So I applied for a KeyBank checking account in order to get the free iPod nano, and was thinking of what I should use the account for, or whether it would be better just to wait and close it after enough time had passed. My first idea was to put $200 or so in it, and just leave it there, for "uber-emergency" money - ie if I needed money NOW and couldn't wait for it to be transferred from ING. I had a $200 savings account cushion at Fifth Third, but at the credit union you only have to keep $25 in your savings account (it's your "share" account, ie your membership stake.) So I'd want to have a little money there too. Not that I foresee having that many emergencies, but hey, no emergency is foreseen.
The other idea I had was to use the account for revolving bills that are generally billed to my credit card. I know that these expenses come (the cell phone bill, Netflix, and Lingo accounts) but I still get a little upset when there are charges to my card that I didn't precisely make. (Well, I ran up the charge, but it's not like I handed my credit card to T-Mobile.) So I might feel a little better if I had a direct deposit going to that account that would cover those charges, so I wouldn't have to pay the credit card every month. I don't want to have them auto-charged to my regular checking account because that would drive me nuts in a very short period of time, when $60 goes missing and it takes me a while to remember where it went. (Also, sometimes it gets down that low, especially when we are close to the end of the month and we just went on a big food shopping trip or something, I don't bother transferring in any money since we're not likely to need to spend any more before I get paid again.)
I have a great online direct deposit system where I can divert my pay (by percentages, not fixed amounts unfortunately) into any account I want. I don't think that they even have a maximum, because at one point I had money going in four different directions at once. (My obsession with multiple accounts at ING.) I think it would make me a lot calmer and happier to not have charges appearing on my credit card, and to have a checking account dedicated to this purpose. Also, over time extra will build up (because I can't allocate in my direct deposit the precise amount that will be needed) and that will be a nice cushion if I need it.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm actually going to go all the way and have ALL of the money that I need for bills, other than rent, deposited into the Key account and all of the bills will be paid out of there. They have a great online system (I used to have an account before I moved) so it should be pretty easy. My regular checking account (at the credit union) will contain just rent money and the spending money for the month. Boyfriend writes me a check for his half of the rent plus parking pass and half the cell phone bill, but during the regular school year, since he gets paid the same day I do, the check doesn't actually make it to the bank for a day or two. So I need to be able to cover the whole rent out of my regular checking and still have some money left over.
Here's my fixed expenses:
Netflix - $13
Phone bill - $57
Newspaper - $5
Lingo - $10
Student loan - $150
Credit card - $250
Electric bill - $75
Gas - $15
Roth IRA - $125
Total: $700
Obviously in the winter I will have to raise the allocation a little for the gas bill going up.
So here's where the money will go. I have to divvy things up by percentages since that's how my direct deposit works, and 1% is about equal to $18.
KeyBank - $702 or 39%
ING: $162 or 9%
Normal checking: $936 or 52%
Our rent is $695, so that will leave me a comfortable margin of about $240 in the account between when I write the rent check and when Boyfriend's check clears in my account. Then I will have about $660 to spend for the month on all non-bill items, which I think is a good amount. I was budgeting $500 before and always ended up a little over. (Since I make more than Boyfriend, I buy all the groceries.) I spent a while playing around with the percentages, as I decided how much should go to savings and how much to the Roth and how much to the credit card. I had originally set the savings at $198, but decided to up the debt payment instead. Which actually worked out quite nicely because now the actual needed amount for the Key account is $700, and what will actually get deposited is about $702, so the extra $15 can go into savings instead.
I am extremely pleased with myself! I bet you can tell. With this system, I won't have to worry about anything clearing. All of the bills will just zip out of the Key checking account. And I'm also bumping up my savings and debt payments - my minimums are actually $137 for the student loan and $140 for the credit card. I really want to get my emergency fund up to a good size, so once I do, then I'll probably cut down the ING contribution and put it towards debt. But it just makes me really happy to know that I won't have to put anything on my credit cards anymore, won't have to pay them off even for the automatic things anymore.. it'll be great.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Question of the Day 4 - Up at Experiments in Finance
Today's question comes from Experiments in Finance, who asks: How many credit cards do you have and what's their combined limit? Let's see what the brightest financial minds in the blogosphere have to say...
