Why are You Trusting Bank Robbers?

Chase Bank is a robber. They rob you with outrageous, undisclosed fees They lie in wait and when you’re the most vulnerable, they pounce, and beat the heck out of you and take your money. And this after you have already given them their extortion money through your taxes. Your taxes are supposed to go the common good of all the citizens. You have been extorted. Your tax money was just handed over to them because they could prove they were incompetent as a bank. They steal your tax money. You had no say in it, yet it’s gone from your pocket. Then they have the nerve to jack up their fees and penalties and rob you a second time.

Chase Bank is evil. I hope you realize you don’t have to put up with this. You have options. I have had personal experience with getting mugged by Chase Bank just recently and I’m really peeved. But it’s not just Chase, it’s Bank of America, it’s all the major banks and credit card companies. But you don’t have to play their game. You can go to smaller banks. Banks that knew and still know what they are doing. They are professionals who are careful with their corporate policy. Didn’t buy junk and try to sell junk and then got caught with their pants down.

Small Banks and Credit Unions are the solution. Small Banks play by different rules. They are concerned about their investments and are concerned about your investments. You can deal with them one on one and they know what they are doing. They belong to all the major ATM networks. Have on-line banking. Free checking. Debit cards. FDIC insured. DBA accounts for small businesses. A host of investment vehicles. They can meet all your needs. Take my advice, let the criminals die a slow death in their own greed and incompetence. Just make sure you are not still one of their victims (customers) while they accelerate their embezzlement (fees and penalties).

An unrepentant, corporate criminal will continue their criminality just as any street criminal will. Giving them more money is not going to stop their criminality, only encourage it. Get away from them now.

The steps to take are as follows:

1. Find a local, small bank that does not advertise on TV. I drove around my neighborhood and found “Home Savings of America”. Very pleased with them. You can find listings of local, small banks on the Internet, or just drive around.
2. Open a checking account and two savings accounts (one for saving for large purchases and one for your emergency fund). Set up on-line banking and join all accounts so you transfer money to and from them all
3. Go on-line and open a checking account and another savings account with ING at www.INGdirect.com. Setup where you can transfer money back and forth from your ING accounts and your new local, small bank accounts.
4. Set up your direct deposit at your work, to put 80-90% of your money to one bank and 10-20% to the other.

The Best of Both Worlds

Now if you want a lot of money fast, you can go to your local bank and withdraw. You’re not being dependent on ATMs and you have the flexibility and safety of 2 systems of checking and savings accounts.

I use my ING checking to pay all my monthly bills and the ING savings to store up for my insurance bills that are due every 6 months and annually.

I use the checking account at the local bank for groceries and incidentals. Because the monthly bills are paid out of their own separate account, I can’t accidentally use that money for incidentals. Your bills will always be paid and you’ll always know how much discretionary money you have available.

The 2 savings accounts at the local, small bank are first, for saving up for large purchases, and the second savings is for your emergency fund. People in the know are saying 12 to 18 months these days, instead of the previous 3 to 6 months of living expenses.

Saving Saves on Insurance

Incidentally, once you get a thousand or so in one of these savings accounts, you can increase your insurance deductibles on all your policies to $1,000 because you’ll have it stashed. Why pay higher insurance rates for something you already have covered?

Summary:

How not to get Mugged?

Don’t go where the muggers are.

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Martin O’Hara writes on business and personal finance related issues. You can learn more by visiting his blogs, Success With Personal Finance and Money Hidden at:

http://successwithpersonalfinance.blogspot.com/

and

http://moneyhidden.com/

As Featured On Ezine Articles

What Are The 2 Best Investments In The World?

Investment #1: Make 20% or More

Pay off your debts. If you have invested $10,000 at 20% interest you have gained $2,000. If you don’t have to pay 20% interest on $10,000, you have gained $2,000. If you are in debt and take the critical step to bite the bullet and pay off your debt, you will be making one of the best investments of your life. And it’s totally 100% risk free. It’s a guaranteed rate of return.Where else in this wild and scary economy can you get a super high return and have it 100% guaranteed. Now if you’re already out of debt, go to investment #2, and if you are in debt, go to investment #2 anyway to help you get out of debt.

Investment #2: Make 30% or More

Sell something. This is the only real protection against both deflation and inflation. You have to buy something and then sell it for a profit. The quicker the better. Here’s why: If we are having deflation, your money might have better buying power, things are cheaper, but you might find yourself with salary cutbacks, work hours reduced, or layoffs. But there will always be someone buying something.

