His Hers Money

As you had read before, we had set up a Smartypig account recently. I like the idea of it. I think the extra money from retail stores is really great for when you already have a specific item already in mind. However, if you change your mind or an emergency comes up, then you are stuck as the funds are not liquid.

Smartypig has stated that at some point they are going to allow you to EFT the funds back into the account from which you originally funded from. This was not the case when I went to close my account on 15 May. I was planning on getting Amazon gift cards as there is a speaker set that I’ve been saving for there. The process was easy and I was notified that any extra funds left over from the gift card purchase (they only allowed $25 increments) would be funded into an electronic Smartypig gift card that I could put towards my other savings goal.  That’s a nice feature.

My big complaint is that it supposedly will take 7-10 business days to get me a gift card! If they are indeed partnered with these companies, it should only take 1-2 business days to get the card in the mail to me. As of now I have not received the card. Now granted, we moved and the mail is forwarding so I will check the postmark when it comes but it’s disappointing.

In the future I’ll be forgoing Smartypig and just creating sub-accounts with ING. It will be slightly less return but it’s worth it for less headaches in using my money.

I (HERS) unfortunately have to find a new financial advisor. I have been with the same guy since 2002 and I have really enjoyed working with him. Unfortunately he has received a promotion up to a leadership position within his company and won’t be directly working with clients any more. Great for him, not so great for me.

The whole thing really came as a shock to me and I really wasn’t prepared to make such a change. I am not looking to change firms at this point but I do need to find a new advisor within the company. I got an email and voicemail from the assigned replacement saying hello and introducing himself but I really wasn’t getting a great feeling from him. FIrst of all it sounded like it was just a given that I wanted him to manage my retirement without any questions asked. The last thing I want in a financial advisor is to feel like I’m talking to a used car salesman!

So, I emailed him back and said I would be more than happy to interview him and consider him as a candidate but I would also be interviewing others as well. I said he could come to my office to speak with me if he was interested. It’s amazing how his attitude changed! So, he will be coming to my office to speak with me on Thursday morning.

I’ll let everyone know how it goes!

Apparently SmartyPig is taking the time to listen to its’ customers and the blogging community. Their marketing team and even their co-founder are participating in discussions on various blogs on how to improve their service. Apparently the latest build of their website will include the ability to withdraw funds through ACH. This is great news and was the only real drawback to the site that I could see.

That allows users to save for bigger and better things. Say a newlywed couple want to start saving for a house down payment? Well instead of doing the traditional registration for household items, they could just refer friends and family to deposit into their SmartyPig account in order to help them reach their goal!

For myself, I’ll probably take advantage of the extra 5% that you receive for withdrawing to a store gift card since I’m saving for gifts anyway. The links below are generated directly from SmartyPig to give you an idea on what it looks like to show others your savings progress.

Everyone knows that automating your savings is definitely the way to go. Right now I feel like I have my savings so disjointed because I have accounts all over the place. I took advantage of the Suze - TD Ameritrade offer where you deposit at least $50 a month for 12 months into a savings type account and they will deposit an extra $100 in at the end of the 12 months. I don’t remember what the rate is but it’s better than I’m getting at ING right now. The promotion code was 701 so you might try it and see if it still works.

I also have an ING account that I send $200 a month to and a savings account with my credit union that gets another $200 a month. So that’s $450 a month in savings. My goal is to have $15,000 in emergency funds . I was aiming towards $10,000 but my financial advisor bumped that up to $15,000 during my yearly financial check up.

I also have some retirement based investments. I fund my Roth IRA in full every year ($5000 for 2008) and my 401k in full every year ($15,500). This all adds up to a whopping $25,500 in deposits in a single year!

Well, if you read the post below that His wrote earlier today you will see his comments regarding the Bose Home Theater speakers that he is currently “jonesing” for. Well, let me let you in on a little secret: Prior to the current transformation that His is experiencing, those said speakers somehow found their way to our house! Now, I’m not talking about a brochure or picture of them, but the actual speakers. Delivered in a big box, direct from Bose themselves.

Paid for of course by, oh wait, they weren’t paid for, they were financed.

I utilized the Return to Sender option and told Mr UPS to take them right back where they came from and when His got home from work I informed him of his decision to return the speakers and hold off on that purchase. For some reason he didn’t remember making that decision but I think he realized that this wasn’t one of those battles worth fighting.

So, why am I telling you this? So you can see just how far he has come in only two months. It was just late January when those speakers temporarily escaped from the Bose factory only to be returned safe and sound. Now he is using some of his allowance funds to save for them. I am so proud of him!

As part of the Group Writing Project -> Saving over at wereindebt I’m going to detail my current plan, why I think it’s going to work, and where I am at in the process.

I used to have just a plain-jane savings account through USAA, which is the bank that I use for probably 90% of my banking and insurance needs. Overall they provide excellent customer service and good rates for my credit cards and loans. However, the interest rate on their savings accounts sucks and because I tend to spend money when I have easy access to it, it is not the best place for me to be using for savings.

I was slow to the bandwagon in opening an ING account. But Hers already had one and so we were able to get us both some extra $$$ when I funded my account $250 to start. Extra money is always a bonus! I’m impressed with their website and their interest rates even though they’re falling along with every other bank. One advantage with ING is that I have easy but NOT instant access to my money. With a few days to think about that withdrawal I am more likely to realize that I don’t have to spend that money. Therefore, this is going to be my emergency account. I already have it set up to automatically take out $50 every paycheck.

Now that the main emergency account was set up, I was on a roll. Hers saw the offer that TDAmeritrade was running through Suze Orman for their Money Market accounts. Just borrow a copy of Suze’s Women & Money book or look for it at a bookstore to get the code that is inside. Fund a new account and after 12 monthly automatic deposits of $50 or more and you get a free $100! That along with a decent interest rate was enough for me to sign up right away. I have my account set up for the withdrawals and it will sit there until I receive the bonus. At that point I will either throw what’s into my account into an IRA or plus up the emergency account at ING.

I also realized that I could not completely stop my spending habits cold-turkey. I’ve been jonesing for a set of Bose home theater speakers for a long time now. However, since we are trying to be smart with our money, I decided that there was no way I was going to put them on a credit card or finance them through Bose even with a 0% offer. I signed up for a SmartyPig savings account and set up the amount for the Bose speakers as a goal along with how much we had decided to spend on each other next Christmas. Now I will automatically save for both things each month and be able to pay cash along with making some interest along the way. Who knows, with SmartyPig, I might even be able to convince some friends and family to fund my speakers instead of giving me stuff I’m going to return anyway!

The key to all of this is the automatic withdrawals. Between savings and automatic bill pay for most things I’m pretty much in a set it and forget it mode right now. When you don’t have to actively manage your money it is easier to forget that it’s there and the temptation to spend is lessened.

So what do YOU do? Have you signed up with SmartyPig? Ameritrade?