Save Money on Gas by Changing Driving Habit?

I have two gas station receipts in my hands: one from last Monday and one yesterday. They are both from the same gas station where I always fill up my car on my way to work every week. On these two receipts, in addition to the ever-increasing gas price, which has gone up from $3.659 per gallon of regular gasoline last week to $3.799, another noticeable difference is the total amount of gas I purchased: last week 12.610 gallons and yesterday 11.678 gallons, about 1 gallon less then a week ago. Since I drive my car almost exclusively to work, the miles I put on the car every week are similar. So where does that 1 gallon reduction come from?

Of the 35 miles drive to work, 20 miles are on a major highway where people usually drive 80 miles/hour. Though it’s not always a smooth ride, especially in the morning rush hour, there is a good 10 to 15 mile stretch where I don’t have to hit the break a lot. Starting the week before, after being reminded by the gas saving tips on The Penny Saved, I began to use cruise control whenever I can, though I didn’t set the speed at 55 mph as suggested by the Consumer Reports. On a good day, cruise control can take over 30 to 35 miles of my 70-mile daily commute. And after the first week of experiment, I already saw the positive result, though I didn’t exactly change my driving habit

While I am willing to use cruise control to save on gas more often, I am not going to try Jesse’s another tip: “Turn that A/C off.” Not just that it’s not comfortable to let the wind blow on my fact at 75 miles/hour speed, rolling down the window could do more than undoing the little gas I saved by using cruise control because of the added load to the car from the wind. That’s one save money tip I won’t do. Another is I don’t buy used electronics, a computer, a digital camera, or whatever it is.

Popularity: 11% [?]

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Thanks for the Generous Donations!

Last week, I started a donation drive for the Sichuan earthquake relief. During the seven days from May 15 to May 22, a total of $215 donation was made to the effort by readers from countries/regions as far as Greece and Hong Kong. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who made the generous donation to the people whose life have been tremendously affected the devastating earthquake. I can’t express enough my gratefulness to the donors.

As I mentioned in the post soliciting donation, I will match 1:1 to each dollar donated. Therefore, the total money raised in the fundraising is $430, which will be the amount to be donated to the earthquake relief fund. Originally, I planed to send the money to the Consulate General in New York. Now I will make a slight change of the plan because early last week my employer emailed me that company, together with the American Red Cross, just launched a company-wide fundraising for the victims of the earthquake. And my employer also promises a 100% match. Therefore, to maximize the effort, I decided to send the donations I collected to my employer to get another $430, making the total $860! After I get the receipt, I will contact each donor and provide them with a copy of the receipt so they know their money goes to the place where it’s needed the most.

Thanks again for the generous donations!

Popularity: 9% [?]

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RevolutionMoneyExchange $25 Sign up Bonus still Alive?

Update: Now it’s DEAD!

RevolutionMoneyExchange’s $25 sign up bonus promotion was supposed to end on May 15, 2008, but it looks like the offer is still alive.

Yesterday, a reader emailed asking for a referral link so he can get an additional $5 bonus. I emailed back with the link and later asked the reader whether he received the $25 bonus from RME because it already passed the expiration date. When the user replied back, he told me that he indeed got the $25 bonus! And in my own account, the $25 sign up bonus button is still there with no update on the May 15, 2008 date.

I don’t know how long this is going to last (RME already extended the offer once from April 18 to May 15), but if you want to take advantage of the offer and get another $5 on top of the $25 bonus from RME, you can use the contact form to contact me to request an invitation. I still have a few referrals left and I will be happy to split the $10 bonus I get from RME with you

Popularity: 14% [?]

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Hospital Compare: Compare Hospitals Online

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services recently launched a website, Hospital Compare, that allows patients to compare measures of quality of care of more than 2500 hospitals nationwide. The website, which was created by the joint effort of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of DHHS and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), is to provide ratings on key measures so patients, as well as family members and health care providers, can make better decision on health care (find out more about the website here).

