Remember Book It? I used to love that program… free personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut just for reading. I used to read Encyclopedia Brown and Hardy Boys and all those books for free. When I learned I could get free pizza for reading… it was like Christmas in June. It was incredible.

Well, it’s almost summer and TD Bank is once again offering a summer reading promotion in which customers with a Young Saver account (kids) can get $10 if they read 10 books. All you need to do is have your child read ten books, fill out the summer reading form, and take it to the bank. They’ll get $10 deposited into their account and the fun of reading ten books.

If you aren’t a TD Bank customer, this isn’t that great of a promotion if you’re promotion hunting. Most banks offer closer to $100 for you to join them, though their promotions aren’t as easy to fulfill as this one. They usually require direct deposits and minimum balances.

If you are already a TD Bank customer, and your kids don’t have a savings account, this isn’t a bad time to consider introducing them to saving. And reading.

$10 will be deposited into a new or existing Young Saver account. One coupon per Customer during the promotional period. Cannot be combined with any other offers. Valid May 5, 2012, through September 29, 2012. Must be 18 years of age or younger to participate. Bring form of ID for child for new account opening.

As we mentioned a while back, we’re buying a home and it’s a very exciting time for us. It wasn’t always so exciting though and if you’ve ever looked for a home, you’ll agree. The actual task of finding a house you like can take a very long time and there are no guarantees you’ll ever find one you like. I’ve heard horror stories, they were horror stories to me anyway, about people having to look at a hundred homes before they found one they liked… only to lose out on it because their offer wasn’t good enough.

A hundred houses. If you spend a minimum of half an hour inside, that’s still 50 hours. That’s more than a standard work week. Add in travel time and you’re probably pushing 80 hours. Two solid weeks. It’s incredible.

Here’s the secret… it’s up to you to be efficient.

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Insider trading has been going on ever since the stock market existed. Everyone is looking for an edge and no one is willing to play fair. Martha Stewart did it and was treated to several months in one of our nation’s fine institutions. Raj Rajaratnam did it and was sentenced to 11 years in prison and penalties of over $150 million. Heck, someone you know has probably done it.

Some are brazen about it, others are a little more secretive. I first realized how prevalent it was when I read Trading with the Enemy, an anecdotal book written by Nicholas Maier as he worked at Jim Cramer’s hedge fund. The story that struck me most was how they’d get news stories before they hit print and used it to their advantage. It’s not necessarily insider knowledge about a company but getting it a few minutes before the rest of the world, even if it was a third party, is a big advantage.

So, as for insider trading, if you want to learn how to do it, this is what you need to do to get away with it.

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Yesterday, Miranda wrote a post that talked about how marketers are using zip codes to reach new customers. It made me think about the research we’ve done when looking at real estate investments (we dabble a little here and there). One interesting tool I wanted to share with you is ZipSkinny. You give it a zip code and it gives you a ton of demographic data including race, age, gender, but it also includes social and economic indicators. It’s all taken from the 2000 Census, so it’s a little dated but still works quite well I think.

This is probably a light version of what marketers use but probably not that different. 49.3% are in the same home for 5+ years. 28.9% never married, 55% are married, and 9.3% are divorced. You have household income breakdown, occupation (in some broad categories), and even unemployment and poverty. It’s amazing what is available on census alone.

I had two questions – have you ever researched data like this and does it bother you that marketers are using it?

(Credit: Eric Fischer)

Statistics are tricky whenever people try to guess their underlying cause but it doesn’t make it less fun. A recent Gallup poll results showed stock market investment by U.S. adults is at its lowest percentage since Gallup has started asking (1998). It’s been on a steady decline since 2007 (65%) and this year it stands at 52%.

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We haven’t covered it much on Bargaineering (you might have guessed given the increased interest in credit scores), but we’re buying a new home. We submitted an offer a little while ago and after a little back and forth, it was accepted. We’re buying a house about ten minutes south of where we live now and while we aren’t excited about packing up and moving, we are really excited about the home itself.

Bargaineering was around when we bought our first house and we chronicled the entire process. A lot of it is mundane, downright boring if you’ve already done this yourself, but at the time it was all new to us. Getting pre-approval, while much easier then, hasn’t changed much except for how much paperwork you need to submit. Back then you typed a few numbers on a form and you were in! That’s why I didn’t write much about the process this time around – it wasn’t that much different and it wasn’t a completely new experience for us.

That said, in the last eight years, some things have changed…

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I was watching CNN’s list of the big-name college commencement speakers and saw that there were a few names on that list I’d love to see. Bill Cosby is delivering the commencement speech at the University of Baltimore on May 21st. President Obama is speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis on May 24th. And Cal Ripken Jr. is speaking to the graduates of the University of Maryland on May 19th. All within fifteen minute driving distance, these all hold great promise. While they may not not be as powerful as Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2008 or The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch from my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, they all have the promise of being entertaining.

There’s just one problem… I’m not graduating from any of those schools. So how do I get in?

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Back when I worked as a consultant in the defense industry, I was expected to wear a suit every single day into work. I was fortunate in that I had just made a trip to China and came back with five suits (at around $80 a piece – they were very nice quality too) so I was well equipped to wear one every single day. (I would later learn that you just left a jacket behind your door and only wore a full suit to meet with clients) Even with five suits, I wanted to make sure I maintained them properly so that I could get the most out of them. While they were under $80 a piece, a great price for a great suit (that’s what happens when you go straight to the tailor), I knew they were worth two or three times that and wanted to treat them that way.

So I read up on how to maintain a suit and was surprised how simple it was.

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