Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been mailing a bunch of documents and packages back and forth between my parents and myself. Some of these packages have been important from a sentimental perspective, some have been important from a financial perspective, and some were just some routine things that weren’t important at all. While my faith in the United States Postal Service is a little shaky, they’ve had a good enough track record that I’d trust them as long as I didn’t test them by mailing too much! In all those instances, we had to decide on how we were going to mail it - certified, registered, express, priority or regular? What’s the difference? The differences are actually pretty substantial and it’s important to understand what each is trying to accomplish so you don’t overpay.

Certified Mail

The package is trackable and a signature is required on delivery. The point of certified is if you can’t completely trust your recipient or you need a timestamp of when a package is accepted. This makes it perfectly suited for official letters because the post office will track when the letter was delivered along with a signature by the person who accepted it. If you don’t need either of these things, certified mail is a completely waste of money.

Registered Mail

Registered mail is the only one that guarantees delivery and they claim to put it under “tight security from the point of mailing to the point of delivery,” plus insurance of up to $25k against loss and damage. If what you’re shipping is over $5,000 (that’s the normal insurance limit) and you want USPS shipping insurance, registered mail is the one for you. If the thought of having to mail your item or letter scares you, you’ll probably want this insurance.

Express Mail

The package is trackable (if you print the label online) though no signature is required on delivery. Guaranteed to get there as promised or your money back. If you want speed, this is your best bet. The guarantee is a money-back guarantee, it’s possible that the package will never get there.

Priority Mail

The package is trackable (if you print the label online) though no signature is required on delivery. An interesting tidbit, any package over a pound is automatically considered priority mail even if you want to do it first class. Both are transported together and it is not treated any differently than regular mail. The 2-3 day delivery timeline is an estimate and not a guarantee, you’ll need Express Mail for a money-back guarantee.

First Class Mail

This is essentially everything else and is what I call regular mail. It’s called First Class because it’s the “best” of the shipment options that aren’t Express or Priority. Some examples of other classes are Media Mail and Parcel Post… both are slooooowwwww.

Confusion…

I think two things confuse people the most about shipping with the USPS:

• People think Priority Mail means it’s guaranteed to get there in 2-3 days, it really gets there as quickly as it would’ve if you shipped it First Class. If you have something that is less than 16 oz. and you ask for Priority Mail, you’re paying more for the sticker.
• People mistake Certified Mail for Registered Mail. If you’re filing some document, certified mail is what you want. If you’re mailing a $25,000 necklace, then registered mail is what you want.

(Photo by kelan)

Looks like it’s about time to start buying those Forever Stamps now! The United States Post Office announced today that they’ve decided to increase the price of first class postage by a penny to forty-two cents, effective May 12th. Less than a year ago the USPS increased the price of a first class postage stamp by two cents to the price of 41 cents, all within its newly granted rights of being able to increase it within the rate of inflation.

With inflation at 2.9% last year, the USPS was allowed to increase the price of a stamp by a penny without any oversight as long as they give 45 days notice (they plan on giving 90 days). I don’t know why anyone (or even businesses) would need 90 days to react to a price hike but I guess that’s considerate of them.

Here are other notable increases (or unchanges):

• Each additional ounce of a letter will remain an extra 17 cents (no change).
• Cost to mail a postcard increases to 27 cents (+1 cent).
• Large envelope of up to two ounces will now cost $1 (+3 cents).
• Money orders up to $500 will remain $1.05 (no change).
• Certified mail will now cost $2.70 (+5 cents).

If you haven’t picked up a few of those Forever Stamps, now’s a good time to buy some. I hardly mail any letters nowadays, mostly cards, and I probably won’t be getting any of Forever Stamps myself (too many leftover stamps from the wedding invitations and RSVP cards). I think that the USPS needs to rethink its strategy if it really wants to remain competitive in the shipping game. However, based on the behavior and performance of the staff at most post offices I visit, it’s clear that competitiveness is hardly a concern (government subsidies don’t hurt either!).

(Photo by aa440)

The other night I mentioned to my fiancée that we could sign up for Stamps.com’s free 4 week trial and get $25 in postage, a digital scale, and $5 in supplies (the paper the stamps get printed on). $25 means we can send out over sixty letters absolutely free, but the only thing she cared about was whether those stamps would have the ugly bar code on it (yes it would, but I don’t think that barcode is ugly). I acquiesced, because $25 isn’t really worth the hassle and I already have a free scale from when I took advantage of this offer back in college, but that got me thinking about the USPS’s recent push of PhotoStamps at the post offices I’ve been to.

If the bar codes aren’t worth getting 60 letters for free, does putting a picture next to it make it worth paying $XXXX on top of the postage? So far, of the five or six invitations/save the date’s we’ve received, only one has used PhotoStamps and I honestly didn’t think anything of the stamps (I mean they were obviously a nice touch, but I’m someone who wouldn’t mind bar codes… a stamp is a stamp is a stamp).

