August 7, 2006

Wow, Citi: Train your CSRs!

I just spoke with a Citibank Online rep who, upon ending our call, asked if he could make a small suggestion regarding my accounts. “You have,” he says, “quite a lot of e-savings accounts.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, you have a lot of e-savings accounts, were you aware that if you do not have e-savings accounts linked to your checking account, you will only be getting the 5% annual percentage – that is 4.75% monthly, on the one account and the other accounts will not be getting the high interest rate?”
*interest piqued, does this guy know anything?* “Really, that’s interesting, do you mean to tell me that if each of my e-savings accounts are not linked to their own separate checking accounts I will not be getting the high interest rate? What rate would I be getting?”
“Yes ma’am!! You would only be getting the day to day interest rate and I can check and tell you what that rate would be!”
“Really, because I specifically checked if there were limits on the number of e-savings accounts I could have at the advertised rate.”
“Oh, uh, er, yes let me check on that please could I put you on hold for just a short minute ma’am?”
“Sure..”
a minute later:
“Oh, uh, I checked that and you’re absolutely right ma’am, yes, you are getting the full high interest rate that you seem to be getting ma’am.”
“Yes,” as I peer at my statement with each account’s interest earned and rates looking kosher, “yes I do believe I am right. Thank you, good night!”
“Thankyougoodnightma’am” *CLICK*

Which leaves me wondering, what on earth kind of money-making opportunity did he think he saw? Or did he actually think he was really actually helping me out? What an odd fellow.

Strike One: CitiBank Online

I fully admit that going to the ATM and then realizing that I don’t remember the ATM number is a numbskull move on my fault. And, unfortunately, it takes me more than just three guesses to realize that I really truly don’t have any recollection of what the PIN number is.

Yesterday I stopped by the bank to deposit a check I keep forgetting about. I’ve only used my Citi ATM number once, weeks ago, because I primarily use Citibank to bank online – I simply don’t have time to go to the branch and it’s never open when I need it because I’m gone 6am-8pm everyday. After a couple tries (no warning, btw, that after X number of tries, I’ll be locked out so I figured I had 4-5 tries) I’ve been locked out of my ATM access AND online access! Spoke with a rep, he confirmed that so long as my ATM is locked out, my online access is locked as well.

Guess what my options are, for resetting my PIN? Yep, going to the branch. The branch that’s open 9-4 every weekday. If they send me a new PIN by mail, it’ll take 7-10 days. Argh!

I know it’s my fault for screwing up, but they couldn’t have warned me that I only had 3 consecutive attempts? And, they had to save me from myself online too? Why on earth can they not make provisions for online-only customers? It can’t be totally unreasonable to have some sort of procedure to reset a PIN over the phone if I am able to verify my identity!

*sigh* If I hadn’t mentioned before that I’m totally neurotic about checking my accounts everyday, well, I am. This is going to drive me nuts!

Debate: take my chances with the PIN? Wait until Saturday to reset?

August 6, 2006

Keep Your Financial Footing at 22….

So You Can Buy That House at 32 (article link courtesy of Jane Dough)

Articles like this always intrigue me. They make me think “oh, there IS a magic formula!” or “what ingredients do they have that I don’t?” I should expect the usual Stay out of Debt caveats but I’m always hoping that there will be one or three gems of advice or investing wisdom that I’ve not yet discovered and implemented.

Hm, what it boils down to is five bits of advice that are good sense but aren’t very enlightening to me. It tells you to live a simple lifestyle, not the one your parents are theoretically living, don’t carry credit card debt, don’t rush to pay off student loans (interest is tax deductible), be careful using credit cards, and don’t make extravagant auto purchase or lease decisions.

And the 22 to 32 business? Nothing more than the span of time that new college grads will spend possibly getting themselves into financial trouble before they hit “average first-time homebuyer” age.
Oh well. Better luck next time.

August 5, 2006

How much time is worth how much money?

I have been pondering this the last couple of days because I usually figure, well, any free money is good and what else would I be doing with my time? I could say that because I’m young and single (ie: not married, I don’t mean unattached), rarely go out, BoyDucky is hundreds of miles away on a normal basis, and if I’m not working at work, then I’m working at home or just working with finances to keep from spending bored money.

That means I took advantage of everything Citi had to offer in the way of Credit Protector sign up and retention money, and BT offers and would do the occasional App-O-Rama. However, after spending two full weekends away from home, I realize that the deals and rebates all take time that I will eventually NOT have at my disposal. Again, things like Deal Barbie are great supplements but those sources of cash will definitely dry out without time and attention.

Obviously a wise decision would be to make informed and well-researched investment decisions but you can only do so much with a limited income in that arena. I’m talking about the in-between things that you do for random cash.

