Negotiate Your Way To Lower Prices

Most people think negotiating prices only works when dealing with large ticket items like cars or homes. Well in this declining economy, consumers are noticing that pretty much anything is negotiable.

I don’t negotiate much since I think it wastes times, and my wife hates when I do it, but I will let you in on one time I we did and it was very successful. My wife (girlfriend at the time) needed to have her gall bladder removed. She had United Healthcare Insurance. She went to an Out of Network doctor so she thought it was covered 80/20. 80% paid by UHN and 20% paid by her. Well UHC decided that it couldn’t agree on a price with the doctor and they opted to pay nothing. According to their plan literature, they will by 80% on out of network procedures once they agree upon a price. I was pissed, I told her to call and refuse the pending balance. My wife had paid into that plan for years and the one time she needed it, they denied her. She received a bill for $8,500 from the doctors office. My wife basically called up the doc and said, “look, I am a recent grad with student loans and cannot afford to pay the total bill”. They asked how much could she pay and she said $2000. The lady in the billing office said fine, we will send you a bill for $2000 and the rest will be written off I was shocked, I guess I never really gave it a thought that it would work. After working in health care years later, I have realized that most doctors are happy to get anything due to the high amount of uninsured patients. Besides, outside of the doc fees, I bet the surgery didn’t cost much more than that anyway.

Other things I have negotiated down is my cable bill, phone bill and internet bill.

There was a Forbes Article just published that shows even more things you can negotiate. I may think about trying this, since I realize that most companies are willing to due anything to sell products these days since no one is spending!

If anyone has any interesting negotiating stories, please post a comment, I bet everyone can benefit from your experiences!

Q3 2010 Brokerage Promotions

As the market conditions continue to improve, more online brokers are adding incentives to get you to open an account with them. Now is not a bad time to start investing since the market is still of its highs from last year but seems to be rebounding a bit. Sure we still may be in for a rocky ride, but if you are investing in the long term, now is the perfect time to get going. If you have some extra money to invest I suggest you look at one of these promos prior to signing up with anyone.

Here are a few of the current ones going on:

• Tradeking Promo- Get up to $150 in transfer fees credited to your account when you transfer your account from another brokerage to Tradeking (see post for more details)
• ETrade Promo- Open an ETrade brokerage account and get free trading for 60 days. You can also get up to a $500 account opening bonus depending on the amount you transfer over to your new account. See the Etrade Promo page for more details.
• ETrade IRA Promo- Open an ETrade IRA and get 100 free trades. (See post for more details)
• Zecco Promo- Zecco brokerage gives you Get 10 free stock trades every month if you $25,000 balance or make 25 paid trades each month. Otherwise the commission is only $4.50 / trade which is one of the lowest out there. (See more details here
• OptionsXpress Promo- OptionsXpress is giving away $100 when you open a new account with them. (See post for more details)
• Firstrade Promo- Firstrade is giving away 5 free trade when you open a new account. (See post for more details)
• Optionshouse Promo – When you open a new account with Optionshouse you will receive 100 free trades.

1% Cash Back from ING Direct Electric Orange Checking

ING Direct has a promo going where you can get 1% cash back on all debit card purchases in your Electric Orange Checking Account. This promotion covers any purchases from October 1st all th way through November 30th.

You can get the cash back on all eligible PIN and signature based transactions that total under $50 at any merchant that accepts MasterCard. Note that ATM transactions and any transaction where you also get cash back are not considered “eligible” transactions.

There is a limit to how much you can earn however. The cash back reward is capped at $250 per month, so since this covers 2 months you could potentially earn a $500 cash back reward if you make a lot of small ( < $50) purchases.

The 1% Cash Back Rebate will be deposited into your Electric Orange by the 15th day of the following month. If you already have an ING Electric Orange Checking this is a good deal since this cash back offer rivals that of most cash back credit cards for small purchases.

