Stimulus Check Payment Amounts - What You Need To Know

By now most people know that Pres. Bush's economic stimulus checks are soon to be on their way. But, when -- and more importantly how much?

I did a little research on the IRS website today and it says that checks are being mailed by the final two digits of their social security number in waves. Checks will first be mailed May 2nd and the chart below shows when you can expect to receive your check.

DIRECT DEPOSIT
Last two SSN digits
Payment will be transmitted:

00 through 20
May 2

21 through 75
May 9

76 through 99
May 16

PAPER CHECK
Last two SSN digits:
Payments will be mailed by:

00 through 09
May 16

10 through 18
May 23

19 through 25
May 30

26 through 38
June 6

39 through 51
June 13

52 through 63
June 20

64 through 75
June 27

76 through 87
July 4

88 through 99
July 11

The full chart can be found here. It should be noted that the IRS also says that people who filed late will receive their stimulus check approximately two weeks after their scheduled payment date.

If you have your 2007 1040 printed and handy, you can head over to the IRS Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator to determine how much you will be receiving. Generally, the checks will be $300 for individuals and $600 for married couples jointly filing, but this can be complicated when dependents are thrown into the mix.

Money Ning Is Giving Away Cash Money

If you're reading this post you are here because you are looking for ways to save money (or came here by mistake somehow). Well this post won't help you save money per se, but will tell you about a place giving away money. Money Ning is giving away $1,000 (in $100 daily increments) until the sum is gone -- for subscribing to his blog via his Feedburner email feed. If you're interested in getting in on the contest since it doesn't cost anything and he has some decent advice you can head over there here.

Sharebuilder $50 Free Offer

ING has started to market the Sharebuilder service that it acquired. This isn't terribly exciting new, but ING is currently offering a special deal where you can receive a $50 credit to your account by entering the code SHARE50 -- hey a free $50 is a free $50. As with any deal there is fine print. It looks as though you need to purchase a security and the credit will post within 4 weeks of the transaction.

For those of you not familiar with ShareBuilder, the company allows you to purchase fractional shares of securities. You can set up an automatic savings plan and have the company purchase $35 of stock each month and you will receive the applicable fraction of shares that the $35 will buy you at that time.

The company advertises that they have buy fees as low as $4, but that is for people who have an automatic savings plan set up. A full fee schedule can be found here.

Direct Link to Offer at ShareBuilder

Photo: goat_girl_photos @ Flickr

101 Best Web Freebies

While they assuredly won't help you grow your nest egg, or retire early (for the most part), there are a lot of useful free goods and services you can score online. BusinessWeek has done some of the leg work for all of us by compiling a list of the best freebies you can get on the web. It's not presented in the most reader friendly manner, but you can check the list out here. The list is almost exclusively software or web based services and I have listed a few samples of the items on the list below:

Operating Systems - Ubuntu
Anti-Virus Software - AVG
Free Phone Calls - Skype
Accounting Software - Mint
Tax Software - TaxAct
Business Cards - VistaPrint
Remodeling Software - Google Sketchup

Read the entire article BusinessWeek.

Review: E*Trade Complete Savings Account

Now that I have been using E*Trade's Complete Savings Account for a couple months the time has come to give a little review of the service.

For a little background, E*Trade introduced the Complete Savings Account in the not-so-distant past and it operates VERY similar to the other online savings account providers out there like HSBCDirect, INGDirect, or Emigrant. The account offers a 5.05% APY compounded monthly and can be linked to outside bank accounts or any account you may already have with E*Trade. I have had, or currently have, accounts with HSBC and ING so I will compare them to E*Trade as I go in this post.

Opening an Account

It took about two weeks for me to open an account. I filled out the online form and about a week or week and a half later had the registration forms. You sign the form and mail it back to the bank within 7 days and you are all set. Not as sleek and fast as ING, but a lot better than HSBC.

The Interface

(click the picture to enlarge)

E*Trade's Complete Savings Account has a nice clean interface. Things are easy to find and it is painless to add linked accounts. Those of you who have or have had E*Trade accounts in the past (regardless of how unhappy you were with customer service) will likely enjoy it.

Transferring Funds

(click to enlarge)

This is where the E*Trade Savings Account really shines. The company has chosen not to nickel and dime people by putting a hold on transferring money. While companies that hold transfers don't really cost you anything in real terms, the are profiting off the float on your money that could be going to you. The transfers I have made are done within 1 business day! Zero days of lost interest. ING is usually pretty good around 2 business days, and HSBC is pretty terrible taking substantially longer.

It's also really easy to add linked accounts. I should be with any service, but you can instantly validate accounts with E*Trade if you are willing to divulge your online user name and password for the account.

The Rate

E*Trade is paying 5.05% APY which isn't terrible, but there are plenty of other players in the mix now. ELOAN is consistently above 5% (5.25% right now) and many of the traditional banks like WaMu are offering similar services with competitive rates. The company has been offering a $25 sign-up bonus which as far as I can tell is still effective. Check out my former post on the bonus and try some of those codes to see if you can still snag the $25. UPDATE *I found a link to the bonus and it is now at the end of this post*

Fees

None, just keep at least $1 in the account.