What do you all think of PhotoStamps? Cute and worth the cost? A sign of minor excess?

• NCN hates credit cards, learn about how he lives without one.
• Read about how FMF almost saved $100k on a home.
• MightyBargainHunter has found a helluva bargain if you’re a fan of arcades, try buying your tokens somewhere other than the arcade!
• JLP talks to us about Black Monday 20 years ago. Scary retrospective.
• JD wants to know who you think is the best brick and mortar bank?
• Nickel signed up for Amazon Prime, Amazon’s $79/yr service where you can get free two day shipping with no purchase minimum. I think it’s a bit excessive, not because of the $79 fee but because it’s excessive to have someone ship you a batter when you can drive to the store to pick it up. I guess it’s a tradeoff between your gas and a truck/plane’s gas, the cardboard packaging, and all that crap inside.
• Become a portfolio manager and earn nearly half a mil for your time… just for being average.
• Jeremy asks readers, if you’re investing, how do you know you’re doing well?
• Quit your job and you can win $50,000 - read Money Smart Life to find out how!
• Lazy Man talks about brewing your own beer, it’s something I’ve been doing off and on every since college.
• SVB is terrible at taking vacations and talks about why.
• Sun wants to know if you’re a rate chaser… so, are you?
• Golbguru is glad oil prices are at record highs. I’m glad but for a totally different reason, environmental reasons.
• Have you read reviews of your homeowner’s insurance provider? Comparing some things on price alone is fair, but with insurance companies, when you’ll be dealing with them at the worst of times, it’s important to consider other factors as well.
• The weather’s been great so I’ve been grilling a lot, especially with the new Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker, and picked up a good tip: keep a secondary grill ready!
• Facing foreclosure? The climate is great for trying to negotiate a loan modification instead of going under. The numbers are looking bad for lenders so they’ll be looking to make more deals than normally.
• Check out these 9 dumb retirement moves.

I don’t know how JD comes up with the topics he does but practically every single one resonates with me and this one about pursuing paperless personal finance hit spot on. I only started truly dealing with personal finance issues such as bills, credit cards, and banking within the last four years and I’m pretty much as minimalist in terms of paper as you can probably. I’m so trusting of going paperless because many of the all-electronic processes had proven themselves in the last four years (in terms of earning user trust on their safety and reliability) so I just rolled into it. I think going paperless as much as possible is the way to go.

There are two reasons why you should go paperless: it’s good for the environment and it will save you money. Since most people are interested primarily with saving money and I like it when people try to save the environment, I’ll try to trick you into going paperless for your reasons even though I want you to do it for my reasons (shhh! this tactic is a scecret, don’t tell anyone!). If you want ideas on how to go as paperless as possible, read JD’s post for ideas.

Reason 1: Save On Envelopes & Stamps

Each bill you don’t have to send is one in which you don’t have to stick into an envelope, which usually is provided, and stick a 41 cent stamp on. If you mail off two credit card payments, a mortgage payment, a car payment, a cable payment, and a utility bill each month, that’s $29.52 saved each year in stamps alone. Don’t scoff at the thought that going paperless only saves you thirty bucks in stamps, would you pick up a thirty dollar bill if it were sitting on the ground? I would.

Reason 2: Avoid Fees Because Payment Systems Remember

One of the benefits of getting email notification of a statement is that when you get the email you’re generally at your computer, which means you can log on and schedule a payment. If you get a paper bill, you have to go get your checkbook, write out a check, put it in the envelope with the stub, put a stamp on it, and walk out to your mailbox. There are plenty of opportunities in that process chain to just put the bill down and take care of it later. If you’re online, just log into your account, schedule a payment, and have a nice day until the next notification.

Reason 3: Schedule To Pay At The Last Minute

Keep those hard earned dollars in your bank account until the last moment and have the bank remember when to pay for you. When you log on and schedule the payment, most places will let you pick the day you want to send it. Simply wait until the last day (I generally schedule it three or four days before the last day, just in case… though the just in case has never happened and I’m not really sure what could happen) so your dollars keep earning interest. While I can’t quantify how much money you’ll earn each year, it won’t be much but it’s better you than some company.

Reason 4: Electronic Payments Are Rarely Lost

The USPS processes gazillions of pieces of mail each year and a percentage of those are lost or mangled in processing and O’Doyle’s Law states that all bad stuff happens to you when it will hurt you the most (it doesn’t because I just made up that law but if there is a law for that I don’t know it), so put two and two together and realize that a physical payment is far inferior to an electronic one. With electronic payments, you get confirmation of a successful scheduling or payment almost immediately. If it’s “lost,” you generally know because the next page doesn’t load. When regular mail is lost, you generally know because you get a missed payment fee.

