Tips from a college student

I have finally given up on high yield savings accounts. Okay, that isn't completely true, but I'm going out on a limb here. With the FED cutting interest rates what seems like every day now, no one is earning any signifcant interest on their savings. The stock market is down as the recession is freaking everyone out, so I decided now would be a good time to begin investing in the stock market.

I began researching a few different stocks about a week ago and finally chose a few to begin with. I am going with Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and J.Crew to begin with. I am watching a few more right now, but I want to see how things go and get used to things before I put too much money out there.

After choosing stocks, I realized that I needed to choose a broker or dealer or whatever you call the place you buy stocks from. I began looking online, and quickly realized I was looking for a discount online broker. So I started googling every name I had heard, E*trade, Sharebuilder, Zecco, and a few others. I decided on Zecco for several reasons, the main one being price. As long as you have $2,500 in your account, the first 10 trades a month are free. I don't plan on doing a lot of trades, so this should be perfect for me.

I read several blogs about it and all of the comments, and I read every bad story I could find about it. It appeared to me that all of the bad stories were from people who didn't do what they were supposed to, like send in the correct paperwork. And most of the problems people had were in the application process, which I found to be very simple and easy.

I have now completed the application and been approved, and everything is great so far. Many of the things I read that were complaints I noticed were not problems in the application. It was completely online, so nothing needed mailed in. I am now waiting for my ACH transfer to go through and complete funding, and then I will be ready to trade!

Check back for a complete review of Zecco once I have had time to do a few trades and see how everything goes.

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If you want an easy $25, along with a good online savings a checking account that both earn good interest rates, you should sign up with ING Direct. Email me or comment on this post for a link to recieve the $25 promotion.

ING's Orange Savings and Electric Orange accounts have good interest rates (Orange Savings is 4.10%APY), and good features too. You can link it to up to 3 banks, so you can easily fund it. The Orange Savings account has an automatic savings feature where you can set it to automatically withdraw a certain amount of money from your checking account on a regular basis to boost your savings. And best of all, if you sign up now you get $25 for free just for signing up!

The Electric Orange account is a checking account that pays a great interest rate of 3.15% APY. You can send checks to people online, which is very useful, and you can use certain ATM's for free.

You can also use these accounts for automatic bill pay, and they deposits made from these accounts to other accounts will count as direct deposits, so you can use them to fulfill the conditions on other promotions later down the road.

If you open a new account, you can get a free $25 bonus. The conditions for this is you have to open it with $250 and open it through a link that I would be happy to send you, all you have to do is send me an email or comment on this post. I will respond to emails ASAP, but only email me if you are definitely going to do it, because I only have a limited number of links available.

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I have just discovered a great website that I can't believe I haven't heard about before! It has free information covering everything financial that you could ever have a question about. The website is FinWeb, and it is completely free.

FinWeb has information on every topic I could think of, from getting reverse mortgage loans to investments to debt consolidation and everything in between. At first glance I thought it was just a few pages of information, but then I realized that there are links at the top and down the left side of every page that are full of information. It also has a page of links to financial news sites and a directory of links for every category that it covers. This could be very useful as these links cover anything that wasn't covered on the site. This is one thing that makes FinWeb so great, it covers about everything and if it doesn't have an article on what you need it probably has a link to where you can find it!

This site is so useful because it is simple to navigate, it has a lot of information, and it is completely free. I have never seen a site so comprehensive over everything financial. Many sites have good information about getting a mortgage, or how to invest, but FinWeb covers everything all in one place. That is why I highly recommend this site, because it is like the Wal-Mart of finances! Everything you need under one roof!

There is a ton of information and it would take hours to read every article on there, but it is fairly easy to navigate and get right to what you are looking for. I have personally found it useful for tax information on a sole proprietorship, which I may be starting soon. I will definitely be visiting FinWeb some more when I get closer to starting it so that I don't have to scour the web for information, since this seems to have everything in one place! I will also use it for information about investing, as I need to do better on this in the New Year.

Besides one ad on the left side of the page, this site is ad free. I don't see how the owner of the site is making any money, but I can tell you it is great for information and I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear some big company like Forbes bought this site in the near future, because it has way to much information to be undiscovered. I would compare this site to HowStuffWorks, except FinWeb is less cluttered and covers finances.

FinWeb's mission statement basically says it is there to help Americans understand how to improve their financial situations, and I would say it has accomplished this mission well. Check this site out, click through the links at the top and on the left of every page, and bookmark it for future reference because even if you don't need it now, you will one day I promise.

Fire Finance posted an article about ING dropping their rate again, and the best high yield online savings accounts. Their list includes the highest three accounts by interest rate and the highest three with a Bankrate rating of 4 or better.

