Personal finance
New Car Buyer Tax Break for 2009
IRS today announced a special tax break for new car purchases (the tax break was actually approved by the congress as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). If you are planning to buy a new car, then you may get a break on state and local sales taxes and deduct taxes [...]
What You Need to Know about Early Withdrawal from Retirement Accounts
If you are saving for your retirement using vehicles such as IRA and/or 401(k), there are limitations on when investments can be withdrawn from these accounts. Since these are tax deferred accounts, either contributions (401(k) and Traditional IRA) or growth (Roth IRA), or both (401(k) and Traditional IRA) will be taxed at the time when [...]
PIN vs. Signature Based Debit Transactions
Last week, when I was writing the article on reward checking accounts, I noticed that some banks not only require a number of debit card transactions in a month in order to get the higher yield, but also explicitly say qualifying transactions must be PIN (personal identification number) based, while others insist only signature based [...]
Reward Checking Accounts
I wrote quite often about banking deals here, mostly high-yield savings accounts (well there probably isn’ t any real “high-yield” account any more if you look at what savings accounts are offering now) but occasionally checking accounts, because I am always on the look out for better places to park our cash. And when [...]
Can You Get a Better Rate at MoneyAisle?
Money Aisle is an online marketplace where banks compete to each other to offer better rates for high-yield savings account or CDs.
I have heard about MoneyAisle a while back, but never got a chance to check it out until recently, partly because back then I was very happy with Dollar Savings Direct’s 4.0% APY. But [...]
Bank Bonus Deals
Looking for incentives to open a bank account? Following are some bonus offers valid for this month (March 2009) only. All of them are for checking accounts though.
M&T Bank is offering $100 bonus when opening a M&T Direct Checking, Classic Checking (with interest), Select Checking or Power Checking or $25 bonus for M&T Totally Free [...]
Time to Say Goodbye to Dollar Savings Direct
After being with the bank for only half a year, I think the time to move on has finally come.
When Dollar Savings Direct was first launched last summer, it was touted as a high yield savings account from Emigrant Bank, which also owns Emigrant Direct. You may wonder why one bank wants to have to [...]
Google Tip Jar Lets You Take and Share Tips
So the economy is bad and families are tightening their belts to save here and there. In time like this, we can always use a few helpful tips. If that’s what you are thinking, then you may want to check out a new site called Tip Jar from Google, a place where you can share [...]
Citi Launched New Forward Visa Card: Get Rewarded for Keeping a Good Credit
This could be a hot credit card.
Citibank launched a brand new credit card today, called Forward Visa Card, which the bank claims will “help you see rewards of maintain healthy credit.” After a quick glance, it does seem to be a very rewarding card because card member will not only enjoy rewards (in ThankYou Points) [...]
SmartMoney: 10 Things Your Credit Card Companies Won’t Tell You
SmartMoney yesterday published an article on 10 practices that credit card companies use to get more money out of us, their customers. Even though some of them, such as universal default and two-cycle billing, will be banned when the new credit card rules take effect, which is still more than a year away, we should [...]
