Budget Freak

I recently signed up for the cell phone deal of the century. It’s the Sprint Employee Referral Offer. For $30 a month, you get 500 minutes and an unlimited data plan. For comparison, my old Cingular phone cost me $40 per month for 450 minutes and NO data plan. Cingular’s data plan is another $20/month. Also, through the end of June, Sprint is throwing in unlimited text messaging package for free. Cingular charges another $20 for unlimited texting. Furthermore, the Sprint plan comes with unlimited nights and weekend minutes that start at 7pm, where Cingular’s plan only had 5000 N&M that started at 9pm. You can get the early nights and weekend on Cingular for another $9/month.

So, let’s add it all up:
Old Cingular Plan - $39/month
450 minutes, NO data, NO texting, N&W @ 9pm

Cingular Plan Similiar to Sprint SERO - $89/month
450 minutes + unlimited data + unlimited text + Nights & Weekends @ 7pm

Sprint SERO Plan - $30/month
500 minutes + unlimited data + unlimited text + Nights & Weekends @ 7pm

That’s a savings of 66%!! Also, there are rumors on the message boards (see below) that you can get a corporate discount if you work for certain companies. If I get the job I’m applying for, I’d be eligible for another 20% discount. That would bring my monthly bill down to $24!

I also got a pretty cool phone, the Motorola Q. It’s a smartphone, so I can surf the internets, check my email, and sync up my calendar. For a techie guy like myself, it’s fantastic. The phone cost $100 when I signed up, but there’s a $100 mail in rebate. Also, there’s a referral bonus if you tell them another Sprint customer referred you. After you get your phone, you can call #REF and type in the Sprint Customer’s phone number, and you’ll both get a $25 Visa Check Card!

This deal was so hot, I immediately canceled my Cingular contract AND paid the early termination fee (I still had 8 months on my contract). It’ll take about a year to recover the loss of the $150 fee (saving $15/month), but my cellular life will be much more enjoyable in the mean time.

If you’re shopping around for a new cell phone or if you’re just sick of you’re old plan, and you’re interested in signing up for this deal, check out the forums over at Slick Deals. Thanks to Jonathan at My Money Blog and the Consumerist for pointing this deal out.

By the way, if anybody does sign up and needs a referral for the $25, please drop me an email.

Turns out I did miss the extra $50 sign up bonus from Citibank. I wrote Citibank to see if they could apply the better offer, but they said they couldn’t. Oh well. An extra $50 would have been nice, but I’m still happy with the $50 they will be giving me.

If YOU want to take advantage of the $100 offer, you must be a new Citibank customer, and USE THIS LINK.

As you may know, I’ve been making money taking advantage of 0% balance transfers offered by many credit cards. So far, I’ve made over $90, and I’ll be getting another interest payout of $75 by the end of the month. When taking advantage of these offers, it’s critical to keep up with payments. Any late payments, and the 0% offer is revoked and you’re stuck paying interest. I’ve paid 3 bills so far on my two different cards, and it’s been pretty smooth. I’ve also helped myself by setting up reminders that go off at various times the week before the payment is due. If you try something like this, I highly suggest you do the same.

Things are going so well, I decided to push my luck and apply for more cards. Over the weekend, I applied for 4 more cards offering 0% balance transfers, a Chase, American Express, a WaMu card, and another Discover card. I heard back right away from WaMu (only a $1,000 limit ), I was rejected by American Express, and I’m still waiting from Chase and Discover. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I screwed this one up. My credit score right now is probably in the toilet. If I had done these applications when I originally started the arbitrage game, I’m sure I would have been approved, no problem. Now, I’m around a 60% debt to credit line ratio, and I have a few recent hard credit pulls in the last 3 months. To a credit card company, that’s a huge risk, and they’re unlikely to hand out a large credit limit, if they’ll even hand out a card at all.

The smart thing would have been to wait until my balances were lower and the old credit pulls had fallen off (at least 6 months). I guess I got a little impatient. Lucky for me, I’m not too worried about my credit score right now. I’m not planning any large purchases for at least another year, if not 2 or 3 more years. Even still, these inquiries will disappear in a few months, and as soon as I pay off the balance transfers, I’ll have a clean slate.

Then again, maybe I’ll get lucky and Chase and Discover will approve me. Who knows.

One more thing to note, the WaMu card I applied for did have a 0% balance transfer offer, but it also had free access to your FICO credit score. This alone, is worth applying for the card, and I’m really glad it’s the one card I did get approved for. Most companies will charge $10 a month or so to check your credit score, so I had to jump when I saw it for free. Now I can actually watch my credit score take it’s nose dive!