Thursday, August 03, 2006
People have waaaaaaay too much free time
A little off topic but this was so strange I just had to share it. Click on over to Amazon and read what some people think about a gallon of Tuscan brand milk.
Throwing in the towel
Well, I finally sold my shares of stock in ShareBuilder. I had 8.3 shares of ViaCell, which I bought into at about $4.50 a share. The thing I didn't realize about ShareBuilder is that you can buy in for $4, but you can't get back OUT for less than $16. Which I guess isn't so bad if you have 400 shares to sell all at once. However, I also got a free trade and decided that it was probably worth it to use it. (Otherwise, I'd get like $10 back. A great example of how fees eat up all your damn returns and more.) So I'll be getting $31.08 back. I decided to do it now rather than wait because since I'm in the process of switching banks, I didn't want to have to re-register a new bank account with Sharebuilder.
Maybe I'll register a new account with a promotion code and see if they send me another free trade...
Maybe I'll register a new account with a promotion code and see if they send me another free trade...
Bought my credit report
So I've been feeling a little paranoid about my credit report. A while back, I got a 60-day-late on one of my student loans because they had been sending the payment notices to my parents' house. I just graduated, so this loan was just starting repayment. I paid off the loan with a balance transfer at 4% cause the loan was at 8%, but was worried that it was going to ding my credit. (Since I'm young and have short-lived accounts, it doesn't take much.)
Well, I guess my worry was overstated - I got a credit report and score from Equifax and at least by their records, that loan isn't even on my credit report. So, no ding. Hooray! Nothing suspicious on my report, either, which is good. It shows my collection of consolidated loans (so I have one big one, and several with $0 balances) as all paid as current, for some reason.
And my score is... 735! Yaaaay!
Well, I guess it's not record-worthy, but it'd get me the best mortgage rates. I think people get a leeeetle too caught up in having a high score - but your credit score is only good for something if you need some credit. So if it's a little low, unless you're going to apply for a card or a loan, it's not a big deal right then. But it's nice to know that just by default, by not doing anything wrong but at the same time not doing any of the right things (like having long-held accounts or all below-30% utilizations) you can get a perfectly acceptable credit score. I think it's actually higher than a year ago when our brokerage company pulled Boyfriend's and my credit reports for our apartment application.
Equifax says this about my account:
Positive factors - no late payments, no recent attempts to obtain credit
Negative factors - age of accounts is low, most recently obtained credit is 8 months old
I guess I can't really do anything about those. As with many things, time cures all credit reports. =)
You can also check your credit reports at Bestcreditreports.com
Well, I guess my worry was overstated - I got a credit report and score from Equifax and at least by their records, that loan isn't even on my credit report. So, no ding. Hooray! Nothing suspicious on my report, either, which is good. It shows my collection of consolidated loans (so I have one big one, and several with $0 balances) as all paid as current, for some reason.
And my score is... 735! Yaaaay!
Well, I guess it's not record-worthy, but it'd get me the best mortgage rates. I think people get a leeeetle too caught up in having a high score - but your credit score is only good for something if you need some credit. So if it's a little low, unless you're going to apply for a card or a loan, it's not a big deal right then. But it's nice to know that just by default, by not doing anything wrong but at the same time not doing any of the right things (like having long-held accounts or all below-30% utilizations) you can get a perfectly acceptable credit score. I think it's actually higher than a year ago when our brokerage company pulled Boyfriend's and my credit reports for our apartment application.
Equifax says this about my account:
Positive factors - no late payments, no recent attempts to obtain credit
Negative factors - age of accounts is low, most recently obtained credit is 8 months old
I guess I can't really do anything about those. As with many things, time cures all credit reports. =)
You can also check your credit reports at Bestcreditreports.com
Question of the Day Marathon - Question 3 up at The Investimist
Click on over to the Investimist and leave your answer to today's question:
What was the last thing that you splurged on that you didn’t really need?
