Personal Finance Zen

PNC’s Virtual Wallet service sounds like a great idea. They’ve essentially packed up the solution I started using a few years ago into a neat bundle that’s all in one account. There are three accounts, spending, reserve and growth. Spending is your checking account where you pay bills and such. Reserve is for short term savings and covers any payments from spending (and transfers the money to cover those payments without charging you any fees). The growth account earns 3% interest. I’m not sure if the other two accounts have interest, but my guess is they don’t.

You need $25 to open the account and there aren’t any fees or minimum balances. They have online bill pay, a bill calendar and various other ways to help you manage your finances as easily as possible. I’m currently happy with my setup at Washington Mutual Chase, but if things start changing, I may open up a Virtual Wallet account with PNC.

Frank Abagnale, the guy whose life was made into a movie called Catch Me If You Can shares 5 tips to avoid check fraud. He should know, he was one of the most successful check fraudsters of all time.

According to the LA Times,

Across the country, Americans struggling with rising food and energy costs are more worried about their personal finances than at any time since the early 1990s

It’s no wonder with the rising cost of fuel and food along with the slump in the housing market that people are feeling the pinch. What concerns me is how long this is likely to last. If fuel prices continue to go up, unemployment rates increase or the housing market continues to tank, we could be in for a full on recession.

(via LA Times)

The Y generation is broke because many don’t understand basic financial principles like budgeting, interest rates and taxes.

I was curious how I stacked up, so I took a financial literacy test I found on the Kiplinger forums.

I got a 27/30. The average was 21.

Take it and see how you do.

BillShrink provides you with a way to compare cell phone plans, giving you an opportunity to pick the one that fits your needs the best.

It’s still a beta so it needs some work, but it has potential.

J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly found a great resource from the government. It’s a list of 66 ways to save money. As he points out in his post, some of them are pretty obvious, but others are quite useful.

BankSwitcher aims to make it easier for you to switch banks, for those times you decide to go with the high interest savings accounts.

The main concern I have is giving out the login credentials to your bank. Of course, I do this currently with Yodlee but I’ve made the decision that they can be trusted because of their affiliation with Bank of America, HSBC and third-party audits. I don’t have anything else to go on with BankSwitcher other than “trust us”.

The FAQ says “Safe and Secure” over and over as if they’re trying to will you into believing it’s safe and secure.

I’ve switched banks twice before and I’m in the middle of the third switch (From Zion’s Bank to Wells Fargo to HSBC and now to Wamu). It takes some attention to detail, which I have, so I’ll stick with that instead of handing my credentials over to an unknown third party.

Do you want to get control of your finances? Do you have good intentions but find yourself sabotaging them with spending?

With the this site, I will teach you the basic principles to manage your finances simply so you can focus on the rest of your life. These principles are not complicated or based on luck or extreme knowledge of the stock market. They are long standing rules that thousands of people have used for centuries to build wealth one step at a time.

This isn’t a get rich quick scheme or a quick fix. You can work at improving your financial situation one day at a time with the tools and information on this site. Eventually you’ll be able to look back and see that your personal finances are all taken care of. It’s a great feeling to stop worrying about money. I want you to have that feeling.

And once your finances are in order you can live relax into a state of Zen.

Here are some guides to help you in the process.

1. Get out of debt
2. Pay yourself first (save 10% of your income)
3. Reduce your expenses
4. Save for retirement
5. Set financial goals
6. Buy appropriate insurance
7. Save for college
8. Create a will