Ohai There!

You thought I had died? Yeah, me too for awhile there...

I've been pretty busy. Not too busy to keep up with all my blog reading though, so I figured it was time for me to get back on the blogging horse and put my contribution to the blogosphere out there.

Like I said, I've been busy. Among the many things that have been going on is one exciting development - I'm back in school! Technically speaking I have been in school for the past year, even longer than I've been blogging. The difference is I was taking care of some reqs that didn't suck every ounce of free time out of me and it didn't seem worthy of mentioning yet.

Read: I didn't feel like mentioning it until I was actually accepted into my program. I'm a big scaredy cat like that.

But guess what? I was accepted! And it was awesome! And I had all of about one weekend between being accepted and starting class. And then the first assignment was a breeze! And then it got hard...

So during the spring I focused on school and I'm happy to say that I passed the weeder class that about half of my class was retaking for the second or even the third time and I even did it with a halfway decent grade and without my husband divorcing me. Or forgetting what I looked like.

Now, for the first time in a year, I'm actually not in school. I started this whole back to school thing last summer, so this is the first time in awhile that I haven't been smack dab in the middle of a class. It feels extremely luxurious.

I'll be back at it in the Fall taking another difficult class and hopefully passing. After these two classes are out of the way I hope to figure out how to work an actual full time schedule into my already full time schedule. I will have to broach that as 2013 2012 (clearly brain is fried) comes about, and haven't quite figured out the details yet. A lot of thinking and planning is going into it, and the hubs and I are saving up all of our pennies as much as possible in anticipation of a year when I could be working part time and for a much reduced salary.

Hopefully the payoff at the end will be worth it.

START Saving at USBank

I've been a USBank customer since about the tender age of...oh, eleven or so. This weekend I opened up a S.T.A.R.T. savings account, and if you're looking for a hassle free way to get started on a small emergency fund and earn a little extra in the process, this is a great way to do it.

You need to have a banking package with USBank to qualify. I have a Silver Banking Package meaning I have a no fee checking account and have now added a no fee money market account. If you don't already have an account through USBank, you can open a checking account with a minimum $50 deposit. There are no fees, and no minimum balance requirements.

The S.T.A.R.T. program is very simple. Add a money market account to your banking package and set up automatic deposits from your checking account. Once your balance reaches $1000, you get a $50 Rewards Card. I've set up twice monthly transfers of $250 so that I can reach that $1000 as quickly as possible. If you maintain a balance of at least a $1000 for a year, you receive another $50 Rewards Card.

That's a 10% return over a year plus however long it takes you to reach $1000.

Say you're just getting started saving, and don't think you can afford to put much away. Don't put it off! Start paying yourself first now, even if it's only a little bit. If you keep putting it off until you think you can afford it, you might never start saving. It takes time to form a habit, so getting into the habit of saving now - even if it's just a little bit - puts you in a better position for the future.

Think you can spare $50 from each paycheck? Setting up a $50 transfer twice a month will get you to that $1000 level in ten months. After ten months, you'll get a $50 Rewards Card, or a 5% return. That's better than you'll get in any CD or high yield savings account right now! Save that money (you can keep adding to it!) for another year, and you'll earn another 5% on your money.

I like getting cash rewards, but I'll take a Rewards Card. I can always pay a monthly expense with the card, and put the $50 extra cash I'd have into savings.

USBank is known for being conservative, approving only the best borrowers for loans and credit cards at really low rates, but also offering very conservative rates (i.e. low) on their savings and checking accounts. Once you've maximized your rewards from the S.T.A.R.T. program, I recommend looking into moving your money to a higher yielding account like Ally Bank, ING Direct or SmartyPig.

Think you can't get started with even a little every month? Sign up for a pay-per-action site like FusionCash. I easily earn around $25 a month without exerting much effort using FusionCash. With a little extra effort, you could easily make that $50 a month and turn that into $600 savings a year. Get started, even with baby steps!

eBay Success | Free Listing Ends Today!

About a week ago I started cleaning out my closet and listing my gently used (and a handful of never worn) clothing on eBay. The success I've had so far is way more than I ever expected! As an experienced Craigslister, I knew that none of my items were suitable for Craigslist. I would have to list everything every week for a year in order to get even a few fluke sales. But I figured I'd try them out on eBay with some auction style listings.

When I discovered that eBay was running a free listing promotion I listed a handful of my nicer new-with-tags items for a little bit higher, but mainly I started everything out at the free-all-the-time auction price of 99 cents. I either put up only one picture, or uploaded additional pictures using HTML in the body of the listing, so I didn't pay a penny upfront for any of my listings.

I'm astonished by how much things have been bid up! Items I didn't expect to sell at all have sold, and things I expected to make a few bucks on at most have sold for up to $30 in bidding wars. So far I've sold $206 worth of clothing, and have at least another $20 coming once the last of my auctions end.

None of the clothing I'm selling had been worn in at least 2 years. Some of it hadn't been worn at all.

Even with the 9% that eBay takes off the top once a sale is made, I'm banking at least $205 from this experiment, and with all the success I've had I'm definitely going to try to list some more items. If you're trying to figure out how to put a couple hundred bucks away as the start of an emergency fund, this is definitely a great way to do it.

The free listing promotion ends today, so get started!

