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August 31, 2005
Katrina Shelter
A friend is working on a project that might explode. No guarantees. I'll help where I can. Alex or anybody else interested in helping?
Posted by Jeff at 02:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2005
Tracking Personal Spending & Online MMA Bank
As we do some personal financial planning, I wanted to share the results of any in-depth research I do so you can profit from it too.
I always wonder exactly how much we spend on various categories of miscellaneous stuff. We use Quicken, but we never enter minor expanses or save receipts. Well, we just got a Neat Receipts. It automatically scans any receipts and doubles as a full size 600dpi scanner. The software is very intellegent (optical character recognition, auto-rotate, internet receipt recognition database). It auto categorizes things like food vs clothes vs bills, and can tell what card you used to pay for something. It can sort by Rebecca's vs my spending, and feeds data to Excel, Quicken, MS Money, or QuickBooks. The portable scanner is a tiny thin thing, but large enough to feed an 8.5" paper of any length. Word of warning: It IS a color scanner, but the device is NOT good enough for photos. It feels like 10 bit color or something.
I went in search of an account to keep minimally funded to cover business expenses and receive business reimbursements, to separate those from my personal account. I put in some buffer money, and long term, this buffer amount should be the average balance. I pay off the corporate card from it, and receive my employer's expense reimbursements via direct deposit. I have about $4K of business expenses per month, so I wanted to make a little interest on the buffer and when there's a surplus.
For this purpose, I decided on a NetBank account. NetBank is the larget internet-only bank. A money-market savings account returns 2.6% annually and has an average minimum balance of $100. Paying the Corporate AMEX online is easy and free. If for some reason I need to make other deposits or withdrawls, it's easy. I can write checks from it, optionally get an ATM card, and I can make deposits via prepaid envelopes that they supply, or free at any UPS Store. There is a 6 withdrawl per month limit.
For more localized research on bank rates for loans and other personal investments like CDs and MMAs, cheout out BankRate. For high yield online MMAs, besides NetBank, I've heard good things about ING Direct as well.
Coming topics will focus on tax-advantaged saving and paying for graduate school, which in the end for both of us going back for 2 years together, will cost just around $180K. Yikes.
Posted by Jeff at 03:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 25, 2005
So... Uhhhh
Blog brainstorm
Excuses: Moving, wedding planning, new job.
- Change Blog title and Style Sheet
Blog about:
- Ultimate USB drive project
- Leapfrom wireless audio
- Researching internet-only banks with higher returns, educational saving research
- Post best pics from Belieze Sailing trip
- Southbeach
- I want my maid back
- Fun with Auditor linux distribution on CD
- Rant about returning to corporate world: "Business Bullshit: On Denial of Inane Work, And The Search for the
Cheeky Colorful Consulting Metaphor"
Haven't been all web-lazy. Check out the wedding website.
And we'll help Google index Rae and Chad's new blog by linking:
Posted by Jeff at 07:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack