or gimmicks. To this day, the Zecco Trading firm still does indeed offer zero-cost and commission free trades on stocks and ETF’s for both market and limit orders, albeit now with account minimum requirements. But at its heyday and for quite some time, Zecco seemed to show up on the radars of every financial website and finance blogger’s list of the best online stock brokers.

When it comes to low cost trading, it’s frankly hard to do any better than an offer involving free stock trades. With aggressive marketing and promotion of its free monthly trades, Zecco has always greatly appealed to low cost seekers and active traders looking for the ultimate way to cheaply trade and invest in the stock market. But as a victim of its own success and popularity, the early years saw performance of Zecco’s online trading platform greatly plagued by slowdowns and loading issues due to surging online customer demands and the technological limitations of its trading platform. Presently, the company is reportedly working to revamp its online investment website, improve its much to desired customer service, and retool its business model to comport better with the realities of today’s market. Since its initial web 1.0 beginnings, Zecco has made many  improvements and innovative enhancements, such as adding an online Zecco trading community for like minded investors to share investment tips and swap portfolio building advice, as well as greatly adding to its exclusive online library of educational materials. Much publicity (both good and bad) continues to surround Zecco’s dubious decision to utilize and promote its collection of financial educational videos with the hosting assistance of the company’s rather attractive and seductively alluring band of Zecco Sirens. While Zecco has probably not improved its credibility among serious investors with its use of extremely attractive girls to host its Zecco marketing material, this obviously gimmicky approach probably has helped them earn more than a few new customers (translation: sex sells).

Free Online Stock Trades and Low Commissions With Zecco.com

Despite any of its possible shortcomings, Zecco stands as the king of the low cost brokerages with its unique offer of free monthly trading privileges for those who satisfy certain account minimum requirements. Previously in the recent past, Zecco account holders received 10 free trades per month if they maintained a minimum balance of $2,500. Do to the difficult economy and realities of financial circumstance, free Zecco trades are now limited to account holders who maintain at least a minimum balance of $25,000 in their trading accounts, or make at least 25 online broker trades per month. For savvy savers, it’s worth to note that even after the allotment of free trades are exceeded, stock trades are still only a mere $4.50 per trade. Even if one failed to meet the $25,000 minimum to qualify for free monthly trades, Zecco is still one of the deepest discounters around in terms of cost per trade. Option trades with Zecco are also priced very low – currently just $4.50 per trade and $0.50 per contract. Mutual fund trades are tabbed at $10.00 each.

Those who don’t trade frequently will be pleased to know that with ordinary individual accounts, there are no account minimums or hidden inactivity fees to contend with. While, there is a $30 annual fee for retirement accounts like Roth IRA’s and traditional IRA’s, one ought to evaluate this cost in light of the greater potential savings one will receive from the free monthly stock trading privileges. For such a low cost and cheap pricing structure, Zecco Trading packs a pretty competitive package with its arsenal of respectable trading tools, investment research materials, and large social media community of like minded users and investors. But as with all seemingly great offers, one has to wonder – what’s the catch with Zecco.com? If Zecco’s free stock trades are so great, why isn’t everyone and their uncle kicking down doors to become a Zecco customer?

According to Zecco sources and based on my personal observation, the catch with the free monthly Zecco trade offer is simply that the account customer must either maintain a minimum balance of $25,000 in their account or trade at least 25 times every month to continuously qualify. Furthermore, the free trading offer only nets you a total of 10 free trades per month. It’s not like you are reaping a huge windfall of unlimited stock trades. With ordinary Zecco equity trades priced at a low $4.50 per trade to begin with, the monthly cost savings associated with the free trading promotion isn’t exactly substantial or exceedingly astounding. However, for ordinary consumers looking for a way to invest on the cheap, every little savings helps in the long run. Zecco’s automatic free trade offer is genuine and real – you just have to be aware that qualification requires you to meet certain conditions every month.

The other possible catch or limitation with Zecco involves its recent struggles with customer service response. Due to the crushing weight of its own success, the broker has been working feverishly to improve its customer service reputation and overcome the growing pains of keeping up with heavy demand for its free trades. Along with customer service issues, Zecco also has limitation issues in regards to advanced trading tools and premium research access – features that full service and bigger online trading sites offer, but Zecco does not. But as always in life, you get what you pay for. Those who don’t mind paying a bit more for the peace of mind that established customer service brings may want to look into other popular discount brokerage alternatives like TradeKing, a consistent winner of numerous online accolades for its outstanding customer service year in and year out (read my TradeKing review to learn more). At  just $4.95 per trade for TradeKing compared to Zecco’s $4.50 per trade, both are actually quite comparable in terms of price.