I tried the service to find a hospital in our area to see how it works. Since I know the hospital’s name, I searched under the Hospital Name and found the hospital I was looking for. The results are given in three categories:

• Hospital Process of Care Measures, including
  • Surgical Care Improvement / Surgical Infections Prevention Process of Care Measures
  • Heart Attack Process of Care Measures
  • Pneumonia Process of Care Measures
  • Heart Failure Process of Care Measures
• Hospital Outcome of Care Measures
• Survey of Patients’ Hospital Experiences

In addition to giving the results in numbers (including the number of patients treated by the hospital) and tables, the website can also present the data in graphs for easy compare and understanding. For example, the following is the picture of the Surgical Care Improvement part which, as you can see, compares the particular hospital against the national average and the average among New Jersey hospitals that participate in this program (hospitals voluntarily submit their data).

How useful is this tool?

I don’t really know because I don’t have any medical need right now. But I think the information is quite helpful in the sense that patients, before deciding where to get the medical care they need, can have a big picture on where they could get better treatments for their health issues.

Popularity: 13% [?]

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Capital One Online Savings Account Opened

I have been considering getting a new online savings account with a better rate for quite a while. The banks I am using right now (IGoBanking and FNBO Direct) are OK, but their rates are not as competitive as they used to be. After looking around and evaluating potential candidates such as Countrywide Bank, Provident Direct, and Capital One, I eventually decided to open an new savings account with Capital One. Though I never had any good impression with Capital One’s credit cards, the 3.75% APY of their Online Savings Account is pretty impressive (check out the latest interest rates). Besides, Capital One recently opened a branch office not far away from where I live. So that’s another plus. Countrywide Bank offers a slightly higher rate (3.80% APY), but that bank faces some uncertainties due to the pending Bank of America purchase. Since I already have my checking account with BoA and our mortgage loan with Countrywide, I don’t want to have another one with them.

Account Opening Process

Opening a Capital One Online Savings Account is quite easy, taking about 10 minutes with information that is required by any financial institution: personal information (no employment information required though), identity verification, and account funding method. For verifying the identity, Capital One asked some questions and

The questions are based on information from an external credit reporting agency. Rest assured that your answers will not affect your credit score in any way.

While, as the above statement says, the answers themselves will not affect my credit score, it isn’t clear whether Capital One conducts hard pull or soft pull. On their disclosure page, they does state that

For your protection, you agree that we may order a consumer credit report on you from a credit reporting agency. Upon your request, we will inform you of whether or not a credit report was requested and, if so, the name and address of each agency that provided this report.

It looks like I have to ask them to find out.

Fund the Account

At the end of the account opening process, I was asked how I want to make the initial funding of the account. I chose to link my BoA checking account to the new account. Before the external link is established, Capital One uses trial deposits to verify the account ownership, and it’s pretty fast. I opened the account last night and tonight the two trail deposits already appeared in my BoA account.

According to Capital One, I can link multiple external accounts to my Capital One account and transfer funds vis ACH between. However, each linked external account needs to be verified (use trial deposits) separately. And since this is a savings account, there’s a 6-withdraw per month limit.

Fund Availability

Like any ACH fund transfer, deposits made by external accounts via ACH take times to show up in Capital One account. It could take up to four days before the fund shows up in the account and another day or two before the fund become available. For example, if the fund transfer is made on Monday, then the money won’t be credited to the Capital One account until Thursday.

During the first 30 days following initial account funding, funds deposited into your account will be held for ten business days (available to you on the eleventh business day) after the day we receive and process the deposit. For accounts opened and funded older than 30 days, funds deposited into your account will be held for five business days (available to you on the sixth business day) after the day we receive and process the deposit. If you change the external account linked to this account, funds deposited into your account will be held for five business days (available to you on the sixth business day) after the day we receive and process the deposit.

Others

This morning I got an email from Capital One, saying that my new “Money Market Account or Certificate of Deposit Account” is now available. But what I opened is an Online Savings Account, not a MMA or CD. So I called them to make sure there’s no mistake or anything because their Money Market Account only pays 3.00% APY. What they told me was that the account I opened was indeed Online Savings Account, which is also a MMA. In addition to the name and rate difference, the MMA also offers ATM card and check-writing ability, but not for the OSA.

To earn the 3.75% APY, the minimum account balance for an OSA is $10,000. In the past, I usually stayed away from accounts that require high minimum balance to earn interest. But since the account balance at IGoBanking is well above this level, the high balance requirement isn’t really a big problem. Even if the balance is below the $10,000 mark, there’s no fees or anything and the money can still earn a 2.75% APY. And there’s no additional costs for lower balance, which is also a big plus.

Popularity: 24% [?]

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