Everyone knows about the cheap Costco gas and the wonderful Costco return policy (though on electronics it has certainly lost some of its teeth), but there are a lot of lesser known perks that members should try to take advantage of. Here are just five of them.

Sharebuilder New Account Promotion

Sharebuilder, recently acquired by ING Direct, is a popular dollar cost averaging brokerage. All members can get a $55 account bonus when they open a new account and make one purchase through a special Costco Sharebuilder landing page. Less valuable is the quarterly rebate on automatic transaction fees - Executive Members are eligible for a 25% quarterly rebate while Goldstar and Business members are eligible for a 10% rebate. There are some other terms and conditions that you’ll need to review if you’re seriously considering signing up for their automatic investing program.

Periodically Costco will spotlight a “Service of the Month” and when they choose Sharebuilder, it often comes with some nice perk like a cash card or something like that.

It’s a nice promotion because the $55 beats the typical $50 Sharebuilder promotions that run all the time.

Capital One Direct Banking Member Bonus

There’s another signup bonus available for members and this time it’s with Capital One Direct Banking. Executive members get $60 and Gold Star/Business members get $20 when they open an account and deposit $5,000 within 30 days. Their online savings account is yielding a solid 3.66% APY on balances over $5,000 too, which is a nice bonus. If you’re looking to lock in a CD, they have an 18 month CD at 4.46% APY and a 7-year CD offering 5.55% APY. The online savings rate is certainly one of the better high yield savings account rates and the CD rate is also among the best CD rates.

The eagle eye’d may notice that Costco members also get higher yields on both products. The standard online savings account rate only gets as high as 3.55% APY (and that’s if you have a daily balance above $10,000) while the standard 18-month CD rate is 4.41% APY. It’s important that you let them know you’re Costco members if you decide to bank with them!

Car-Buying Service

I’ve read stories about people having a good experience using Costco’s car buying service. I don’t know how it differs from ones I’ve seen offered at credit unions though I imagine they are similar. The website claims no haggle pricing with “special manufacturer rebates & incentives.”

I chose a 2009 Honda Civic Sedan and it listed a 5 Speed Manual DX for $15,405. I looked on Cars.com and the lowest list price they had on that vehicle was $16,825 - a difference of over $1400. I didn’t compare all the features but that’s looking pretty solid just to start. If you’re a Costco member and looking for a car, you definitely want to check out the car buying service.

Bank Checks

Costco also offers check printing services that are pretty competitively priced versus some of those mailers (and you have the confidence you’re working with someone vetted by Costco). 2 boxes (400 checks) of their singles costs $10.59 ($8.47 if you’re an executive member) plus shipping. The same thing costs $13.92 at Wal-Mart, so you save a few dollars.

I personally try to limit the number of personal checks I use because they’re one of the most insecure methods of payment available. All the information someone needs to steal your identity is available on those checks - your name, your address, your bank, your bank’s ABA routing number, your account number, and even your check number (if you ever wondered why sometimes checks start with 1001 or 501 rather than 1, that’s a “security feature”). But, if you like checks, Costco can get them for you cheaper.

Photo Printing

The fact that you can print photos at Costco is nothing special. What’s nice is that you can orders prints and pick up photos up to 12×18 in size within an hour at your local Costco, while paying Costco prices. Their prices won’t knock your socks off when you compare them with online photo printers but they easily beat any other photo printers you know of. Here are their prices as of today:

* mail order only

What’s your favorite Costco perk?

(Photo: greenwenvy)

If you visit the E*Trade homepage, you’ll see a big yellow star that names E*Trade the #1 premium broker of 2007 by Smart Money magazine and “Best of the Breed” in Money Magazine in August 2007. If you visit the Scottrade homepage, you see a blurb about a J.D. Power and Associates Award for “Highest in Investor Satisfaction with Online Services” award. And if you visit Zecco homepage, they don’t have any awards posted. Does that mean E*Trade is better than Scottrade and Scottrade is better than Zecco? Maybe, maybe not! So I wanted to match up all the awards and ratings and come up with my own ranking of the best online discount broker.

The List: I started with all the Premium and Discount brokers from Smart Money 2007 Brokerage Ratings page and then removed anyone with commissions greater than $10. That left me with E*Trade, Banc of America, TD Ameritrade, WellsTrade, Scottrade, Firstrade, WallStreet*E, SogoInvest, TradeKing and then I added Zecco, simply because they offer $0 trades, and Sharebuilder, because they offer a unique discount purchasing program. I removed Banc of America, WellsTrade, and TD Ameritrade because they’re affiliated with larger banks, I wanted standalone brokers.

