As I mentioned in my last post, I moved about 1/3 of my 0% credit card balance funds to a 3 month (91 day) treasury bill last week. Something interesting came out of this. The T-Bill was scheduled to be issued on Thursday (1/26). I have it set up to pull the money from my Netbank Savings account but had forgotten this and transferred the money to my checking account. When TD attempted to pull the money, there were insufficient funds (costing me $30 :/ ). The bill was still issued on 1/26 however and the money did not get pulled from my account until today (1/31). Obviously I didn’t make anything on this transaction (the $30 represents a decent chunk of the interest I’ll be earning from the T-Bill) The extra 5 days the money sat in the savings account earned some of that back however.

Saw on Fatwallet that HSBC is now paying 4.8% on their Online Savings Account (which is where I keep most of my liquid cash). The website has this figure on the rates page but not on the big splashy graphic. So I’d say it’s probably not a mistake but your mileage may vary. It is evidently a promotional rate until April 30th. (After which I presume it will go back to 4.5%)

I moved about 1/3 of my 0% credit card transfer to a 3 month Treasury Bill last week paying 4.397% (state tax free) so the new HSBC rate isn’t all that much better. Glad I didn’t take the time to move a bunch of money to Ing when they offered 4.75%. I did open an account though, to catch their $25 account opening bonus. If you’d like a referral email me at mypfblog@gmail.com with your first and last name as well as email address you’d like the referral to go to. (I get $10 you get $25 for opening an account with $250) The $25 credit happened immediately for me.

As we half-expected, my wife lost her job yesterday. We had thought she might be safe because her department had managed to eliminate a number of positions through attrition but it wasn’t meant to be. She was with her company for almost 12 years.

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Mittal (symbol MT), one of the stocks I hold in for my Investment Experiment just launched a surprise bid to buy the Arcelor, another huge steel company.

I have to admit this one took me completely by surprise. MT has been climbing recently well exceeding my $30 strike. This underscores the main risk of selling covered calls. If the stock moves up a large amount here I don’t get to participate in the gain. In essence I’ve already sold my shares for $30. (Actually a little more when you include the premium I received for the option.)

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If your Adjusted Gross income (AGI) is below $50,000 for last year, you may be eligible to file your federal taxes electronically for free. Check out the IRS’ Free File page for more details.

We definitely don’t qualify for this and normally pay our accountant to do our taxes anyway. It costs us a couple hundred a year but is worth it to me since I don’t need to spend hours figuring out how and what I can deduct for our two businesses (web hosting and horse farming - neat combination eh? :)) I wish I could say I didn’t have to spend much time with the taxes but the horse business generates a ton of receipts that need to be collected, entered into a spreadsheet and categorized. Hopefully this year we can get a bit more organized about this stuff since it will be the first full year we’ve used MS Money to track our finances.

Anyway, hope the tax man is kind to you all this year… reminds me that I need to speak to our accountant about whether or not we can open a Roth IRA for last year or not and I need to do some tax planning for this year.

I hadn’t seen much need to do so until now but Ing Direct has a ‘Winter Save Up Sale’ going on right now. From now until April 15th you earn 4.75% on all new money deposited to your account! That deal beats my HSBC account hands down although you need to keep the money there for a few days to make up for the lost interest during the transfer.

If you don’t have an Ing account and would like one email me and I’ll send you a referral. Deposit $250 and you get a $25 bonus (disclosure: I get $10 if you do this…). Free money is always good…

As some of you may be aware, HSBC offers one of the better interest rates available. A downside to the account is the couple of days it takes to move money from other accounts, typically two days where you are not earning any interest.

I’m going to try an experiment. Basically, I am buying some treasury bills using money from my main bank (Netbank) as the source of funds. Upon maturity the funds will be deposited at HSBC. When I tried this with Virtualbank in December my T-Bill matured on 12/15 and was credited to my Virtualbank account on 12/15. I want to see if HSBC works as well.

The interest on 91 day T-Bills is currently 4.397%, with my state tax rate of 3% that comes out to be approximately equivalent to a 4.5% taxable yield. I need the money prior to six months to pay off the current round of 0% offers so I can’t do more than 91 day bills. I’m going to let the money sit @ HSBC for the remainder of the time earning their not unrespectable 4.25%.

I’ll post an update after the transaction has completed. If it works it might be a good way to move money around without losing a day or two of interest. (albeit a somewhat slow way to do so)

Due to the $2,500 additional deposit and the fact that I’ll be adding more money to my brokerage account instead of being able to contribute to my 401K I’ve decided to rename my $5000 Experiment to ‘Investment Experiment’. Same concept, just more money will be flowing in.

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Just when I thought we were going to have to pay 1.99% on the truck we bought a couple of 0% deals came along.

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Got a letter from my 401K custodian last week. It seems that the raise I got last year pushed me over the limit for being a highly compensated individual for my company’s plan. This means I am limited to contributing only 10% of my salary to my 401k on a pretax basis and 3% after tax. Frankly I’m a bit shocked and a little angry. By earning a few thousand dollars more per year I now will be able to save several thousand dollars less on a pre-tax basis (the IRS limits for 401K contributions this year have risen to $15k). This will have the net effect of costing us over $1000 in additional taxes, not to mention the drag it will put on my 401K contributions. Takes a lot of the joy out of getting a raise…

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