Which online bank is best? This is not an easy question to answer since we all have different criteria when it comes to banking. A good place to start is how much interest the bank is paying you. However, there are many more factors to consider beyond interest rate.

7 Things To Consider Before You Open An Online Bank Account

To make sure you have the best possible bank for your need, be sure to look for the following features:

Low or No Fees

There are enough banks out there that you should not have to pay any fee. Before you open an account, ask for their fee schedule. Some of the common fees to look for include: below minimum account balance fee, overdraft fee (for checking accounts), ATM fee, inactivity fee, and transfer fee.

Good Web Interface

Online banking should be fast, easy, and secure. First and foremost, the site should be secure with strong validation process and data encryption. Secondly, the site should be intuitive and easy to navigate. Also, it should provide essential features, such as images of your cashed checks, balance transfer tool, a good set of reports (including payments, transfers and deposits).

Other good to have features include alerts (see below), archive of account monthly statements, archive of yearly tax statements, and budgeting and/or financial planning tools.

Easy Fund Transfers

Transferring money to your online bank account from other banks and brokerages should be easy and free. Setting up direct deposit for your account should be straightforward. And transfers between checking and savings accounts should be easily accomplished.

Breadth of Products

At the very least your bank should have both savings and checking products — even if checking doesn’t pay interest. Access to certificates of deposit would be a nice touch, but not essential. And integrated account management would be icing on the cake.

Online Bill Payments and Electronic Funds Transfer

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is an essential feature nowadays. Make sure your online bank accommodates this free of charge. And it would be even better if your bank let you set up automatic deductions to make scheduled payments for various monthly bills.

E-mail Alerts and Reminders

In today’s fast moving world, alerts and reminders are must haves. Your online bank should let you set up email alerts, such as, low balance alert, large withdrawal alert, and excessive activities alert.

Customer Service

Regardless of what your online bank does or doesn’t have, it should have good customer service. There should be a toll-free number that you can call 24/7 — in addition to other methods of contact.

What bank are you using today and how does it compare to this list? Also, did I leave out any feature of a good online bank?

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

When one looks at business, it is easy to miss or not appreciate the importance of private businesses and entrepreneurship. How often do you look to the larger public companies for opportunities, marketing and jobs? Probably a lot. This is what many first think of doing.

Source: Financial DNA – Discovering Your Unique Financial Personality for a Quality Life!

There’s no question that these are trying times. With car payments, house payments, credit card debt, and the cost of daily life, saving for the future can feel like an impossible task, but by harnessing the power of small, each of us can achieve whatever we set our minds to, one baby step at a time. And, as we’ve discovered, one of the best ways to get started on saving is to make it automatic.

As personal finance blogger and author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi once said, “Personal finance is not about willpower.” So, the ideal way to manage your finances is to set them up to grow effortlessly.

In other words, try putting your savings on autopilot. Instead of consciously trying to put aside a fixed amount of money into your savings and retirement accounts, make it automatic. When you calculate your monthly budget, act as though the amount of money that you will automatically deposit into those accounts is not a part of your income. Start with a small sum at first and week-by-week, gradually increase the amount you save by just $10. Without even noticing it, you will adjust to your new income level and smile every time you check your ever-growing savings accounts.

THE POWER OF SMALL philosophy is all about taking on the tough challenges one manageable step at a time and nowhere is this more important than when dealing with your long term financial goals. Saving $1 million for your retirement or setting aside enough money for a six month emergency fund can feel like an unattainable goal, but with the simple change of automating your investing strategy, you can slowly but surely meet it.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

Owning a computer can be quite expensive, especially once you add up the cost of software to go with it. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a fortune to have access to great software. In this article, I was to show you how to save money with these must have free software for windows.