Check out the ING Electric Orange Checking Promo page for more details on this Limited Time Cash Back Offer.

TD Ameritrade Offers Commission Free ETF’s

TDAmeritrade, in a battle against the likes of Vanguard and Fidelity has launched a commssion free ETF program to their customers.

The are toting that they have over 100 different ETF’s that you can trade for no commission. You can choose from popular ETF’s from iShares, Vanguard, StateStreet, Powershares and more.

Here is a comparison chart that they created lining them up against the competition:

The only catch with this deal is that you must hold the ETF’s for at least 30 days, if you sell one within the 30 day window you will be charged a short-term trading fee.

What is great about this deal is that accounts at TDAmeritrade are free. There are no minimum balances or activity fees. So if you are solely going to invest in the free ETF’s, you cost of investing is $0. Not a bad way to get some money into the market for no cost whatsoever.

TDAmeritrade is a full service discount broker, so any other stock trade will cost you $9.99 per trade. If you don’t currently have a broker or are looking to switch, this ETF deal can make you pull the trigger.

Check out the full list of Free ETF Stocks here.

No More Tax Forms By Mail

Moving along with the Internet age, the IRS has decided to no longer automatically tax forms to those that filed their 2009 taxes on paper.

According to the IRS, they are “taking this step because of the continued growth in electronic filing and the availability of free options to taxpayers, as well as to help reduce costs.”

According to the news releasein early October the IRS will be mailing out a postcard to individuals and businesses that filed by paper last year and did not use an electronic tax preparer with instructions on how to get the necessary forms required to file their 2010 taxes.

Most likely those instructions are going to direct you to their online forms section of the IRS website.

This really makes sense, since the cost of mailing these out can be saved considering more and more people have access to the Internet to print these forms.

Anyone think the IRS will take these cost savings and reduce our taxes?????

2010 ROTH IRA and 401k Contribution Limits

It is getting to be that time of year again where you want to make sure that hit all of your retirement contributions prior to the end of the year. Here are details for 2010:

401k and 403b Contribution Limits Contribution Year Less Than Age 50 Age 50 and Older 2008 $15,500 $20,500 2009 $16,500 $22,000 2010 $16,500 $22,000	Roth IRA Contribution Limits Contribution Year Less Than Age 50 Age 50 and Older 2008 $5,000 $6,000 2009 $5,000 $6,000 2010 $5,000 $6,000
Roth IRA Phase Out Limits Contribution Year Single Married Filing Jointly 2008 $101,000 – $116,000 $159,000 – $169,000 2009 $101,000 – $116,000 $159,000 – $169,000 2010 $105,000 – $120,000 $167,000 – $177,000

I will add the 2011 numbers as I get them. Also note that in 2010 the income limits to contribute to a ROTH IRA are removed when doing a conversion to a ROTH IRA.

It is obvious that the government hasn’t done much to increase those limits. I am still hearing rumors that they are wanting to get rid of the ROTH IRA loophole, so my advice to you is to max that out if possible, since it is a great tax savings vehicle. Don’t forget that you can contribute to a 2010 ROTH IRA in 2011 prior to April 15th. So even if you haven’t started setting aside your 2010 contributions, you still have about 6 months to get that $5000 in there.

For those of you new to planning for retirement, here is what I recommend:

• Pay into your 401k the required amount to receive your full company match (if your company doesn’t have a 401k match, skip this)
• If you have credit card debt, pay it off!!! (if no credit card debt, skip this)
• Max out a ROTH IRA. Put $5000 after tax dollars into a 2010 ROTH IRA
• Max out your 401k. The current max is $16,500 for 2010
• Save Save Save – Start saving the rest of your extra cash. It is always recommended to have a buffer of 4-6 months of your living expenses saved up in case of unforeseen circumstances, such as job loss, illness, etc.

If you follow those simple steps, you should be on your way to a healthy retirement. Now only if we could get the market and economy to cooperate!!