Reason 5: Electronic Theft Is Harder

It takes very little effort to steal your information when you mail a check payment. If you have a traditional mailbox, it just takes someone with enough stones to open up a stranger’s mailbox and snatch the envelope. Once they open it up, they have your name, address, bank name and your checking account number - all off your check. If someone wants to steal your information when you make an electronic payment, it’s impossible because you aren’t sending your bank information with your request every single time. You only register the bank once, it’s never displayed back to you for security reasons (in case you unwittingly give out your credentials to a thief), so they’ll have to somehow catch you when you enter that in and spend eons of time to crack the SSL 128-bit encryption (good luck, read this for more on SSL 128-bit encryption). The Law of Least Resistance says that a thief, given the skills to two both, would rather open your mailbox.

There are probably plenty of other ways that going paperless will save you money either right this moment or in the long run but those are probably the biggest. So even if saving the environment isn’t on the forefront of your mind (though it should be!), save yourself some of the other kind of green by going paperless and everyone wins.

Just as a friendly reminder to all of you who still use regular USPS, the rate hike will take effect on May 14th and a first class letter will go from 39 cents to 41 cents. Dymo, whoever they are, is giving away ten 2c stamps so help you with the surge, offer ends Sept. 1.

FMF explains how not all index funds are not equal whereas MBH discusses how not all priority mail boxes are equal.

Nickel writes about the latest 6 month Citi Divident Platinum Select promo, but I say down with these stupid teaser promo rates!

JLP makes a case for diversification as the Dow hits new all-time highs while the NASDAQ isn’t even close to its former peak.

Flexo’s auto insurance is going up but not as much as he thought it would considering his accident. My insurance cost has been going down by around $25-$40 every single renewal (I pay for 6 month increments), not sure why other than I’m getting older?

Ever wonder what it meant when someone said your home was on a 100 year flood plain? I write briefly on what that means at Homeowners Insurance Guide.

Don’t think you should review your insurance policies? Don’t think you really need an emergency fund? Read this story from Trent about the things he learned The Flood of 1993 (of the Mississippi River, where a levee broke, it was bad) and you’ll likely think twice. Three times even.

JD lists five ways to earn a little more money. I thought it was funny that one of the reasons for doing this was to pay off debt and one of the ways to earn cash was to sell your stuff, makes you wonder if some folks are filling up one hole by digging a new one.

I guess I just never really thought about the logistics of delivery to a Post Office Box before but only the United States Post Office can deliver to PO Boxes. If you think about it, it makes sense because the only way someone can access the box is with a key (you) or through the back (the post office), UPS and FedEx can’t very well leave the package outside a bank of PO Boxes in the hopes that you, and not some enterprising thief, picks it up.

While I’ve never FedEx’d or UPS’d a package to a PO Box before, I bet that their software or their people would probably notify me that they couldn’t delivery… but what if they didn’t? What happens if you try to use UPS or FedEx to deliver? Return to sender? Anyone know?

On May 14th, it will cost forty one cents to mail a first class letter. Also on May 14th, you will be able to buy what’s been called the “forever stamp.” The forever stamp, which will cost forty one cents, will let you mail a first class letter no matter what the rates increase to in the future, thus it will be good forever.

I don’t send many letters and the only personal correspondence I send nowadays that even requires a stamp are cards, whether their holiday cards or birthday cards or thank you cards, it’s mostly cards. I avoid stamps by using bank billpaying services or direct debit whenever possible because, let’s be honest, while the USPS is 99.9999999% reliable, I don’t want important payments being part of that .0000001% error rate (and I’ve received some mangled letters before). The excuse of “it got lost in the mail” really doesn’t work with mega-corporations, they want their money when they say they want it.

So, how many freaking 2 cent stamps will you need and how many of these forever stamps do you think you’ll be getting? And how many people are ecstatic that you’re no longer paying for Lance Armstrong’s sponsorship in the Tour de France? (Nothing against the Tour de France or Lance Armstrong, I just think the USPS advertising on something like that, a bike race, is stupid especially when they were jacking up stamp prices and claiming loss of market share to competitors)

So I recently started the 401k to IRA rollover process, moving my assets from my former employer’s 401k plan to a Rollover IRA at Vanguard, and just today I received the check for the value of my assets that I would be sending off to Vanguard. The check is easily the largest single legitimate check I’ve held in my hand (beating a check that was the down payment for my house a year and a half ago) and I kind of wondered why the plan administrator would mail something so important in regular first class mail.

Anyway, I was very very tempted to just slap a thirty-nine cent stamp on the letter and mail it off but I thought better of it. While I’m pretty sure that there was a 99% chance the letter would make it there without any problems (I have faith in the USPS, even if Nick doesn’t), do I really want to deal with the hassle in that 1% case?

