Mint = Fail

Before this year, I kept my monthly budget on a whiteboard, writing in expenses as they came up, and keeping a running total on the wall, where it was easy to see.  The downside of this system was that it was difficult to track expenses over time.  Lots of PF bloggers had nice things to say about Mint.com, and so I've been using it for the last six months or so.  On the whole, I've been underwhelmed.

Mint tries to auto-categorize your spending for you.  I can't decide which is more annoying, having my utilities auto-categorized as my toy budget, or having literally every Amazon purchase categorized as shopping, a category that isn't anywhere in my budget.  Their trends section is woefully inadequate to track spending over time.  And it's annoying as all get out to get spam email that "my Paypal balance is low" or "my interest rate has dropped, why don't I change to a bank with an even lower interest rate."  Finally, if I do overdraw a budget, there's no way to zero it out by bringing in money from my EF and reconciling my accounts - I have to use torturous and unsound accounting methodology to make my budgets look right again.

But this week has taken the cake - according to Mint, my toy budget is overdrawn by $2264.  Usually, this means that Mint has again misallocated a credit card payment to my toy budget.  In this case, however, I can't find the source of the two thousand dollar plus overdraft, and I've looked over all my transactions for the last six months.  So, basically, I have to either wait for Mint to fix the error, or put in fake numbers and hope that Mint never fixes the error so that my numbers continue to look correct.  

I'm done with this.  I'm going back to my trusty whiteboard next month.  I still want a way to track expenses well over time, and I'm sure I'll try another budgeting service when it becomes available, but, for me, using Mint has been a gigantic fail.

Scottrade and Bank of America Wouldn't Give Me My Money! Grrrr!

I recently decided to sell some stocks in a regular Scottrade account to pay some expenses as part of the financial restructuring after my loan payback last month.  I had never cashed out stock from an online brokerage before, and I assumed that, after the stock transaction cleared, it would be like any online account - 3 business days to transfer funds electronically.  I needed the money to pay a cheque that I expected to hit my bank account on January 15th, so I thought I was in good time when I sold the stocks on January 3rd.  I was wrong, wrong, wrong.  Here is the actual timeline:

Day 1 - Monday - Stocks sold.
Day 4 - Thursday - Stocks clear.  I call Scottrade before noon to order my cheque.  They say it will be sent out that day.
Day 8 - Monday - My cheque arrives.  Scottrade has an office less than 30 miles away from me, and it took them 4 days to get me my cheque? WTF?
Day 9 - Tuesday - My cheque goes out in the mail to my bank, which has no branches in my state.
Day 16 - Tuesday - My bank acknowledges receipt of my cheque, but won't free funds until the next business day. It should not take a week to send a cheque from LA to FL; my post office is usually very good, so I am guessing that the problem is somewhere in FL.
Day 17 - Wednesday -My cheque clears at my bank and I have actual possession of my money.

Luckily for me, the cheque I thought was going to hit on Day 13 (Saturday) hit on Day 18 instead, so I wasn't overdrawn, but that was the closest to an overdraft on my checking account I have been since before I graduated high school.  Not where I like my finances to be!

Lessons I learned from this:
(1) EF money cannot all be kept in brokerage accounts in case I should need cash quickly.  I'm not sure what my ratio of brokerage accounts to savings needs to be, but the 100 to 0 ratio that I am rocking this month is obviously not a good idea.
(2) I need a new bank.  If I'm going to have all the inconvenience of an internet bank, I might as well have some of the advantages.  I bank with Bank of America because it made sense when we were moving every few years all over the country and I was traveling all over the world.  Now that our only foreseeable moves are within the United States, and our travel is strictly recreational, it's time to get a grown-up bank account.  Do you have an online bank that you would recommend?

Sayonara SmartyPig

There were 2 emails from SmartyPig in my inbox today.  Email # 1 announced that they were again cutting their rates, this time to 1.35% APR.  Email #2 asked me to spam all my friends about SmartyPig, with the promise of $25 to me should any of them create an account.

