• It took roughly a week from when I sent the paper application in to when I had an account number. I was notified via email that I had an account number and I called them to get a login to online banking.
• My initial deposit took almost a week to process. I found it faster to login to online banking, link my ING savings, and transfer a few bucks to the account.
• Access to online bill pay, printing and mailing debit cards and mailing me checks all hinged on an initial deposit into the account. Since there’s no local bank and I didn’t want to setup direct deposit BEFORE I had bill pay setup transferring a few bucks in via a linked account was the best option. Again, it took about 5 days to link, transfer, etc.
• Mobile deposits – one of the coolest features of this account is the ability to deposit from your smartphone. I requested this as soon as I got the account access online and it took about three days before they came back to me. I wasn’t “rejected” but I was told that I need to wait until I start using the account, have direct deposit, etc. before they can approve it. I’ve made a note to follow up on February 15th and will keep doing this monthly until it’s activated.
• Debit cards arrived on the 7th of January and checks around the same time.

All in all it’s been pretty smooth so far. I’m going to do all my bill pay manually this month to make sure it’s all set up right (other than the bills I have setup to autopay via my credit card) and then I will re-automate those. I will report back in March with progress and will hopefully be done with the switchover.

It took a bit of leg work, but I have almost all of my bills automated on my credit card now. There are still a few outliers but I am now paying my cell phone, home internet, car insurance, gym and some other recurring memberships with my credit card. Unfortunately my mortgage and student loans won’t allow me to pay with a credit card (imagine that?). There are services that allow you to funnel money through them to pay those bills but the fees normally aren’t worth the trouble.

One more bill I thought I’d never be able to pay with my credit card was my children’s preschool. The preschool we go to is a small, independent preschool that still had us sending over paper checks every month. Not only was this a little old school for me but my wife and I could never remember the amount to pay (was it $259 or $256?) and we’d often forget to pay it on time. If there was a holiday or something and the school was closed this also caused it to be late. I posed the question to the school director about paying via PayPal. She was at first hesitant because she wasn’t sure how she could keep track of it but I was able to convince her to do a trial run. Once I showed her how easy it was to for her to get an email with the payment confirmation she was onboard. On top of that – I can use my Starwood Amex to pay the bill – earning me points for paying it! I can use those points to take the kids on a nice trip, a win win!

So think outside the box when paying bills and be diligent about asking people to accept PayPal for recurring bills. How can you funnel the majority of your expenses through a card that rewards you for paying with it? As long as you’re disciplined at paying it off you can earn some great perks for just paying the bills.

What creative ways do you have for earning bonuses for everyday things you pay for? Please share in the comments!

1. Give everyone on your account (yourself, your spouse, etc.) an allowance at the beginning of every pay period. This is money that’s budgeted for as an allowance, but then used for whatever YOU want. My wife and I have setup a separate checking account just for us that we put this money in. This gives us a little padding outside of the normal budget
2. Don’t panic. If you’re using something like Mint to track expenses and the amount left in your budget buckets is equal to the amount of cash in there just be confident that by payday you’ll be alright if you stick to that budget.
3. Put a padding in your checking account. Most folks can’t afford to do this – and that’s fine – but if you have an extra $250 or $500, just drop it in there. Use discipline to not spend this money unless really necessary but it will give you a little psychological piece of mind by keeping you from pulling out of savings.
4. Use a credit card (if you have the discipline). Cash flow can be one of the bigger problems to following a budget – paying the mortgage takes a big chunk of a bi-monthly paycheck, but then you start to run out before you get the catch-up paycheck. If you are disciplined and can stay within your budget, use a credit card all month for expenses then just pay it off at the end.
5. Rework your budget. Are you overspending in places and fooling yourself that it’s OK? (I’m often guilty of this) Use Suze Orman’s advice to stand in your truth and be honest with yourself about where your money is going and whether you really need to spend it.

What other tips do you have for avoiding panic at the end of the month? Share them in the comments.

First, I checked with my homeowners insurance. I pay a little every month for glass coverage and they were able to cover it without question. I didn’t even have a deductible but the limit was $100 for repairs so they cut me a check for $100. This was great because I don’t yet have a home repair savings account – just a small emergency fund.