Best of the best free software for Windows

Before I go to the list, I want to highlight what I think is a fantastic piece of software. Winlibre, Free Software for Windows is actually “a rigorous selection of free, legal software for Windows 98, 2000, XP. It packages this quality software in a complete and coherent product accessible as a single download.
The Winlibre package includes:

• Office
  • OpenOffice.org – includes Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database access, HTML documents generation, and PDF documents generation
  • PDFCreator – allows you to convert any file to a PDF document.
• Internet
  • Mozilla Firefox – Although web browsers are free, Mozilla Firefox is one of the best out there
  • Mozilla ThunderBird – Open source cross-platform email and Usenet client based on Mozilla code, featuring intelligent spam filters and built-in RSS reader.
  • FileZilla – Open source FTP client and server software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
  • Nvu – Open source web authoring system with WYSIWYG and HTML modes and site management features derived from Netscape Composer.
  • Pidgin – Free chat client that let you connect easily to MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM and other chat networks all at once
• Multimedia
  • Zinf – Simple, but powerful audio player for Linux and Win32. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio CD playback, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming, RTP streaming, a powerful music browser, theme support and a download manager.
  • CDex – Open source CD ripper for Windows with a range of features, such as,  jitter correction, normalization, retrieval of song titles and more.
  • VLC Media Player – Highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
• Create
  • Gimp – GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
  • Inkscape – A Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator, that strives to be SVG Compliant, open source, responsive and extensible.
  • Blender – Free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.
  • Audacity – Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
• Tools
  • TightVNC – Free remote control software package. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.
  • 7-Zip – Open source Windows utility for manipulating archives. Formats 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR are supported fully, other formats can be unpacked.
  • NetTime – A simple time synchronization client for Windows 95/98/NT/2000. Its main claim to fame is that it is small, simple and unobtrusive.
  • ClamWin – A Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 and Vista.
  • Notepad2 – A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting.

Note: you can use individual download links too if the Winlibre one doesn’t work or too big.

More essential free software

In addition to the list above, there are also other free software and alternatives that I think are worth mentioning:

• AVG Antivirus – A free version of this powerful anti-virus program is probably one of the best anti-virus programs available.
• Spybot Search & Destroy and CCleaner – Quickly remove junk and offensive software from your PC quickly.
• Skype- Free Internet telephony
• Picasa- Free photo management, sharing and basic editing software.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit PDF Reader – Free PDF readers
• PrimoPDF – Free PDF creator.

If there are particularly good free Windows software that you don’t see on this list, please leave a comment below and let us know why you like it.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

What is a Good Credit Score? That’s a question that was recently asked on Moolanomy Answers. Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer, because there are many different credit scoring systems with different scales — not to mention individual lenders have their own criteria. Essentially, a good credit score depends on the scoring system used and your particular lender.

However, you can get a good idea of where you stand by getting your credit score and report. To do this, please read these articles for specific instruction on how to get your credit score and report for free:

• How To Get Your Free FICO Credit Score Online
• How To Get Free Credit Reports From AnnualCreditReport.com

Credit Score Basics

In general, credit score is a number generated by a mathematical formula. This formula analyzes information in your credit report to derive your credit score — a number ranging from 300 to 850. Your credit score is a reflection of your credibility (credit worthiness).

Overall, your credit score does a very good job of predicting how likely you are to repay your debt. Therefore, lenders extensively use credit scores to determine whether or not to loan you the money and at what price (i.e., interest rate). Typically, people with higher credit scores get lower interest rates compared to the rates for people with lower credit score.

To give you an idea on how credit score affects interest rate, here’s an example of 30-year mortgage interest rate for a $300,000 loan from myFICO web site:

What is a Good Credit Score?

While there are many credit scoring systems, it is generally accepted that FICO scores above 700 is considered a good credit score. However, there is no standardization that dictates what a good score is. As such, it’s possible that you may be surprised by the interest rate offered on your next loan. What happens if your lender asks you for a high interest rate despite your good credit score? This could mean a few things:

1. The lender may be looking at a report that’s using a different credit scoring system than yours,
2. Something could’ve changed since you last acquired your credit score, and
3. Your lender may have very strict lending guideline.

When this happens, you might consider working with another lender or delay your loan application to give yourself time to improve your credit score.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

In this article, I’ll break down the three components of saving, investing, and borrowing to accomplish your financial goals. Out of all the steps in Moolanomy’s Financial Success Plan, this step is without a doubt the most complex step. As such, I’ll keep this article at a high level, then later dive deeper into various concepts in separate articles.

Common Financial Goals

Throughout our lives, there are things that we all would like to accomplish. Many of them require a sizable amount of money. Some of these common goals include: graduate from college, buy a car, buy a house, pay off car loan, pay off mortgage, save for kids’ college, and save for retirement.

