toomuch2do2day said:What do the financial minds here consider to be a "good score" when it comes to mortgage rates?Some lenders look for >680 FICO, other lenders look for 720-750. I think a "good score" would be 720+ FICO. (Assuming 80 LTV, good DTI, etc.)

When you are looking to lease a new car, is the car salesman obligated to give you the money factor and residual value/percentage in the lease calculation when asked?

If you think the number is low do your own market survey.

Go to Autotrader and see what cars like yours are going for in say a 200 mile radius.

See if the average price is close to the value your ins co is offering. Send them the documentation if needed.

I want to start investing in mutual funds and need some sort of directions: banks to consider, fees, risks.

I am looking at this right now -https://www.usaa.com/inet/imco_mutualfund/ImMutualFunds?FundGroup=AA, but would like to invest via a bigger bank.

Please suggest.

Thanks

I recently had a CD mature with my local bank. 5.85% for 9 months I believe so I was happy it was with the bank that I've been using for 10+ years. Over the holidays my CD matured while I was on vacation and the 7 day grace period elapsed 12/29/07. Needless to say I was on holiday the whole time and I'm not happy as I knew that 5.85% was a special they were having. I emailed customer service to see if there was any way out and I was unsure on the grace period because I didn't know if it was 7 busines days or just 7 consecutive days. It was the latter.

My question is, they told me an early withdrawl penalty of $361 would be imposed if I were to close today. I JUST found out my new CD has an apr of 2.72% and an apy of 2.75%. If I were to withdrawl the ~27k in there and put it into say the fnbo 5.25% 9 month cd, or the CountryWide 5.50% 6 month CD and take the penalty would it make sense monetarily? I don't know how to figure this out. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm also really pissed that there is a 10month CD (1 month longer) with the same other terms at 4.85%. To be honest, I'd take the 4.85% 10month and call it a day, but to drop from 5.85 to 2.75 while on vacation.... I wasn't happy!

Thanks

This seems to have been asked, but the answers are almost always flames, so I'm still curious about the answer.

I'm a college student, and looking to deposit some savings (roughly 3-4000$) into a decent bank account. Ideally, this is going to be a decent yield 5% or above. However, a lot of the accounts require some sort of direct deposit or ACH. My job doesn't do direct deposits right now, so I have no way of getting in that quota of at least direct deposit every month that so many banks seem to want. Is there any way I can set it up such that I can deposit into my own account a trivial amount of money from another account or something?

On that vein of thinking, what are some great ways to build credit from...well...nothing ?

frugalwallet said:First off, I've read through like every forum on here but a lot of the pertinent information is outdated; from 2004 and 2005.

I'm trying to open a Roth IRA inexpensively. I want Free DRIP, free automatic debit from my BofA checking account to the IRA at an amount of $50 every 2 weeks (Payday), I also want a very low initial investment, like $250-500 NOT $2500-$3000 like Vanguard or Fidelity. I would like to be investing in Vanguard or Fidelity indexes until I get around $10k to try other investment options, but cannot afford their initial amounts. I don't mind owning just 1 fund for now until I amass more money to work with. Is there anything like this out there??? It seems that every place I look, I cannot find all of these options. Either I can open an account with Free DRIP, but must deposit like $500 minimum and cannot do an automatic investment plan monthly from my paycheck. I don't necessarily mind paying for actual trades, but I don't want to pay a Lot. So far I've looked into Merrill, Morgan, T. Rowe, Scottrade, Ameritrade, going directly to Vanguard or Fidelity, and a few others. I really would like to go directly with Vanguard right now but don't have the $3000 initial investment.

I've looked into ING funds, but don't like their performance at all. I'd rather keep my money building in their savings for the time being until I get the $3k to open with vanguard.

Background: My financial status is decent. I'm 25 years old. I have around $11k in 401k, maxing out my employer contribution each paycheck. I also have my 6 month safety net in case I lose my job. I have a separate account tucked away that I contribute regularly to, for my first time home purchase. But I would like to be able to put $100 away in an IRA right now until I can get that up to $200 a month. (I have a guaranteed raise in June that will enable that to happen.) Right now I have an ING account titled, Roth IRA, where I have them deduct $50 from each paycheck. But that's just one of their saver accounts and there's only $250 in it.


Any ideas???

I'm specifically looking for Roth IRAs that could hold Index Mutual Funds and maybe eventually place a stock, option or futures trade down the road. If I have to open a separate brokerage account down the road for the stock, option or futures trade, then I’ll do so. but right now, I'm hoping for a cheap, easy, beginner Roth account that will let me build up. I've seen Fidelity's Simple Start as well as T. Rowe Price's Smart Choice but I'm not all about those for some reason. I wish Vanguard had one. Maybe i should call their CEO? hahaha. Yeah, that'd work.

I was in a similar situation just a month ago -- although I had a bit more money to work with. I ended up opening a ROTH thru Bank of America ... its pretty straight forward and I feel relatively easy. They have tons of no load no fee mutual funds you can invest in, or you can invest in stock once you get above a certain amount.

Does anyone know how to freeze Experian credit reports? I've seen people talk about it but when it came to the details it was because their state that had some specific law that forced experiean to let them.

I live in CA if that helps. Also I have had no fraudulent activity.

I would like to get a credit report + credit score this month, however, Google is loaded with webpages and they all look like a scam to me. Can anybody recommend a good/cheap service so I can check my score? thanks

tookmuhjerb asked about his credit score -

Remember, you only get to see A credit score -- not THE credit score a bank/employer/insurer etc. may use to gouge you. The monitoring requirements when you sign up for the "free" sites can be tricky to cancel -- be sure you check other's posts on any provider you choose to see that you do not end up with charges you did not expect.

Also, many of the "free" sites jumble your actual data then offer to sell you clarifications -- NONE of which gives you the complete -- NOR more importantly the weighting data (that is the importance and highlighting of items in your history) that are part of THE secret credit score the big firms sell to the bank/employer/insurer's.

Still other sites have printing/save restrictions --- so you may want to be sure your printscreen/scrolling functions work if you want to more closely look at the info you are buying. Of course I may be guilty of an assumption -- you are doing this for some form of tangible financial goal and not merely interested in what the blessed folks in North Dakota and Delaware think of you personally.

They appreciate you paying them to work on the info they sell about you.

Tookmuhjerb - you are right that they are all a scam. Lay back and endure. Did you really expect an industry that swore for decades that FICO scores did not exist and were never used for credit (let alone employment or insurance) -- to come clean and actually let you see how they gouge you. A rapist would sooner buy his victim dinner AFTER.