- - Page 3 of 5 The Finance Gourmet

Best Online Bank Rates

January 21, 2021December 11, 2020 by Finance Gourmet

OK, I get asked all the time about where to get the best rates for a savings account. First off, check your current bank’s offerings for a money market account, which often pays higher interest than a savings account. Money market accounts pay better rates in exchange for restrictions that should be very easy for you to meet. (You can check here for information about kids savings accounts.) With the low interest rates out there today, getting a high interest rate isn’t easy. Even the best high interest account won’t pay more than 1%, unless they limit how much money earns the higher rate. Remember, a higher interest rate won’t mean much for a small amount of savings. The difference in actual dollars between 1% and 1.5% on something like $500 is just $5 per year. That isn’t worth it if it means you end up with even one overdraft charge. Keep a cushion of savings in your local account so you instantly transfer money to your checking account if you need it. The Online Banks Next, if you are purely interested in rates, then online banks are the way to go. There is a catch, but it isn’t what …

Round Up Savings Plans

August 30, 2021January 23, 2020 by Finance Gourmet

Savings is really easy. You just spend less than you have, and voila! Savings! If you don’t want to save, then round up savings plans might be for you. Of course, talking about it, and doing it, are two different things. Recently, there have been several new products that offer to help make your savings easier. There are good reasons for this. Automatically saving money without you having to do anything is one of the most successful ways to save money. Some people have been using the IRS to do automatic savings for years. The idea is simple. You give your employer a W-4 Form with less deductions on it than you actually have, and they take more money out of your paycheck than necessary. Since the money comes out before you get it, you never have a chance to spend it, or even miss it. After a year, all of that extra money has built up into a sizable amount that you get back as a tax refund when you file your taxes. The disadvantages to this method, are also its advantages. Changing your W4 is often difficult making adjusting your savings troublesome and time consuming. Of course, this …

Bank Merger Signals New Phase of Economy

February 7, 2019 by Finance Gourmet

OK, here we go. The first big bank merger (or acquisition) since 2008 was announced today. It is significant for several reasons. Banks Are Back? As the financial industry imploded in 2008, it took the banks with them. It also exposed a lot of their shadier practices and brought out new regulations and reporting requirements. As a result, banks were in no way ready for the kind of scrutiny markets, investors, and regulators would perform if they tried to merge or acquire one another. Today, two semi-major banks are merging to become one of the big boys. BB&T and SunTrust are merging. They are going to pick a new name, though they apparently don’t know what it is. Wall Street seems to approve of the deal. Bigger Banks Better? One of the reasons given for the merger is that being a bigger bank is better. The idea is that some of the costs associated with being a modern bank make being smaller less viable. That isn’t entirely true. A small bank, serving one, or a few, states is still a completely profitable and worthwhile venture. Where banks are getting stuck is that area between small, and big. There, it can …

The Purpose of High Credit Card Limits

May 8, 2018 by Finance Gourmet

I’ve always wondered what the purpose of a $30,000 credit limit was. I get what the purpose is for the credit card company. They want you to spend more money and keep a balance on your card, but what would the purpose be for a responsible credit user, specifically one that pays the balance off every month. Using Your Credit Card for Everything If you don’t have the ability or the discipline to pay your card every month, then DO NOT use them in this way. But, for me, I use a Capital One Rewards Card as my primary means of spending. I get Capital One rewards points at the rate of 2 for every one dollar spent, or basically it works out to 2% cash back when I use the Purchase Eraser to wipe out travel spending from my card. (We travel a fair amount, it lets you look back 90 days, and it turns out some odd things like Uber rides, or Car2Go rentals end up getting coded as travel on your Capital One Statement.) At any time, I have a log of virtually everything I have purchased in a given month, going back 24 months. I print …

Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Review

February 2, 2017February 1, 2017 by Finance Gourmet

The folks at Barclay Card are nothing if not persistent. A buddy of mine is overseas. I picked up his mail, and there are at least a dozen Barclaycard MasterCard mailers in here. It got me wondering, is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard good or is the Barclaycard MasterCard a waste of money? Without further ado, here is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard review. Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Reviews The Barclayscard MasterCard rewards card is issued by Barclays Bank Delaware. Barclays Bank Deleware was originally Juniper Bank, but was bought by big British bank Barclays in 2004. There is no actual bank, it only issues credit cards in the U.S. In addition to the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard, the bank issues co-branded cards, such as an American Airlines credit card, the JetBlue credit card, and a Priceline.com rewards card. As always, different customers can get different terms and conditions for the same cards, but in this case, it looks the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard is setup as a points rewards credit card. For every $1 you spend on gas, utility, and grocery stores, you earn 2 point. Note, that Target and Walmart are specifically excluded as grocery stores for the purposes of 2x points. Then, …