Among us PF bloggers and readers, this might be pretty interesting.. =)
What was the last thing that you splurged on that you didn’t really need?
Among us PF bloggers and readers, this might be pretty interesting.. =)
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
100 things about me
1. I was born on December 8th.
2. I am a brunette.
3. I am short.
4. I wear a digital watch all the time.
5. I have two guinea pigs.
6. My guinea pigs are named Adrian and Wedge Antilles.
7. Both of my guinea pigs are named after movie characters.
8. I hate grapefruit juice.
9. I like ranch dressing on my French fries.
10. I went to college in Cleveland, Ohio.
11. I am a science dork.
12. Specifically, I am a biology dork.
13. I own at least 30 books about genetics.
14. I hate shopping for clothes.
15. I love shopping for food.
16. My favorite color is red.
17. My favorite stores are IKEA and the grocery store.
18. I love fruit.
19. I have bought only 1 music CD in the last five years.
20. I have more than 11 gigabytes of music.
21. I use Excel to organize just about everything.
22. My cat is named after an ancestor of Aragorn.
23. I have a bamboo plant in my office.
24. There are earthworms living in my bamboo plant's pot.
25. Both of these earthworms are named Rupert.
26. I enjoy high-quality scissors.
27. I am trying to grow out my hair - below the shoulders is short.
28. I wear glasses.
29. I got glasses in tenth grade, but am only on my second pair.
30. I used to collect cut gemstomes.
31. I also used to collect blue glass bottles.
32. Now I collect Shaun the Sheep items.
33. I have art posters all over my office to cover the damage from the previous occupant.
34. I am extremely organized.
35. But, I am very messy at the same time.
36. I have been using computers since I had sufficient manual dexterity.
37. My home computer is blue with a light inside.
38. My previous computer case had a hole cut out of the top with tin snips.
39. I eat dry Mini Wheats and Cup A Soup as snacks at work.
40. I can't cook independently, but I can follow a recipe.
41. My favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip.
42. I hate mint in all other forms, including gum and toothpaste.
43. I hardly ever write checks or use cash.
44. I have never actually used up a book of checks before I switched banks.
45. I was an early adopter of Paypal in about 1998 - they gave me $20 to sign up.
46. I was also an early adopter of eBay.
47. In high school, I used to buy what can nicely be described as drag queen shoes on eBay to wear to school.
48. These were the "scare the freshmen" shoes.
49. I want a dog.
50. I didn't get a cell phone until junior year of college.
51. I really get a kick out of getting those $10 checks from the credit card company to sign up for crap I don't need.
52. I love editorial cartoons.
53. My favorite TV show is Animal Patrol on Animal Planet.
54. I also like Project Runway on Bravo.
55. For these reasons we are not getting rid of our cable even though it is expensive.
56. I held 11 different jobs during college.
57. By the time I graduated college, I was working four different jobs at the same time.
58. I got fired from two of those jobs.
59. But I didn't like them anyway, so pooh to them.
60. My favorite candy is Zero bars.
61. Actually, I just love candy.
62. Fortunately, I have had only one real cavity, and that was in a molar that fell out.
63. I had braces, but only for about a year and a half.
64. Which was fortunate because I did so much damage to them that it probably cost twice as much as it should have.
65. I have one sister, who is older than me.
66. She had to have braces a lot longer than I did. Ha ha.
67. I have a bicycle with a detachable basket.
68. I do not like to vacuum.
69. I do like to load and unload the dishwasher.
70. I lasted only three weeks in my new apartment before breaking down and buying the dishwasher. (I was going to wait for my second paycheck before buying it.)
71. I am not much of a doodler.
72. I like to have separate bank accounts for different goals, even if all but one don't have anything in them right now.
73. I read very quickly and devour content.
74. I like Asian food, particularly Thai and Japanese.
75. I will eat just about anything with Korean barbecue sauce on it.
76. My favorite vegetable is red peppers.
77. I have absolutely no tolerance for spicy stuff.
78. I almost always order eggplant parmesan at Italian restaurants.
79. I have an ancient laptop with stickers all over the lid (it's about seven years old now.)
80. It took me less than six weeks after graduation before I started my first job.
81. This was the fourth job I interviewed for.
82. I really enjoy saving up coins.
83. I have two piggy banks, one for silver change and one for pennies.
84. Unfortunately, I hardly ever get any change because cash runs through my hands like water, so I try not to carry any.
