Note: Welcome to those coming over from Yakezie! Glad to have you here! Be sure to check out some of my most popular posts on the right side of the page. Cheers!
With brick-and-mortar banks, credit unions, and online banks, the options for where to open an account are limitless now. You could open dozens of accounts in a day without much effort. But should you?
While there’s no financial penalty for having many accounts, there are pros and cons to having many or having just one or two.
Why have multiple?
Having multiple bank accounts can …
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Posted on February 29, 2012 -
Congrats to our three winners from the Spruce Up Your Life Giveaway!
First Prize: Kimberly C. gets the $100 prize and picked the Alzheimer’s Association for the donation.
Second Prize: Kyra B. won the $50 prize and has chosen the Autism Society of North Carolina as her charity of choice.
Third Prize: Doreen K. takes home two of my favorite personal finance books.
Thanks to everyone that entered! It was a lot of fun running the contest and getting hundreds of entries!
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Posted on February 3, 2012 -
In a quest to understand taxes to the best of my ability, I’ve compiled a list of the best posts to help you maximize refunds and minimize stress in the tax season!
To do this, I looked at bookmarked posts, asked friends on Yakezie, and scoured even more of my favorite blogs and Google. The result – 37 awesome posts (plus this one, which clocks in at ~1,900 words).
Posts cover a wide range of topics. Not all of them are “how-to” in nature, but they’re all helpful in making tax decisions both when you’re filing your return this season …
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Posted on January 24, 2012 -
Welcome, friends, to the Spruce Up Your Life Giveaway!
I’m celebrating one year of blogging on Money Spruce by giving away $150 cash plus another $50 to charity.
The Prizes
First Prize: $100 cash to you + $25 to a charity of your choice*
Second Prize: $50 cash to you + $25 to a charity of your choice*
Third Prize: One copy each of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and Total Money Makeover
IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to add all your entries in the Raffle Copter form below! Only those entered properly can be counted.
Giveaway has ended! Thanks …
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Posted on January 17, 2012 -
ING Direct is offering $107 in free cash when you sign up for an Electric Orange checking account.
I’m already an Electric Orange checking account holder. Here are some of my favorite features:
- NO MONTHLY FEES – by far my favorite feature
- free ATM usage at 35,000 ATMs
- easy to link with my ING savings acounts
- Easy P2P payments
- No overdraft fees
This deal is only valid for 2 days, so be sure to sign up by Sunday at 11:59 pm ET.
Even if you don’t make the deadline, you can still get $50 …
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Posted on November 26, 2011 -
Frustrating fact: none of the big banks offer completely free checking anymore. Most of them offer free checking, with a catch. This could be something like requiring direct deposit and/or keeping a daily minimum balance through the month. If you don’t follow the rules, you get slapped with a monthly fee. I overheard my roommate on the phone yesterday complaining to a BoA rep. about a $12 fee she was charged on her last statement because she doesn’t have direct deposit anymore. She didn’t get the memo and found out about the fees the hard way. I learned …
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Posted on July 29, 2011 -
Everyone loves to hate airline fees, right? Well, I don’t. In fact, I think they’re kinda great. Let me explain further.
I first realized this concept while listening to an episode of Planet Money. On the show, they announced in the “indicator” that airlines collected $3.4 billion in baggage fees last year. One of the hosts, Adam Davidson, announced that he “love(s) baggage fees and airline fees.” He goes onto to explain that in the before-fees era, we all paid for everyone’s bags, whether we checked our own bags or not, as the cost of bags was distributed …
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Posted on June 29, 2011 -
I’m not a credit card affiliate, and I’m always shocked/annoyed/disgusted at how many financial bloggers seem to make a living “reviewing” credit cards on their sites. There’s never a shortage of blog posts explaining the latest credit card offers, and I’m really sick of seeing it. Undoubtedly, most of these bloggers are getting a cut for reviewing the cards and getting their readers to sign up for them. While I won’t name names (and I’m sure I don’t have to), I think these bloggers are doing a incredible disservice to their readers. Here’s why (and see my pledge …
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Posted on June 15, 2011 -
As y
ou may or may not know, I am now a freelancer for adaptu.com! Adaptu is a similar service to Mint, but with more a community feel to it (I’ll be featuring a review of adaptu on here soon).
You can read my first post on changing banks.
This is really exciting to me, as it’s my first real writing gig! I feel like it’s a great accomplishment for me. It’s definitely a step towards earning more money on the side of my 9-5 job.
I’ll continue to post on adaptu every two weeks or so. Be …
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“If you get a tax refund, you just gave the government an interest-free loan!” I seriously can’t count how many times I’ve heard people say some variation of that phrase. You’ve heard it, too (or maybe you’re the one that said it to me). It’s technically true. But obviously people who say this really haven’t run any math on that to see how insignificant the interest can be nor have they considered any other implications.
Let’s examine the impact that going a year without my refund had on my finances this year. I received a tax refund of $900 …
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Posted on March 2, 2011 -