Check it out here

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I just realized that to transfer money out of Wachovia online into a different bank there is a $3 fee. That is absurd. There is no reason for them to charge a fee for that, they are just trying to screw their customers out of money. I have news for them, I'm doing them a favor by letting them store my money, I don't have to leave it with them. And this fee isn't helping my decision to keep it there. I have several bank accounts with other banks, and there are no fees for anything on them, including transfers. I am going to contact Wachovia and issue a complaint.

If you have a Wachovia checking account, please contact them and complain about this fee. Let's try to get it taken away, because there is no reason for them to impose it on us. Until they take it away, I will continue to take money out through paypal, which is a free way to do it.

You can contact Wachovia by logging in online and clicking on customer service, then clicking to contact them and send a secure message. Hopefully if they recieve enough feedback, they will remove this fee. Please comment on your feelings about this fee and any ideas you have for getting it removed.

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I have had some issues with Wachovia in the past, but this post is going to be positive. Wachovia now has their online banking set up where you can transfer money between other banks and Wachovia. This was one of my biggest complaints before, and I'm not sure when they added this but it upgraded Wachovia in my book from unusable to usable. With that in mind, here is a list of the top 5 reasons Wachovia is a good bank to use for checking.

1. Wachovia is big. There are branches across the country from the West Coast to the East Coast. This is important because you have access to your money for free whereever you go.

2. Good online services. Free bill pay is one feature that can be really handy. Also as I mentioned earlier, you can transfer money easily between Wachovia and your other banks online. The only problem with this is there is a $3 outbound fee when you transfer money out. I think that is ridiculous. The only other thing I don't like about the online services is they charge you to download your info into Quicken.

3. Checking is free. No fees, no minimums, nothing. This is my minimum requirement for opening any type of banking account. Why should they charge me for me to let them have my money? That would be dumb.

4. Services. Wachovia is a big bank, so they offer many services. Everything from business options, loans, financial planning, insurance, investing, you name it they can help. The only thing I use is checking, so the other stuff I cannot endorse because I haven't tried it.

5. View transactions online and in monthly statements. I like to be able to go online and find out what I've spent money on and keep up with my finances, because I hate waiting until the end of the month to see everything. Wachovia makes this possible.

Wachovia is a pretty good bank with many options and it is pretty useful, although I still prefer my credit union checking account. I'm not sure why, maybe I'm just really loyal. I have to have this Wachovia though because when I leave the state I don't have access to my credit union. I would recommend Wachovia because it's good enough for free checking, is easy to transfer money between it and your high-yield savings account, and it is big so you have access to your money no matter where you go.
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Evidently the response I received in this post was wrong, because I just checked my Wachovia Checking account and the money from the promotion was deposited into my account on 10/4/07.

It shows up as 2 separate deposits, one for opening the account with $100 and the other for making a direct deposit of $100.

I haven't been that happy with Wachovia, and probably won't keep the account open, but I am going to read first and make sure that I am allowed to close the account without any fees or losing the bonus. For more on why I'm not happy with Wachovia, click here.

I guess that even though I would never use Wachovia as my primary checking account because of simply not being able to transfer money easily online, it did accomplish it's purpose of getting me $50 for free. So I should be satisfied with the results, as I now have my money.

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I believe that big banks rip people off. I get much better features from small banks than I do big ones, but the big ones generate a ton more money for themselves. I do not own a business or take out huge loans, so I cannot speak from experience on that, but coming from investing in savings accounts, cds, money markets, checking, IRA's, etc., big banks are not the best deal.

Many times smaller banks have good deals because they are trying to take customers away from big banks like Wachovia, Suntrust, BOA, etc. I'm sure that these big banks are more useful for businesses or big loans or something, but I can say from experience they are no good for personal accounts.

These banks rip you off many ways.

1. They give you a tiny interest rate, then charge a really high one on loans. I know they have to make some money, but they are making wayyyy too much.

2. Fees. It seems like these big banks have fees for everything. Especially if you have a checking account. They tell you it is free, but you have to read the fine print. Sometimes it will say something like you have to have 10,000 dollars in your savings, your house and your car financed through them, and been customer for 25 years. On the other hand, you can go to a smaller bank or credit union and just get a free no questions asked checking account. Many will even pay interest, something a big bank would never do.

3. Lack of features. I signed up for Wachovia because of the $50 promotion, but was very disappointed when I discovered that I could not easily transfer money between my online accounts at ING and Wachovia. Is it too much to ask for a bank as big as Wachovia to institute some kind of ACH transfer system?

After having Wachovia for about 3 months, I am very disappointed and will close my account as soon as I get my money for the promotion.

I recommend getting an online account such as ING or FNBO Direct. If you like to have a local brick and mortar bank you can visit, get a credit union. I am not even sure if it's worth the hassle to get a promotion at the big banks, I guess that depends on how hard up you are.

