It’s July 31st, cash out of Fusioncash and Instant Profitz. I Have $8 in my Fusioncash so I don’t have enough to cash out. I have $58 in my Instant Profitz account however so i’m cashing out there. If you cash out today in either site, you’ll recieve your payment on or before the 20th of next month.

EmigrantDirect recently changed their site design. The new site has a more eye pleasing interface but like other online banks they’ve started to implement the usual security features. The security features are a two way street, they create a hassle for people that log in everyday (like me) but supposedly they make your account more secure. The yield is 5.15% as of date.

A few days ago I got a package with my free iPOD nano from the Jets MBNA offer. Looking at the original post I mentioned the offer I found an enjoyable comment. Here goes:

Anonymous said…

“Okay… I did post some negative comments about your blog, but guess what?
I just recieved my jets engraved iPod in the mail!!
So please disregard all anonymous negative comments.”

I too recieved my iPod nano. I also don’t have to buy a new iPod to replace my aging 3+ year old one. The one I received is only 1 gig and has the Jets logo engraved on the back. I’ll take the 1 gig since it was basically free. I’m still a Jets fan despite all their faults so I like the engraving.

Here is the original post where I mentioned the offer.

As of date, I’m going to enable word verification for comments because looking back through old posts I found a couple spam comments. I’m still allowing anonymous comments but hopefully word verfication stems the spammers a bit, if not I’ll have to disallow anonymous comments too.

Bank of America’s earnings report beat analyst estimates and the stock has been on an upward spiral lately. To top this off, they also announced a dividend increase of 12%. So the shares I bought at $44.55 pay out $2.24 per year in dividends which amounts to a yield of 5.03%.

The share price is currently $51.66. My plans to unload this stock are put on hold as I think the price has more appreciating to do. A couple more quarters of dividends couldn’t hurt either. I don’t think price depreciation is likely as the current dividend justify these prices and some growth prospects could justify pricing the stock even higher. Time will tell, as always.

Current performance for holding BAC 1 year is 16% capital gain + 4.5% paid in dividends = 20.5% annual gain. I love it when your “safe” stocks outperform your expectations.

I’ll list some websites that I generally find very useful related to investing.

Yahoo! Finance – Probably my first stop of the day to check quotes. Useful for finding out information about when a company is releasing earnings also. Don’t wander off to the finance message boards, they’re generally garbage.

The Motley Fool – The Motley Fool isn’t what it use to be. I still visit the site to look for meaningful and informative articles, but a lot of times all they seem to do is sell their services. I can’t blame them though, profit is king.

MoneyChimp – Various articles and calculators related to investing. I like their stock valuation article located here.

Investopedia – If any financial jargons are lost on you, check out this site. A

In my endless drive to make easy extra money I found another site that was similar to Fusioncash. I waited until I got paid from them before I start mentioning them here. The site is called “Instant Profitz” and they are the same deal as FusionCash. The site design is a bit cheesy and I was skeptical at first but after I recieved my first cashout my doubts were wiped clear. The site pays more for offers that FusionCash also offers and they have tons more offers than FusionCash.

The only catch is you should play by their rules and you’ll do alright. Read the terms and service and whatnot. Don’t do offers you’ve already done somewhere else or already a member of. E-Mail me at hejustlaughs @ gmail . com if you have any questions.

I recently stumbled accross http://www.tradeyourwaytowealth.com/index.php and I found it to be an interesting read… and complete BS.

I think what they basically do is pick stocks for their members and then if the stock doesn’t move their way, they expand the time frame until it becomes a “winner”. If it never goes their way regardless of how much they expand the time frame, they probably say “mistakes happen”. Their recent double digit gains are small cap companies like LBIX with market caps of 100 million.

There are some amusing aspects to this site. They claim a third cousin of Albert Einstein who is apparently a mathematical genius is a member of their site. He also supposedly developed “Einstein Scans” to find stocks where you can find HUGE gains the next day. AWESOME. I’ll join the site, but too bad I’m not a gullible idiot.

Busy doing things for my brother’s wedding all week, a couple things slipped my mind. I scheduled a payment to my citi card and forgot to deposit money into my ING Direct account. ING Direct rejected the payment so Citi charged me a NSF fee of $29. This is relatively low as far as NSF fees go (Wachovia charges $35 on student checking accounts). I called them up and after being transferred to the manager, I explained to him the situation and he immediately offered to waive the fees.

Citi seems to have better customer service than Bank of America. Maybe that’s just their credit card division.

If anyone was wondering why I have Citi withdraw funds from my ING account instead of my checking account is because my ING Direct account is usually where I stash all the cash I plan to use to pay off my credit card.

If at the beginning of the month I buy $30 worth of gas. I’ll deposit $30 cash into my checking account then into my ING Direct account so I know I have the money to pay off the balance in full and earn a little interest on it. The interest earned is chump change but last time I checked leaving money in my drawer ’till money comes didn’t earn you anything extra.

Let’s get one thing straight. I hate banking with Bank of America. The customer service is horrible. They place unreasonable holds on checks even though they’ve already cleared. Their interest rates on savings account is paltry. I could go on and on. If you’re a happy BoA customer, more power to you. I’ll admit the only reason I hold accounts with them is for their bonuses. They seem to be throwing money around these days to try to attract new customers. Sadly to say if you can’t retain customers you’re paying so much to aquire, what’s the point? Bank of America does have the benefit of branches and ATMs throughout the country but I don’t see myself traveling much anymore so that benefit is useless for me.

Bank of America is clearly a bank that rewards shareholders more than the customers itself. This is why I’m a Bank of America (BAC) shareholder. Sadly, despite all their faults, they do make money. I bought in at $44.55 on July 26th of last year. After the one year mark passes, I’ll definitely be looking to liquidate this stock. My target price for selling is $49, which would represent a 14.8% gain (10% in capital gains, 4.8% in total from dividend gains). Current price is $48.80. They continue to make money, but my feelings about banking with them are so negative that I can only see them losing customers in the long term. Another reason I would be looking to sell is there are a lot of other better opportunities I would rather have my money in.

Other prospects I am considering: fannie mae (FNM), cocono phillips (COP), and Altria (MO).

I totally forgot to followup on the Fusioncash post. I did $60 worth of offers and they cashed out. Turns out they are legit. The funds are sitting in my bank account. Currently I’m waiting on another $75 cashout. I’m going to use this money to pay down credit card debt. This is a great source of free cash every month.

Point your browser to FusionCash. There’s also a $5 sign-up bonus.