Best Discount Broker: TradeKing

TradeKing is running a $50 promotion this month where you can get $50 for opening a new TradeKing account, depositing at least $2500, and making one trade.

TradeKing was named #1 Discount Broker by Smart Money magazine in 2006 and 2007. Barron’s gave it four stars in its rating system. At $4.95 a trade plus a very competitive money market sweep account and low options fees ($4.95 a trade and 65 cents a contract), there are good reasons to list TradeKing first. When it comes to discount brokers, TradeKing appears to be the one with both cheap prices and enough performance clout (see the awards) to give me confidence that the low prices don’t mean poor service.

E*Trade

E*Trade, one of the priciest of the online discount brokers, with a $9.99 trade commission, has won several awards in its own right. #1 premium broker of 2007 by Smart Money magazine and “Best of the Breed” in Money Magazine in August 2007. One startling ranking was one for Kiplinger’s in 2006, where E*Trade was rated 9th (the only other online discount broker on the list was Firstrade at #4 - #1 was optionsXpress but their trades cost $14.95).

Scottrade

Scottrade was rated the highest in investor satisfaction by JD Power & Associates and beat out all other comers on the list, including E*Trade and TD Ameritrade, which is amazing considering trades cost a mere $7. While the scoring for this was for satisfaction and not scope of offering (though it does include information resources and trade execution), which many other awards are based on, it still speaks volumes about the happiness of Scottrade customers.

SogoTrade

SogoTrade, once known as SogoInvest, is as bare bones as you can get, running the caboose of the discount broker train according to Smart Money magazine. To be honest, you can’t expect much at $3 a trade and you don’t get more than the ability to trade. I looked for awards but there were none to be found.

Zecco

If SogoInvest is the caboose, where does that leave Zecco and it’s zero cost commissions? Not a single award to go on, Zecco does offer ten free trades a month if you have a balance over $2,500 but they score last in customer service. While the free trades offer is nice, is it really worth that much? Hardcore traders complain that ten isn’t enough. Novice traders shouldn’t be trading ten times a month. With no name recognition and little to offer, I’d skip them.

Sharebuilder

Sharebuilder isn’t really a discount broker in the traditional sense because you pay $4 a trade but it has to be done on a schedule, meaning the following Tuesday. So in a sense you can buy stock at a cheap price but you have less control over it. Sharebuilder was recently acquired by ING Direct and they’re also, currently, the only broker to offer promotion codes for free money.

The Awards Sites

Below are links to the award pages I could find:

Update: Smart Money just released the results of their 2008 Brokerage Ratings.

Smart Money 2007 Brokerage Ratings - The rankings from 2007 listed TradeKing as the number one discount broker, their second in a row. The full ratings, in order from best to worst, were Scottrade, Firstrade, OptionsXpress, Muriel Siebert, WallStreet*E, SogoInvest.

2006 Kiplingers Ratings - For a $50,000 account, the rankings were: optionsXpress, Muriel Siebert, Wells Fargo, Firstrade, Fidelity, Vanguard, TradeKing, Schwab, E*Trade, Scottrade, and TD Ameritrade.

For JD Power & Associates, I invite you to search on their site.

Need to absolutely reach your brokerage right now? Here’s a handy resources of all the brokerages I am aware of, their phone numbers, hours of operation, and a link to the brokerage’s contact page. On that page you’ll usually find a Fax number, overnight mail address, regular mail address, email addresses, and sometimes even an online chat. In many cases, there are multiple telephone numbers listed, I chose the one for existing brokerage clients (if that’s not what you need, just hit up the link and you’ll find the whole list).

Did I miss your brokerage? Let me know and I’ll add their phone number.

Nashawn recently asked on my post about opening a Roth IRA right this minute for some advice as to how she should invest $500 with a Roth IRA. She’s looked at Vanguard’s mutual fund accounts and ran into the minimum balance requirement for each of the funds. At Vanguard, the STAR Fund has the lowest minimum balance with $1,000 - a good $500 more than what Nashawn has at the moment. If I were her, this is what I’d do…

Wait Until April 15th Next Year
You have until tax day next year to contribute to your Roth IRA this year. That is, you have until April 15th, 2008 to contribute to your Roth IRA for 2007, giving our heroine a good nine months to try to get her balance up to $1,000. This is predicated on the fact that you are sold on Vanguard’s mutual fund accounts.