Is Zecco.com A Scam, Or Is It A Legitimate Online Broker?

What started out as an extremely liberal free stock trading offer by Zecco has morphed a bit over the years. Originally, the company built its brokerage firm on the premise that it could sustain its free stock trading model off of the interest rates and margins that it earned from customer accounts. But with interest rates at historical lows due to the recession and American brokerage customers trading less and less these days due to lingering market uncertainty, Zecco has had to alter the terms of its basic marketing pitch to meet the demands of reality. However, though qualification minimums for the free stock trading offer have been increased, Zecco has staunchly stuck by its cornerstone free stock trading feature, raising the collective eyebrows of many who perpetually wonder how the company continues to offer free trades for customers and still manage to make money and stay viable. As such, Zecco.com’s practice continues to raise little red flags among the skeptics. But supporters simply note that the company is still in its growth phase and sustains itself through regular injections of stable venture capital funding, which has continued to be forthcoming. For the foreseeable future at least, it seems Zecco is relatively stable and has settled into a marketing niche of sorts (although I suspect further tweaks in its promotional terms and conditions in the coming years).

Those wondering if their money is safe with Zecco will be pleased to know that Zecco is indeed a registered member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. It’s also a card carrying member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which insures and protects brokerage account customers and securities investors from financial harm in the event of a catastrophic broker dealer failure. The SIPC is the brokerage account equivalent of FDIC insurance, which protects bank based deposits. While investors are not insured for potential loss due to ordinary price fluctuations in the stock market, Zecco.com’s status as a bona-fide SIPC member protects account holders from loss in the event Zecco goes bankrupt or goes out of business. In the event Zecco Trading fails, the SIPC provides insurance coverage up to a maximum of $500,000 of the customer’s net equity balance, including up to $100,000 in cash. Excess SIPC insurance coverage of Zecco customer investment assets is also additionally provided through the Lloyds of London insurance company. Thus, the answer to the question of whether Zecco.com is a scam – is no. Your portfolio money is safe with Zecco.

Zecco Trading/Research Tools and Customer Service Review

The first thing you’ll notice with Zecco.com’s online trading interface is that the company is absolutely in love with the color pink – bright neon pink in particular. Despite this very questionable color palette choice on the surface, internally, Zecco offers a pretty robust trading platform with all of the basic investment bells and whistles you’d expect from your run of the mill discount broker. Overall, the Zecco Trading interface is pretty straight forward and fairly intuitive to use. Equity trades are made under the Trading Center tab where customers access their Account Overview and investment options, as well as receive their real time quotes and trades on market price, opening price, highs and lows, volumes, and price changes.

In terms of investment options, Zecco gives investors the opportunity to purchase individual stocks, ETF’s, index funds, mutual funds, and options, for both limit and market orders. At this time, Zecco does not offer access to Treasuries, bonds, or CD deposits. Individual retirement accounts like Roth IRA’s and traditional IRA’s are available to Zecco customers (although note the $30 annual fee to manage IRA’s). Zecco does offer dividend reinvestment but currently only permits whole share purchases – leftover dividend payments unable to purchase a whole share are deposited into your account as cash. Idle cash for Zecco accounts can be swept into a money market sweep account for higher interest rate yields, however customers need to affirmatively request this feature to enable it.

Unlike a few of the other deep discount brokerages in the market today, Zecco also offers a currency trading feature via its Zecco Forex trading platform. This is a nice bonus trading perk for those seeking a consolidated one stop shopping source for their diversified trading needs.

In terms of investment research, stock trading analysis, and financial education, Zecco provides users free online access to most of the basic investment research sources that you’d expect from low cost brokers. There are a variety of premium tools available, but many of the premium research and online analysis tools are only available via extra monthly or annual fee subscriptions. My recommendation is to utilize Zecco for trading purposes only due to its extremely low cost perks for individual stock and ETF trades. However, get your stock and fund research elsewhere. Zecco’s educational videos for beginners are amusingly worth looking into however. If not just to admire or gawk at the rather gratuitous Zecco ladies that host the Zecco video shows, they are somewhat educational and informative, particularly for newbies to the world of investing. If the Zecco Sirens don’t answer your introductory investment questions, you may want to visit the ZeccoShare Community online forum  for answers or some socially assisted enlightenment. There is wide berth of information and active stock market discussions going on in the ZeccoShare Community forums, groups, and blogs. Surprisingly, I found the ZeccoShare forums to be remarkably free of pumpers and dumpers – spammers trying to spread misinformation to affect stock price movements. The same can’t be said for other popular stock market forums like Google or Yahoo Finance’s message boards.

