It took a couple of weeks but I finally received the check for cancelling my Whole Life Policy today. I also received a $20 rebate check for a hard drive I bought a few months ago. (I had totally forgotten about that. I love found money!)

The check is for a little over $1000. Right now I think I’ll put it in the savings account until the end of November and then buy more iBonds with it. Alternatively I could put it in the brokerage account but right now I’m having trouble finding stocks I really want to buy…

By the way, if anyone wants/needs a Vitualbank referral for opening an account I have some available. You and I both get $20 upon your opening an account. If you’re interested email me at mypfblog@gmail.com with your first and last name, and your email address and I will set you up. Your information won’t be sent anywhere except Virtualbank and I won’t be emailing you beyond the confirmation that I’ve set up your referral.

Please only request a referral if you are serious about opening an account as I only have a limited number of referrals.

I’ve been searching for a new rewards credit card for the last week since I’ve maxed my Household Bank card ($400 cash back per year). I’ve applied for the Citi Rewards card but haven’t received a decision yet. I may get turned down due to my bankruptcy even though my credit score is now in the mid 700’s.

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I’m entering another order for an iBond today. I purchased a small ($100) one earlier this month to see how long it would take for the transaction to occur. Happily it only took one business day for the transaction to go through. The reason I wanted to know this is that if you purchase an iBond on the last day of the month you get the interest for the entire month (the bond is considered issued on the first of the month.) Since the money doesn’t leave the savings account until you actually purchase it, you also get the interest for most of the month in your savings account. Not a lot of money but every little bit helps.

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It’s been a couple of months since I last posted about my goals. I’m continuing to track our expenses in MS Money with some interesting results.

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It is generally offered to those who have sub-par credit (which I had due to my Chap. 7 bankruptcy in 2000). The offer I got was 0% for six months on both balance transfers and purchases. I am beyond that period now but another nice feature is 2% cash back on purchases. They even gave me the 2% back on a 0% balance transfer I did when I got the card! There is a limit of $400 per year which I’ve just hit. I make most of my purchases on this card in order to capture the reward but now that I won’t be getting it until January I need to look for another rewards card. More on this over the next few days…

A while back I wrote about cancelling my Whole Life Insurance Policy. It’s been a while and it kept slipping my mind but I finally took care of it today. Getting just over $1000 back. I paid in well over $2000, not a good investment…

I plan on taking the money and investing in some more iBonds. Still need to decide whether or not to do so in October or November. More on this later.

My wife and Ihave a house which is a bit larger than we need. I literally have rooms that I haven’t been in in months.

Winter’s coming and natural gas is estimated to be as much as 70% more expensive than last year. Luckily for us we replaced our 25 year old furnace with a high (96%) efficiency model last spring. So I am hoping that our heating bills are no more than they were last year. I’m not taking any chances however…

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Before I started my last job about 2 1/2 years ago, I worked for a web services company here in the midwest. There I had a 401K plan that because of the bust was worth less every quarter even though I was putting money into it… I’m sure many of you were in the same boat.

When I left the company to start my new job I decided to leave my money there, mainly because it was simple. A couple of things are making me rethink this however.

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As I mentioned in my post about my dad, I am interested in investing in IBonds. Today I set up an account at TreasuryDirect.com and bought a small bond to test both how long it would take to complete the transaction and to make sure the link to my Virtualbank account would work. I’m happy to say everything went smoothly.

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