Two weeks ago, I applied for an account at Ally Bank, the new rebranded name for GMAC Bank. Their rates have fallen in recent weeks but are still competitive, so I wanted to open an account to take advantage of certificate of deposit rates while they were still strong.

Ally claims the account opening process takes only 10 minutes, which, after my experience, is probably accurate if you don’t run into any problems (more on that later). It’s also important that you have all the information present, including but not limited to your social security number, your driver’s license, and any banking information for the accounts you want to link to your Ally account (ABA routing number, name, account numbers, etc.) It’s all fairly standard stuff.

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In mid-May, GMAC Bank changed its name to Ally Bank. With General Motors in the news every day for something negative, it’s hard to do business when everyone thinks you’re about to go out of business. The funny thing about it all is that GMAC Bank’s parent company, GMAC Financial, hasn’t been a part of General Motors for several years. When you have financial companies in distress and auto companies in distress, a bank that people think is inextricably linked to auto company is in some deep trouble.

So, they changed their name.

But are they a good bank to do business with? Let’s find out.

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Matt Bell is a personal finance writer in Chicago who ran into financial difficulties early on in his adult life and, in turning it around, used his experiences and knowledge to try to help others who may have gotten themselves in a similar situation. His professional career began as a radio journalist, having been featured on NPR, and Money Strategies for Tough Times is his second book, his first being Money, Purpose, Joy.

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When it comes to financial activity, I try to do as much as I can online because it’s much more convenient than driving to a branch. With that convenience comes a risk, with more financial transactions being conducted online, more thieves are looking to the internet for their next scheme. My biggest concern isn’t that I’ll click on a spam phishing email, but that I visit some compromised site that installs spyware onto my computer. If they manage to install spyware on my site, they can collect all my financial information and rob me blind. Fortunately, this hasn’t happened yet, but one can never be so sure.

When Ben from F-Secure contacted me about taking a look at their internet security product, I was a little hesitant. I recognize the company name but they don’t have the brand name that a company like Symantec has (they own the Norton brand). However, I told him I’d check out the software because internet security is very important and, well, it’s an opportunity to find out more about them. So they sent me a copy of their F-Secure Internet Security 2009 package to check out. (and several to give away to you all!)

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Earlier this week I gave away three copies of Wise Bread’s new book – 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget, while promising a review later in the week.

Like Wise Bread, this book is colorful, approachable, and while I haven’t confirmed the actual number of tips, 10,001 doesn’t seem that far off. The two main sections of the book are Frugality and Personal Finance, with a staggering 196 pages devoted to Frugality alone. If you’re going to live large on a small budget, frugality is going to have to be a regular part of your vocabulary!

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Until I saw this book, I had no idea who John C. Maxwell was and why he was qualified to write a book on how successful people think. Maxwell is a “leadership expert” and a New York Times bestselling author who has sold over 16 million books. He’s also a speaker, having spoken to Fortune 500 companies, government leaders, NFL, UN ambassadors, and many other groups. At first I thought his website was making a case of why Maxwell was a leadership expert, but in the case of this book, How Successful People Think, it merely explains why Maxwell is qualified to write this book. He knows how successful people think because he’s talked with, worked with, and interacted with plenty of successful people.

I was very surprised with out action oriented this book was. I don’t real many personal improvement books for Bargaineering but this one has many qualities I like in a book – it’s short, action oriented, and easy to understand. At about 115 small pages (the book is 6″ tall by 4.5″ wide), the book is not long at all. It’s action oriented in that he establishes a framework for both “how to think” and “how to get yourself to follow his framework of how to think!” Finally, to illustrate what I mean about easy to understand, here’s what he says about how you can become a better thinker.

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It looks like the Complete Idiot’s Guide franchise has expanded into the personal finance world with their latest offering, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Out of Debt by Ken Clark. I normally associate their books with specific products, like how to use Quicken or how to get the most out of TurboTax, but this one talks about the steps you need to take to put your personal finances back on track and get yourself out of debt.

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Have you ever heard of Getting Things Done? When I brought it up to my wife, she thought I was just making a sarcastic comment (not uncommon ) but it’s a national bestselling book by David Allen about a personal productivity system.

It’s been lauded by practically everyone who has integrated it into their lives. When so many people proclaim its brilliance, you’d be a fool not to take a look at it right? Well, I was such a fool until recently. The system is as good as people claim and it’s surprisingly not very different, at least in its core principles, as what I believe, which makes it easy to integrate and easy to adopt. I now feel stupid for not reading about this earlier!

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If you want to learn how to effectively build your brand, something you’ll need and take with you regardless of who you work for, then you need to get Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel because it’ll teach you all the techniques and tools you’ll need to master. One of the most important lessons I learned in becoming a full-time blogger was the importance of building a brand. Bargaineering has grown, mostly by accident, to one of the top personal finance blogs over the last four years. I’ve learned to use tools like videocasts, forums, Twitter, and internet radio to build up the Bargaineering brand and I’ve been blessed that people like you find value in what I write and speak about and continue to read and visit the site every day.

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This is a book review of Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich and I am friends with Ramit, so please keep that bias in mind. I also contributed to the book in an “Advice from the Blogosphere” piece at the end of Chapter Four. I don’t have a financial interest in the book doing well but I like seeing a fellow personal finance blogger do well.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi is a six week program that will set you up for financial success. If you have six weeks, you have enough time to establish a financial foundation that will yield benefits for decades. In fact, you won’t need six full weeks, you’ll just need a little bit of time each week to lay one brick in the foundation. When I graduated college, I had very little personal finance knowledge. It was only through years of reading, writing, and reading some more did I finally learn much of what Ramit has distilled into a 250-page book.

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