Zecco’s weak point centers around its somewhat infamous customer service reputation. Most of the online complaints and negative reviews you’ll read about focus on the broker company’s customer service reputation. Due to its rapid explosion in growth, the company has not devoted sufficient resources to improving its customer service, although I will concede, it is gradually improving. During my years as a Zecco customer, I have only had a handful of customer service interactions with Zecco and during those times, I’ve never really encountered any substantial problems worth remarking on. However, I’m sure there are plenty of Zecco customers with strong viewpoints willing to share their thoughts (both positive and negative). Zecco offers e-mail informational support and telephone customer support through its toll free line at (877) 700-7862. The company is currently pushing out a new live chat support feature but the online tool seems to be still in the troubleshooting phase at the time of this writing.

Zecco’s New Online Broker Account Opening Process

As is the case with most online brokerages these days, the Zecco new account opening process is remarkably quick and efficient. The Zecco online application for new trading accounts is pretty straightforward and easy to follow. Be prepared to enter all of your personal information, including notations about your employment details, stock trading experience, and investment goals. These details are all pretty standard fare with brokerage account registrations nowadays.

In terms of new account funding, you can start up your Zecco Trading account with a check, money transfer, or via a recommended ACH transaction through your existing bank account. Those that want to fund their new Zecco account via an electronic ACH transfer from their bank account will need to undergo the customary two small deposits verification test. The deposit verification process ensures proper ownership of the transferring bank account and greatly expedites future ACH fund transfers from the same account. The bank account link up process takes 2-3 days, but it’s worth it.

Overall, Zecco is a pretty competitively priced discount broker ideal for individual stock and ETF traders and investors. Even without its offer of free stock trades, Zecco remains one of the cheapest deep discount online stock brokerages out there today. Although frankly, if you are willing to pay a tad more in the way of commissions and fees for a more advanced and highly rated platform, I’d recommend either TradeKing or ING Share Builder (remember to take advantage of ShareBuilder promo codes for new account bonuses). But if low cost trading is your game and you seek an online community to bounce stock ideas off of, discount broker Zecco is worth a look.

Welcome to my FICO coupon deals, promotional discounts, and exclusive myFICO.com web bargains page. Here you will find a regularly updated list of myFICO coupons and promo codes to help you save money on genuine FICO score products. To ensure that you get credit for the myFICO promotion offer that you seek, make sure to visit the desired link below and follow the appropriate coupon redemption instructions. Also, it would be of great help to myself and fellow readers if you’d post a comment below about any new myFICO.com coupon codes or special discount offers not already listed, as well as bring to our attention any myFICO promo codes mentioned below that may have already expired.

As we all know, credit scores are numerical representations of credit worthiness, and are one of the most determinative factors that mortgage lenders and major banks base their approval decisions on. While there are several credit score variations out there, the most popular and widely used is the FICO. As American consumers, we each have a total of 3 FICO credit scores – one from each of the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion). While the three FICO scores are derived from the same proprietary formula, differences in credit reporting data often cause the individual scores to differ somewhat from each other. Routinely checking one’s credit score (whether via a credit monitoring program or via manual credit score pulls) is a recommended activity in this modern day and age. Regularly monitoring my FICO credit score is one of the ways I keep a close pulse on this very integral part of my personal financial life. Knowing where you stand in the eyes of potential lenders is particularly crucial when you are in the process of applying for credit-based products like home mortgages, car loans, or even balance transfer credit cards. It’s also a very effective and pro-active way to prevent identity theft and be informed of any unauthorized or fraudulent access to one’s credit accounts.

Save Money On MyFICO Credit Scores With FICO Promo Codes and Coupons

Current federal laws give all American consumers annual access to their free credit reports from each one of the 3 major credit bureaus of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. However, while personal credit reports are available free of charge, FICO credit scores derived from the credit data found on these reports are not. If you want your FICO score, you generally have to pay extra for it. Fortunately, there are currently a variety of ways for savvy consumers to enjoy up to 20-30% discount savings off of their FICO score purchases with the use of FICO promo codes. There are even a few arbitrage ways for resourceful consumers to snag free FICO scores by taking advantage of special trial offers.

