Stealth Wealth Are you under the radar?

Today I was told that I received the new position that I had applied and interviewed for a few weeks ago.  I will start the position in mid January, but will not actually be receiving the pay for the position.  I will still be paid as a teller and will be reviewed to see at what point I fit in within the pay grade scale a few months later.  I’m thinking the pay grade is between $24K and $36K.

This will be a great chance to learn the loan side and gain knowledge required to move into a loan officer position in the future.  We’ll see how my pay effects my bottom line probably in March, but until then there will not be too much change.

I will be driving 200 miles less to work each week, which will be good on the cost of traveling.  I travel 40 miles a day, but I will only be traveling about 1 miles once I start the new job.

Also I was told that as a teller I have received a raise of about $500 which equals about 10 bucks a week.  Thats enough to pay my cell phone bill

This weekend I’ll finish my goals for 2008. I need to buckle down and start saving more money. Next year will be exciting I believe.

Today I called Capital One because they wanted to talk with me about my card and making some changes to get me to use it more. I quit using it back in October because I got a Chase Freedom for the rewards, but kept my Capital One open. Through the conversation I have changed my card to a rewards card with a minimum pay out of $0.01 which is cool. The rep. also offered me a rate increase from $1k to $2k, which is cool with me.

Before we finished I asked him if I could get 6 months interest free. He was hesitant and told me that he could give me either a rate increase or 6 months interest free. I decided to go with the 6 months interest free because I’m looking to buy a Canon Rebel xti, which is about $500-$700. I’m planning to go ahead and get the camera and just put it on the credit card and pay it off over a 6 month period.

I just checked out Sharebuilder’s new website. They have changed the colors to match ING’s now. I think it looks pretty good. They say nothing about my account will change and login is the same also.

One of my favorite things I noticed when I first saw the site is that real-time trades are just $9.95 now. That’s not free like Zecco is offering, but its a step towards it. It doesn’t matter what pricing plan you are on EVERONE pays $9.95 per real-time trade. Pricing plan only seems to affect your automatic investments along with gaining a few helpful tools with bigger plans.

They still offer the promotion where you get 5 free auto investments if you refer someone as of now.

I’m excited to see what ING comes out with to streamline sharebuilder and ING’s banking. I’m really interested in the Electric Orange checking and will be definitely checking into it sometime next year.

Click the thumbnail for a screen shot of the remodeled site.

Today I wrote my biggest check I’ve ever written out of my account. I wrote a $2,000 check to my employer to pay for my 2008 ESPP contributions. I know I looked at that check more than 20 times before I put it in the envelope before I mailed it off. Even after putting it in the envelope I pulled out a couple more times to double check (25 times check) to make sure that I had written it out correctly along with the correct address. I’m paranoid on things like that for some reason.

Now I’ll have a little over $75 extra every paycheck. The company pays a little over 4% dividend so I’ll be making about the same as it sitting in my money market account. When economy straightens up and the banking industry gets settled from the sub prime mess I expect the stock will climb back up to where it was a year ago, which is about a 50% climb. My employer isn’t directly hurting from sub prime lending, but indirectly it is being hit as is most every company right now.

I found this article interesting because it says that Americans are more conscious about their spending during Christmas and many plan to use cash for their purchases. Also 73% of people surveyed plans to have their Christmas debt paid off within 3 months. Well we know people plan a lot of things, they don’t always follow through (ie: paying off debt).

Over the weekend when surfing a few blogs I saw another survey that showed the U.S. consumers not as financially aware as this survey. I don’t know the exact numbers I saw but the second survey I saw showed about 1 in every 5 shoppers about the ages 18-26 (give or take a few years) thought money was no object when it comes to Christmas shopping. That stat is pretty alarming!

After reading both surveys I am leaning more to believing this second one more because to me it’s hard to believe that people are actually all of a sudden financially responsible. Maybe people can prove me wrong hopefully.

What do you think?  Are shoppers actually more financially responsible this Christmas?

Here is a link to the article of the first survey I read that states shoppers are more responsible.  I’m sorry I don’t have a link the the second survey I read which was the most believable to me.

Over the past few weeks I’ve felt like I need to liquidate some of my holdings and have some more cash for now.  I’ve struggled trying to figure which of company I wanted to pull the trigger on and let go.

• Middleby - this was my largest gainer… well only gainer with over 22% gain in 6 months.  It was my hardest to let go because this is the company I’m pretty sure will continue to grow.  Everytime they announce earnings the price goes up.  Selling this makes me feel like I’m firing my best employee.
• Coldwater Creek - my biggest loser.  I debated just cutting my losses and moving on…but I’ve done that before and regretted “cutting my losses” when I see the company back up 6 months later.  I’m pretty confident the new CEO is going to start running a tighter ship and earnings will follow.  I need to be patient with this one.
• My employer’s stock - I really wanted to sell my holdings here because I already have so much exposure to the company in my ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan).  I even went as far as setting a sell limit up on sharebuilder for $16(about a $75 loss), and the quote was $16.03 at that moment.  I was pretty sure I was just going to take the loss and get it over with at that time.  Well quotes are delayed and some shares traded during the 15 minute delay which is rare.  It has since then dropped down to around $15 and I’m still holding.  I don’t want to sell this low.  I get about a 4% dividend so it’s not too bad.

