Mazda’s starting up their Zoom-Zoom Live! promotion again where they let you drive their cars on their tracks and give you points based on your time trial results, points that are worth “prizes.” There are four challenges: Performance Challenge, Matched Time Gymkhana, School of Zoom, and Jinba Ittai Experience; where you can earn a maximum of 50 points for meeting the time and even 5 points just for trying.

The locations for Zoom-Zoom Live are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Miami, Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. Check out the site for the dates, I’ll try to be at the Washington D.C. site, Fedex Field, between Nov. 12-13. They also give away all sorts of goodies on site as well just for showing up. Signup, my friends went last year and said it was awesome.

Last year there was a $30 charge, this year it appears to be free.

Over dinner last night the topic of what the best return on investment renovations were and I went with the generally accepted addition of a full bathroom as the highest return. After scouring the internet, I found this great site that listed their opinions - I’m inclined to believe, if not the absolute numbers, that their relative place on the list is probably accurate. Tops is the addition of a full 2nd bathroom, average cost of $12k, and a payback of 100%. The worse is to finish the basement, which my friend correctly identified, at a cost of approximately $8k and an average 15% return.

(read full article…)

I saw an article today on CNNMoney called the top things homebuyers need to know and I don’t think they tell you enough on some very key and critical points. For example, they give the advice that you should clean up your credit because it’s important in the lending process (it, among other things, determines your interest rate) but it misses a key fact: You shouldn’t be trying to improve your score, you are merely checking for errors and inaccuracies. You can’t improve your score significantly in a month or two, the equation just doesn’t work that way, so don’t look for a magic bullet but do check for errors which can improve your score since the errors should be investigated and removed within thirty days. There are more…

(read full article…)

Internet is expensive. Comcast will give you a promotional rate of $20/month for their High Speed Internet for six months and then jack up the price to an uncomfortable $45/month until the end of time. While $45 isn’t really that much, you want to cut down on costs whenever you can, especially with enormous mortgage payments looming every month. It’s also a lot when you consider, of the 168 hours in a week, at a bare minimum 45 are spent at work (or traveling), probably 56 is spent sleeping (8 hour nights may be optimistic) , leaving 72 possible hours. If I spent half of my waking, non-working time glued to the internet… that’s $1.25 an hour (not that expensive right?). Or I could use free internet…

(read full article…)

Before I bought a house I was very very concerned about my credit score so I didn’t take advantage of free money offers from credit cards. Every time you apply for a card the issuing bank pulls your credit and a lot of inquiries negatively impact your score. Now that I own a home, don’t anticipate any other large purchases, I’m going to get back into the free money game.

(read full article…)

I bet most of you know that ING doesn’t have the best interest rate, but did you know that there are five other banks that match or exceed ING’s piddly 3.15%? Current top dog is Presidential Savings with a 3.75% APY with their Checking account in second with a 3.5% APY (Emigrant Direct tied for second with a savings of 3.5%). The best list of updated interest rates I know of is Flexo’s at Consumerism Commentary, he keeps that list as up to date as possible and it contains other useful information, such as Quicken and MS Money accessibility.

My personal experience with online banks is limited to ING and Emigrant Direct, I discussed both as emergency fund safe houses a while back and an alternative to Certificates of Deposit. Personally, I go with the higher interest rate but ING is the better known name and has a much prettier interface. Emigrant is very austere which lead many to think it’s not reliable, which I believe is a mistake. A deposit into Emigrant Direct takes approximately five business days to clear while a withdrawal takes a mere two days (I withdrew at 1am once, it cleared within 48 hours). With ING, a deposit takes five days to clear and a withdrawal takes anywhere from two to three days.

ING can offer a lower interest rate because it already has a sizable customer base; it no longer uses that interest rate as a hook. It will be quite some time before ING catches up to Emigrant, if that ever happens. For those of you thinking ING will match Emigrant, I suggest you make the switch to Emigrant because that’s a race ING won’t win unless a major shift in market share occurs.

ING Direct has a referral program, if you are interested in picking up $25 (I get $10) for opening an account, drop me an email.

Ha! Just kidding. Unless it’s a dire emergency, no one should consider touching that 401(k) because it’s tantamount to robbing your future self… and your future self would be pissed. So why did 45% of a 200k polled by Hewitt Associates opt to take the cash after leaving work? Perhaps it’s because they don’t know the ramifications (it’s taxed as income and then you’re nicked for a 10% penalty!) of their actions? If you look at the dollar amounts it’s even more staggering: if you’re 401(k) value is under $10,000, that little devil telling you to raid is three times fatter than the angel! (72.5% take it out).

(read full article…)