Overall

I have had some bad experiences with E*Trade as a brokerage which I will write about some other time. However, I'm happy to say my experience with E*Trade's Savings Account has been good so positive. Of course I haven't had to use the customer service for much which has been the brokerage's main downfall.

Pros:

• No minimum, $1 to open, no fees, sign-up bonus of $25, FDIC insured.
  
• No hard credit pull to open the account.
  
• 5.05% APY is good but not the best.
• Blows competition away when it comes to transferring funds in an out of the account.
• Links to other E*Trade accounts if you choose
• If you have $5,000 or more in deposits you can get a checking account with ATM card as well.
  

Cons:

• Variable rate (but it is with any of the online savings accounts so far as I can tell).
• You can get a better rate other places if you look around, especially if you have more money to park in one of these accounts.
• When dealing with E*Trade brokerage I have run into some of the worst customer service experiences I have had anywhere. I'm not sure if they share customer service departments, but keep this in mind. With HSBC I have had decent customer service and INGDirect has some of the best I have ever had when I have contacted them.
• You might be able to get a comparable rate at a local banking branch where you already do business, especially if you have a significant amount to invest.

Link: E*Trade Complete Savings w/ $25

CitiBank Direct Ultimate Savings Bonus

I just saw an Adsense advertisement that CitiBank is currently offering a $50 bonus to people opening up a CitiBank Direct Ultimate Savings Account. While the rate isn't that stellar at 4.65% APY, the $50 bonus is pretty nice. Might be worth it to open an account with $1 to get the bonus. You can always close the account later or transfer the bonus out and leave the $1 seed money there.

The bonus is credited within 90 days. I couldn't find anything that says you need to keep the account open "x" number of months. I haven't used CitiBank's online banking service so I can't tell you how the interface or transaction speed is.

Direct link to the promotion page here.

E*Trade Free $25 Savings Sign-up Bonus

E*Trade has a promotion running for their new high yield online savings account. If you open account and fund it with $1 (the account minimum) they will give you a $25 bonus. Not too bad of a deal considering you only have to chip in $1.

The account pays 5.05% which puts in a good position to compete with what the other top online savings accounts are paying out right now. The biggest benefits (aside from the free cash) is that the transfers are really fast in and out. I have complained ad-nauseum about the lag time for HSBC and have been happy so far with the responsiveness of E*Trade's online account. As with all reliable online savings accounts this one is FDIC insured up to 100,000 too.

Link
E*Trade $25 Savings Bonus Promotion

Free Money... (Well Stock)... No Honestly

I'm always looking for a way to save or make a little money (so long as it is legit and not the slightest bit shady). How does $50 sound... Like there is a catch right? Not exactly, but let me explain. Sharebuilder (a website that lets you buy as little as $1 worth of a share of stock), has a promotion running where they will give you $50 when you open an account. I did this a while back and opened up an account, purchased a couple risky penny stocks (its free money after all) and am sitting back waiting to retire on the beach 30 years from now.

How it works:

• Head over to Sharebuilder.
  
• Enter one of the codes below (all were working at the time of this post) and open up an account.
• Make a trade and 4-6 weeks after your trade is made your $50 bonus gets deposited in your Sharebuilder account.

Code: CAMPUS50
Bonus: $50
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

Code: UFALUMNI45
Bonus: $45
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

Code: IPLANGIFT
Bonus: $50
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

Code: ENTERTAIN40A
Bonus: $45
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

Code: SMFALL50
Bonus: $50
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

Code: UWALUMNI45
Bonus: $45
Exp: None Found
Link: Link to Open Account

One other thing to consider is if you are a CostCo Member Sharebuilder has a deal where they will give you a $55 bonus if you enter your membership number when signing up. If you are an "Executive Member" you get the $55 bonus plus 25% of your Sharebuilder fees credited back to you. If you are a "Gold Star or Business Member" you can get the $55 bonus plus 10% of your transaction fees credited back to you. If you are interested and a Costco member you can find out more about the offer here.

FYI:

1. I have heard that once your $50 bonus posts you can electronically withdraw that bonus cash without fees once it hits your account, but I haven't done it myself.
   
   
2. You can open additional Sharebuilder accounts and still receive the bonus cash, but space them out by a week or two and use a different code, if you open over 3 accounts you are going to run the risk that they prevent you from opening additional accounts.
   
   
3. Sharebuilder has a pdf form that you can print off and fax to them that will allow you to combine accounts at a later time.
   
   
4. If you are thinking about cutting and running quickly after you receive your bonus be warned that to close your account and transfer all or part of the funds out of your account ShareBuilder charges fees (see the fee schedule below).
   

Links
ShareBuilder

Sharebuilder fee schedule
Fees