Next, how to repair it? The obvious solution would be to repair the glass pane. I called around to about four or five home repair companies and handyman individuals (I recommend at least calling three of them). I have old single-pane aluminum windows. They’re “easy” to repair in that they aren’t low-e, double pane or gas filled but they are terribly inefficient. This window is also right above my head when I sleep so it’s very very cold (or hot). Average estimate for replacing glass-only: $150-200.

My next thought was to replace the window entirely. I have received quotes for replacing ALL the windows in my house before of about $5,000. Doing some simple math that worked out to about $500/window and I confirmed this by also calling a few places and asking (and asking the folks doing glass-only replacement, they do both). Most of them told me that they ‘didn’t make any money’ doing one window and would likely be doing it ‘at cost’ to gain my future business. You’ll see with my final option that this was a sales tactic and was not true. So, average estimate was $500.

I consider my self a bit of a DIY’er around the house so my last thought was to do it all myself. I first turned to YouTube for help on how to remove an old window and how to install a new one. I found tons of great videos on it and it seemed fairly straightforward (I’ll leave the searching up to you – every home has a different type of siding and internal finishings so my videos probably wouldn’t help you). At this point, I felt pretty confident in my ability to replace the window myself.

I still needed the window itself so I started to check out some options. First, I Google’d and found a couple of online stores that sell replacement windows. Their prices were good (around $140) for a window but the shipping was astronomical ($125!). The shipping was normally free if you spent enough money so this was likely a good option for those doing a whole house of windows and not just replacing a single window. My other option was a local home improvement store. I drove to the nearest one (Lowes) and chatted up the guy (Jim) in the window section. This proved to be an extremely good use of my time. He was able to describe all the window options, took the time to give me a quote for every brand and even some advice on installing the window.

The most interesting part of my experience at Lowes was how he described each window. Most of the companies I called had a ‘typical brand’ that they installed ‘for most of their customers’. This, also, was a sales tactic. What they don’t tell you is that aside from fancy options all windows are measured on Solar Heat Gain Coefficient and U-factor. I won’t go into what those mean (you can read the linked Wikipedia articles) but it all boils down to those two numbers. You can compare all the windows by those two numbers. If you don’t go with special options (special tint, double-hung, etc, etc) a window is a window is a window. When you sell your home no one is going to ask you what brand of window you installed – they might want to know how efficient they are though.

So after getting a good description and lesson on window U-factor and SHGC values the prices for windows ranged from $135-225. The $135 builder-grade window was no worse than the other options performance-wise. Window price (with DIY labor) $150 with tax.

At this point the decision was a no brainer.

Costs:

So for less than half the cost of replacing just the glass I have a new gas-filled low-e window over my head when I sleep and the skills to replace all of my windows in my house for 1/3 the cost of having someone else do it. I’ll be using this knowledge to replace my windows gradually over the course of the next year.

How do you save money around the house? Please share in the comments!

Active Mutual Funds, Passive ETFs, & Tax Efficiency » My Money Blog

For those not familiar with David Swensen I recommend you check out the Wikipedia article about him and read more about him. He is the Chief Investment Officer for Yale’s endowment and investment funds. I particularly liked this quote:

He slams many mutual fund companies for charging excessive fees and not living up to their fiduciary responsibility. He highlights the conflict of interest inherent in the mutual funds, claiming they want high fee, high turnover funds while investors want the opposite.

The “easy option” I talked about above going along with this thinking. I don’t like (traditional) mutual funds. These put my money into the hands of some “professional” who – historically – doesn’t outperform the S&P 500. I still want to diversify though. The easiest (and best for me) option is index funds.

An index fund is a fund that tracks a specific index like the S&P 500. They adjust their allocations based upon the movements of that index and are managed by a computer so that they match as closely as possible. The great part about that is there’s no fat-cat fund manager to pay an annual salary and bonus to. Computers eat little, never sleep and work 24 hours a day. They also don’t like yachts because the water isn’t nice to their circuits.