Presently, authentic Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion FICO scores can only be obtained from the official myFICO.com website or via an authorized partner. While Equifax and TransUnion FICO’s are freely available for purchase, those looking to obtain their Experian FICO scores will note that they are no longer readily provided to consumers. Due to a major contractual dispute between myFICO and the Experian credit reporting agency, myFICO authorities have discontinued the sale of Experian FICO’s to consumers. For now at least, consumers will have to make do with what’s available. Most of us should be able to reasonably compensate by requesting the other two FICO’s via Equifax and TransUnion. Knowing your scores based on Equifax and TransUnion data ought to give you a fairly accurate approximation of where you likely stand with Experian as well, barring any significant credit report discrepancies or errors.

Special limited time discounts and exclusive FICO promo codes are frequently released by myFICO.com. A list of verified and updated codes and discount coupons have been provided in the table below. Please visit the desired coupon links to make your credit score product purchase. The myFICO promotional codes should appear automatically in your online shopping cart during the check out process. In the event the coupon has expired or has not been automatically inserted into your checkout page, please manually insert a working myFICO promo code into the correct box to ensure that you get credit for it.

List Of The Best myFICO Promotional Discount Deals (Expiration Varies)

In case you are are not entirely familiar with the different myFICO credit score packages mentioned above, here is a quick summary overview:

1. myFICO Score Watch – There is a free 30 day trial with the FICO Score Watch program. Simply sign up and cancel within 30 days, and you’ll walk away with a free FICO credit score. This is the online tool I use to continuously monitor my FICO credit score changes. I like how it charts my FICO profile changes over time and gives me continuous and unlimited access to my FICO on demand. With this offer, you also get 2 free credit reports a year from Equifax. For more information, check out myFICO review.
2. myFICO Score Standard – You get your choice of a single official FICO credit score and credit report from Equifax or TransUnion. This is probably the most popular option for those looking for a home or car loan right now and just need to know their FICO credit rating as it currently stands. Price is $15.95 – but can be easily reduced with one of the discount codes above.
3. Suze Orman’s FICO Kit Platinum – This is basically the former myFICO Credit Complete package but with extra commentary by popular financial guru Suze Orman. With the Suze Orman FICO kit, you get your FICO scores and credit reports from Equifax and TransUnion, along with extra media material to help you better plan out your credit-based life, with particular attention given towards home and car buying decisions, and extras on how to get out of credit card debt. Price is $49.95. Don’t forget to use one of the 10% to 30% codes to reduce the price.
4. myFICO Quarterly Monitoring – With the FICO Quarterly Monitoring package, myFICO will track your TransUnion FICO score and credit report for you (a useful anti-identity theft feature). You’ll also receive 4 FICO scores and 4 reports every year through TransUnion. Currently, the price is: $4.95 per month or $49.95 per year. Remember to use myFICO promo codes to maximize your discount savings.

As always, please let me know if there are any more myFICO savings deals or exclusive FICO promo codes out there!

As part of my ongoing hobby of applying for free credit card rewards and pocketing introductory bonuses that make themselves available, I recently applied for Citibank’s new Citi Forward Card. Simply for signing up, I earned sufficient credit card bonus points to swap for a free $100 gift reward card to the retailer of my choice (I picked Best Buy). Although I have not yet tried, I would imagine that if one were a college or graduate student, one could also simultaneously apply for the nearly identical Citi Forward Student card as well, and receive another free $100 gift card upon sign up – for a total windfall jackpot of $200.

The Citi Forward – Marketed As A Reward Credit Card That Promotes Responsible Credit Use

This new Citi Forward Visa credit card that Citibank is introducing is marketed as an enlightened approach to the promotion of responsible credit card use. Along with its offerings of a 0% balance transfer rate and credit card reward earning potential, the card also touts a litany of lower interest rate opportunities for card members who can demonstrate mature credit use with timely payments.

