The Sun's Financial Diary

I started my own Zecco referral bonus sharing program back in December 2007 when Zecco relaunched its Zecco Friend program. At the beginning, it was actually pretty good. I sent new customers to Zecco and got a $50 bonus for each new customer shortly after they opened and funded a new account. I then shared part of the bonus with those I referred every month.
However, the last time I got a referral bonus was in early March. Since then, I haven’t received a penny from Zecco. Though I have answered some 20 requests in the past two months, none of them signed up for a new account. I don’t know whether it’s the problem of Zecco or people just changed their minds after receiving the link (I do have a couple of people telling me that they did open and fund their accounts as required, but that wasn’t reflected in my Zecco account) , the result is that the program hasn’t be very effective lately.

In February, I contacted Zecco when a reader questioned the referral link I sent to him. After providing detailed information Zecco asked for investigation, I never heard back from them again. And I don’t want to spend any more time dealing with them the issue. So to avoid making promise (to split the $50 bonus) that I can’t deliver, I decided to suspend the bonus sharing program unless I know exactly what has been going on.

I have updated the Referral page to reflect this. But there are other referral programs that are still available. Take a look if you need any thing.

who lost their lives in last week’s earthquake in Sichuan, China, I have temporarily removed the Great Wall header image and replaced it with just black and white. I will run this theme from May 19 to 21, China’s national mourning period for the 32,476 people killed in the disaster.

The site will return to normal on May 22 and, hopefully, I will have a new design for the site at that time.

Not just that they all want your money, but the way they treat you as a customer.

Last year, I had a nightmare with American Express over the fraudulent charges on my Costco TrueEarnings card. Though eventually, the issue seems to be resolved, I had to keep calling and calling them every month for more than half a year! Then last week, I went through a similar one with Citibank.

Early this year, I transferred some of the credit line from one credit card to the then newly opened Citi Driver’s Edge card in order to use the card’s 0% APR offer to pay off our car loan. At that time, I only moved credit line from one Citi card, enough to cover the remaining car loan. Since the 12-month promotional offer won’t expire till February 2009, I decided to take the full advantage of the offer. So I called Citibank last Sunday and asked to move some credit line from my UPromise card to the Driver’s Edge card. After some verification, the guy who was helping me told me to hold while he was checking something. When he came back minutes later, he said it was done!

Done???

But I didn’t even have the chance to say how much I wanted to move yet. And I didn’t want to reallocate the entire credit limit because I am still using the UPromise card.

Realizing that he made a mistake, that guy put me on hold again and went to ask his manager on how to reverse the action. When he came back the second, he also brought his manager on the line whose first comment was telling me I shouldn’t use the word “consolidate” or “all credit line” when making my request. But I didn’t use either. This was the first time I did credit line reallocation and I told the manager I knew what I was doing. Then the manager said I had to wait two business days for a different department to unconsolidate my cards then call back to make request again.

It took then just minutes to consolidate, but needs days to unconsolidate!

So I waited two days as told and called again on Tuesday evening. After I asked the CSR to check if the credit limits of my two cards were returned to what they were before, I was told I still have no credit left on the UPromise card. This time I didn’t waste any more time with the CSR and asked to speak with the manager directly. The manager, to my surprise, told me there wasn’t any record regarding the unconsolidation request that I was told two days ago, thus no action was taken since then.

I can’t believe it!

The manager then apologized, but not before telling me that since I couldn’t provide any details on whom I talked to the other day, he had no way to know it was a manager or not or what happened to the request. At the end, he assured me he wrote down the request this time, but asked for 5 business days instead of 2 to get it done.

I wonder I have to ask for the name every time I talk to somebody. From what happened in these two incidents, maybe I should.

Check out the following articles form The Money Writers and beyond.

Reader Mail: How Do I Reduce Investment Fees? @ Million Dollar Journey
Stay away from load funds, buy funds with lower expense ratio, and avoid frequent trading of stocks (unless you do zero-commission trading). Well, these are actually my ideas

Save Money on Gas - How I Saved 11.9% at the Pump With a Sneaky Trick @ Money Smart Life
Not too shabby with gas price approaching the $4/gallon mark. I only get 3% back with my Chase Freedom card.

Increase Your Salary Without Increasing Your Work @ The Digerati Life
The known secret is “work smart, not harder.”

4 Investing Ideas for Your Economic Stimulus Tax Rebate Check @ Lazy Man and Money
Did you make up your mind on the money yet? I haven’t got our check, but it will probably stay in my bank account as I have nothing particular to buy (including stock/mutual fund).

Investing in the Stock Market Over the Past 10 Years: How Did Dollar-Cost Averaging Fare? @ Generation X Finance
I looked at the same issue of dollar cost averaging last year with VFINX and the conclusion is: Invest as early as you can.