So for a while I’ve been investing in index funds but only of one type – the S&P 500 index fund type. This is on the advice of an accounting professor I had in college who said if I was to invest in nothing else, at least put it in an S&P 500 fund and leave it there. I now have a small retirement nest egg that I’d like to diversify a bit in the case of another market downturn. Enter David Swensen’s Lazy Portfolio. The portfolio consists of the following:

• 30% in Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX)
• 20% in Vanguard REIT Index (VGSIX)
• 20% in Vanguard Total International Stock (VGTSX) or (15% in VGTSX and 5% in VEIEX)
• 15% in Vanguard Inflation Protected Securities (VIPSX)
• 15% in Vanguard Long Term Treasury Index (VUSTX)

There is no expectation of return on this portfolio – but I’m hoping it will produce something that is inflation-beating. It’s a good balanced mix of types of investments (like bonds, stock and real estate) and levels of risk.

One tweak I did make to his allocations is to use all ETF’s though because I love ETF’s and the liquidity they provide even though I shouldn’t need to touch this money. To do this with ETF’s you can use:

• VTI – 30%
• VNQ – 20%
• VEU – 20%
• TIP – 15%
• EDV – 15%

With the exception of TIP all three of these match the funds above, but in ETF form. If you have a Vanguard retirement account the trades should be free as well as long as you haven’t used your free Vanguard fund trades up.

I plan on revisiting these twice annually to ensure they stay within the allocation percentages. I will report back with my returns.

Anyone else have a similar lazy strategy? Please share in the comments!

For the 2012 holiday I have a plan. Every month for the past few months I’ve been putting away a little money in a savings account (with ING Direct – a great online bank. Let me know if you want a referral and we’ll split the referral bonus!).

I’m not (yet) going to increase the amount I save every month but I am going to begin splitting it up. ING makes it really easy to open new accounts so now, instead of one savings account automatically pulling money every month I have three of them.

That’s a percentage of my entire savings amount divided up. I think this will be a good way of earmarking some money for specific goals without (yet) increasing the amount of money I’m saving every month. It also puts up a psychological hurdle around that money. I’m not as inclined to transfer from savings to my checking on a whim because I have a specific goal I’m saving for and it’s not just “savings”.

What are your strategies for saving for the holidays in 2012? Share them in the comments!

There are two features I wanted in addition to what I consider standard features (debit cards, checks and online management/billpay all free, connectivity with mint.com). They are:

• Refund fees from ANY ATM
• Electronic check deposits via Android/iPhone without going to a branch

I did some research and there are not many options that have this. RBFCU has electronic check deposits but not free ATM’s. USAA has both but only if you’re. Finally I found my unicorn: Charles Schwab High-Yield Checking Account.

I could barely believe my eyes. The last time I had a Charles Schwab account I was 16 years old and it was a brokerage account that charged $30/trade. I closed that account when I was told that they ‘didn’t cater to the little guy’ by one of their employees. It seems times have changed and that business model didn’t work out so well for them.

This checking account has no fees and no minimums. It also comes with a no fees no minimums brokerage account (which I won’t be using – I like my Vanguard Roth IRA that gives me free trades for Vanguard ETF’s). The only weirdness with it was that I had to fill out and mail in a paper form and a paper check to open the account. I can only assume this must be manually opened and entered by an employee at the bank which seems a little out of date.

So why go through all this headache? ATM fees and gas money. Every month or two it seems I’m in a spot where it’s very convenient to just take out $20 from the closest ATM. This normally results in at least $2-3 from the ATM plus another $2 from Bank of America. I save gas because I just use the closest available ATM now and not drive to the nearest convenient bank. I can sit on my couch and deposit checks too.

Less stress, more gas, more money. Adios, Bank of America.

And to get all dad-like for a second: if you got money and weren’t expecting it put 80% of it in your Roth IRA as fast as possible and forget about it!

Another way I think about some of this stuff is “Hey, it’s $80 on sale and was originally $400? I could save even more by just not buying it!”

Check out this post on anchoring from Get Rich Slowly: How “Anchoring” Sways Your Decisions