Let me get this straight SmartyPig.  You've changed your APR to the same rate that I get from Discover, and you want me to spam my friends about it?  What exactly am I going to say "Here's a savings account that makes you jump through a ton of hoops for the same APR as everyone else.  You gotta get you some of that?"  Give me a break.

For 1.75% APR, I was willing to put up with their site's eccentricities, but for 1.35%, I'll be closing out my account and moving everything to Discover.   There's not much in there at the moment anyway since most of my cash went to paying off a large debt to a family member,and it will be much simpler to build my new ef in a bank account that allows you to make deposits and withdrawals easily.

SmartyPig is not a bad deal for everyone.  They do offer a psychologically larger barrier to raiding the ef kitty, as you have to close out an entire goal to move the money into your checking account.  Additionally, multiple goals are easy to set up.  They also offer gift cards in lieu of cash that give you a bit of value over the amount you have saved.  However, these aren't things that I value, so I'm going back to Discover's plain vanilla account.

Do you currently have a SmartyPig account?  Are you planning to retain it?  Why or why not?

Jinx is so fail ... I am sadpanda

The T-shirts were crap.  The woman's T-shirt was so thin that you could literally see through it and the guy T-shirt was sized tall and narrow; it barely fit over my hips, and hung to mid-thigh.  So I'm out $10 (shipping and handling, return shipping), assuming Jinx actually processes my return.  Lesson learned - never shopping there again.

Touchdown Jesus is Fail

Is there any part of this story that isn't humerous?

Starting Tomorrow, I Suppose?

On sale at an anti-war rally in Los Angeles, CA, per Zombie.

Could you say that again, Ms. Pelosi?

This just blew my mind when I read about it in Best of the Web Today.

Yale Fail

Yale University has removed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from an upcoming book about how they caused outrage across the Muslim world, citing "a substantial likelihood of violence that might take the lives of innocent victims."

This is wrong on so many levels, I can't even start.

Job uncertainty means life uncertainty

Mr. Goat's CEO sent an email last week that said that they were "looking into cost cutting measures" at "all levels of the process," which he (and I) take to mean that there will be a round of layoffs at his company in the near future. So I have put all long-term plans on hold, lest we need to move again soon.

It's really a shame, because Mr. Goat loves his job (he's a computer programmer for a medium-sized California company) and we both like living where we do. Unfortunately, we live in such a rural area that there is no chance he can get a job anywhere near here (he's currently 100% telecommute).

The uncertainty has permeated the decision-making process at all levels of my life. Until we know how things are going to shake down, I'm not joining the local gym or golf course (both things I was considering doing). I'm not going to put up any more okra, since I won't be able to take it with me. I'm also locking down my spending to the bare necessities.

I estimate this will last about three more weeks. If we haven't heard anything by then, I'll re-evaluate my reaction. If we have, then I can shift into whatever gear is necessary.

Ebay Ugliness - Please Help!

I've recently lost about 30 pounds, so I decided to go through my closet and clear out stuff that does not fit anymore. I'm also cleaning out my mom's closet for her. Between us, we have some pretty nice stuff. I could just take it to the consignment store, but I was hoping try my hand at ebay and see if I can get better prices.

So I put up a few test auctions, and as you can see, they are ugly. And not just a little ugly - truly ugly. I wouldn't buy these clothes; I don't expect that anyone else will either. I don't have a good camera (these pictures were taken with my phone) and I can't figure out a good place in my house for lighting.

Do any of you ebay mavens out there have any suggestions on how to make my listings more attractive, especially my pictures? As I am not the right size for the clothing, it all looks awful on me, so I tried taking the pictures flat, but that looks awful too. Should I just give up and consign it all?

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A friend of mine just sent me what purports to be the Gates Arrest Report. The person I feel sorry for is the woman who called in the complaint - nothing like having your name splashed all over for the crime of trying to be a good neighbor.

Is our students learning?

I went to DonorsChoose.org, an organization that connects donors to classrooms in need. This was the front page request.

Ebay epic fail - hot 13 year old girls

I got this ad when I was reading dear abbey this morning. Hot 13 year old girls? I think Google/Ebay needs to modify their screen grab software/settings.