If you follow along the other steps in the plan, your finances should be in a fairly good shape and you should be more prepared to face these challenges. But exactly how can you accomplish these goals? There are essentially three ways to get the job done — save, invest, and borrow.

Borrowing To Accomplish A Goal Is Not The Same As Being In Debt

I can hear you saying “But I just got out of debt and now you want me to borrow?”  Yes, I am. A very fine distinction I want you to make is that borrowing to accomplish a goal is not the same as being in debt. When you’re in debt and have nothing to show for it, that’s bad. But when you’re in debt for a good reason — i.e., to get your college degree, to buy a house, to start a business, etc. — it’s usually a good thing. Of course, the debt must be reasonable with respect to the anticipated return on investment. For example, going in to debt for your third Master’s Degree at a top Ivy League school is not a good thing.

What do you have to borrow? Unless, you have a ton of cash, certain goals are very hard, and may be even impractical, to accomplish without borrowing. Two good examples of borrowing to accomplish your goals include taking out a student loan for your education and taking out a mortgage to buy your home.

Saving and Investing

What about saving versus investing? Other goals on your list can be roughly separated into short-tern and long-term.

Saving for Short-term Goals

Short-term goals are things like establishing an emergency fund, saving for home down payment and other big purchases, saving for vacation, etc. Basically, you’ll need the money fairly soon (5 years or less) or on demand (e.g., for emergencies). In these instances, you should save the money in liquid FDIC insured accounts like online high yield savings, certificates of deposit, or high interest checking. This way you have easy access to you money and the principal is protected from loss.

Investing for Intermediate and Long-term Goals

Intermediate and long-term goals are things like saving for your retirement, or for your children college education. For these, you don’t need money immediately, but you need it to grow at a much better rate than what you can normally get from risk-free options like savings and CDs. In these instances, you’ll have to invest your money.

So there you have it, a 30,000 feet view of step #5: Save, Invest and Borrow To Achieve Your Financial Goals. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be expanding more on this step. In particular, I want to really dive in to the concepts of borrowing and investing.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

An annuity is an investment vehicle issued by insurance companies. It is designed to provide the owner with a steady income stream over an extended period of time. In its simplest form, an investor would pay a lump-sum payment to the insurer who would then provide a guaranteed monthly payment to the investor for the rest of his life.

Photo: annuitiesguide.com

When it comes to annuity investment guides what we have tried to do is offer the truth. Annuity is a no-nonsense approach about the good, the bad and the ugly of fixed annuities, variable annuities, equity index annuities and even life insurance to minimize estate taxes. Therefore, it was written because people need to know the truth about their annuities. They need to know the dirty little lies insurance agents are using to sell annuities.
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In this article, I want to go through a few basic tax concepts that include Tax Brackets, Marginal Tax Rate, and Effective Tax Rate. Due to uniqueness of individual States, we will focus our attention to the Federal Income Tax System and the same concepts can be generally applied at the individual State Income Tax level.

In the United States, we have a progressive tax system where people who earn more money generally pay more. There are six brackets, and the 2009 federal income tax brackets are as follows:

• 10% for the first $8,350 earned,
• 15% between $8,250 to $33,950,
• 25% between $33,950 and $82,250,
• 28% between $82,250 to $171,550,
• 33% between $171,550 and $372,950, and
• 35% above $372,950.

Marginal Tax Rate

One of the biggest misconceptions is that your entire income will be taxed at your bracket tax rate. For example, if you make $100,000, you have to pay 28% or $28,000. In fact, that’s not the case at all. Suppose your taxable income (after deductions and exemptions) is exactly $100,000 and your status is Single; then your tax would be calculated like this:

The $100,000 taxable income puts you in the 28% marginal tax rate bracket, but this only applies to income above $82,250. Income below that amount is taxed at the appropriate tax rate as per above chart.

When we talking about tax deduction, i.e., IRA contribution or charitable donation, we often talk about reducing our tax burden at the highest tax bracket. For example, “My $5,000 IRA contribution would cut my taxable income by $1,250 at my 25% marginal tax rate.”

Effective Tax Rate

Effective tax rate, or your actual tax rate, is simple the amount you are paying to the government as a percentage of your taxable income. In the example above, your effective tax rate is 21.72% ($21,720 divided by $100,000). Comparing 2008 tax rates, you are paying $258 less tax in 2009 for the same income.