Credit Card Arbitrage Q&A @ My Dollar Plan
I LOVE getting free money from credit card companies. They charge ridiculously high interest rates and credit cad arbitrage makes them pay a little back

10 Career Quotes, My Take, and TGIF @ Brip Blap
What do you expect from your career? Are you still motivated?

Balancing a Checkbook @ Money Ning
Do you?

Finally, I participated in the last Carnival of Personal Finance, held at Money Under 30 with a post on tips on save money on gas.

We started to save for our daughter’s future education shortly after they were born (for our second daughter, we did wait nearly four months before opening a 529 plan for her ) and since then we have been making monthly contributions to their 529 accounts, currently5. Th at $14,77e reason for deciding to help our children is quite simple: We want them to go to the schools at their choices when the time comes without having to worry about how to pay for it themselves. I was lucky enough to finish my college tuition-free, but my parents did support me with all other expenses. Now, I want to do the same for our children. Somehow I feel it’s an obligation. With annual college inflation running twice as much as the general inflation, the cost of college education could become a heavy burden to them after their graduation if our children have to pay for their own education.

Though participation rate in 529 plan has increased exponentially in recent years, according to Investment Company Institute, not every parent has taken the full advantage of the vehicle to save for college because of misunderstandings of the plan. Last week, I received an email from Fidelity which points me to an article on college-saving myths, which clarifies some common misconceptions of 529 plans. The following are the excerpt of the article.

Myth 1: Saving in a 529 plan will affect my child’s eligibility to receive financial aid
Truth: Assets in a 529 plan are owned by parents, not the child. Though the assets are only assessed at 5% when determining federal financial aid, as opposed to 20% for child-owned assets.

Myth 2: I shouldn’t risk investing my money in a college savings account when the market is so volatile
Truth: Trying to time market is never a good idea to invest in stocks. Instead, making contributions regularly (dollar cost averaging) help to smooth the ups and downs in the short-term.

Myth 3 : I’ll lose control over the assets in a 529 plan if my child decides not to attend college
Truth: Parents can eaisly change beneficiary if the child doesn’t want to go to college. In the worst case scenario, the money in a 529 plan can be withdrawn for purposes other than higher eduction at a 10% penalty.

Myth 4: 529 plans offer limited investment options
Truth: Though 529 plans don’t have the flexibility to offer all the investment options available, many plans do provide a wide selection of investments such as bonds, index funds and age-based portfolios at low costs.

Myth 5: I don’t have enough money to open a 529 plan
Truth: There are many 529 plans require a minimum initial investment as low as $50 and monthly contribution of $15 with an automatic investment plan. You don’t have to have a lot of money open a 529 account.
Myth 6: I don’t want to limit my child’s college options by having to invest in my state-sponsored 529 plan
Truth: Anybody can invest in any 529 plan, not just those sponsored by the resident’s own state, though some plans do offer extra tax incentives to the state’s residents.

Myth 7: The contribution limits of 529 plans won’t allow me to save enough for college
Truth: Unlike IRA accounts ($5,000 limit for 2008) and 401(k) accounts ($15,500 limit for 2008), annual contribution limits of many 529 plans can be as high as $300,000.

Myth 8: You can get a better return on your investments if you create your own portfolio of funds versus savings in a 529 plan
Truth: Because of the 10% penalty, a dedicated college savings plan can prevent parents from withdrawing money from the account for day-to-day spendings that are not related to higher education.

I can host them for you here on this blog!

When I published my ING Direct Orange Savings Account $25 signup bonus post on April 27, I thought it could be a while before all the 25 referral links are taken because, ING Direct, as well as this referral problem, has been around for a long time and people who want to have an account probably already have one.

Well, looks like I am wrong!

Less than three weeks after the original post, I have only one referral left! It’s unbelievable that the demands for the popular financial products are still very strong. Too bad that I am running out my own referrals However, I believe that there are many out there have plenty of unused referrals, but don’t have the means to share them with people who are interested in getting a $25 bonus to open a new account.

Here’s what I am going to do.

If you have unused ING Diret Orange Savings Account referrals and would like to receive a $10 bonus by sharing them with others who need them, leave a comment at this post with a valid email address. I will then contact you with instructions on how to generate the referral links. I will take 25 referrals at a time from 5 referrers.

It’s a first come first serve service. So hurry up if you want to make an extra $250 There’s no guarantee, though, on when

Update[May 16, 2008]: Within hours after this post was published, I received 200 new links from people want to shares their referrals. Since it will take some time to exhaust all these links, I won’t be able to take any new links at this moment. However, you can still leave a comment here if you have referrals available and I will get in touch with you once the links I have are gone.

Thanks!