So starting with my theme of the day, I’m reevaluating what Citi’s offers are worth to me:
$15 or $20 sign up rebates. (Unfortunately they haven’t sent a check, which is much easier, in a long time. Or is that Chase?) Either way, the sign up rebates mean that I have to make sure I get the money before I cancel the service. The easiest way to do this and make sure I don’t get dinged while waiting is to only apply for my zero balance, decommissioned cards. As previously posted, I’ve learned my lesson in trying to be sneaky and get away with doing that for my BT cards without paying a fee. I got greedy. *Bad Mini, bad!*

$50 over 5 months retention coupons: These are low-key, make a copy of your receipt and coupon, mail it in, wait for a check. Except if you’ve already done a set this year, or if you have two sets for two different cards. I found out the hard way that even though THEY offer you the second set of retention coupons, the processing company will say only ONE per household per month allowed. So I no longer bother trying to run two sets of retention coupons at a time because it’s a waste of time to call and dispute each $10 check.

Chase Credit Protector: Sometimes they’ll send me a check to deposit as your enrollment bonus. I’ll take it and call to cancel later. They’re not as easy to shake on the cancellation call as Citi reps are, I’ve noticed. Although with Citi reps I just usually say that it’s been causing me more inconvenience than it’s worth, and it’s usually true so they’ll just cancel it.

The deal that wasn’t: My employer’s credit union sent out a slick marketing campaign. It’s called “Get your kicks on Route $66! Cruise to a carefree payday and a $66 bonus.”

Sign up for direct deposit at your credit union checking account and we’ll put $11 in your savings account each month from September 2006 through February 2007 to a maximum of $66.

Don’t delay – you must sign up for direct deposit by August 31 to start receiving your $11 monthly bonuses.

But, of course there’s fine print. Magnified about 15 times, it reads:
Bonus will be deposited into your savings account in $11 increments beg Sept 06 and Feb 07 to a max of $66. Bonuses must remain on deposit for six months before they can be withdrawn. Minimum monthly deposit of $250 is required to qualify. If direct deposit is terminated before six months, the total amount of the bonuses paid will be deducted from your share savings account.

And then they REALLY lost me when I looked at the application: Enclose your opening deposit $10 ($9 one time membership fee + $1 savings minimum deposit)

Yeah this officially counts as a stinker of a deal. I have to pay $9 to open an account with a pittance of interest for essentially 12 months at fairly great inconvenience just to get a net gain of $56? This was definitely not worth the time or effort.

The Anatomy of a Credit Score

Despite my current balances on the 0% BTs, my Equifax score is still 700. [higher than 40% of the U.S. population]

Equifax Positive factors:
I have 2 installment loans.
One is a fully paid off auto loan on my car, the other is the truck loan for BroDucky.
I have not applied for credit in the past 12 months.
(I haven’t? Oooh … maybe it’s almost time for another App-O-Rama ….)
I have never been late with my payments and no collection accounts or negative public records are listed.

Equifax Negative factors:
I opened 12 accounts in the past 24 months.
Uh, yes, that was the last App-O-Rama, and I did make several hundred dollars to pay for gifts and the business suit I needed but couldn’t afford.
I opened my first account 5 years ago *this is an interesting explanation they have here*:
You opened your first credit account 5 years and 5 months ago. This does not include disputed accounts and accounts for which the date opened is not reported. Also, this may not include accounts closed more than 7 years ago.
This lowers your score. Having had credit accounts for a long time is a positive factor because your credit history allows lenders to evaluate how you typically use credit and repay your debts. However, accounts that have been open for a long time may have a short payment history, either because you have not used the account recently, or because the lender has not reported the payment history to the credit bureau. Having a short payment history is a negative factor, even for accounts that have been open for a long time. This is because it does not provide lenders with the information they need to determine how you repay your debts. Accounts that were opened 40 or more years ago and have 2 or more years of reported payment history are considered best. On the other hand, if your oldest account was opened up to 7 years ago, your credit history may be considered short, and less than 3 years ago is often considered too little. It is worth noting that because lenders can be slow to report new accounts to the credit bureaus, you may have accounts not yet recorded on your credit report that may be younger or older than your listed accounts.
I am currently using at least 50% of my credit limit on 3 open bankcard(s).
They even list the three cards they used to calculate this. Yep, two BTs and the one regular use card, but this does show that their “snapshot” of my high balance on this card is already outdated. I paid that balance off last month!

Experian: 684 [higher than 35% of the population]
The only different item in the Negative factor was this:
You applied for credit 6 time(s) in the past 12 months, as recorded in this credit report.
(Mortgage and auto loan applications within the last 30 days do not count towards this total. All mortgage applications before that within a 14-day period count as a single application. This is also true of applications for auto loans.)

