E*Trade Complete Savings Account now 3.30% APY

For the second time in less than two months, E*Trade Financial decided to make its Complete Savings Account competitive by increasing its interest rate from 3.15% APY to 3.30% APY, starting July 2, 2008. It made a similar rate adjustment in early May.

Though the news in encouraging (increasing rates), the rate is still not as good as the rates from banks I am currently using, such as Capital One and FNBO Direct. Therefore, I don’t think I will make any change on the way I am using those banks now. For better bank deals, check out my interest rates table.

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June 2008 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth

U. S. stock market fell hard in June 2008, so did our paper wealth (because most of our assets are stocks with only value on paper). When the Dow closed the month at two-year low, there isn’t really anything good to expect and that’s exactly what happened to our net worth.

After two consecutive monthly gains in April and May, our net worth last month returned to the “usual” theme of this year: down along with the stock market. On June 30th, we lost $37,125.69 in the past 30 days from our investments. That’s a 6.13% drop from previous month and more than half we gained in the past two months. At the end of June, our net worth is at $568,395.28.

Here’s a quick look at each element in our net worth:

• Credit card balance(-): The total balance on our credit cards was $862.70 (4.72%) less than that of last month at $17,429.29. Every day expenses was almost identical to the previous month, though gas price has gone up quite a lot recently. Right now, we have to spend more than $110 on gas every week
• Cash(+): This is the only positive part in our net worth calculation. At the end of June, we have $64,440.04 in our savings accounts totaled, up $3,554.82 (5.84%) from a month ago. In the past, when stocks dropped big ones like we saw last month, I usually took the opportunity to buy a little bit more. Not this time, though I maintain our regular monthly mutual fund purchases. I just didn’t get any extra. Seriously, it’s not fun to watch my newly purchased shares worth less and less every day, though I know that some time down the road what I bought today could bring me more. Now, I feel a little more comfortable with our money in the banks than in the markets.
• Taxable accounts(-): We lost big in our investment accounts in June. At $258,725.06, we are $26,075.38 (9.16%) less now than a month ago. I am not going to get into details of what contributed to the big loss as I usually did because, basically, everywhere I look, I see red :((
• Retirement accounts(-): Though we didn’t have any individual stock in our retirement accounts, the performance last month was pretty bad too in our retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs. At the end of the month, we had $231,945.98 in all retirement accounts. That’s $15,162.66 (6.14%) less than what we had at the end of May.
• 529 plans(-): Even our daughters’ 529 plans could stay positive, despite the new $600 monthly contribution. In June, the total market value of 529 accounts declined $524.51 (3.38%) to $15,012.15. And those new money only contributed to the loss because the money was invested at the beginning of the month.
• Bonds(+): Our investments in I-bonds increased by $100 (0.73%) to $13,414.08.

Though our net worth has gained two months in a row, we are still slightly below where we were when 2008 began. YTD, our net worth dropped $39,727.07 (6.53%).

Now I can only hope we will have a better second half, given how bed the first six months have been to investors.

Related Posts

• July 2007 Score Card — Part II: Expenses
• July 2008 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth
• May 2008 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth
• March 2008 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth
• April 2008 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth

Weekend Linkage - June 29, 2008

Check out these excellent readings from The Money Writers and elsewhere around the PF blogosphere.

9 Ways to Save Without Breaking a Sweat I can add one more to make it 10 ways: Use automatic invesment plan when possible to invest in mutual funds.

Rate Your Job, Company and Salary At Glassdoor.com: Compare Work and Pay A nice tool to find out everything you are concerned about your job.

A Reminder to Keep Your Beneficiaries Up-to-Date As circumstance changes, don’t leave your beneficiaries outdated.

Is Now the Time to Take Advantage of the Housing Crisis? Is the housing market bottomed yet? Some said it still has a year to go.

Risk Management via Insurance - Life Insurance I consider life insurance as a indispensable part of our portfolio.

Stock Market Investing 101 - How Can Stocks Make You Money? Yeah, stocks can make you money, but not now

11 Fun & Frugal Summertime Activities Lots of ways to have fun this summer and do your wallet a favor.

Will frugality ever be ready for prime time? If frugality becomes mainstreet (high gas and food prices could help), that’s good enough.

StreetRead - An Interesting New Site For Stock Quotes And Financial Information That sounds interesting. Maybe I need to take a look too.

Three Requirements of Great Investing Make investing simple not complex and start it right away. That’s two requirements

Setup Google Alerts to Get Coupons and Deals Thanks for the cool tip, David!

Everyman’s Guide to $30 / Month in Passive Income But nothing is really “passive”.

Don’t Buy Too Much Company Stock Never put all your eggs in one basket.

Related Posts

• Weekend Linkage - June 1, 2008
• Weekend Linkage - September 1, 2008
• Weekend Linkage - July 6, 2008
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• Weekend Linkage - January 20, 2007

Discover More Card $100 Bonus Offer

Found this Discover More Card deal on the Clipper Magazine in my mailbox.

Details of the offer are:

• $100 Cashback bonus when you make $500 in purchase;
• 0% APR on balance transfer until June 2009;
• 5% Cashback bonus;
• 3% balance transfer fee.

I have discussed this card in my best cash back credit card post. With this card, you can also unlimited earn 1% cash back on other purchases. To apply for this card, go to apply.discovercard.com and use invitation cod: DAQH.

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Make Hundreds of Dollars by Referring People

There are quite a few programs out there that actually pay you for referring new customers to them. And if you can manage to exhaust all your referrals, you can make hundreds, even thousands, or dollars without much of work to you, though demands for each product are different and not all of them are popular.

Among those listed on my referral page, one that I found as the easiest free money maker is ING Direct. Seriously, you can’t underestimate how many people still don’t have an ING Orange Savings Account and how many actually want to have one. I started to put referral links here at the end of April and in two months, nearly 100 people have taken those links and opened a savings account for themselves. That not only made me $250 richer but also helped several other people collected hundreds in bonuses because after I finished up my referral links, I also took unused links from them and posted them here to benefit both parties. Since each account holder can refer up to 25 people for Orange Savings Account and another 25 for Electric Orange Checking Account, it could mean $500 for anyone who has an ING account (the demand for the Electric Checking Account isn’t that strong though).

Don’t have an account? Then that’s even better because if you use any of the links listed in my ING Direct promotion page to open an account and fund it with at least $250, you can get a $25 bonus immediately. Once your account is ready, you can start to refer people and earn bonuses. Have no means to run your referrals? Not a problem. I can host your links for you. Just go to this page and leave a comment. I will get back to you when I need new links

In addition to ING Direct, other programs that let you earn referral bonuses include:

• RevolutionMoneyExchange: I reviewed RevolutionMoneyExchange early. It’s a nice service, though not as popular as Paypal. With RevolutionMoneyExchange, you can earn $10 per new signup for up to $500.
• TradeKing: I wrote a TradeKing review yesterday. With TradeKing, you will get $50 for every person you refer to and earn a maximum of $5,000 bonuses.
• Zecco: Zecco will pay you $50 for every new customer and there’s no upper limit on how much you can earn. I had some success with their referral problem, but stopped it after some issues with Zecco.

Though the above three are not as popular as ING Direct and making money from them is not as easy as either, but still not bad if you can get a bonus from them

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