Consider Another Brokerage
You don’t have to go with Vanguard and you don’t even have to go with their mutual fund account, with a regular brokerage account your account balance minimums are lower than $3,000. TradeKing, Sharebuilder and Zecco are atypical brokerages that don’t have account minimums and both are known for their cheap/free trades. That’s crucial for a balance of $500. TradeKing has no custodial fee but Zecco charges $30/yr and Sharebuilder charges $25.

When it comes to the bigger brokerages, your pickings get slimmer. Fidelity will waive their minimum of $2,500 if you can commit to a $200/month contribution (Fidelity has no annual fee). If you can commit to that, you might as well wait a few months and go with Vanguard (if you wanted).

Summary: If you’re sold on Vanguard and can wait, wait; otherwise there are plenty of other options out there whether you want a discount brokerage like TradeKing or a more traditional name like Fidelity, just keep an eye out.

If you know of any brokerages with low account minimums and low annual fees for Roth IRAs, please share!

I plucked another code from my list of Sharebuilder promotion codes today and signed up for my second account at Sharebuilder. I’ve discovered that the codes are not restricted to new account sign ups so you can sign up multiple times with different codes to get the free money (I know only because I just did it).

Signing up for the second time was even easier than the first time since they already have your information. The only new information you’ll have to provide is banking ABA and account numbers if you plan on funding the new account with a bank account.

My list of promotional codes has 8 different codes on the page worth $290 plus a subscription to Money magazine. Since you’ll need to make one trade, that’s minus $40 in transaction fees if you don’t opt in to the trial subscription and $0 if you do. (The fees are $4 per schedule buy, $16 to sell but you won’t be selling for 40 years!)

Folks are having problems reaching the other page so I’ve reproduced the list of codes:

Thinking about investing in some securities? Well you’re going to need a brokerage account. While it’s hard to compare the qualitative differences between each brokerage, it’s easy to compare one of the big quantitative differences - fee schedules. So, below I’ll compare the fee schedules of each of the major brokerages in easy to understand language and hopefully it’ll make your decision just that much easier. In the discussion below, I only talk about online trades - no phone or in person (broker-assisted) transactions.

TradeKing - Two time winner (2007 and 2006) if Smart Money’s best discount brokerage award, TradeKing leads the pack with its $4.95/trade commission schedule. I have yet to hear any bad things about this brokerage.

TD Ameritrade - TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade recently combined to form TD Ameritrade and they lowered many of their fees. Market and limit orders are $9.99 regardless of your trading frequency. I use TD Ameritrade for my Roth IRA because they have the lowest fees of the brokerages I looked at (at the time).

ETrade - ETrade recently acquired BrownCo, which had $5 real time trades, and they have a tiered fee schedule. If you have less than $50k and trade fewer than 29 times a quarter, it’s $12.99 each. If you make over 1500 trades (wow), it’s only $6.99 each.

Vanguard - Known for the performance of their mutual funds, Vanguard has pretty hefty fees. An online trade costs a whopping $25, or 0.025 per share (whichever is greater). My Roth IRA used to be at Vanguard but I felt the interface was a little too dated (slow, clunky), they may have since improved it (they’ve overhauled their website). My SEP-IRA is here because I can invest in Vanguard funds.

Fidelity - Also known for their mutual funds, second only to perhaps Vanguard, Fidelity has $19.99 trades in a tiered schedule as well.

ShareBuilder - Sharebuilder is a little different than the other brokerage houses, the idea with them is that you’re constantly investing small amounts, dollar cost averaging, in various securities. It’s $4 if you schedule your purchases (always onto a Tuesday) and it’s $15.95 if you want real time trading (all sales are real time). Limit orders are $19.95. I would not recommend ShareBuilder for anything other than for a long term investment plan in which you want to dollar cost average your positions. Also, ShareBuilder has been known for having a lot of free money promotions (follow the link for an explanation on how they work and for promotional codes).

Did I leave out your favorite brokerage firm? Let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

This is a guest post authored by frugal at My1stMillionAt33.

