I just got the following e-mail from Wise, screenshot below. I haven’t looked into it. Wondering if everyone else got the notice.
Category: Bank Accounts
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets shut down — sources below. If you try to click the CFPB link under Favorites page of Cashback Cow, you will be presented with the following 404 message.
Russell Vought, Trump’s director of Office of Management & Budget and now acting director of the CFPB shuts it down. Vought sent an email Saturday night ordering all employees at the consumer watchdog to stop virtually all work, including fighting financial abuse.
Originally posted in The Wednesday Morning Weekly — August 7, 2024.
Updated December 27, 2024 for MEAB Guest Post :
Most of us agree how important it is to have an emergency fund — it’s often one of the first recommendations from financial planners along with tracking all of your spending each month. A three to six month emergency fund recommendation is common. Some of us, including myself prefer a one to two year emergency fund, or more. It depends on a lot of factors: risk level, type of employment, number of dependents, personal preference, etc.
In the recent past, many of us who prefer a larger emergency fund have been concerned because that money was not getting much interest — just sitting there eroding. Just a couple years ago it was hardly getting anything as interest rates were near zero. So many of us opted to just put all we had into the S&P 500.
Today, at this time of writing 4%+ APY is fairly common — around 5% just a few months back. So things have changed quite a bit.
Well even better, is that if you are in the bonus hunting game, that emergency fund can also serve as a bankroll for the bonus hunting. It then becomes dual purpose: both a bonus hunting bankroll as well as an emergency fund. I call this the BHEF — the Bonus Hunting / Emergency Fund.
A friend just shared this news with me this evening. Paypal and other payment platforms are now subject to the CFPB. See news article link below.
Update 11/4/2024. Sign up bonus offer of $200 expires on 12/2/2024.
As you might already know Upgrade often has a decent sign up bonus of usually $200 for their Rewards Checking Plus account — last month it was a record breaking $300! But even more lucrative are their referral campaigns. I’ll share my recent experience:
As I mentioned a few months ago, I have a Feeds page which is very handy. It aggregates more than a dozen resources related to the bank bonus hunting game — blog, vlog & podcast feeds. The Feeds page also includes some handy links — at the top of the page — to various resources I check each day in addition to what is presented to me in the feeds list. Please click on the aforementioned link for more details about what the Feeds page is.
Here’s what I do each day.
Update 10/9/2024. They sent me a VGC via Tremendous for $20. I used it to prepay my natural gas bill, which does not charge me a processing fee to use a card to pay the bill.
Mercury sent me an email today offering me $20 to fill out a survey as to why I moved my money out of Mercury Business accounts. I obliged and filled it out. Took about 10 minutes (about 30 questions perhaps) — figured why not.
The Wednesday Morning Weekly — October 2, 2024
This one will be quick. I was checking out my feeds page this morning and found a new DoC post that Bank of America is now offering a $300 sign up bonus for personal checking accounts, instead of the very common $200.
Click to read more..
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice whatsoever. These are just my own opinions and personal preferences I am sharing.
I think I briefly mentioned here and there that I am into FIRE: Financial Independence Retire Early. I got exposed to this idea from the Mr. Money Mustache blog about 7 years ago. Summarizing, save as much as possible each month and invest it — e.g. 30, 40, 50 percent or more of your income.
The Wednesday Morning Weekly — September 18, 2024
Disclaimer: I am not an estate planner. These are my personal opinions/ideas in this article, and was just wanting to share them with the community. Please consult with an estate planner for your personal needs.
In the bank account bonus hunting hobby, we open up many accounts. Sometimes we have large amounts of money in a few of these accounts to meet the requirements of the bonus. Or we have utility accounts, such as hubs, which we never plan to close; these accounts can have significant amounts in at any given time. Or we might have retirement accounts, both tax-sheltered and non-tax sheltered with large amounts in them as well.
I personally feel it is important to setup designated beneficiary/beneficiaries for every account possible if the accounts hold a significant amount of money. If you don’t set it up or the bank doesn’t offer it, when you die, it then goes to probate and the courts can decide when your beneficiary/beneficiaries get the money — which could take months or years, instead of a couple weeks.