It’s no secret that savings accounts are struggling to entice new customers. With every week that passes, savings account rates are falling lower and lower. Online banks have proliferated the marketplace and boast more impressive rates overall than the bricks-and-mortar institutions, but even their yields have been anything but show-stopping. This is all by way [...]
Enough Practice – Make Your Credit Score Perfect!
A FICO credit score can determine a very large number of decisions in your life. Where you live, what you drive, where you work and where you and or your kids go to school can depend on a 3-digit magic number. The range of scores begins at 300, for the individuals in life that have [...]
Fannie Mae Offers Incentives for Homebuyers
Fannie Mae just announced new incentives for homebuyers (and realtors) that I thought was worth passing on. Fannie Mae is what’s known as a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that adds liquidity to the mortgage market by buying certain home loans. By buying up loans, Fannie Mae puts money back into the mortgage market so banks can [...]
What’s the Best Way To Find Health Insurance?
In October of 2009, I decided that I would no longer run the 9-5 gauntlet. And with that decision came a few immediate changes in my life. Working from home and for myself meant that I could set my own schedule, make my own decisions and only have myself to blame when something I’ve implemented [...]
Debit and Credit Card Swipe Fees Decrease July 21st – Watch Out
The Senate recently voted on whether or not to delay the decrease of debit card swipe fees, and the vote to delay failed. As you can imagine, the banks were lobbying very heavily to delay their loss for as long as possible, but come July 21, 2011, all debit and credit card swipe fees will [...]
Are Bitcoins a Scam?
A good friend of mine and I were talking the other day and he asked me if I had ever heard of Bitcoins. Never having read or seen anything about this type of currency before, I was amazed to hear that this was a potential online currency system and it was gaining serious traction. Once [...]
Discover Bank Review
As regular readers of the Dough Roller know, I use the for daily purchases. It has no annual fee and you can earn up to 5% cash back (actually, you can earn up to 20% cash back with some online retailers). What you might not know is that the Discover family of companies include an [...]
Citi Simplicity Card Review
Citibank is no stranger to launching quality credit cards with excellent introductory rates, and it would appear they’ve done it again. The , which you may have seen advertised on television, is now offering consumers the longest 0% intro rate available today– months on both purchases and balance transfers. And even though this card doesn’t [...]
What is a Flexible Spending Account?
Graduating from college in 2006, I’ve really never had the opportunity to take advantage of some of the benefits that larger corporations and employers have to offer. Before working from home, I was employed at a small-time online company that didn’t have things like retirement plans, flexible spending accounts, or even health insurance! I guess [...]