Doug Goldstein

So this post might be a bit late for the holiday season for everyone. But the worst thing people do is just buy an item and not shop around for it first. Let’s say you wanted an Xbox 360 this holiday season, many people went to the stores and bought them since they were very available in retails stores this season. However, at some places they were sold out. People hopped on Ebay and started buying them in droves. Suddenly the prices on Ebay were greater then the retail prices. Well had people searched around a little bit, they would have found sites like NewEgg selling them for $10 less then retail or even Overstock.com that had them for $80 less then retail for a while.

Save yourself a couple of bucks and check out sites like Slick Deals. Where other users of the site post Hot Deals and they get populated to the main page. Or Fat Wallet where they set you up with a cash back percentage and also have a list of Hot Deals, but generally I find Slick Deals to be a bit more up to date then Fat Wallet with their Hot Deals. And lastly a site like EBates where they hook you up with a cash back percentage at MANY retailers websites, similar to Fat Wallet. But usually they provide a higher percentage and they include more stores then Fat Wallet does. Also if you sign up for EBates now, they’ll give you a $5 cash back bonus if someone refers you. And yes, the referrer does get a kickback as well, if you want to use my referral, here it is.

Why am I posting this? Because a bunch of people in #gentoo-dev were bashing me for listing a bunch of Xbox 360s for $389.99 Buy It Now’s on Ebay and then when people bought them and paid me, I’d turn around and buy them off Overstock.com and shipped it directly to the buyer. Basically drop shipping, no possible loss to me and I never had to leave my house for this and it took all of 5 minutes.

Filed under: Financial, General
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So every now and then it sparks up and people start talking financial stuff in #gentoo-dev, John and I will usually pipe in with a comment like “Go read http://www.mymoneyblog.com, get yourself an HSBC savings account, get yourself an IRA, contribute as much as you can to your IRA and squirrel away at least 2 months worth of living expenses in your HSBC account.” or something to that effect. Why do we say this? Because many of the Gentoo developers are youngins, I can’t really talk since I just recently turned 24 but there’s lots of people younger then me in Gentoo. People my age and younger tend to be compulsive spenders and hold down a job during college just enough to pay the rising minimums on that credit card some blonde girl working for the credit card company convinced them to get for a t-shirt.

So why is that our constant advice? Well it’s never too early to start saving away for those Golden Years (hey, devs… you need to be able to retire early and dedicate yourselves to purely Gentoo work in ~30 - 35 years). Plus, you can always use that money towards a home purchase since first time buyers are exempt from most early withdrawl taxes and fees associated with IRA accounts, I say most because there are some situations where you can still get dinged. Some more good info is available, at The Motley Fool. And lastly the savings account is always a smart idea because you never know what can happen or what can come along. It’s best to be prepared. You can loose your job at any point, if you’re in college you might find that your work schedule is too demanding and hurting your grades and find yourself in the position that you have to quit.

Or the best example is my landlord one year in college swung by the house we were renting from him and he offered us a 25% discount on our rent if we could prepay 6 months in advance out of the 7 we had remaining. Since I wasn’t too sure of his financial situation, we worked it out that our lease would also be amended that the last months rent would be the security deposit (plus the difference we still owed since the deposit was 1/2 a month) and we’d take care of anything that needed to be fixed up. Because one of my roommates and I had saved up enough we were able to accept the deal and our third roommate paid us back each for the next 3 months. But it was definitely nice not to have to worry about a rent payment the rest of that year. As an added bonus, when I sent him the fractional rent payment in the last month, the check got returned to me in the mail and he never came to get our keys from us or inquire if we were moving out. 3 months later I saw him in an ad on TV for his real estate business on TV. No idea what happened to him during that time period or why he needed the cash so quick, but it worked out to our benefit.

Moral of the story. Start saving away for retirement kids. Do this wisely, don’t be like your other peers and start educating yourself early and read about financial topics. And always have a little bit of cash saved away, don’t be like the rest of the college kids and constantly hit that overdraft mark and have to live off of Ramen for two weeks because your next paycheck went to pay the overdraft fees.

Oh, what prompted this post was Josh Jackson was asking me about some stuff in #gentoo-dev and I remembered Seemant’s blog post from a while back.

Filed under: Financial, General, Linux
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So I opened a Datek account back in 1998 when I was 16. This of course meant that it had to be a custodial account which was fine at the time. When I turned 18, in 2000, I tried to convert the account to an individual account however they didn’t allow you to do that, you had to get something notarized by your custodian and open a new account and transfer the money in, which I did. However somewhere in between there was a dividend of $0.17 paid to my account so it never got closed. I had tried to call them back up to have them fix it but they again wanted a notarized form and for $0.17 it wasn’t worth the stamp, let alone the notarization. I let the account be, I then asked them 2 years later, in 2002, I again asked them to nuke the account since I had a new account and now even had a Roth IRA account with them. They wouldn’t budge without a notarized form, again not worth it. So 3 and half years later I call them up after receiving tax info on my $0.17 and a stack of offers on why to get this new account and that new service from that (this cost them $0.55 in postage to send to me), they put me on hold and got a manager. I politely explained the situation and that if they wanted me to jump through hoops it wouldn’t happen. Just write off the account and close it. I even described the package I held in my hand that cost them $0.55 to send to me. The manager agreed and did a misc charge of $0.17 and closed my account for being at $0. Finally! After 5 years of monthly statements, and 5 years of tax information and countless offers being double mailed to me (once for my regular account and one for this one). Datek, now Ameritrade realized this was stupid and closed the account.

Filed under: Financial
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So I had some really crappy college jobs during 2005, I also had to work a lot to be able to pay bills, which resulted in my grades suffering. And 2005 put me deeper in the financial hole then I was in. But in the end it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

I’ve begun to track my finances much better then I have in the past. I’ve switched to online savings accounts. Specifically HSBC and ING Direct. I personally like ING Direct better then HSBC because of their interface and ease of signing up. For a review of HSBC’s sign up process, check here. Or even for a good comparison between the online saving accounts, check here. In the end I made $65 through bonuses and interest over at ING and about $26 over at HSBC. While the total might not be that great ($91 total), it was money that would have sat idly in a checking account or in a Wachovia Savings account at a measly 0.8% interest which would have netted no where near that total.

I’ve also begun to track my total net worth monthly to see how I’m keeping in line with my spending and savings goals so that should help me out a little bit.

All in all, not much in the positive way of things happened but hopefully I understood and I’m able to improve from there. This posting is part of the goal of improving.

Filed under: Financial
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