My lovely wife and I both opened individual ING Direct accounts before we were married. In the latest step towards consolidating our financial accounts, we’ve decided to take all of our individual accounts and work towards combining them when it made sense. We’ve left investment and retirement accounts alone but online bank accounts are perfect for combining. Our latest move was to combine those ING Direct accounts into one.

I called a CSR yesterday to discuss consolidating our accounts and learned that the process is much simpler than I imagined. You can’t consolidating two separate ING Direct login accounts but you can add a joint account holder to an existing savings or checking account. This will turn an individual savings account into a joint savings account, let’s see how easy it is.

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Costco and Capital One have joined forces to offer an InterestPlus Online Savings account that offers a fairly competitive 1.50% APY. It doesn’t appear that a Costco membership is required for this account but there is an incentive for members. If you are an Executive, you can get a $60 bonus. If you’re a Gold Star or Business member, then it’s only a $20 bonus. In terms of bonuses, these are probably the best you can expect for an online savings account but brick & mortar checking account bonuses (where you need to setup direct deposits and make bill pays) will usually pay far more (without a third party paid membership requirement).

This offer is attractive if you don’t already have an online savings account and you are already Costco member.

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Making the Most of Your Money Now by Jane Bryant Quinn is a massive 1,200 page tome of personal finance information.

The book starts with a must read introduction to Quinn and her experience with money. It goes back to her childhood days as a page at a local public library, her paycheck to paycheck lifestyle when she first started working, her first experience with stockbrokers and mutual fund mistakes, all the while picking up personal finance insights that will be expanded upon later in the book. Reading this introduction, a prologue of sorts, gives you an understanding of why Quinn is qualified to write such a book. She’s lived and learned a tremendous amount, even when the book was first released in 1991, and she’s captured it in a mere 1,200 pages.

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When we were married almost two years ago, the last thing on my mind was a little tax concept known as the marriage penalty. We were worried about whether the caterer was going to get our food right, how badly our respective best man or maid of honor were going to embarrass us, and whether the night would go off without a hitch. Looking back, it was a little silly because while there were little snags here or there, it was a wonderful night and, hopefully, everyone had a great time.

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If you were to build your personal finances from the ground up, the checking account would be the first “product” you’d pick. If you’ve ever drawn your financial network map, you’ll remember that the checking account is the spoke in your primarily hub-and-spoke layout. Your paycheck is deposited into your checking account, your savings accounts are linked to your checking account, and when it’s time to pay credit cards or the mortgage, chances are the money comes from your checking account.

So if you were to rebuild your personal finances or build it from scratch, the first step is finding a checking account that fits your needs. For me, I need a checking account to be free, have plenty of ATMs, and no minimum balance. If your bank doesn’t offer that as a minimum, I’d find one that does.

So how do you find the best free checking account?

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When you go to do your taxes this year, you will have the option to give three of your tax dollars to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. $3 isn’t deducted from your refund or added to your tax bill, $3 from your taxes is simply allocated for the fund. The money is used to in the party nominating conventions, presidential primaries, and then the general election every four years. It was created by Congress in the 1970s as a matter of campaign finance reform as candidates who accept financing have to follow certain fundraising and total spending rules. If you remember, it was a big deal when then presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama opted out of public financing.

If you want to learn more about it, I may recommend the Federal Election Committee website where you can find all sorts of campaign finance gems.

My question to you is do you check off $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund? When I first started filing my taxes, I didn’t because I erroneously thought it meant I would be personally donating $3. After I learned it wouldn’t actually cost me $3, I thought it was absurd that we would give even more money to spend on political campaigns. However, as I read more, I realized that forcing candidates to take public financing puts a cap on how much they can spend. I don’t claim to be an expert but I think that’s a good thing.

What do you think?

After my last post on drugs, vitamins and expiration dates, I received an anonymous email from someone who claims to work in the pharmaceutical industry. They wanted to share some insider knowledge on how drug and vitamin expiration dates really work. A lot of it confirms and expands on what I wrote initially but includes some first hand knowledge that corroborates what I’ve only found researching online.

So while I can’t confirm he or she works in the pharmaceutical industry, I have no reason to believe (and I think you’ll agree) what he or she says is true.

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If you have a few (dozen) hours to kill and want to learn some pretty insightful things, I have to recommend this fantastic thread on Reddit where users share all sorts of tips. There is a heavy dose of tips on how to buy electronics (warranties and how to abuse them), how to buy cars, fast food warnings (don’t get the Filet o’ Fish and always ask for unsalted or “well-done” fries to get a fresh batch), and a couple gems I’d put in the “money category.”

I spent about a good hour reading through the first few pages but now my brain is way too full of knowledge… here were a few money gems.
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Last year was a year to forget, especially if you were one of the many millions to lose their job. Fortunately, through various stimulus packages and other laws, unemployment benefits were extended to help people through a difficult time. Unfortunately, some of those unemployment benefits are taxable as income.

Fortunately, for the 2009 tax year, not every dollar is taxed. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits tax-free. After that, the remaining benefits is considered taxable income.

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We are led to believe that the best place to invest our money is in the stock market. Low barriers to entry, low barriers to exist, plenty of information, high probability of success in the long run and a lot of success stories. We also hear some of the horror stories of people who day traded tech stocks in the early 2000s, gamblers who lost it all on penny stocks, and all the chop shop, pump and dumpers like in the movie Boiler Room. However, through it all, we’ve been taught, over and over again, that if you buy for the long term, you will always win.

For today’s Devil’s Advocate post, we’re going to break down the stock market and show why we really are just little guppies hoping not to get eaten by the sharks.

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