Last night, I decided to take advantage of the $50 sign up bonus that I talked about yesterday on a Citibank Savings Account. I don’t think there’s much harm in having too many savings accounts, and it’s hard to pass up a free $50.

Well, less than 12 hours later, when I was checking the Morning Deals on Consumerist, I found another promotion for the exact same Citibank savings account, this one with a $100 sign up bonus!! (Link: Citibank $100 sign up bonus) D’OH!

So by signing up last night, I made $50, but if I had waited until this morning, I could have made $100! What a cruel, cruel world. I sent Citibank a nice email telling them about my dilemma and asking if I was eligible for the $100 sign up bonus. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get another $50. Fingers are crossed.

I got an email this morning for Citibank Direct, asking me to open an online savings account with them. In doing so, I’d get a $50 sign up bonus. There are no fees, no minimum balances, and a 4.65% APY. Sounds great right?

My only concern is the number of accounts I have open right now. Currently, a checking and savings account at ING and two more checking and another savings over at WaMu. I think that’s even a little overboard.

So my question, then, is having too many banking accounts dangerous? Is there a magic number? Anybody know?

Then again, fifty bucks is fifty bucks, and I guess I could always close the account once I get the bonus.

A friend of mine recently complained because she received a $25 service charge from her bank for transferring money from her savings account to her checking account. Not many people know, but you are limited to 6 electronic withdrawals from a savings account per month. This is Federal Regulation D, not just a limit imposed by your bank. Transactions that count against the limit include Internet and telephone transfers. You can still use an ATM, go into a branch, or transfer money by mail as much as you want. Those transfers won’t count against your limit.

I hadn’t heard of these regulations either, until a few months ago. This is not something the banks do a good job of letting customers know about. I’ve had to be especially careful when shuffling money around between my different accounts to avoid penalties myself. Consider yourself warned!!!

My Mint has a couple other banking regulations you should know about, including Check 21 and reporting bank errors.

Despite spending more than I earned in April, I still managed to grow my net worth ever so slightly. This was due, in large part, to a great month in the stock market. My retirement accounts were up over 15% for the month (including contributions to my 401(k)). That in turn, gave me a 1% overall increase in Assets. I had my first two 0% balance transfer payments due, as well as another big car payment, so Liabilities are down 1% for the month. All told, net worth was up 3% for the month. A far cry from last month’s 14% growth, but still moving in the right direction. I have a feeling May will be a much better month.

Here’s my expenses for April.

Automobile : Gas $ 212.59
Automobile : Registration $ 244.00
Automobile : Car Payment $ 500.00
Automobile : Parking $ 28.30
Banking : Fees $ 7.25
Bills : Telephone $ 63.63
Bills : Electricity $ 54.43
Bills : Gas $ 34.34
Bills : Rent $ 652.00
Bills : Cable TV/Internet $ 89.81
Bills : Cell Phone $ 50.53
Business : Traveling $ 215.35
Food : Groceries $ 122.66
Food : Dining out $ 157.04
Food : Booze $ 158.16
Gambling $ 200.00
Healthcare : $ 10.00
Homeneeds : Clothing $ 201.25
Insurance : Auto $ 103.42
Leisure : Dodger Tickets $ 335.00
Miscellaneous $ 19.80
Total $ 3,981.21

Ouch. First month this year that I operated at a net loss. I had a few big purchases out of the ordinary. The Dodger tickets, at $335 was the biggest out-of-ordinary expense. I also had my car registration due ($244), and business trip related expenses ($215). The business trip will be reimbursed this month, however. Then of course, there’s the trip to Vegas, which set me back a couple hundred bucks between gambling losses and eating out all weekend. I also made a pretty big clothing purchase. I had a 20% off coupon for Old Navy, so I bought 9 new shirts, a pair of shorts, and a jacket.

My ‘Booze’ category was way too high last month. I’m glad I stopped including booze in the ‘Miscellaneous’ category, so I can really see how much I spend on alcohol. $158 in a month is obscene. Granted a bit of that was in Vegas, but still, I need to cut back. I’m making a goal this month to get that number under $50.

Looks like all my financial troubles are over!! I just recieved this email from GoDaddy, my domain registrar.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN®) recently agreed to reduce their Registrar Transaction Fee from $.25 to $.22. What does this mean for you?

Good news. You have been credited $.03/yr for each domain name you registered or renewed dating back to July 1, 2006 — $.06 has been placed into your Go Daddy® account.

6 whole cents!! If I invest my 6 cents in the stock market, averaging 10% return over the next 40 years, I’ll have built up $2.71!!

Can you even buy anything anymore for 6 cents???