Pay Off Mortgage Early vs. Save More For Retirement? Digging Deep Into The Details

In the world of personal finance, you can always generate a good debate if you talk about paying off your mortgage early. The argument usually boils down to something like this: If your interest rate is 4%, then paying extra towards that mortgage … [Read the rest]

Barron’s Best Online Broker Rankings 2013

The stock market is at or near all-time highs, which means that brokerage firms should be seeing a lot more interest (for better or worse). Weekly business newspaper Barron's just released their 2013 annual broker survey rankings. Here's a snippet … [Read the rest]

Capital One Consumer Bank Savings Account Review

Capital One bought ING Direct USA back in early 2012, and has finally completed their transition and re-branding. Their new savings account product is called Capital One Consumer Bank Savings. Since I've had an account with them for over a decade … [Read the rest]

Stumbling On Happiness by Dan Gilbert – Book Review

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is in many ways like other popular behavioral psychology books. It's a New York Times bestseller. It tends to list a lot of ways that humans behave irrationally or incorrectly as shown by academic studies. … [Read the rest]

Split by GroupMe: Collect Money From Groups – No Fee Promotion

GroupMe is a group-texting smartphone app with a new feature called Split which allows you to collect payments from groups via credit card (collecting rent from roommates, splitting a bar tab, chipping in for a friend's birthday gift, etc.). The … [Read the rest]

2013 New Year’s Resolution: Get Our Crap Together

It's already March, and I've yet to make a New Year's resolution. Then along comes this NY Times article about a mother of two who's young, healthy husband was killed while simply riding his bike: In the many months of suffering after Mr. … [Read the rest]

$10,000 P2P LendingClub / Prosper Loan Portfolio Update – March 2013

Here's the 3rd and last piece of the monthly updates for my Beat the Market Experiment, a set of three real money portfolios started on November 1st, 2012. See also my $10,000 Benchmark and $10,000 Speculative portfolio updates for March 2013. For … [Read the rest]

Groupon: Office Depot $10 for $20 Gift Card

Groupon is offering a $20 gift card to Office Depot for $10 (Update: sold out, boo). Valid "at any Office Depot location across the country, and for online purchases". Also, the LivingSocial Sam's Club membership deal has been extended for … [Read the rest]

$10,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Speculative Portfolio Update – March 2013

Here's the 2nd piece of the monthly updates for my Beat the Market Experiment, a set of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012. Since this update is rather boring, let me provide an update on the overall experiment: $10,000 Passive … [Read the rest]

Amazon Gift Card, Kindle Accessories Promotion

Amazon has a special Kindle promotion where if you buy a certain amount of Amazon gift cards, you'll get up to 20% back towards qualifying Amazon Kindle accessories in the form of a promotion code (i.e. coupon code). The key here is that "Amazon.com … [Read the rest]

Amazon Mom & Baby Promotions: $10 Off Diapers, Coupon Book

Amazon Mom is a program that has some nice perks for parents if you already pay for Amazon Prime at $79 a year (name is a little sexist, though ;)). The main draw is the 20% off diapers & wipes (5% Subscribe & Save discount + 15% Amazon Mom … [Read the rest]

$10,000 Benchmark Portfolio Update – March 2013

Time again for a Beat the Market Experiment monthly update, for the first of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012: $10,000 Passive Benchmark Portfolio that would serve as both a performance benchmark and an real-world, low-cost … [Read the rest]