However, as always when it comes to new credit card offers, I urge interested individuals to tread carefully. Credit card companies aren’t being naturally generous or altruistic when they offer lucrative cash back credit card reward opportunities such as this. Just because they offer a card that features great cash back reward opportunities and no annual fees that highly favors savvy card users doesn’t mean the card issuers aren’t still motivated by ulterior motives. Remember, their driven purpose in the market is to profit from the credit card interest charges and late payment fees that they hope you will rack up. If you’re a shopaholic, compulsive addict, or an irresponsible credit abuser, my advice is to stay away from credit cards altogether. However, if you’re a responsible credit user with a high FICO credit score, you can most definitely beat them at their game and profit greatly from the generous sign up bonuses, introductory 0% APR periods, and free money opportunities that they dangle in front of you. If you can handle the card usage responsibilities and not succumb to late payments or maxed out balances, good credit score consumers will benefit greatly from the Citi Forward’s extra bonus features that reward smart credit use.

Citi Forward Credit Card’s $100 Sign Up Bonus

For credit card sign up reward seekers, the new Citi Forward card offers the equivalent of a free $100 store gift card just for signing up, with extra points to spare.

Upon card registration, new cardmembers receive 6,000 Citi ThankYou bonus points after making at least $50 in card purchases within three months of receiving the account. Agreeing to forgo paper monthly statements in favor of electronic credit card billing statements within 3 months of account opening will net you another cool 5,000 ThankYou bonus points. The 11,000 instant Citi ThankYou points you reap simply by signing up for the Citi Forward card can be exchanged promptly for a $100 gift card or swapped for a much more versatile $75 prepaid Visa Card (as good as cash).

Get 5% Rewards On Credit Card Purchases Via ThankYou Points

The Citi Forward card is a very high earning reward card with a 5x reward earning rate at special category vendors. With the Citi Forward, you earn 5% back (5 points per $1 spent) on restaurant purchases, books, movies, music, and 1% back (1 point per $1 spent) on everything else. Big cashback reward card fans will notice that the reward structure is remarkably similar to the highly touted Citi mtvU, one of the best student credit cards out there. However, unlike the Citi mtvU card, the Citi Forward is available to all applicants, and not just college students. However, like the popular Citi mtvU student card, the Citi Forward, with its high 5% reward rate for restaurant visits, dining out, and coffee shop purchases – the card is one of the best card offers out there at the present time for those who eat out often (as I frequently do).

Another very important aspect of the Citi Forward’s reward program is that the 5% reward rate on books also includes popular online retailer Amazon.com (interestingly treated as a bookstore for Citi credit card reward purposes). Want to buy a simple personal finance book or even purchase something more expensive like a desktop computer via Amazon.com? You can earn 5% cash back by utilizing your Citi Forward Card. Frequent Amazon.com users like myself will benefit greatly from this high reward earning loophole.

Citi credit cards run their card rewards off of the Citi ThankYou network. Those of you who want to know more about the steps that I take to maximize my ThankYou network points to get the best point to cash, and point to gift card redemption rate should read my Citi ThankYou point article. While it’s not easy to get a perfect 1:1 conversion rate for reward redemption when it comes to gift cards and pre-paid debit offers, it is possible to get incredibly close to the mark via higher denominational value retail store gift certificates.

Get Extra Low Interest Rates For Paying Your Credit Card Bills On Time

One of the novel features of the Citi Forward card is its promotion of special bonuses for those who adopt good card usage behaviors. Designed to encourage good credit usage among consumers, the card offers a unique reduction of your purchase interest rate whenever you pay out your bills on time and responsibly stay within your maximum account spending limit. According to the specifics of the Citi Forward program for good credit behavior, you get an extra 100 bonus ThankYou points every billing period and a 0.25% interest rate reduction every time you manage to stay under your credit line and pay on time for 3 months in a row (for a maximum limit of 8 times, for a total 2% APR reduction). While it’s something that you ought be doing anyway regardless of reward incentives, it’s always nice to get a little something extra for your efforts.

Along with the responsible credit usage incentives, there is also an intro 0% APR offer on purchases and a 0% balance transfer deal for 6 months – features that may interest the zero percent fee card seekers out there. As some have noted, while there is no annual fee for the card, there is a 3% charge for balance transfers however.

The first thing you’ll notice right away with online discount broker TradeKing is that the company has received quite a number of accolades and praises over the recent years for various high performing aspects of their popular investment brokerage business. In fact, when it comes to acknowledging the awards, the company is definitely not bashful about flaunting the coveted certificate of merits, and proudly name drops them whenever they can.

