Archive for September, 2008

WaMu, I will miss you.

September 29th, 2008

As everyone already knows, Washington Mutual’s operations were bought out by JP Morgan Chase. The move that ultimately helped take down WaMu faster was when panicked depositors withdrew more than $16 billion in a 10 day period. Personally I believe a lot of people who withdrew money were idiots in that their money was FDIC insured up to $100k. WaMu may or may not have failed eventually but irrationality helped seal WaMu’s fate.

The #1 reason I’ll miss WaMu is their ESPN Rewards credit card. I’m not big on earning rewards on the card but you did get to see your FICO score for free regularly. That was probably the biggest perk of having that card as a myfico.com ScoreWatch subscription is $8.95 per month or $107.40 annually.

WaMu also offered free checks for life and free outgoing wire transfers worldwide. I hardly ever use paper checks these days or wire transfers but it’s nice to know that you can have them for free.

JPMorgan Chase expects to consolidate everything by the end of 2010. I already have 4 Chase credit cards. Hopefully when my cards get re-branded the features stay the same. I’ll miss checking my FICO score for free regularly.

Kiva in the American Express Members Project

September 28th, 2008

Lyndsey, a volunteer who works on various lender engagement initiatives for Kiva, contacted me recently to inform me about Kiva being back in the top 5 for the American Express Members Project competition for the $1.5 million dollar grand prize. They moved from the #8 spot to the #4 spot overnight because of an e-mail they’re sending out to all the lenders. Below is a short 15 second video that was made specifically for the competition.

The voting for this round goes until September 29th (TOMORROW!) and the final round goes until October 13th witht he winner announced October 14th. Every $1 donated to Kiva’s operational expenses has led to $8 in loans so Kiva winning this prize could help facilitate $12M of additional loans to 24,000 entrepeneurs.

Head on over to the American Express Members Project page for Kiva and place your vote today!

You can link your ING Direct accounts to your Sharebuilder accounts.

September 28th, 2008

I logged into ING this morning and noticed at the bottom of the screen there was an option to link your ING Direct accounts to your Sharebuilder accounts. All it takes is inputting your username and password.

Now whenever you log into ING Direct you’ll see the balances of your Sharebuilder portfolios and if you click on one of your Sharebuilder accounts it’ll automatically log you in a new window. Funds transferred between ING Direct accounts and Sharebuilder accounts are now instantaneous.

It’s about time they integrated considering ING Direct bought Sharebuilder quite awhile ago.

Asking “Are you serious?” thwarts bank robbery.

September 28th, 2008

So a woman tried to rob the Roslyn Savings Bank with a threatening note demanding cash or she’s open fire. The teller asked the robber if they were serious and apparently they panicked enough to run off. link

Seriously?

Get in on WaMu 5% 12 month CDs while you still can.

September 26th, 2008

JPMorgan is acquiring WaMu but the offer for 5% 12 month CDs is still on the main page of WaMu.com. If JPMorgan decides to not honor the rate at some point in the future you’re allowed to withdraw your money without penalty.

Minimum to open an online CD is $1,000.

link

American Express Gold $100 gift card after first purchase

September 26th, 2008

10,000 Membership Reward points after first purchase which is equivalent to a $100 gift card.

First year is fee-free. $125 after first year.

link

WaMu 4.00% APY Online Savings

September 23rd, 2008

WaMu upped the rate for their online savings account to 4% APY. This is 1% higher than what ING Direct currently offers.

If you’re worried about WaMu failing just keep your under $100,000 and you’ll be FDIC insured.

savings account link

I actually don’t have a WaMu bank account yet and will consider opening a free checking account and online savings.

ExxonMobil Credit Card – 30 cents per gallon back and 2% on all purchases

September 21st, 2008

With the ExxonMobil credit card you can get a 30 cents per gallon gas rebates on Exxon and Mobil Gasoline purchases for the first 60 days and 15 cents per gallon afterwards. Each year you earn 2% back on other purchases up to $10,000 and 1% afterwards.

The 2% cashback on all other purchases is a pretty good deal by itself.

What about 30 cents back for the first 60 days and 15 cents afterwards? The Exxon station by my house sells gas for $3.45. 30 cents back on that is roughly 8.7% cashback. A rebate of 15 cents per gallon would be 4.3% cashback.

The deal gets sweeter if you believe gas prices will drop over time. At $3 a gallon the 15 cent rebate is exactly 5% cashback. If gas drops any lower the cashback percentage only goes up.

link

Testing Commerce Bank’s free coin counting machine.

September 20th, 2008

Commerce Bank offers a free coin counting machine that I recently decided to try out. This is opposed to Coinstar machines which typically charge a 9% fee to count your coins.

Commerce Bank prides itself on being a extremely customer service oriented bank. They were open until 8 pm the day I went and the coin counting is free even to non customers. After the machine is done counting it prints out a reciept and you just hand it to the teller and they’ll give you the appropriate amount.

So how exactly are we “testing” Commerce Bank’s coin counting machine? Me and my crack team of interns counted all the coins in the picture below by hand. The hand counted result would then be compared to the result given by the Commerce Bank machine.

Coins to be counted at Commerce Bank.

Hand counted result: $60.38
Machine counted result: $60.43

Wait! How is the machine result 5 cents higher? Possible explanations:

  • The hand count was undercounted by 5 cents.
  • There was 5 cents stuck in the machine that was freed by our stream of coins.
  • The machine overcounted by 5 cents.

We’ll never know the true reason but it’s great to know the margin of error is slim to none on this field test. Commerce Bank for the win!

Free GPS for signing up for a Discover Card

September 20th, 2008

Sign up for the Miles by Discover card through mygpsoffer.com and you’ll get a Garmin nuvi 200 Portable GPS for free!

My friend did this offer a couple months back and recieved his GPS last week so the offer is for real. There are tons of confirmations around the web about this being a legit deal too.

This is a great deal considering this card has no annual fee.

link