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TDAmeritrade has added an additional offer to current promo (see post) where you can receive free trading for 30 days when opening an account with $2000 or more. They limit the number of free trades to 500, which is a lot. That is over 16 trades a day. They still have the $100 bonuses as well if you deposit over $50,000.
Full Promo Details:
These promos expire 1/31/08
Link To Promo Page
Their current commission rates are $9.95 for online equity trades and $9.95 + $.75 per option for option orders.
I get a lot of questions asking me what accounts I use for my money. I tend to look for accounts that have the features I want over the interest rate, but have been able to find accounts that offer both. I have posted about many of these accounts since they are what I use everyday, so please refer to the posts for more detail. Here is a quick breakdown of how I handle my money:
Checking Accounts:
My main checking account is the Fidelity mySmart Cash High Yield Checking Account. (See Post) The current yield I am receiving there is 4.82%. This account has free ATM rebates, free checks and free billpay, so it pretty much has everything I want with a high interest rate. Plus it is integrated with my IRA’s and 401k, so it is nice to have everything in one place finally! Since this is a decent enough interest rate, all my savings sits here as well, no need for another account!
Since Fidelity doesn’t have any branches near me, I have a National City Account Free Checking Account that I use for deposits of cash and checks. There is a branch just down the street from me, so this is convenient to make deposits. I then use Fidelity Moneyline to move those deposits from the National City account to my Fidelity account. Very easy and hasslefree.
Brokerage:
I use Tradeking (See Post for Bonus) Brokerage. They are very easy to use and the commissions are low, $4.95 for equity and option trades. They also have an ACH feature where I can pull money out of my Fidelity account easily. Since the market has been so volatile lately I haven’t don’t much trading here, so the cash is just sitting in Tradeking’s money market at 4.25%.
In addition to Tradeking, I also use Sharebuilder. (See Post for Bonus). I mainly use Sharebuilder for a long term investing account. I buy partial shares of 10 ETF’s four times a week. My goal with this account it to dollar cost average while the market is correcting itself. I just set this and forget it. I consider this nest egg fund to use later, possible for kid’s college education.
Credit Cards:
I only use 2 credit cards for purchasing. My main card is the American Express Blue Cash Card
Written by BudgetBoy · Filed Under Reviews · Leave a Comment
Tax day is approaching so the next question you need to ask your self is am I gonna file my self? Well if you are, I have compiled a list of online tax softwares and their prices as of today (1/21). As a disclaimer, the only two I have ever used is TaxSimple and TurboTax. Many of these sites have multiple packages so I tried to pull out the cheapest for you for the forms that you will need to complete. You can click on the name for a link to the actual product page.
TaxSimple:
- 1040EZ: $14.95 Federal | $14.95 State
- 1040: $24.95 Federal | $24.95 State
TurboTax:
- 1040EZ: FREE Federal | $22.05 State
- 1040: $25.45 Federal | $25.45 State
- State Farm Customers: FREE See Post
Tax Cut:
- 1040EZ and 1040: $35.96 Federal and State
CompleteTax:
- 1040EZ and 1040: $29.95 State: $14.95
TaxAct:
- 1040EZ and 1040: Standard: Free Federal | $13.95 State
Happy Filing! Be sure to verify prices before filing as they may change. Please leave a comment here if you see any updates to prices or know of other softwares not listed above.
PNC is offering a $100 bonus when opening up a Personal Checking account with Direct Deposit. The $100 bonus will be paid out 7 days after your first direct deposit. The first direct deposit must be made by 4/30/08.
In the small print it explains what they consider a direct deposit, “The Direct Deposits must be made by an employer or an outside agency. Transfers from one account to another or deposits made at a branch or ATM do not qualify as Direct Deposits.” It is possible that a Paypal transfer will count as a direct deposit, however it has not been confirmed.
Offer expires 1/26/08.
Link to Bonus Page
Since ING Direct (Account Bonus) acquired ShareBuilder, I thought you would see the usual $50 new account bonus go away, or at least get smaller. Well that is not the case, they just started a new $50 bonus for new accounts. You do need to invest at least $50. The $50 bonus will be paid out roughly 4 weeks after you have invested $50. Offer expires 3/31/08.
With the market in the crapper, there isn’t a better time to start investing. Get in low and watch it ride high!!
Sign Up Link
After months of debate and looking at various products, I decided to move forward and purchase Equifax Credit Watch Gold 3-in-1 
for my wife and I.
Yes there are ways to get your credit report free (see my post), but I haven’t been able to wait the 3 months to pull each report and want to know about inquiries to my credit report as they happen. With the recent increase in identity theft, I wanted more piece of mind that I know immediately when something hits my credit report.
With the Equifax Credit Watch Gold 3-in-1 we get unlimited access to our Equifax credit report for a year, a yearly 3 in one credit report which is a consolidated report from the 3 credit bureaus, but more importantly we now get real time email updates when a new account is opened. This was the main reason we went with Equifax. The email alerts are also configurable based on % change on an account or if a card is used that has been dormant for a while. Since I open quite a few credit cards to receive the bonuses, I want to make sure that no one has gotten the account info and has started going on a shopping spree.
Now this security isn’t free, I am going to end up paying $12.95 / month. This is why I was having the dilemma. I wanted to have these real time email alerts, but didn’t want to pay for them! But there was no way to do this for free, so I am just going to eat this cost for some piece of mind. I feel that using this in addition to Yodlee (see my post) will virtually eliminate the risk of identity fraud for us, or at least give us an early warning so we can take care of it before it is too late.
If you don’t want to shell out $13 a month for something like this, at least regularly pull that credit report for free. I’ve seen too many horror stories happen to people that don’t keep an eye on their credit report.
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