2017 Finances and Money Issues

January 3, 2017 by Finance Gourmet

Welcome to 2017! Relax. Take a deep breath. There. Feel better? Good. Then let’s jump in. Finances Updated in 2017 With a new year, come some new numbers. There will be updates to the maximum 401k contributions, income limits for Roth IRAs, and others. Plus, there will be adjustments to the 2017 income tax brackets, the 2017 standard tax deduction, and more. And, of course, there is a new IRS mileage rate for 2017 as well. What about 529 plans? There aren’t a lot of updates to those numbers each year, primarily because most facets of 529 college savings plans are administered through the states, who aren’t always as keen on changing and updating everything. You’ll want to re-evaluate your financial plan for the new year, and you’ll want to review how your financial plan did in 2016. Plus, you’ll want to rebalance your portfolio, if you didn’t do it at the end of 2016. Retirement Plans 2017 A big part of most retirement plans are tax-advantaged savings accounts like your 401k plan, IRA accounts, and, for some of you, 457 plans, 403(b) plans, and various differed compensation plans. All of those need adjusted and reviewed for 2017 as well. …

Keep the Change Automatic Savings Program Review

May 13, 2016 by Finance Gourmet

As a former Certified Financial Planner, I can tell you that from a financial advisor standpoint, nothing is better than automatic. Automatic savings, automatic investing, automatic 401k, automatic bill pay, are all great ways to improve your personal finances. It seems like the financial industry agrees. One such automatic savings program comes from Bank of America and is called Keep the Change Savings Program. It works similarly to the Acorns automatic savings and investing app, but with a few small differences. Automatic Savings By Rounding Up Purchases There are a lot of ways to save automatically, including just setting up an automatic transfer to a savings account. However, some people are reluctant to commit to doing so. Ironically, these same people might sometimes be willing to save an equivalent amount of money if it can somehow be seen to be painless. The psychology of money is a powerful thing. Enter Keep the Change from Bank of America. Instead of setting up a specific amount to save each money, the Keep the Change program lets you by rounding up your purchases made on the debit card and then transferring the money to your savings account automatically. So, if you buy lunch …

Are Oil Loans the New Subprime Mortgages

April 12, 2016 by Finance Gourmet

Remember when banks got too greedy with subprime mortgages? Remember when banks (and their executives) just couldn’t say no to the massive earnings (and by extension massive bonuses) that came from building bigger and riskier portfolios of subprime loans? Well, get ready for oil loans. Oil Loans and Bank Risk If you think Wall Street and the big banks learned their lesson from the subprime loan driven banking crisis, you really don’t understand how compensation works in the financial industry. You see, bonuses are paid based on big gains. This encourages risk taking. However, there is no downside for being wrong on those big risks, not even losing some of the bonus you earned earlier in the year. As a result, risk is the name of the game at Wall Street’s big banks. This time, banks rushed to lend money to companies in the oil industry when prices where high. In addition, they extended very generous lines of credit to those same companies on pretty sweet terms. Just like with the subprime mortgage crisis, as long as oil prices didn’t fall too far, too fast, everything would be fine. Deja vu. With oil prices at low levels, and any oil …

What Does Credit Card Fraud Look Like?

March 31, 2016 by Finance Gourmet

You can do all the right things, and you will still probably, eventually, be a victim of some sort of credit card fraud. Sometimes, a person you give your card to willingly will somehow steal the information. You may lose a card, or someone may compromise your credit card another way. Or, like me, maybe a merchant will be compromised and your credit card company will call you, telling you that your card needs to be canceled. Credit Card Fraud Detection I have a Capital One Rewards card, among others. I like using it because the points seem to add up pretty fast, and I can always use them instantly just by logging in and using them to “erase” a travel purchase instead of having to get a Capital One Rewards catalog and pick some sort of reward out of it. Another reason I like it is that they seem to have pretty aggressive fraud protection. This annoys some people because it always seems to kick in when you are on vacation and their computers notice that you are buying a lot of stuff in Chicago all of the sudden when you live in Dallas. Recently, however, all that happens is …

What Is Middle Class?

January 20, 2016 by Finance Gourmet

Who is middle class in America, and why does it matter? Middle Class Politics One favorite political maneuver is to come out in favor of the middle class. There are a lot of reasons for this. First, and foremost is that numerous studies have shown that no matter how much money they actually make, most Americans think that they are middle class. Thus, when a politician says they care about the middle class, most people make the assumption that the politician is talking about them. On a secondary level, the value in favoring the middle class, is that there is a deeply American assumption that the middle class is where you will find the normal, hard-working American people. Those who are wealthy, can be assumed to be either exceptionally lucky, exceptionally hard working, or exceptionally smart, depending on who you ask. Realistically, it is all three. One need only look at the number of seemingly less than intelligent, or motivated, celebutaunt children who just luckily have wealthy parents, compared to the rags to riches stories of various immigrants or sons and daughters who were born into poverty. Whereas, the poor are the exceptionally unlucky, unhard working, or unintelligent. The fact that …