Money in the Bank

When going on vacation to a distant country, you have to worry about how you are going to carry your money, and you also have to learn about money exchange rates. The currency in each country is remarkable different from your own, and this fluctuates on a daily basis. Even though Canadian currency is found in the United States quite often, many people will not accept it. This is because the value of a Canadian quarter is not the same as the value of an American quarter.

We like to award Fifth Third Bank for having the highest ATM surcharge fee to non-Fifth Third customers.

Next, I noticed that the “Initiative” was sponsored in part by Chase Bank… now I have nothing against them, they are a great organization, we even bank with them. However, wouldn’t a group of creative agencies or a technology firm make more sense to partner with than a bank? Nothing “cool” about the banking industry.

Those of us in the older generation remember the 1970s. It was a wonderful time (for gold bugs). Gold went up. Almost all commodities went up. Bonds went down. Stocks went down. By 1980, most of the top mutual funds were gold funds. All of the establishment gurus lost their shirts. By 1981, they were believers in Dr. Doom. The (non-gold) mutual funds went to 12% cash.

He was rewarded with $100 from the owners of the bonds, but despite that heartless giving, the community of Michigan rallied around the homeless man and poured in around $4500 and a job lead. Mr. Moore, used the money to find an apartment, and hopefully he is having a wonderful Christmas Season.

First, you must have an emergency fund. A six month emergency fund is the best thing you can possibly have for your family. It’s more important than a big lump in retirement or a nice mutual fund balance. It needs to be safe (meaning you have little or no risk of losing the balance) and it needs to be easily accessible when you need it. Some options for this include savings bonds or a high-yield savings account.

First off, do some google searches on IRA, ROTH IRA, 401k, High Interest Savings accounts (i.e. Ing Direct, Wamu, Fidelity) , and Term Life Insurance plans. I’m sure reliable articles will come up on this topic that can help you.

At any rate, for the last 2 weeks my Dad, god bless him, has been sending me money from my DubCorp account via Western Union. You see, WAMU did a great job of FedEx’ing me my new cards, but they sent the pin #’s to my PO Box in SLO, where my company is HQ’d with all the local and federal agencies. My dad has driven down to SLO twice now to fetch them from the PO box to no avail. They weren’t there.

The suspect held up the Chase Bank at 2455 State HIghway 6 around 9 a.m.

Has my quality of life disintegrated - absolutely! Billboards, signs in stores and advertising are all appearing in Spanish. The Wells Fargo Bank on Euclid Avenue has their indoor signs primarily in Spanish. Even the City of Ontario is sending out city publications printed in both English and Spanish! These are all signs to welcome illegal immigrants! As long as the powers that be cater to the Spanish speaking population life will continue to decline.

FDIC has issued guidelines encouraging banks to make “small, short-term loans,” acknowledging that the demand is there.

While he may be best known as the younger brother of the President, Jeb is no Billy Carter. In 1973 he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin, later taking a job with the Texas Commerce Bank. Several years later he moved to Florida, where he worked as a real estate developer and consultant, and eventually a political lobbyist. Today he is the Governor of Florida, with a long and distinguished record of accomplishments which include maintaining a 3.0 unemployment rate in his state, and cutting taxes every year since 1998. Often characterized as brilliant, he is also a man of high principles, and his hard work and determination have transformed Florida into one of the most successful states in the union.

Although trading was fairly quiet on Friday given the importance of the day’s economic releases, equity prices rallied modestly on a dollar rally spurred on by the encouraging employment report and comments from U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Treasury and commodities prices fell mildly on the news, but stocks continued to be supported by rumors and news in corporate finance. Analysts speculated about a possible bid for Barclays by Bank of America, and an IPO from apparel-maker Heelys traded significantly higher than its opening price.

FYI- National City Bank at the corner of University and Pioneer Parkway many mergers ago was called Pioneer Bank (with the old wagon out front) not The Pioneer Bank.

Disintermediation is defined by Wikipedia (which disintermediated paper-based encyclopedias) as “The term was originally applied to the banking industry in about 1967: disintermediation referred to consumers investing directly in securities rather than leaving their money in savings accounts, then later to borrowers going to the capital markets rather than to banks.” The Internet has had a strong impact in disintermediating several industries, with Amazon disintermediating book stores and later retailers in general. iTunes disintermediating music stores and record companies, Netflix disintermediating Blockbuster and other video chains, CraigsList disintermediating classified ads in most newspapers. If we think about it we can see that the Internet started a revolution of disintermediation.

It’s educational. If done well, a gift of a savings bond can be quite educational. They can teach the power of interest and also demonstrate how investments work in a simple way that children can grasp. I particularly like using the savings bond calculator to see how much a few savings bonds I received in my childhood are worth - and sort of worried that some of them are about to stop earning money, because it means I’m getting old.

‘Money in the bank’ is a good, safe way to lose money. A couple of months ago, I renewed some fixed deposits at 7.25 per cent per annum. At today’s income tax rates, almost a third of this will go into the care of Shri Chidambaram, leaving a net interest rate of 4.9 per cent, which is less than the official rate of inflation. So the money I manage is actually losing value.

In September, I saw a paragraph on the city council agenda pages, where Commerce Bank had applied to subdivide the property, and build drive throughs.

This mock exchange in response to the recent BofA YouTube disaster provides another take on what customers might care about:

South Korea hosted the most phishing sites at a whopping 39% with Barclays Bank, PayPal, eBay, Fifth Third Bank and Wells Fargo being the overall most popular targets.

3. your average listed for brink and mortar interest rates are lower than what I have seen at BofA, for example.