Before I tell you about my terrible experience with Scottrade, let me first compare several online brokerage firms in terms of commission costs:

1. Ameritrade Izone: Best for active traders. $5 per trade, very cheap rate for option contract at $5 + $0.75 per contract.
2. Scottrade: Best for casual traders and/or investors. $7 per trade. $0 for loaded mutual fund, but $17 for most other non-loaded mutual funds. Option contract at $7 + $1.25 per contract. Has offering on CD & fixed income bonds. Can only do the following option trades: buying put/call, or sell covered call.
3. ETrade: More expensive compared to both Ameritrade Izone and Scottrade, unless trading more than 1500 trades per quarter.
4. Sharebuilder: Good for long term investor. $4 for automatic investment, and can be as low as $1. Selling is $12 to $20 depending on the plan. The biggest downside is that you give up the control on the market timing for your buy order. Instead you will do time-averaging through automatic investment.
5. BuyAndHold: Best for asset allocator and long term investor. I will recommend this to anyone who is currently using Sharebuilders. I like their $14.99 per month for unlimited number of “window” trades which get routed 3 times a day. With $120 $180 a year, you can buy and build 1000 stock portfolio if you want (just kidding, but it’s true). I don’t think you can beat this deal, especially after http://www.freetrade.com/ (under Ameritrade) is gone.
6. FirsTrade: Even better than Scottrade. I’m sure everyone has lamented the reduction in the NTF program for mutual funds at Scottrade. Well, if you use FirsTrade, you can get it back. Yes, ALL mutual fund trades are FREE. And the stock trades are 5 cents cheaper at $6.95. Their pricing model is essentially the same as the old Scottrade. But they don’t have any physical branches. If you want to open an account with 5 free trades, PLEASE send me (frugal) an email, and I will give you the referral code to get the free 5 trades.

Enough of cheap commissions, but if it is not reliable, it is pretty much useless. So back to my Scottrade bad experiences. My problems with them is that their internet servers are getting so unreliable, especially the first half hour right after the market opens, that it is no longer usable.

1. One time I tried to day trade a stock, and I almost got sacked by Scottrade. I placed limit order, and I was barely able to cancel and modify my entry price in time because their servers kept non-responding.
2. The second time, it was pretty much unforgiveable. I put in a limit order, and when I attempted to cancel the order, I simply cannot cancel it, even though it is still showing on my screen as open order. Somehow somewhere there is a server problem. Minutes later, my limit order became executable. I called up customer services, and they could not determine whether my order was filled or not. After an hour, my order got executed with a timestamp of an hour later. Scottrade claims that the timestamp is the reporting time, not the executed time, and my order was filled minutes later, instead of an hour later. Scottrade refused to correct anything, but simply blaimed everything on the delays of the market makers.
3. Yesterday, again, stupid me, I was doing trades near market open. I am so certain that I cancelled my order. But I had some problem with their server again in the morning. After a couple of hours, I finally found out that my “un-cancelled” order got executed. They claimed that I never cancelled the order. They really have a big problem with this process. At the end of cancellation screen, there is never a confirmation number given out. I can never write down any # to prove that I have attempted to cancel my order. So after a long talk of repeating the same information over and over, and an eventual non-callback, it appears again that they will not do anything to my phantom trade becoming real and losing significant money in such a big down day.

I know that FirsTrade has its problems, especially with market quotes right after market starts. But at least there is never a problem with non-responding servers that give you a page-not-found error. Probably because they are smaller company. In any case, I am moving majority if not all of my money out of Scottrade. I’m so fed up with their parrot-talking customer non-service. I was planning to move my tradings to Ameritrade Izone, but after reading some comments at Dogs of the Dow, I’m a little hesitating now. If you have recent positive experience with Ameritrade or any online brokerages besides Scottrade, would you please suggest them to me? I don’t really know where I could find a reasonable priced and reliable brokerage now. I plan to use FirsTrade for now. Since I never tried their streamer, maybe FirsTrade streamer will not have quoting problem. I can always use the other online brokerage accounts for quote too, so it won’t be such a problem.

Thanks in advance for your online brokerage suggestions to me. Cheap commission is not everything. Without reliability, all (stock) bets are off. I’m planning to take my complaints to NASD. By the way, I really miss the reliability offered by Datek, which was bought by Ameritrade. That was my first reason of moving to Ameritrade since I assume that the platform would be similarly reliable. And I hope you will find both FirsTrade and BuyAndHold useful.

All the “where to invest $100″ articles telling you to buy CDs and open money market funds are dead wrong. Absolutely dead wrong. Where should you be investing $100? Look for promotional offers from online bank accounts (where you can generate some more income by referring friends and relatives), brokerage firms, and other financial institutions to get the most bang for your $100. Then, after you’ve earned enough through those offers you can start thinking about “conventional” investment vehicles.

Don’t have $100 you want to invest, consider signing up for a credit card that offers statement credits or gift cards that you can convert to money to invest.