Let’s compare…
99%: I save myself a few bucks.
1%: I’d have a headache. First, it would take me a little while to learn that the check was lost, then I would have to request that my 401k plan administrator void the original check and reissue a new check. That request would likely come with some sort of (unreasonable) fee. Then, after I lose about three or four weeks of appreciation on a pretty sizable sum (to me anyway), I’d send it via certified mail this time. So… I think certified the first time is the route to go.

So, frugality can be a fault and in this case, saving a few bucks could potentially cost me a lot in terms of time, hassle, and money.

Within the last few weeks I’ve seen check-buying posts from both Michael (Ordering Checks on the Internet) and Nickel (How to Order Checks Without Getting Ripped Off) and there was even a poll over at Consumerist (Do You Write Checks?). (as an aside, if you’re enjoy a nice healthy dose of schadenfreude when it comes to big companies, you’ll want to ping that site daily - it’s like a schadenfreude addict’s dream) so I figured I’d weigh in on the whole check writing issue.

I wanted to wait until the poll had a few weeks to run its course before I looked at the results and after two thousand plus votes, the breakdown was exactly what I expected:

Yes, because I’m a luddite - 4.8%

Yes, because I like a paper trail - 10.8%
No, I pay everything electronically - 16.1%
No, they’re insecure - 0.5%
Don’t have a checking account - 1.5%
Yes, but ONLY when I have no other choice - 66.4%

I’m not a luddite and you don’t need to have read or have watched Catch Me If You Can to know that checks aren’t all that secure but honestly I try to avoid checks because of the convenience factor.

Why I Don’t Write Checks:

1. Stamps are expensive - I don’t really want to spend 39 cents to mail my payment in, which is a total savings of $4.68 per year on a monthly payment. Considering how many monthly payments one may have (a handful of credit cards, rent/mortgage, car note, etc), this could add up to a nice dinner - I’d rather eat my $4.68 than lick it.
2. Account numbers written on the check! - This is the thing that boggles my mind the most, the fact that we’ve had our account numbers written on the checks for as long as checks have existed and our financial world hasn’t crumbled. The bank takes such great pains to hide your account number on statements and mailings but when you send out a check, your number plus your address and perhaps even your phone number and social (if you put either on the check) are there in full view. I know it’s a fault of the “system” but it’s still absolutely ridiculous.
3. Checks are slow - First you have to mail them and prior to Check 21 you had to wait like a week for them to clear. Even with Check 21, the processing has sped up but you’re still talking about waiting for delivery and such.
4. Physical things get lost - It’s funny that “it was lost in the mail” as an excuse has entered American lore along with “my dog ate it” as the two more popular and incredulous excuses ever… that you really can’t contest. The USPS, despite sponsoring someone who won that bike race in Europe a ridiculous six times in a row, still loses mail… it’s the nature of the beast. I suppose electronic things get lost too but since you don’t have such a long delivery lag time you can react much faster.
5. It’s harder to schedule paper checks - If you like to schedule payments in advance so that they go out at the last possible moment, it’s a breeze with online bill payment sites because you force the site to remember when the send it out. If you try it yourself, all it takes is one forgetful moment to ruin anything you would’ve gotten all year by delaying the payment.
6. Checks are way too expensive - They’re too expensive on an absolute scale… $30 for two boxes of checks (which is like a million checks) isn’t all that much when you figure they have to print and bind it all but you do think about it when you close an account and shred about two boxes (minus ten checks) of checks because you really don’t use them. It’s like shredding money.

Why I Still Have To Buy Stupid Paper Checks:

The only reason why I buy stupid paper checks is because whenever you request a direct deposit, the direct depositor will ask for a copy of the voided check to make sure that you haven’t messed up the typing/writing in of your ABA routing number and account number. While it’s a pain they ask for it (if you talk to them and explain you don’t have any checks, they’ll usually be sympathetic), it does make sense because we have fat fingers and mess up sometimes - it’s better to send a check than miss a paycheck deposit for a month because you transposed some numbers.

I used to sell stuff on eBay (from Wash. Wizards Jordan jerseys to Anime DVDs) and had my process down to a pretty good science so that wasted activity was put to the absolute minimum. One of the key things I did was to use a standardized auction template that included all my shipping information and payment information so that prospective buyers wouldn’t ask me any needless questions. The key to a good boilerplate terms & conditions is that it’s description but not so large and cumbersome that buyers gloss over it. After the jump you’ll see my template (and it’s associated code).

First off, ignore the colors, they look much better in eBay.

Second, the key pieces of information in your template are Shipping & Handling information, your shipping policy, your accepted payment methods, and any other conditions you want to list (preferably in that order). You’ll find all those bits addressed below and in the years of selling since using this template I have yet to receive an email about an auction not related to the actual item for sale.

Oh, and don’t forget to thank your prospective buyers for stopping by!

[Download as .txt file]