TransUnion: 687 [higher than 35% of the population]
The only different item in the Negative factor was this:
You applied for credit 4 time(s) in the past 12 months, as recorded in this credit report. Mortgage and auto loan applications within the last 30 days do not count towards this total. All mortgage applications before that within a 14-day period count as a single application. This is also true of applications for auto loans.

Free money from Citi credit cards!

But you can lose money too ….

First a couple little things: Kira, the ID monitor from Citi that I mentioned before has another benefit I totally forgot about. Their offer is a 30 day free trial of Identity Monitor and only 9.95 a month after that. It gives you a free credit report and credit score from Equifax. AND THEN: it includes a free upgrade (it comes in a nice little booklet, on the first page) to a 3-in-1 credit report with 3 credit scores and 3-Bureau Notify Express so you can get all your info from Experian, TransUnion AND Equifax for free. You just have to log onto their site, activate your account and access the upgrade.
Cost: 5 minutes
Gain: $30 of credit reports and scores? I don’t know how much they cost actually, I’ve never paid for one.

BONUS: I found, while looking at my Special Offers on the Citicards site, that you can sign up online and get a $25 dollar rebate coupon while you’re getting all the free stuff above!! It takes about 6-8 weeks to receive the coupon though, so I think I’ve decided it’s actually not really worth the effort and 9.95 for the second month so that I’ll still be enrolled in the program long enough for the rebate to go through. It’s a net profit of 15 dollars but I’m not sure it’s worth my time right now.

Ok, on to the next thing: I’m using a Citi card’s 0% fee-free BT offer to take care of a chunk of debt for my parents, and I was able to use the remaining amount left on my limit (700 of 2800) to just throw in the bank for some interest. So they’re saving me all the interest that I would be earning on the original 2100 debt by allowing me to keep most of it in the bank for nearly a year, I’m getting extra interest on the borrowed money, and I can take advantage of their Credit Protector and ID Monitor rebate checks.

I am learning, however, that I should be careful not to overextend myself playing with Citi offers because the rebates do take some time to go through and you don’t want to get caught paying a CP fee because you’re waiting for the rebate to go through before you cancel. At least, I thought you had to still be enrolled in the program to have them process your rebate check. So, I confess, I tripped myself up with doing that on a BT card – and thought I was being clever by having them give me another 30-day free trial on the CP program. It turns out that I misunderstood them. The CSR offered me what I thought was another 30 days free to continue in the program at a lower cost, but it was actually a 30 moneyback guarantee period. As soon as I saw the 21.44 fee on my statement, I called and cancelled the whole thing. It’ll be refunded but they said it could take 30 days. Since my next due date is 8/21 and the next statement period is 8/25, there’s a possibility I’ll get dinged with some interest if they don’t credit that amount back before then. I’ve learned my lesson, hands off the BT cards! Tsk tsk.

August 4, 2006

Advance Paycheck Cashing: It’s not just in the local neighborhoods anymore

I was flipping through the junk mail a couple days ago and found, to my intense chagrin, that there was a flyer in the Valu-Pak for Paycheck Cash Advances. ONLINE.

Single Ma hosted a spirited discussion about this the other day and I frankly agree that those places are just awful. The discussion there had touched on the connection between the prevalence of these businesses in the black and/or economically disadvantaged and depressed communities. This is just another example of the widely expanded network of opportunity such predatory businesses have at their disposal with the internet … I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked so I clicked on one to check it out. At first glance, it looks like any other legitimate business, clean and well designed.
The first surprise I had was that the first link you see when clicking on Rates and Terms (after you’ve picked your state) is a link to your state’s regulatory agency for questions or complaints. Now that’s not something I’d expect to see for this sort of business.
The second surprise is that the maximum load amount is set at $250.00 for my state’s residents. That seems ridiculously low, at first, but it does underline the likelihood that the majority of this company’s patronage will be from the very low-economic strata. I mean, 250 dollars is a lot of money, but … not a lot at all if you’re talking about the entirety of a paycheck.
The third surprise was that the loan terms are spelled out in large type, even bold face. Definitely not what I expected from what I’d consider a rather seedy business.

But the last surprise? Wasn’t a surprise at all. Check out these rates:

Fees and Charges: Your loan fees will be $17.65 per $100 borrowed.

So maybe the website isn’t in an economically depressed neighborhood, with shabby wallfronts and rundown decor, maybe there aren’t broken bottles littering the sidewalk, but this is definitely not a competitive-value-for-your-business sort of place. Where else can you find USURY stamped all over the place in not-so-invisible ink? 800%? Thanks, but no thanks.