Roth IRA

In high school I was lucky enough to have a brilliant physics teacher. I was especially lucky because he had actually retired the year before. He then took one look at his finances and returned to work part time. The first day of class he didn't say a word about physics. Instead he talked about Roth IRAs and told us all to start one as soon as possible and max it our contribution as often as possible. I have no idea why a man so brilliant at math, and certainly smart enough to realize in his golden years how beneficial a Roth IRA would have been, didn't think about his financial future earlier. My 16 year old sat there smug in the knowledge that I already had a Roth IRA, started by my father. When I took over my finances, the contributions stopped.

Why are our past selves so stupid??

I recently rectified this situation. I was interested in applying for the Fidelity 2% Rewards Card. The rewards are deposited into a Fidelity account, something I didn't have. I knew we needed to start working on some Roth retirement savings, so my husband and I each opened a Roth IRA with Fidelity and I applied for the card and attached it to my Roth. I was pleased to see that Fidelity's trades are also $7.95 rather than the $8.95 I pay in my Schwab account. The Roth IRAs are fee free with a minimum opening deposit of $2500 OR minimum monthly contributions of $200. We set up monthly contributions of $500 each. The first contribution was set up for July, so we would each reach the $5000 maximum for 2010 by the required date of April 2011.

I thought the max contribution would go up to $6000 for 2011, so again we were set up perfectly to reach it by April 2012. Unfortunately, it remained at $5000 so we are actually set to reach the max by February 2012. Thanks in part to the rewards card, I'm hoping to speed that up a bit and make all of our 2011 contributions by December. By contributing as early as possible, we set ourselves up for the most compound interest possible, and this well help make up some ground lost by the max limit not going up.

I read an interesting article on Get Rich Slowly recently about building up an emergency fund even if you don't think you can afford it. I would add that you can also look at your Roth IRA as a part of your emergency fund since you can withdraw contributions penalty free - just not earnings. Although we certainly don't want to ever touch our retirement savings, in the case of an extreme financial emergency, we could withdraw from it. We don't have much additional cash in savings accounts - and I don't really want too much of our money sitting around earning a max of 1.3% - but by the end of 2011 we'll have $20,000 plus earnings sitting in our two Roth IRA accounts. That's enough money to make me feel fairly secure about being laid off, emergency medical bills, etc. and is also a great start to our retirement savings.

So here's to my old teacher. He was one of the very best I ever had. It may have taken me 10 years to really start listening, but I am now.

Paying Up Front & Avoiding Fees

One of the ways I save a little money is by paying up front for insurance bills, rather than paying an inflated amount each month. For instance, every 6 months I get a new bill from Progressive for our car insurance. I can either make a payment every month, or I can pay for the entire policy upfront meaning that I pay my insurance twice a year. While this is a big chunk to have to pay all at once, paying it all at once costs about $200-$300 cheaper than monthly payments. That's like saving an entire monthly payment for us - twice a year!

On top of that, there is a $5 fee for putting the monthly payment on a credit card. I like to put everything onto my rewards credit card, and even when there are fees involved I have a hard time breaking this habit. But when you pay the bill upfront, not only are you only making one payment, but they waive the $5 charge.

It can be hard to have a big chunk of change like that lying around. Recently another bill that can be paid upfront or in 3 yearly payments came in the mail. They also have a $5 charge if you choose to break it into 3 payments, but because there's no additional savings and my husband doesn't budget quite intensely as I do, I usually don't have him pay it all up front. However, this time I just happened to have a 0% convenience check offer through my FlexPerks rewards card that gave 3500 bonus points for any check over $1000. I cash out my points as soon as they accumulate, so 3500 points represents $35 of my next $50 cash out. Although USBank has increased their balance transfer/convenience check fees to 4% from 3%, along with the $15 in payment savings, I was able to write a check for $1000 and actually save $10. If the savings are big enough, a convenience check offer like this one could help you get started.

In my case this helped give us a boost, but the only way to be able to pay bills like this is to budget savings for them ahead of time. It's not so easy to pay a $1000 bill at the drop of a hat, but could you put aside $200 in savings over the next 5 months? In my husband's case, at 0% interest, he can pay me back over the next few months. The bill won't be due again until next January, so he can then continue to set aside a little extra every month and be ready for next year.

I think another great thing to incorporate in this advanced planning is online savings accounts. You can easily open accounts with ING Savings or SmartyPig and earn interest along the way. ING is currently at 1.1% and SmartPig is at 1.35%. Open multiple accounts and give them names like "Car Insurance" or "Vacation Fund". Make a plan for when you'll need them and how much you'll need, and start stashing away a little each month. This can also be a good safety net along the lines of an emergency fund. If you're laid off, or injured and not working, you might have some extra discretionary money in the Vacation Fund that you can now use to pay your bills. Or if you need some extra padding before you get back on your feet, you can use the Car Insurance money for necessities and pay it monthly when it becomes due. These shouldn't be your emergency fund, but I think they can be a great supplement.

On the other hand, when my health insurance recently changed and the savings I'd been getting from paying a year in advance was wiped out, I chose to start paying monthly. I didn't see any reason to hand over a couple thousand dollars when I could put that money to work for me compounding interest and just pay $150 bill each month. Figure out which bills you could be saving on. A $5 fee doesn't sound like much, but it can certainly add up. The question is, will it be adding up for you, or adding up for the companies you're paying?