The Magic of Combining
or “You Want Fries With That?

If you can buy some things for $10 total and sell it for $15, you’ll be doing fantastic. That’s a 50% profit on your investment. Where can you get that interest rate?

The easiest way to start, is not to Make “the thing”, but to Combine “the thing”. Look around craft stores, hardware stores, drug stores. Have the “Gift Basket” mentality. What if I packaged travel hand lotion with a nail file with stick-on nails with clear nail polish? What if I packaged a bicycle inner tube with a tire repair kit with a can of air? What if I packaged a mechanical pencil with a crossword puzzle book with a clip-on book light? What if . . .

Now sell “the thing”

If there’s deflation, you are selling it at a low price but you bought the raw materials at a low price. You are still making your profit, return on investment, your mark-up, your “interest”.

If there’s inflation, you are protected. You have bought your current raw materials in the same environment you are selling them. By selling and making raw material purchases and then selling again, you will be protected from any change of value of the dollar. Your money is protected because it is riding the wave of inflation.

Going Up the Down Escalator
If you stand still on the escalator of “downward dollar value” it will take you to the bottom. But if you can walk up the down escalator by buying and selling, you will be completely unaffected by the movement of the dollar (escalator). Transactions will be the only true defense against both deflation and inflation.

How Do I Sell “the thing”

Get yourself a $10 domain name. Get yourself a $10 a month hosting. Use a free website template. Use the free PayPal service to take credit cards. You can sell stuff. It’s not hard. Combine, combine, combine. Make things easy and convenient for people and they will buy.

Martin O’Hara writes on business and personal finance related issues. You can learn more by visiting his blogs, Success With Personal Finance and Money Hidden at:

http://successwithpersonalfinance.blogspot.com

and

http://moneyhidden.com

The People Part of Money

When a Midget Fortune Teller Escaped Prison, the Newspaper Headline was: Small Medium at Large

People’s problems are either small, medium, or large. The cure is always the same for all sizes. That’s because the size of the problem is an illusion. When it’s your problem and in your face, it’s always large. When it’s someone else’s problem it doesn’t seem so big. It’s like the definition of a recession is when people are out of work but it’s a depression when it’s you that’s out of work.

I’m trying to set some perspective here because the mechanics are all the same. Cut expenses, make more money, get out of debt, build savings. But it’s the emotional side that is really the problem. Why are you not 10 million dollars in debt? No really. Whatever debt you have, you did yourself. But really why not millions? Because you cut yourself off at some point, didn’t you? Somewhere you said, “yikes, that’s enough”. So you do have self control. You are in charge of how much you spend. Circumstances didn’t run away with you. You did what you did and still you used self discipline and self control and basic money management skill. Congratulations.

You just ignored the arithmetic. If you make one pile of money and you spend 2 piles of money, you’ve got to pay back that extra pile, but you can’t because the next one pile has to cover a new 2 piles.

Money is energy. It follows mechanical principles. Do this and that will happen. It’s people that change everything. People are not machines, they are the variables when it comes to money. It’s the people part that you need to know about, more than the money part when you’re dealing with the subject of money. That’s why things don’t work out the way they’re planned. Things aren’t always what they seem.

2 plus 2 equals 2
Two cats plus two birds equals two cats.

My wife had a friend that went to co-dependent group therapy meetings because her boyfriends always walked all over her. My wife told her, “Stop that. Just don’t do that anymore. I don’t get it. Just kick the bum out and stand up for yourself.” Her friend said she can’t. She doesn’t know how. Well eventually, she started to stand up for herself. With practice and new habits, she made a lot of progress. But it’s not easy, because you’re making personality changes when you’re dealing with emotions. People that give financial advice generally miss this point.

So the starting point is to take a good look at how you got yourself where you are. Remember you’re not millions in debt so you do have control. Bad control maybe, but at least you’re in control. So like my wife said, “Stop that”. Don’t do what you did to get yourself in trouble anymore. You can. You might need to learn some new habits but the mechanics of money will take care of itself. Just don’t let the people part run crazy. Just stop it.

The people part of money: I want things. I want it. I want it now. I want lots of it. I want lots of it now. It will make feel good. I want to feel good. I deserve it.