A quick visit of their website reveals numerous mentions and displays of graphical award banners from popular sources of financial critique and reviews. The Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney Magazine voted TradeKing the #1 Discount Broker in 2006 and 2007, and the #1 Customer Service broker with 5 stars in 2008. Kiplinger’s Finance voted TradeKing as having the best Top-Rated Customer Service in 2008. Even Barron’s, in its annual surveys of the Best Web Browser-Based Online Brokers awarded TradeKing 4 stars for its outstanding investment tools, customer service, social media offerings, usability, and cost factors in 2007 and 2008 – and further tabbed it as the Best For Options Traders in 2008 and 2009.

I suppose when you’ve developed a quality product that’s getting attention and praise from the critics and product reviewers, there’s no sense being overly modest about a good thing. After having used online brokerage TradeKing for more than a year now as one of my major discount brokerages for cheap stock trading, I personally have to agree with the majority sentiment – TradeKing’s a recommended keeper. The online brokerage firm isn’t perfect in all respects, but it packs a pretty good punch as top discount brokers go. Beginners new to stock market investing and trading really can’t go wrong with TradeKing – as it’s one of the best brokers out there in terms of overall quality and value.

Also, one of the very attractive practices of discount broker TradeKing is its well known propensity for offering lucrative promotional deals and offers to first time customers – frequently rolling out new account bonuses of $50, $100, and even $150, to lure customers of competing online brokers to the TradeKing platform. If this is your first introduction to online stock and mutual fund investing, you may be curious as to what the hubub with TradeKing’s all about. For your benefit, I’ve provided a summary overview of the pros and cons of TradeKing below.

TradeKing’s Best Online Brokerage Features: Low Fees & Commissions and Great Customer Service

Discount broker TradeKing has numerous standout features – but the two that get the most press and attention are its low fees for stock trades, and the highly touted quality of its customer service. While I think we can all pretty much unanimously agree that low trading cost is very important, some may disagree on the importance of having great customer service. Those readers who downplay the importance of customer service reputation, and focus solely on the online trading tools and investment options of the online brokerage – are rather short sighted. As a long time stock market investor and user of web-based trading tools, there have been countless number of times when I’ve had to contact customer service for account related issues – whether they be problems related to account set up, complicated investment fee structure questions, or technical issues related to website troubles. Sometimes, I’m just too lazy to look up an answer to my detailed trading or account question from TradeKing’s self help pages and prefer to fire off a time saving direct question to one of Trade King’s customer service reps for the definitive answer.

The fact is – trading and account problems do routinely arise and it’s good to know that with a brokerage like TradeKing, their customer service response is one of their best features. TradeKing’s online representatives communicate with customers via real time live chat, phone calls, email messages, and through the online TradeKing website community. If you want access to full service branches and live banking offices, you may want to look elsewhere, but just remember, you’ll likely pay commissions that are twice or three times as high as that offered by TradeKing.

TradeKing offers cheap $4.95 stock trades for all equity transactions, whether they be market or limit trades, stocks or bonds, or whether they be online or broker assisted – each investment trade is only a flat $4.95. The TradeKing commission rate structures are not tiered so all accounts get this standard fair rate regardless of account balance or trading activity. Option trades are also priced very low, at just $0.65 per contract. Mutual fund trades are priced higher at $14.95, but this seems to be in line with what other discount brokers are charging for fund transactions as well. If your investment goal is to purchase mutual funds from one particular type of brokerage company, like a Vanguard or Fidelity fund, I’d recommend going through them directly rather than buying them from TradeKing due to the higher cost of mutual fund transactions at TradeKing. But those looking to engage primarily in individual stock and index fund trading will do quite well with TradeKing, from a commissions fee standpoint.

While TradeKing’s low $4.95 stock and bond trades are not as comparatively low as some of the new offerings coming from deep discount brokers like Zecco, which is currently offering free Zecco trades, it is still substantially cheaper than the fees and rates demanded at other popular brokerages like TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab.

On top of the already low cost commissions and fees for TradeKing, there is also no minimum deposit required to open an account, no hidden maintenance fees, no hidden inactivity fees, and no limits on minimum balances – ideal traits for new investors and those seeking a truly hassle free investing experience. Those desiring to open up a retirement fund and start maxing out their IRA contribution limits will also be pleased to know that TradeKing imposes no extraneous fees or maintenance costs for such tax deferred accounts.

Review Of TradeKing’s Online Investment Tools and Community Self Help Forum For Simple and Complex Investing

Don’t be fooled by TradeKing’s cheap stock trading prices and get the impression that the deep discount broker scrimps on investment features and trading options – TradeKing is a fully stocked investment juggernaut. Okay, calling it a juggernaut’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the broker comes complete with all of the fancy bells, whistles, and widgets you would expect from most full service premium brokerages.

