Let’s face it. Custom printed t-shirts are cool. Getting them printed for cheap is mind blowing.

Vista Print has a “free” custom t-shirt offer where you only pay $4.21 for shipping. However, the designs are really limited in that you have to pick one of their templates and your own text in that template. Uploading a graphic or logo of your own costs extra.

Vista Print Free T-Shirts ($4.21 for shipping)

If you want logos and your own graphics, check out Printfection. It’s $2 and about $4 for shipping so $6 shipped.

Prinfection Custom T-Shirts $6 Shipped

I finally received the dreaded letter that so many others have in the past that Citi is changing the terms of my rewards. Starting July 14th, 2007 I will no longer recieve 5% cash back on supermarket, pharmacy, and gas purchases. Instead I’ll get a measly 2% back on those three categories plus 2% back on utilities and cable. I guess it’s time to throw this card into the sock drawer and look for another 5% gas card.

Ebates lowered their Staples cashback from 3% to 2% this month. I found this out as I buy stuff from Staples.com once in awhile when my purchases are over $50 (free shipping). Fatwallet also does not offer cashback from Staples.com and I use Ebates solely for Staples.com purchases.

I might give Zecco a test drive since they announced that they are lowering their minimum balance to $0. Zecco offers free trades (10 per day, 40 per month, $3.50/each afterwards).

I’m seriously considering them because the trading costs associated with averaging into a stock is greatly reduced. Options are cheap too at $3.50 + $.60.

Salem Five Direct offers a high interest checking account with no monthly fee and no minimum balance. Here’s the rates for the different tiers.

$0-$9,999 5.00%
$10,000-$24,999 5.10%
$25,000-$49,999 5.20%
$50,000-$99,999 5.20%
$100,000 or more 6.10%

I obviously fall under the $0-$9,999 range and qualify for the 5.00% rate. 5% beats ING’s Electronic Orange account’s 4% easily. A full percentage point is usually enough to get me to switch so I’ll open up a test account in the next couple of days to see how things are there.

http://www.salemfivedirect.com/

I recently decided to move my emergency funds from Emigrant Direct which paid 5.05% to FNBO Direct which pays 6% (guaranteed until September, but they had a competitive rate before the 6% increase). So the question is it worth it to rate chase?

Okay, let’s pretend you have $10,000 in an emergency fund. I actually recommend more as your emergency funds should cover at least 6 months of expenses.

The difference of 1% increase from 5.05% to 6% is only $95 for an account with $10,000 in it. However, that’s only if you held it in there a year. Hopefully you won’t be needing to use your emergency funds for quite some time.

$10,000 held in a savings account for 10 years at 5.05% will net you $16,366.60, or about a 63% return.

Increase the rate from 5.05% to 6% and you get $17,908.46 at the end of those 10 years which is about a 79% return.

16% higher return on a switching to 0.95% increase? Not bad. That’s the power of compounding interest at work.

This example just shows that it makes a lot of sense to rate chase, especially if the difference between the accounts is 0.95%. I probably won’t go through the hassle of rate chasing if the difference was 0.1% unless I had a large enough amount of money to justify it… and i don’t.