The money part of money: It grows when it’s left alone. It grows more when you add just a little to it. It makes you feel fantastic just to have it. It’s the real security feeling that makes you feel better than having things. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

The Plot Against You

The Phone call: “No my wife’s not home. She’s out stimulating the economy”. The economy is built around people getting in debt. When people borrow money from a bank (buying on credit), the bank counts that debt as an asset. They in fact have just printed up their own pile of money because of your signature. Banks make money but not the old fashioned way from the interest they charge, they make money from your signature. That’s why they want you to borrow like crazy because you are manufacturing money for them when you do. They don’t care if it takes a lifetime to pay it back. They made their pile of instant cash when you signed, right out of thin air.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t buy anymore stuff you can’t pay for. Stop it.

Do the mechanical parts of money. Do them in this order: Spend less, make more, build a reserve, pay off your debts, build a savings account, save for retirement. But you have a lot to face before you start that stuff. You have to “Stop it”.

Martin O’Hara writes on business and personal finance related issues. You can learn more by visiting his blogs, Success With Personal Finance and Money Hidden at:

http://successwithpersonalfinance.blogspot.com

and

http://moneyhidden.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Martin_O’Hara

How to Convert Your 401k Into a Self-Controlled Roth IRA

What’s Wrong With a 401k

* You can’t buy individual stocks
* You can’t sell individual stocks
* You can’t short the market
* You can’t control your investment at all

What’s Good About a 401k

* Employer Matching (Free Money)
* Delayed Taxation
* What else? Um, uh . . .

Are We in an Up Market or a Down Market?

The market looks like it will be down for 9 to 16 months. If you leave your money invested in 401k mutual funds, you will continue to lose before things turn around. If you move your money to your 401k cash equivalent, you might have stopped the bleeding but you won’t gain a dime until things turn around.

That’s the two huge problems with a 401k. You only make money in good market times. And secondly, you can’t buy individual stocks, only sectors (good stocks mixed with garbage).

Solution:

Borrow as Much as You Can Against Your 401k and Open a Roth IRA and One for Your Spouse Too and a Regular Brokerage Account for Any Left Over

* You get charged interest
* You are paying that interest with after tax money
* You will pay tax on that interest again at the time you withdraw it.

But So What. Here’s the Arithmetic:
You pay 5% interest but it goes back into your own account so that part is your own money. You took money out of your pants pocket and moved it into your 401k, so that’s just your money shifting around. No cost.

You paid that 5% with “after tax” money. If you’re in the 30% tax bracket, then 30% of 5% is only 1.5%.

When you retire and withdraw your money, you’re going to pay tax again on it. If you’re still in a 30% tax bracket, that’s another 30% of 5%, which is still only 1.5%. The two 1.5 percents add up to an out of pocket cost of only 3%. Pretty cheap loan. Better than losing 50% due to no fault of your own.

Of course you need to check with your 401k Administrator or HR Department for your plan’s specifics. Make sure of the interest rate. Make sure you can pay it back early in a lump sum, if you want to, etc.

Roth IRA as Opposed to a Regular IRA

A Roth IRA allows for you to withdraw your “deposited” money without interest or penalties. This is because you deposited “after tax” money into it, so you can get it back with no tax ramifications. Not so with a regular IRA. Nice to know you can use that, if your 401k loan payment makes things too tight.

Conservative Strategy: Buy Low, Sell High

With IRA’s you can buy individual stocks. So build a nice collection of great companies that are having half off sales right now. You know they will be around for a long time. You know who they are and you know who they aren’t. The ones showing up in Washington saying “I don’t know what I’m doing. Give me money to make up for it.” are not the great companies. The companies you buy from everyday are probably the great companies.

Buy real gold. I don’t mean gold coins and I definitely don’t mean gold stock. Just little pieces of actual gold metal you can save in your safety deposit box. If the economy gets really bad, you clip off a piece and take it to a dealer and say, “I’d like a month’s worth of groceries, please.” So your 401k turns into a stash of real, tangible gold.

For the More Adventurous:

Short the market. You know the whole market is going down. You know there’s a lot of companies suffering. You know there are a lot of lousy companies out there barely hanging on. The tidal wave is still crashing in. Bet that their stock will go down and make some cash on it. This you can do in an IRA.

You can trade options in an IRA. Learn about options. Work your way up to knowing what you’re doing with a few thousand. Then generate cash that you will use to either short stock or buy stock you want to hold onto. My website has a link to the best options trainer I have ever seen. For about $29 a month, he will take you safely, step by step showing you everything you need to know about safely trading options. His name is Dr. Stephen Cooper. But no matter what, you should be in control of your own investments.

Martin O’Hara writes on business and personal finance related issues. You can learn more by visiting his blogs, Success With Personal Finance and Money Hidden at:

http://successwithpersonalfinance.blogspot.com/

and

http://moneyhidden.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Martin_O’Hara