Avoid Bank Fee
- Less checking/saving accounts
- Share checking/saving account with you spouse
- Don’t transfer money between different checking account unnecessarily, use the same account to pay all the bills
- Avoid insufficient funds fee
- Always leave more money in the account
- Check your account regularly before 7pm, so if it’s less than 0, so maybe you can transfer money from another account
- Avoid returned item fee for an unpaid
- 11:59 PM ET (8:59 PDT) is the bank deadline for a day to transfer money
- Transferring money or pay credit card during weekend is a trick, try to avoid it
Credit Card
- Always automatically pay full amount
- APR is very high - usually more than 15%
- For the money you have not paid in full, you will have to pay the interest for the whole billing period even only one day late.
- You may request reverse the interest charge
If money is tight:
- Pay minimum in advance which can avoid the late fee
Cancel auto pay temporarily
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Otherwise bank will charge you “returned item fee for an unpaid” - $34.
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Pay as much as you can, as early as you can Utilize 0% APR in limited time for new credit card
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You can only schedule one payment to credit card each day, but you can cancel the existing one and create a new one.
Walmart credit card
- It does have online chat, just ignore the virtual assistant: can I talk with a person?
Costco Citi
- Only have grace period if paid full in last 2 Billing Periods. (sucks)
Cash Reward Credit Card
- 2% cash back:
- Paypal credit card Citi Double Cash Card (hard to get approved)
- 5% rotating cash return
- Chase freedom
- Use all 5% cash back
Shopping
- Return not-really-needed things
- Use google search, but also check store deals
- Target deals sometimes: 10 off over 50 or 25 off over 100
Misc
- Cancel unused service early
- Buy less, buy things needed in near future
- Do more (re)search before buying
- Make sure it’s worth, useful
- Surprise
- Money may arrive earlier, or …
- So if you did something recently, check it before 8:59 PDT
- Make careful/deliberate decision when related with money
- ce: fusion
Tax
Prepare tax as early as possible
- So you know how much you owe Leave enough more for the tax
- Be very careful to put the money in stock at this time Put max in 401k Withhold enough each paycheck
- to avoid penalty if your withhold is lesser than 90%. Prefer Long Term Stock
- much lower tax 15%, compared with income tax which may be 30% or higher Paying tax with credit card if absolutely needed
- It can accept 2 payments per year, so use the service that charges you less to pay as much as you.
- You can only make 2 payments within 24 hours when using irs direct pay. State tax charges much more for credit card
- So try to pay state tax with direct pay. Check more at Lesson Learned from Investing
Related:
http://lifelongprogrammer.blogspot.com/2009/01/lesson-learned-from-investing.html
