If you are financially able, consider making a donation to one of the many organizations that are helping in the relief effort in Haiti. If you are not sure where to give, one good organization is Samaritan’s Purse. If you know of other’s, feel free to leave a comment and a link. Thanks.

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Our family was planning on camping next week. But when I went to set up the pop-up (folding trailer) to prep it for the camping trip it took me twenty minutes to crank it up! There is definitely something wrong with the gears or cables that lift the top. There is no access box to that area so you have to take apart a huge section of the camper to get to it – definitely not part of my skill set.

So we had to cancel our reservations with the campground. Fortunately it was over a week out so we got a full refund minus $15. Not too bad. We will now spend the week at home and go to some local attractions.

The big question now is what to do with the camper. We would really like to upgrade to a nonfolding camping trailer, maybe something like an ultralight. But that will cost about $15,000 and that is definitely not in the budget right now! To fix the current camper will cost hundreds of dollars, but we really don’t want to invest any more money in this camper right now. But to sell it you need it fixed – and campers are not selling very well right now with the economy.

So what to do? We will probably do nothing in the short run and think through our options over the winter. Right now we have it set up on our side yard (we live in the country) on its stone pad. The girls are loving it – we had a sleep over Tuesday night in the pop-up – 6 girls all 9 and under! Dad needs some rest!

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The letter said: “We’ve UPDATED YOU TO CHASE FREEDOM. Now, there are UNLIMITED REWARDS that NEVER EXPIRE. Wow – sounds like a deal! However, they just have a great marketing department.

It really is a downgrade in benefits. Although your points never expire, you get fewer of them. Instead of 5 points for every $1 spent on gas, groceries, and pharmacies, you now only get 3 points on gas, groceries, and fast food purchases. Also, even though the banner says unlimited rewards, the triple points are limited to your first $600 of purchases. After that everything is just 1 point.

Further, they are now charging a $30 fee for “all the benefits” of this new card.

I had been expecting changes – there were rumors flying around that Chase was going to change this card. And with the government beginning to act on laws to rein in credit card companies, I expect quite a few other companies will be changing their cards before the laws take effect. They will make their money, one way or another!

I will probably be canceling this card – I do not pay membership fees for credit cards. Since there is no fee for the first year, I will keep it until I can trade in my current points for cash, then cancel. I will then probably put everything on the other card that puts money toward my mortgage – it’s also only 1%, but at least every dollar they put toward my mortgage saves me 4.75% interest on that dollar, and I pay my mortgage off quicker. Yeah!

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Whatever your thoughts on the stimulus package, it is now law. Beginning around June (or thereabouts – the details are still being worked on), tax cuts / rebates will start kicking in for many families. What will you do?

For me, it will not have much of an impact. Because I am a pastor, the church doesn’t have to take Federal Taxes out.  At the church I am at now, they graciously take out whatever I designate for Federal Tax (this way I don’t have to file quarterly payments).  Anyway, I probably won’t change my withholding. Most of what I have taken out goes to pay not my Federal Tax but my Social Security Tax (Pastors are dual status–employees for Federal Tax, etc., but Self-employed for Social Security – and no, it doesn’t make any sense to me either!). So if anything, I might get a little bit more back when I do my taxes next year. We will see.

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I’ve been thinking about starting my own personal finance blog for a long time, but was worrying that it might be too time-consuming, as I already work full-time, manage a business website for my dad, and am trying to get my own webcomic/writing website off the ground. So, when I saw yesterday’s post, I just had to apply right away. After all, I feel I have something to say about personal finance. I certainly spend enough time thinking about it!

So who am I? I’m 22 and I just graduated from a very expensive liberal arts school with a degree in English and $50,000 in student loan debt. In retrospect, my choice to attend that particular college was not the smartest decision I’ve ever made, but that’s part of the reason why my resolve to make better financial decisions in the future is so strong. I live in an area with a weak job market and as an English major, I was worried that I might be doomed to working at a coffee shop forever. Fortunately for me, I took a bunch of computer science courses when I was still in school, so I managed to get a job in tech support for a small software company. It’s a very laid-back company with a casual dress code, so I didn’t even need to buy a new work wardrobe. My co-workers are fun, friendly people; I’m making a decent entry-level salary and have good health insurance; so, in short, I’m thrilled with it!

My main goal is to pay down my student loans in less than eight years. But it’s also important to me to save for my future. So, two secondary, more immediate goals of mine are to build up an emergency fund of $3,000 (I already have $1,500 in a high interest savings account) and deposit $1,000 into a Roth IRA by February 1st. My posts in the this blog will be an effort to record my “adventures” in meeting these goals and a place to share my thoughts about the world of personal finance as I encounter it as an adult for the first time.