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It has been about a month and a half now since I opened up my Wachovia checking account so I could get the $50 bonus. I was wondering when this bonus was going to appear in my account, so I decided to sent them a message. In the reply they said that it doesn't show up until 60 days after the promotion ends, which is the end of the year! I think that is a little long, but I guess I should have read the fine print.

I have been getting annoyed with Wachovia because they do not have good online features, the main one being I'm not able to transfer money from other banks to them online. Maybe I've been using too many online banks, but I just expected a bank as big as Wachovia to be able to have a decent online system. I mean, my small credit union does!

Anyway, I am done with that rant now. If you are wondering what promotion that I am talking about, click here for a link to my earlier post on the promotion.

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I just received an email from my FNBO account saying that the rate is changing on September 29th from 6% to 5.05%. I am not sure yet how that stacks up against all of the others, but I do know that my ING account just lowered their rates also. This is a large step down, but I believe that FNBO will still be among the highest interest rates in the country. I plan on keeping my account their open, and only transferring money out if I find a higher one.

As I have posted before, if you do not have your money in a high-yield savings account, you are crazy. Regular banks have rates between 1 and 3%, but with the high-yield accounts you can almost double your interest earned. Why would you not want to do that? If you are interested in signing up for a ING account, you get a 25$ bonus for signing up if you ask me for a referral link and I get a 10$ bonus. So feel free to contact me and ask for an ING referral link if you are interested in signing up for that one. It doesn't have the best rate, but it is one of the better-known online banks, and some people feel more secure with that.

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So you've been home from college all summer, working a ton of hours and making lots of money, right? Well, even if all of that isn't true, hopefully you made at least a little bit of money this summer. The question is, what did you do with this money? Have you blown it all already, is it sitting in the bank, or is it in a dirty sock under your bed? Why not let it make money for you?

Instead of holding onto your money in cash or putting it in a low interest savings account, why not save it and let it work for you at the same time? With an online high yield savings account, if you invest $2,000 you can earn over $100 a year in interest. The highest interest one right now is FNBO Direct at 6% APY. It doesn't have the greatest features, but it is FDIC insured and has a great interest rate. You should use this account if you want to put your money away for a while without having immediate access to it, as it takes several days for transactions to clear. If you want a high yield account that's easier to access, check out ING. You can open an online checking account (called Electric Orange) with an APY of 4%, and with this account you can get a debit card so you can have instant access to it. ING's Orange Savings account has a higher interest rate at 4.5% APY, and you can set it up with your Electric Orange account to move money from one to the other and have instant access.

These accounts have no minimum requirements, and no annual fees. They are a great deal, and if you sign up for ING you can get a $25 referral bonus if you email me for the link to sign up through.

So why are you still holding onto your money? Get online and sign up for one of these accounts! Seriously, its free money without you doing any work. Who doesn't want that?

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When using credit, you have to be careful. If you have a tendency to just spend freely, and overspend more than you want too, then I would advise that you get a debit card that you use on every day transactions instead of a credit card.

With a debit card, you can only spend money that you have in your checking account, where a credit card you can spend up to your credit limit, which is a number that the card company decides. Many people don’t keep up with how much they spend and end up accumulating massive credit card debt. You won’t do this with a debit card. A good place to get a debit card is Wachovia, especially with their $50 bonus promotion **edit- promotion ended** going on right now.

While credit cards are not bad, they can be if you do not use them properly. Most Americans today have credit card debt, and many college students do as well. When you are in college, you have enough debt without credit card debt. You need to know when to stop spending money because you don’t have anymore, and how to save money to make it last longer. Hopefully this site will help you make your money go further and if you’re in college graduate with less debt.

Of course, the best way to avoid debt is to pay cash for everything, but I don't like to do that because I can't keep track of how much I spend. I like using a debit card because I can see online what I spend money on and how much I spend, and then I can develop a more accurate budget based on that. By analyzing how much money you spend in different areas, you can decide if you need to cut back on how much you spend on different things. Many times I will start to spend a lot of money on something, like eating out, and not even realize it. But when I see my account online, I realize that I have been eating out too much and need to cut back.

The key to using credit or even debit is to just be responsible. Keep track of how much money you spend, and do not go into debt.

Wachovia is running a promotion right now where if you open a new checking account and fund it with $100, they'll give you $25. If you direct deposit another $100 within 90 days, you get another free $25. Thus, $50 free from Wachovia.
Click here for offer
**edit-promotion is now over**

FNBO Direct, which is the online version of First National Bank of Omaha, has an offer going right now for an online savings account with 6% interest guaranteed not to change until after September 28 **rate change 10/1/07 to 5.05% APY**. Even after then it will probably have a competitive rate. The minimum deposit is only $1. You can link up to 3 banks to your account. The only downside is it takes about 3 business days for any deposits to clear, but thats not a big deal to me. This is a great account to stash money in that you don't need to use anytime soon. It would also be a good account to use as an extremely low-risk investment. Oh yeah, it's FDIC insured also. Here's the link