Since these tax brackets are marginal, meaning that the rate is applied for each bracket before moving on to the next bracket. This means that your effective tax rate will always be less than your marginal tax rate — the percentage listed in the highest bracket.

I hope this article helps you improve your understanding of our tax system, specifically, Tax Brackets, Marginal Tax Rate, and Effective Tax Rate.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

I recently became aware of the Citi Private Pass, which is available to Citi credit cardmembers and Citibank debit MasterCard customers. I have been exploring their web site for the past few days, and it looks like a great place to get free and discount tickets for various events.  The site has four main categories: Music, Sports, Access, and Complimentary.

Music Concert Tickets

I am not a big music fan so I am going to be brief on this one. Right now, Citi Private Pass is running Summer of Savings! program where you can get $5 Live Nation Concert tickets between 7/1/2009 and 8/31/2009. The site offers the ability for you to search by Artist, State, and Month for discount concert tickets. Some of the more familiar names that popped up include Aerosmith, Creed, Kid Rock, Lil Wayne, etc.

Sporting Event Tickets

The Sports section takes you to a variety of partner sites where you can purchase discount sports tickets. Some of the partners include Visa Signature, Hudson River Community Sailing, and Razor Gator (for Basketball, Hockey, Rodeo, Baseball, etc.)

Since the Citi Field is right next to my house, I’ll be searching the site for some discount New York Mets tickets and see if I can take my family to a few games.

Access To Various Events

The most appealing part of the Citi Private Pass offering is the Access section where there are a wide variety of offers. Some of the ones that caught my eyes include:

• New York Comedy Festival (November 4-8) – Citi cardmembers will have special access to presale tickets in early August.
• Sonoma Wine Country Weekend (September 4-6) – Citi cardmembers will have exclusive ticket discount to Sonoma Wine Country Weekend.

The section also includes four sub-sections: Nightlife & More, Culinary Experiences, Shopping Experience, and Dining Access where you can dig deeper and find more of your favorite activities.

Complimentary Tickets

There’s also a Complimentary section where you can get free tickets. Currently, there are two events available:

• Julie & Julia – Complimentary tickets will be available starting July 28 for a special advanced screening of JULIE & JULIA. A limited supply of complimentary tickets are available to Citi Visa Signature credit cardmembers (each with one guest) for screenings in New York and San Francisco.
• Woodward Gallery – Citi cardmembers will have access to a private viewing at Woodward Gallery, New York’s largest gallery in the Lower East Side.

The Citi Private Pass site looks very promising; however, I am not sure how it compares to other discount tickets venues at the moment. In the mean time, I signed up for their newsletter to see if there’s anything special in my area.

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance

One of the leading news this week is about the health care reform that President Obama is trying to push forward. The overhaul is estimated to cost somewhere around $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Sounds like a big number, but when you consider the 42 million uninsured Americans, the price tag becomes $2,381 per person over the course of 10 years — not so bad.

One Trillion Dollars Visualized from Mint.com

Anyway, I found this YouTube video from Mint.com that helps you visualize the one trillion dollars amount.

What’s your thought on Obama’s Health Reform Plan and the $1 trillion price tag?

This Week Round Up

Here are a few articles for your reading enjoyment:

• Saving vs. Investing at Yielding Wealth
• A Free Resume Template Site from Microsoft at The Dough Roller
• Do Things in the Right Order at Personal Finance By The Book
• How Do You Answer The Question – “Can We Afford It?” at Wealth Pilgrim
• Another Look at TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) at Good Financial Cents
• Does My Car Qualify For The Cash For Clunkers Program? at Four Pillars
• Credit Card Fees College Students Must Know About at Studenomics

Carnivals

And here are the carnivals I participated in this week:

• Carnival of Money Stories
• Carnival of the Green
• Carnival of Homesteading
• Carnival of Real Estate
• Festival of Frugality

Do you have a financial question? Ask it now at Moolanomy Answers!

Copyright © 2007 – 2009 Pinyo B. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

Please visit Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog, Moolanomy Finance Directory, and Moolanomy Answers for more great content.

Source: Moolanomy Personal Finance