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The next time you’re in a GM dealership, you might have the ability to try one of their cars and then try one of it’s competing models from another car maker.  Why?  Because GM has decided to give their customers a easy way to compare.  And it’s brilliant.

Besides the fact that customers seem to prefer the GM models in test runs, the customers no longer need to go to the competition to compare models and makers.  And if you never leave the GM dealership, chances are that the salesperson will be able to work his/her magic and get you to buy a GM car from him/her.

It may seem like a bad business model, but I think it really makes sense.  It’s why WalMart keeps getting bigger and bigger.  If you only have to go one place for everything on your list, why go elsewhere.  The same goes here. If you only have to go to one place to test drive all of the cars your interested in, why go to the trouble of going elsewhere if you don’t have to.

Sure, sometimes the customer will like the competitors car better and go to buy one elsewhere (GM can’t legally sell competitors cars in other than a used capacity).  GM also has no plans to give comparisons for certain models like the Yukon since it has a high market share for SUV’s and the extra exposure wouldn’t necessarily help their sales much.

What would you do?  I know I’d just test drive them while I was there rather than drive to a different car dealership.

[tags]car dealers,test drive,GM,Yukon,comparison,compare[/tags]

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Call me a doomsayer if you like, but it’s all coming down now.  Not in a big crash as some had expected, but it certainly is deflating.  Washington Mutual announced their numbers yesterday and their profit is down 20%.  Why?  Deflating Real Estate loans.

a loss in its home loans unit, driven mainly by subprime lending weakness, caused a 20 percent slide in first-quarter profit.

They go on to say that the loss is actually less than they thought it would be so it wasn’t as bad as it looks.  Sounds like a little bit of sugarcoating to me.  A loss is a loss.  Take for instance the fact that they had a $113 million loss this quarter and it was a $52 million gain at the same time last year.

At best, if you graph it out, it looks like a bubble.  At worst, it’s a straight line down.  No ifs, ands, or buts here.  POP!

[tags]money,loans,subprime loans,wamu,real estate,real estate bubble[/tags]

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Unlike the “Godless” Washington Dollars that began surfacing last month, there are some Faceless Washington Dollars that are beginning to surface now. These new errors are completely blank. They have no stampings of any sort and really are just the Planchet for the coin. How they slipped through the strict U.S. Mint proofing and sampling process is beyond me, but they did. As of right now there are 5 of them on eBay.

I also can’t imagine there being a whole lot of them out there like there can be with some other less noticeable errors. They are currently in the range of $131.15 to $999.00 with bids on eBay and really could go up if there turns out to be only a few hundred or less that slipped through. Of course, if there are thousands, then they could drop as well. Not exactly the kind of Gold investment I really want.

[tags]blank gold dollar,blank washington dollar,washington dollar,gold dollar,ebay[/tags]

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Honestly.  What blind person designed the new Presidential $1 coins?  And furthermore, who approved the design.  Have you seen them?

George Washington looks like he’s ready to kill someone.  John Adams looks like he could star in the next production of CATS.  Thomas Jefferson has a major unibrow thing going on and his cheek looks like it’s had a bad botox treatment.  And James Madison?  What the heck happened to the left side of his face?

Honestly, I like the idea of a dollar coin.  I think that the $1 bill is past it’s time and is more of a burden than a boon.  They have a really small lifespan when compared to even the next highest bill and besides strippers(sorry.  exotic dancers) most places could easily make the switch to the dollar coin.  Whats more is that most people empty their change into a coin jar or some such at the end of the day.  Imagine how quickly that will build up in value!  All those dollar coins in there!  The truth is that while I do like the idea, I just don’t think it will get picked up.  They’ll do it until they run out of presidents and then they’ll have a different design, but it’ll be mostly for collectors and not for commerce.

[tags]presidential,presidential coin,presidential dollar coin,dollar coin[/tags]

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It seems that Google has been working on the dreaded “quotes delayed up to 20 minutes” message that everyone gets with their stock quotes.  Unless you pay for realtime quotes that is.

In cooperation with the NYSE, SEC, and Netcoalition, they’ve worked on a proposition put forth by the NYSE to the SEC that would allow for the distribution of last price streaming quotes. If accepted, the filing would allow for the dissemination of real-time quotes to vendors at a flat rate of $100,000 a year.  Sounds like a lot, but from what I gathered, it’s a bargain compared to real-time quotes now.

What that all means is that sites like Google Finance will be able to provide real-time quotes for free.

source: Official Google Blog

[tags]google finance,NYSE,SEC,Real-time quotes[/tags]

Hi there - could you help spread the word about A Penny Saved? We rely on word of mouth to get new readers. If you would send someone a link, email, or even mention it to your friends, I would truly appreciate it. Free realtime stock quotes? is a post from: A Penny Saved