by Silicon Valley Blogger on February 8, 2010
| 2 comments
Want to save on groceries? Today, we are covering the pros and cons of using electronic coupons with your grocery card. We’re also sharing one shopper’s personal experience with using these coupons.
Here’s an interesting concept that I wasn’t completely aware of till I read about it the other day: if you’re a loyal customer at a particular store and own a grocery card, you can actually be proactive about reducing your grocery bill by downloading electronic coupons onto your card. Now I haven’t used online coupons in a long time, but recently had started thinking that in this economy I should revisit the idea again. So, I decided to give it a try.
Nice image of goodies from treehugger.com
How To Use Electronic Coupons With Your Grocery Card
There’s actually a website called ShortCuts.com that lets you add these grocery coupons onto your card ahead of time so that when you use your card at the store, the coupons are automatically applied. Here are the basic instructions for getting this to work:
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by Guest Blogger on February 7, 2010
| edited by SVB
| 3 comments
I haven’t traded options before and don’t necessarily advocate this as an investment strategy for the average investor, but I’ve been always curious about more complex investment plays. Tim Parker, who runs Elementary Finance, has offered us a guest post about his experience entering the world of options trading.
Image from eHow
Now that I’m feeling fairly comfortable with stock market investing, I’ve decided that I’m going to expand my horizons into more complicated investment instruments. Now the obvious truth is that none of us have mastered any type of investing strategy and never will. Also, there will always be folks (like me), who are attracted to more challenging ways to make money in the investment world. There is nothing wrong with wanting to invest beyond straightforward mutual funds and stocks, but what is extremely important is that every investor understand the risks they are getting into. If you enjoy a challenge, then great — go for the fun and exciting stuff. But you must get a solid investment education and put the effort into the research. And even after all of that, we will still lose money from time to time.
First my disclaimer: I’ve been spending a large amount of time learning about options trading. It’s been nearly 6 months of article and book reading, practice investments, paper trading, talking to the people who do it, and just good ol’ fashioned research in to everything options.
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by Silicon Valley Blogger on February 5, 2010
| 6 comments
Not all high interest savings accounts or money market accounts are alike. If you look at it from the standpoint of savers who decide to open such accounts, you’ll find that we’re all prompted to select savings accounts according to various reasons and criteria.
Based on where we are in our lives, we tend to choose accounts according to specific requirements. Younger people in their 20’s may be particularly interested in what kind of returns to expect from their savings, and whether an account has an associated debit card or ATM bank card. Older people with some money tucked away will be more interested in the ability to easily move their money around and between accounts — perhaps from cash accounts to investment accounts and vice versa. In this case, they’d be more interested in online bank account features such as ACH, wiring and account linking.
Given these concerns, I thought it would be good to present this comparison table that shows how various high yield savings accounts rank and score on a variety of characteristics and features. I sourced this data from a couple of reports (from WTDirect and EverBank, in particular).
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by Silicon Valley Blogger on February 4, 2010
| 7 comments
Most long term investment and savings goals boil down to achieving a comfortable retirement or reaching financial freedom. Many of us have shorter term financial objectives such as buying a new car or house, maybe saving up for a vacation or investing for our children’s 529 college savings plans. But why not admit it — our minds often toy around with what may seem like more distant goals. Don’t we all want to have financial freedom from the daily toils of the 9 to 5 lifestyle? How does enjoying a lifestyle and doing work independently of having a job sound?
Image from Rediff.com
Is Your Retirement Investment Portfolio Tax Efficient?
It’s not just “here’s the watch; have a nice life” anymore. The fact is that these days, we expect to have longer lifespans, and therefore, possibly more time spent in the retirement phase. It is not uncommon for some people to spend 30 years in retirement. For these reasons, it not only makes sense to have a very good savings and investment plan in place, but also to do it in the most tax efficient way possible. Why? Because taxes, like costs, can take a big bite out of our returns and ultimately our nest eggs. Take a peek at your online broker account and realize that not all of what you see there is yours to keep — a portion of that is going to the tax man!
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by Silicon Valley Blogger on February 3, 2010
| 9 comments
One of the biggest consumer stories of late has been the Toyota recall. As someone whose been shameless about only driving imports, this particular story hits home. For most of my life, I’ve had the long-standing belief that “foreign” cars are supposed to be well-made, especially compared to their American counterparts. But maybe we should take a closer look at what it really means to be American vs “Foreign Made”: when you look under the hood, you’ll realize that there’s a lot more in common between those designations.
Now that the news has broken on the matter of this massive recall, we see that it’s given one of the big reputable car manufacturers a black eye. So maybe it’s time to ask: are car imports really supposedly better than American cars? And who exactly is making a high quality car these days? I’d love to hear you sound off on this!
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by Silicon Valley Blogger on February 2, 2010
| 6 comments
We just wrote about Citi credit cards the other day, and here’s a little follow up. A lot of banks and credit card companies are striving to go mobile, with Citibank being one of those institutions in the forefront of this kind of technology. In fact, Citi just came out with another application — the Citi Mobile(SM) application for the iPhone — to add to their Mobile Banking Suite. So if you’re an existing Citibank credit cardholder, you’ll have the extra benefits offered by the Citi Mobile Application to connect and manage your account information while you’re on the go. This iPhone tool is intended to help you manage your banking and spending tasks more effectively.
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by Guest Blogger on February 1, 2010
| edited by SVB
| 5 comments
Have you ever seen the movie “Meet Joe Black” with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins? Before some of you get carried away with the mere mention of Brad, please remind yourself of this blog’s theme. Anyway, in the movie, Brad Pitt plays the grim reaper and is confused by something other than death being certain: taxes. Perplexed, he then asks the question: “Death AND taxes?” Well, the certainty of taxes is upon us again and, like you, I am having a hard time reining in my enthusiasm. So, instead of delving into some technical tax nuances, I thought to ease into tax season with some cursory observations I’ve made, as someone who’s helped hundreds do their taxes.
How To File Taxes For Less
Here are a few things to watch out for when filing your taxes.
1. Getting charged by the form.
About 59% of you will pay a commercial preparer to complete your taxes and you are probably getting ripped off, especially those in a rush to get your refund. What I think is unfair is that most of your tax preparers charge by the form. And, this can really add up in costs for what really is not much extra time for your preparer to just input data. With software, the majority of taxes (say, a couple of W-2s, a 1099, home interest deduction and other itemized deductions, etc.) takes about 30 minutes. So, charging by the form seems unreasonable to me unless they are filling it out by hand with a sharp #2. $100 to $150 or more for 30 minutes spent seems a bit much to me.
Tip: Check out our TurboTax review for coverage on a popular tax software application for do-it-yourselfers.
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by Guest Blogger on January 31, 2010
| edited by SVB
| 22 comments
One of the hardest changes for people with debt is changing their spending habits. We all get used to buying what we want, and that becomes part of our “lifestyle”. I’m not even a big spender, but I know it’s hard for me to give up those things I’ve grown to enjoy. But when times get tough, you need to make some changes. Otherwise, there’s no sense in looking for help with your debt if your main problem is outspending your income.
How To Identify A Shopping Addiction & Poor Spending Habits
So here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if your spending is out of control (some of them are tough, so be honest with yourself):
Image from dailymail.co.uk.
1) Do you constantly need more credit?
Credit cards are not supposed to be your source of income. So if you need to keep getting more cards so you can buy what you need, your spending is way over the top. And it’s time to stop using credit cards!
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