#money


Philippines’ Globe Mobile Network Promos

Bare neces­si­ties. If you are ever in Manila/PHL and look­ing to get a Pre­paid mobile line for emer­gency and/or to just com­mu­ni­cate around the islands, this might get you on the right track.

I did some research with Globe and their “GoSak­to” make-your-own com­bos; ~P500/month for some calls and unlim­it­ed tex­ting ain’t bad (P300 only if 1,000 of text). I’ll be able to afford more cronuts now!

globe-gosakto-combos

PS. You may test more com­bos over here.

Update
Seems there’s a bet­ter pro­mo if you are look­ing to spend about P500, GoUnli500. The pro­mo bun­dle includes the fol­low­ing:

  • Viber, FBMsg, Kakaotalk,WhatsApp, WeChat, Line
  • Text to All net­works
  • Calls to Globe and TM
  • Free Face­book up to 10MB
  • Chat
  • Valid­i­ty: 30 days

Financial Fitness

Aaron Patzer of Mint.com states the “4 good habits that can make the dif­fer­ence between going broke or build­ing up your net worth each month”:

  1. Save mon­ey
  2. Avoid debt
  3. Invest
  4. Don’t lose it

Though only 4, it takes a while to be in the prac­tice of start­ing them. Uphold­ing them is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. To do that, I think his recent write-up, 12 Steps to Finan­cial Fit­ness, is a good guide­line to help attain those 4 good habits in the long run.

When Will I Get My Economic Stimulus Payment?

We’ve all been asking/telling our­selves: “damn, I can use some extra cash right about now.” Well, your prayers and requests have been answered as the Gov­ern­ment will soon be send­ing some dough your way:

A. The Trea­sury Depart­ment will make pay­ments start­ing in ear­ly May. Ear­ly fil­ers, espe­cial­ly those who choose direct deposit, will get their pay­ments first.

If the IRS fin­ish­es pro­cess­ing your return by April 15, you will most like­ly get your pay­ment based on this sched­ule. If you choose direct deposit, this means your pay­ment will arrive on May 2, May 9 or May 16. If you do not choose direct deposit, checks will be mailed between mid-May and mid-July. For this ini­tial batch of stim­u­lus pay­ments, the pay­ment date will be based on the last two dig­its of your Social Secu­ri­ty Num­ber. [Updat­ed 3/19/08]

But be smart about with what you do with it—or, just save it. To give you some more info on what this whole ordeal is about, you may check out the fol­low­ing:

Keep the Change, Bank of America Says

Keep the Change

I final­ly came to stum­ble upon this myself. Any­ways… if you haven’t heard or seen yet (espe­cial­ly for BofA mem­bers), Keep the Change, the new pro­gram devel­oped by Bank of Amer­i­ca lets you save mon­ey in a weird way.

From what I read, it’s pret­ty much a way for them to get you to keep using your BofA Deb­it Card. I recall that every deb­it card trans­ac­tion from BofA assess­es a fee of $0.35–0.50. In terms of the pro­gram, you pret­ty much get charged to the near­est dol­lar. Lets say your pur­chase total (from your deb­it card) comes out to $8.75. BofA will charge you $9. The remain­ing $0.25 will then be auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to your Sav­ings, and matched by BofA. The match­ing will be 100% for the first 3 months in the pro­gram, then 5% there­after.

I don’t know to what extent this might be a plus. But for the first 3 months, it’s way worth it I’d say. I just don’t know about the 5% there­after. How­ev­er, as com­menters over at Strange Brand gen­er­al­ly con­clud­ed about the pro­gram, it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to just save in whole rather than being opt­ed in the pro­gram.

Oth­er blog posts regard­ing this, can be seen over at Aval­on Star and Bar­gaineer­ing. Its just weird that I nev­er saw the BofA ban­ner about the pro­gram. It’s been on the very top of their home­page for the past cou­ple of weeks. Maybe it’s because I just use the BofA site to check out my accounts, trans­fer mon­ey, and/or pay bills.

Any­ways, let me know if you guys and gals are on the pro­gram or at least think­ing about it. I’m very inter­est­ed in sav­ing mon­ey, as well as get­ting FREE mon­ey for that instance. 100% match­ing sounds good but man oh man, 5% there­after… even ING Direct 3% (plus) sounds bet­ter than this.

Money-matters

While talk­ing about ING Direc­t’s increased inter­est rate (i.e. 3.3% from 3.0%):

me (10:43:26 PM): did­n’t you want my finan­cial advi­sor’s con­tact info?
juan (10:44:38 PM): im good for now, i want to start sav­ing some mon­ey before invest­ing
me (10:45:02 PM): ummm thats an oxy­moron