85. I have a weird farmer's tan from going to a baseball game more than a month ago.
86. I like to eat frozen fruit.
87. In the summers, when I lived in un-air-conditioned places, I used to keep a store of blue cool-packs in the fridge to wear on my head. It really works.
88. I also had a special ice-tube-maker-tray for making tubular ice that I would put in my guinea pig's water bottle when it was really hot.
89. I really like egg salad, potato salad, macaroni salad.. all of those salads that are in fact really bad for you.
90. I drink Crystal Light all day at work cause I am too cheap to buy more Powerade. I just reuse the bottle over and over.
91. I was a vegetarian from ages 12 through 21.
92. I still buy most of my meat from Whole Foods. I used to buy it from a co-op.
93. My cell phone plays "Call Me" by Blondie when my parents call.
94. It plays "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" when my boyfriend calls.
95. At any given moment there are usually four pairs of shoes in my office - one pair is on my feet.
96. I like the premium Kraft better than the regular old mac 'n cheese, but I don't like Velveeta.
97. My favorite cheese is Havarti.
98. As a kid, I used to eat raw hot dogs pretty much all the time.
99. At one point, I had five sets of earring holes. I let the top ones close and now I don't wear any earrings. I kept losing them.
100. I love books and have bought more than 40 in the past year.
2. I am a brunette.
3. I am short.
4. I wear a digital watch all the time.
5. I have two guinea pigs.
6. My guinea pigs are named Adrian and Wedge Antilles.
7. Both of my guinea pigs are named after movie characters.
8. I hate grapefruit juice.
9. I like ranch dressing on my French fries.
10. I went to college in Cleveland, Ohio.
11. I am a science dork.
12. Specifically, I am a biology dork.
13. I own at least 30 books about genetics.
14. I hate shopping for clothes.
15. I love shopping for food.
16. My favorite color is red.
17. My favorite stores are IKEA and the grocery store.
18. I love fruit.
19. I have bought only 1 music CD in the last five years.
20. I have more than 11 gigabytes of music.
21. I use Excel to organize just about everything.
22. My cat is named after an ancestor of Aragorn.
23. I have a bamboo plant in my office.
24. There are earthworms living in my bamboo plant's pot.
25. Both of these earthworms are named Rupert.
26. I enjoy high-quality scissors.
27. I am trying to grow out my hair - below the shoulders is short.
28. I wear glasses.
29. I got glasses in tenth grade, but am only on my second pair.
30. I used to collect cut gemstomes.
31. I also used to collect blue glass bottles.
32. Now I collect Shaun the Sheep items.
33. I have art posters all over my office to cover the damage from the previous occupant.
34. I am extremely organized.
35. But, I am very messy at the same time.
36. I have been using computers since I had sufficient manual dexterity.
37. My home computer is blue with a light inside.
38. My previous computer case had a hole cut out of the top with tin snips.
39. I eat dry Mini Wheats and Cup A Soup as snacks at work.
40. I can't cook independently, but I can follow a recipe.
41. My favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip.
42. I hate mint in all other forms, including gum and toothpaste.
43. I hardly ever write checks or use cash.
44. I have never actually used up a book of checks before I switched banks.
45. I was an early adopter of Paypal in about 1998 - they gave me $20 to sign up.
46. I was also an early adopter of eBay.
47. In high school, I used to buy what can nicely be described as drag queen shoes on eBay to wear to school.
48. These were the "scare the freshmen" shoes.
49. I want a dog.
50. I didn't get a cell phone until junior year of college.
51. I really get a kick out of getting those $10 checks from the credit card company to sign up for crap I don't need.
52. I love editorial cartoons.
53. My favorite TV show is Animal Patrol on Animal Planet.
54. I also like Project Runway on Bravo.
55. For these reasons we are not getting rid of our cable even though it is expensive.
56. I held 11 different jobs during college.
57. By the time I graduated college, I was working four different jobs at the same time.
58. I got fired from two of those jobs.
59. But I didn't like them anyway, so pooh to them.
60. My favorite candy is Zero bars.
61. Actually, I just love candy.