To learn more, plow onward!

1. Sharebuilder
First step is to open up a Sharebuilder account using a promotion code that will give you free money. Currently there’s a $50 bonus code 50GO28 if you deposit some funds and make a purchase. Stock purchases are a mere $4 but stock sales are a pricy $14.95. Let’s say you put in $50, make a purchase, get the $50 bonus money, and then sell your stock back at your purchase price. Net result is a gain of $30.05 ($50 less $4 purchase commission and $15.95 sale commission) which is a 60.1% gain on a $50 investment. Now you have $130.05 to invest. Some have reported being able to repeat this process over and over again on multiple promotion codes. I list all of the codes I know of on this Sharebuilder promotion code post.

2. Bank of America
BoA frequently has promotional offers for opening a checking account such as this $50 promotion (MYA). The minimum you need to open most accounts is $100 and account fees are lower if you setup a direct deposit into the account. The “cheapest” account is the MyAccess Checking account which actually has no minimum and $5.95 monthly fee, waived if you have a direct deposit. Once you open an account, the $50 bonus will be deposited into your account within 50 days. Deposit $50, wait 50 days, get the $50 bonus. You can sign up for a BoA promotion every 60 days. According to their representative, the verification department runs a credit bureau report and a report from ChexSystems. After doing this once you’ll have $180.05 waiting to “invest.”

Now you’re on a roll… you can repeat these types of signup deals until you reach $250… (here’s a great list of bank signup promotions)

3. ING Direct
This promotion is for only $25 but it’s an easy $25. Just get someone who already has an ING Direct account to send you a referral (I have some available, hit up this self-serve $25 ING Direct promotion page if you’d like one). All you have to do is deposit $250 and ING will send $25 your way, a quick painless $10% gain with no risk. In return, your friend will get $10. Now, you can give out twenty of your own referrals and start earning a little extra cash with no risk whatsoever. If you get all twenty, that’s $200 in your pocket. So, now you have $450 to “invest,” where to turn now?

4. Virtual Bank eMoney Market
Virtual Bank has a $20 referral bonus, much like ING, except the referrer gets $20 too and you can refer up to fifty people (that’s $1,000 in your pocket, contact me if you need a referral). This offer is available to new accounts only, you’ll have to ACH money from an existing bank account, and the $20 isn’t available for the first 30 days. That’s all pretty standard online banking terms and conditions. So, after your account is approved you’ll immediately be eligible to start referring your friends. After you sign up, refer fifty people and you’ll have $1470 to invest.

Now that you have close to $1500, you should start moving towards conventional investments like investing in those stocks you always get emails about (just kidding!). Vanguard’s STAR fund with a minimum account balance of $1000 is an option but it’s up to you what you’d like to do. You can always peel off some of that money and go back into doing bonuses but at least now you can read “How To Invest $1000″ articles which are typically more exciting.

(Updated November 10th, 2008) Below is a list of Sharebuilder promotion codes worth up to $50 each as well as instructions on how to use them. I check each weekly and update this post as needed to keep the codes fresh. I have applied for a few accounts and have experienced no problems.

To use the Sharebuilder promotion codes listed:

• Click on the Apply Today! button,
• You’ll be taken to an ING Direct Sharebuilder page, click on the “Get started today” button.
• On the next page, it says Account Type at the top, you’ll see a white box with the words “I’m responding to a promotion,” - check that box,
• The page will reload and then a new box will appear - that’s where you enter in the code.

It sounds complicated but it’s pretty easy, it just takes a few words to explain it.

Here are the codes you can use:

Regarding Multiple Accounts: Also, I’ve personally confirmed that you can sign up to multiple Sharebuilder accounts (but stagger your account activations over a few weeks, don’t apply for 50 accounts at once or they will deny your promotion codes!) and get the bonus money for each individual new account that you open. I’ve used the first two, ENTERTAIN50 and HH50LOGIN, and plan on opening up enough accounts to get all $645 (and some free books) in free money below.

Original Post:
Back in August, I did the Sharebuilder $50 promotion with the intent that I’d deposit, buy a share of something, and forget it for a whole bunch of years (for that, read my post on how to turn $50 into $1000+ in only 20-30 years). Well, I totally forgot about it (the point right?) until today and when I checked, the $50 was deposited on 10/6 - exactly two months after my initial deposit. Currently, in two months, I’ve lost exactly 73 cents (and $4 commission) in my investment in IYT - DJ TRANSPORT INDEX (ISHARES).