For starters, TradeKing offers all the basic investment choices including stocks, options, index funds, ETF’s, and mutual funds. The broker also offers access to various bond products such as corporate, agency, municipal, strips & zero coupons, and new issue fixed-income securities. Certificates of deposits (CD’s) with a whole range of maturity dates are also available to brokerage account holders. In terms of account types, new TradeKing customers have plenty of options to choose from. They can open an individual account for ordinary trading purposes, open up a Roth IRA or traditional IRA account for their retirement needs, or even set up a tax deferred college fund for their children. In terms of investment mechanics, customers can choose to invest manually, or opt for automatic investment by taking advantage of TradeKing’s auto trading tool which automatically places trades for you based on your pre-set parameters at no extra charge. Those looking to automatically reinvest their stock and mutual fund dividends will be happy to know that TradeKing offers free automatic dividend reinvestment, with the ability to purchase fractional shares as well.

In terms of investment tools, stock fund research, and trading interface, TradeKing provides a wide selection of practical tools to enable any trader or investor to carry out his or her desired investing strategy. These tools include financial calculators, automatic alerts, advanced stock charts and graphs, as well as streaming news. The discount broker also offers a useful free TradeKing Maxit Tax Manager service that serves as a tax reporting tool and online tracker of one’s gains, losses, and cost basis statistics. The Maxit Tax Manager program helps customers stay better informed about any potential losses or gains in their portfolio with major tax implications.

But overall, one of the aspects I really like about TradeKing’s website is its intuitive and streamlined setup. While some of the other brokers require you to jump through multiple hoops and clicks before accomplishing your trading objective, TradeKing speeds certain transactions up by letting you perform multiple transactions via the same page. One example would be in the case of writing a covered call option. Rather than require you to go out and buy the stock and then execute a request to sell the call manually, TradeKing provides you a very handy and efficient Options Trading menu where you can seamlessly execute a variety of fancy option trades on the fly, such as covered calls, protective puts, and even butterfly options.

If you are a beginner investor or someone who needs a wealth of educational handholding, TradeKing provides a tremendous library of free investment and financial education materials for your learning pleasure, including how-to videos, demo tutorials, expert articles, and audio lesson seminars. More self help trading tips and investment advice can also be further gleaned from TradeKing’s community group forum called the Trader Network, which encourages the sharing and exchange of personal financial advice among TradeKing customers. The whole social media and community aspect of investing is a feature that seems to distinguish online brokerages like TradeKing from other sites, as not many other broker services offer or facilitate a similar forum based sharing of ideas, except perhaps low cost discounter Zecco.

Opening A Trade King Account – Bonus Promo Offers For New Customers

Opening a TradeKing account literally only takes few minutes, even with a close read of all of the associated terms and conditions. You’ll need to provide the standard registration information required by all brokerages such as your name, address, social security number, employer information, and indication of your level of investing expertise.

Like most brokerages, Tradeking allows customers to link a bank account to TradeKing to deposit and withdraw money via free electronic ACH transfers. Unfortunately, at the present time, TradeKing only allows you to link up a single bank account to your broker for ACH transfer purposes. For most people however (myself included), this isn’t that big of a deal since most individuals utilize only a single primary bank account, but it can be a mild nuisance for some multiple bank account holders. The other slight knock on TradeKing concerns the mandatory trading hold of 5 business days before recently deposited funds can be used for trading purposes, and the 10 day freeze before deposited funds can be withdrawn. As these account limitations are quite prevalent among most online brokerages I’ve come across, they’re more minor nuisances to be aware of than anything else.

Those looking to sign up for a new TradeKing account really ought to take advantage of the various TradeKing promotions available. For account customers of other brokerages, TradeKing offers a very attractive, no-expiration date – $150 account transfer bonus to reimburse new customers who switch to TradeKing and incur transfer fees with their former broker. If you are unable to locate a current working $50, $100, or $150 bonus offer, you may want to try calling or initiating a live chat session with them and asking if there are current promotions available. Simply visit the main TradeKing.com website and access “Live Chat” at the top (in tiny print).

Thoughts and complaints about your TradeKing experience are always welcomed! Please share your comments below.