62. Fortunately, I have had only one real cavity, and that was in a molar that fell out.
63. I had braces, but only for about a year and a half.
64. Which was fortunate because I did so much damage to them that it probably cost twice as much as it should have.
65. I have one sister, who is older than me.
66. She had to have braces a lot longer than I did. Ha ha.
67. I have a bicycle with a detachable basket.
68. I do not like to vacuum.
69. I do like to load and unload the dishwasher.
70. I lasted only three weeks in my new apartment before breaking down and buying the dishwasher. (I was going to wait for my second paycheck before buying it.)
71. I am not much of a doodler.
72. I like to have separate bank accounts for different goals, even if all but one don't have anything in them right now.
73. I read very quickly and devour content.
74. I like Asian food, particularly Thai and Japanese.
75. I will eat just about anything with Korean barbecue sauce on it.
76. My favorite vegetable is red peppers.
77. I have absolutely no tolerance for spicy stuff.
78. I almost always order eggplant parmesan at Italian restaurants.
79. I have an ancient laptop with stickers all over the lid (it's about seven years old now.)
80. It took me less than six weeks after graduation before I started my first job.
81. This was the fourth job I interviewed for.
82. I really enjoy saving up coins.
83. I have two piggy banks, one for silver change and one for pennies.
84. Unfortunately, I hardly ever get any change because cash runs through my hands like water, so I try not to carry any.
85. I have a weird farmer's tan from going to a baseball game more than a month ago.
86. I like to eat frozen fruit.
87. In the summers, when I lived in un-air-conditioned places, I used to keep a store of blue cool-packs in the fridge to wear on my head. It really works.
88. I also had a special ice-tube-maker-tray for making tubular ice that I would put in my guinea pig's water bottle when it was really hot.
89. I really like egg salad, potato salad, macaroni salad.. all of those salads that are in fact really bad for you.
90. I drink Crystal Light all day at work cause I am too cheap to buy more Powerade. I just reuse the bottle over and over.
91. I was a vegetarian from ages 12 through 21.
92. I still buy most of my meat from Whole Foods. I used to buy it from a co-op.
93. My cell phone plays "Call Me" by Blondie when my parents call.
94. It plays "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" when my boyfriend calls.
95. At any given moment there are usually four pairs of shoes in my office - one pair is on my feet.
96. I like the premium Kraft better than the regular old mac 'n cheese, but I don't like Velveeta.
97. My favorite cheese is Havarti.
98. As a kid, I used to eat raw hot dogs pretty much all the time.
99. At one point, I had five sets of earring holes. I let the top ones close and now I don't wear any earrings. I kept losing them.
100. I love books and have bought more than 40 in the past year.
Day 2 of Question of the Day Marathon up at Caustic Musings
Today's question of the day comes from Caustic Musings: What is the weekly average cost per person for food in your household, including groceries, snacks, and dining out? Click over and leave your answer!
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Question Of The Day - Day 1 at AllFinancialMatters
Today is the first day of the Question of the Day marathon, where each blogger on the list will ask a question of their readers. Today's host is All Financial Matters, and you can check out the answers to his question here. He asks what you would give up in a time of severe budget crunch. Click over and add your answer!
Sad over coupons expiring
I've read previously about getting great coupons off wine bottles and alcohol of various kinds and I was REALLY excited to get some about a month ago. Ecco Domani wine had a $1 off pasta coupon, no purchase of Ecco Domani required. I was all excited about this, and took three of them. Well, it seems that the end of the month is already here, and I haven't used these coupons.
noooooooooooooooooooo!
Oh well. I guess now we just have to pay full price for the fancy tortellini in the little bags. =)
noooooooooooooooooooo!
Oh well. I guess now we just have to pay full price for the fancy tortellini in the little bags. =)
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