In the end I sold Middleby for a profit of $227.98, which is a 22.80% gain.  I now have $2803.31 in my money market account, but over $1k at the moment is going to pay off my credit card in January.  It’s interest free until them so I’ll make a few bucks by waiting until January.

Here is a financial checklist I found by Kiplinger.com I thought you might find helpful. Most are common sense, but it’s always good to be reminded of things.

1) Identify Your Goals
2) Get out of Debt
-Pay off everything by the time your 30
3) Prepare for an emergency
-Get auto, health, life, and homeowners insurance
-Have a cash reserve of at least $1,000
-Try to create the habit of saving at least 10% of your paycheck every month.
4) Start investing
5) Have fun
-Travel (don’t use credit to do it)

Do you have any that should be added?

Click here to see the video

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Monday I got an e-mail from Sharebuilder telling me that they were bought out by ING Direct. I don’t think its a bad thing as long as things don’t change because I haven’t had a problem with Sharebuilder so far in the over 2 years I’ve been with them. I actually hope that my sharebuilder actually make it easier to get an ING account if I decide to in the future. I’m not sure how long it takes to get an ING account now, but I hope it streamlines with Sharebulder.

I’ve known about ING’s checking and saving accounts, but haven’t actually thought about opening one until they bought sharebuilder. I may actually try the electric orange checking account, which pays over 3% interest and free bill pay and debit card. I’m going to see how they handle Sharebuilder first before I jump into it. I really don’t need two checking accounts, but I wouldn’t mind the 3% interest on money I use to pay my bills. I need to keep a checking account at my bank I work at for obvious reason.

One possibility would be to receive my direct deposit and transfer my paycheck into electric orange account and just pay everything from that account. We’ll see later though.

Here is the e-mail I received from sharebuilder announcing the buy. I’ve replaced my name with “Stealthy”.

 

November 19, 2007

Dear Stealthy,

ShareBuilder has some exciting news. As of November 15, ShareBuilder has been acquired by ING DIRECT, the nation’s largest direct bank with over 5.5 million customers and $75 billion in U.S. assets (part of Netherlands-based ING, NYSE: ING). ING DIRECT shares our vision of helping Americans increase their savings.

ING DIRECT is widely recognized for offering some of the most popular and easy-to-use savings products. Joining the ING DIRECT family will benefit you by providing simple and innovative products and services that can help you meet your saving and investing goals including savings, checking and mortgages.

Rest assured there have been no changes made to your ShareBuilder account. You can continue to use the same account number, login and password, and can access your account anytime at sharebuilder.com. Over the next few weeks, you’ll begin to see ShareBuilder adopt ING DIRECT’s signature Orange color. Also, get ready to see some innovative new products, services and additional value as ShareBuilder becomes part of ING DIRECT.

We look forward to sharing more information with you over the coming months. If you have any questions, we invite you to contact us at 1-800-747-2537.

The ShareBuilder team is really excited by what this news means for you!

Best regards,

Dan Greenshields
President
ShareBuilder Securities Corporation

When I first started this blog I did a post on tipping and how out of hand it has become in todays society. Unfortunately I accidently deleted that post when making changes to my blog during the summer. So I’ll restate some of my feelings on tipping again with a video on tipping from The Early Show.

I think that tipping is becoming too expected by everyone from servers to hair stylist. In my opinion tips are like a bonus that should be unexpected. It drives me crazy to see people expecting a tip and when they don’t get one or get a small one they get upset. I’m not going to tip someone just because “it’s just what your supposed to do”, I’m going to tip them if they go out of their way to make my evening go very well. If they make sure my glass doesn’t reach empty. If they are very friendly and make me feel comfortable is what it boils down to when your a server or waitress for me.

As for a barber or hairstylist…I don’t see the reason for tipping $10 bucks when your already paying that person to cut your hair. It’s like voluntarily raising the price. If the price for a haircut is $10 why pay $12. Isn’t the service of cutting your hair included in the price?

In the interview on The Early Show the guy talks about giving your hairstylist a holiday tip equivalent to one haircut. I’m glad I’m not a woman because she would be tipping $100 or more possibly.

I just don’t understand why people tip just because it’s what your supposed to do. Don’t you lose the meaning and the value of a tip when it just becomes the norm? Do expected tips create lower value of service instead of a tip making someone work harder to receive a tip? What’s your opinion?

Click here to view the video!