Looking ahead at the upcoming official federal tax brackets for 2009, it doesn’t look like my taxation plight’s going to get any easier, particularly with tax happy President Obama at the helm. Although his positive approval rating’s through the roof and the man is absolutely oozing with optimism and confidence, I doubt many of his supporters are really comprised of scrutinizing individuals or small business owners like myself who actually pay attention to the potential tax implications of his slight of hand wealth redistribution policies. For the sake of competitive small business owners everywhere, I hope Obama doesn’t go through with his increasingly aggressive crusade to seize the financial proceeds of those who have worked hard to get to where they are today, with his continuous Presidential blurbs of patriotic taxation and “spreading the wealth around”.

My Current Net Worth and Financial Status Update Compared To Last Month

Thinking About Switching Gears From Cash Savings And Back Into Stock Market Investing

While the economy continues to be battered by volatility and investment unpredictability, I am content to cautiously remain on the sidelines, clutching onto my secure and reliable cash savings, currently still saved in online bank accounts reaping what decent interest rate yields are left in this poor interest rate climate. However, I will be honest – looking at how seemingly cheap and reasonably attractive current stock prices are, it’s hard to resist the siren calls of greed and profit. My crazy, irrational side really wants me to go nuts and dump everything into financial stocks like Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and Wells Fargo (WFC), – and bet big for the future. But then my more rationale and logical self thankfully reminds my more greedy half that stock market investing is all about making wise, long term, and diversified investment decisions for the long haul. It’s not about short time bets or gambling one’s life savings away via a single high risk, high stakes all-in-one basket dice roll. Thankfully, despite my torn emotional conflict between greed and rationality, I have been able to stay the course and not engage in any type of hasty stock purchases or aggressive index fund pickings – thus far at least.

Currently, my cash savings remain stored in several high yield savings accounts and bank CD rate deposits. But I anticipate moving a sizable portion into my brokerage account very soon to better position myself to take advantage of coming opportunities in the near future. I am still very pessimistic and hold a very bearish economic outlook, but things don’t look quite as grim or imminently dire as they once did. Obama is doing a great job of building consumer confidence and keeping the American public sentiment cautiously optimistic for the future. I just hope that this pervasive warm and fuzzy sentiment we are all witnessing at the moment isn’t temporary, and that the feel-good Obama train has enough substance to get the American and global economies back on track.

I Will No Longer Be Tracking Car and Vehicle Value For Net Worth Purposes

One of the big changes you may notice in this month’s net worth report is that I am eliminating the asset value for my car and primary vehicle. After including my vehicle asset value into my net worth for several months, I have finally decided that it no longer warrants such an inclusion. It was a mistake to even have included its value into my net worth calculations to begin with. A single primary vehicle is almost a basic necessity to everyday life and is rarely sold without replacement. Even in the event the vehicle is discarded, traded away, or sold, it is almost always promptly substituted with another one. Thus, its value really shouldn’t be lumped into the same category as that of a long term asset or investment. However, if I were to own multiple vehicles like an extra sports car for personal enjoyment purposes in the future, the secondary vehicle may very well warrant inclusion as a networth asset.

This Month’s Extremely Low Credit Card Usage Was Very Atypical Of Me

I put a whopping $104 on my credit cards the entire month of April. People who know me well may be shocked. It really isn’t like me to suddenly ditch my credit card spending habit in favor of using all cash for purchases. While a pro-cash financial guru like Dave Ramsey may be applauding my historical milestone, the real reason for the sudden and precipitous drop in credit card usage is because since March, I’ve been traveling and living overseas. As I’ve been visiting my overseas-living parents for the past few months to help them out with health related issues they’ve been struggling with, I’ve had to adjust my consumer habits to accommodate the realities of a non-credit card based society for some time now.

While it’s possible to avoid the near ubiquitous foreign currency fees on overseas credit card charges imposed on American credit cards by using a fee-less card option like Capital One or Discover Card, I’ve found that it’s usually better to stick to local paper currency while abroad. Credit card heavy countries like the United States have well developed anti-fraud and identity theft prevent mechanisms in place to instill credit card usage confidence in its consumer infrastructure. Foreign locales on the other hand frequently aren’t as well developed in this department – hence my decision to abandon risky credit card use the last few months and stick to cash exclusively.

Of course, when I return home to the United States in a few weeks, all of that will likely revert back to “normal”. I’m a big reward credit card and balance transfer user and will be resuming my old cash back credit card reward earning ways when I return. People like myself who are able to handle the responsibilities and obligations of credit card usage really lose out when we use cash since we miss out on the potential to rack up credit card spending rewards and lucrative airline credit card miles for our everyday purchases.