Financial Fellow

Written by J.P. Wicklein

     Earlier this month I authored a review of Zecco Online Trading. Today, Zecco announced two key changes to their $0 online stock trade policy:

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     Here’s another batch of five interesting and useful articles I’ve come across lately:

1. PT at Prime Time Money provides you with 52 Ways to Make Extra Money. Some of the more interesting ways he lists include selling yourself online, putting stuff on consignment, and renting out a room.

2. Staying on the theme of making extra money, Erik at MoneyCrashers talks about ways to Make Extra Money While You Are Looking For a Job. My favorite suggestion is working for a temp agency. I worked temp jobs during college summers and parlayed a temp job into a full time gig with the client.

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     I work for a publicly traded company that offers its employees the option of buying its stock at a a 15% discount. I take full advantage of this program. Why? It allows me to gross an extra 2-3% a year on top of my salary with extremely minimal risk. Here’s how it works:

…..Each paycheck 15% of my income is withheld. On the last day of the quarter all the money that has been withheld is used to purchase shares of my company’s stock at a 15% discount of the stock’s quarter ending price. Next, I sell all the stock at the full share price as soon as possible - usually 7 business days after the purchase date. (It takes about a week for the purchase of shares to be fully processed and reflected on my account.) In the process I earn a 15% return on my money in, at most, 3 months!

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     What would you do if you had an extra $100,000?  Take the vacation of a lifetime? Throw it all in the bank? Put an addition on your house? Donate some of it to charity? Here’s what I would do with $100,000:

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     A couple years ago I signed up for identity theft protection with Lifelock.  It costs $9 a month. (The normal price is $10/month but I used a promo code to save a dollar.) In light of the recession, I’ve been scrutinizing all of my expenses to identify areas where I’m willing to cutback. After reducing my cable services, cutting out planned vacations, and eliminating daily smoothies I decided to take a hard look at Lifelock. At $9 a month, is Lifelock worth it?

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     Recently I received an email from Financial Fellow subscriber, Tim, looking to discuss and debate the appropriate allocation mix between domestic and foreign stocks. Tim’s approach runs counter to conventional financial planning advice which recommends having 80% of your portfolio invested in U.S. stocks. He believes the bulk of your portfolio, that’s allocated to stocks, should be invested internationally.

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     Every so often I get letters from my alma mater soliciting me for a donation. I never send them anything. Apparently I’m not alone. Their alumni giving rate is under 20%. Don’t get me wrong, I like the school. It’s a well regarded, highly ranked liberal arts university. I made many new friends while I was there, learned a lot, and grew as a person. Despite that I still don’t want to send them a check - mainly because I’m still paying my student loans.  

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     Recently Amazon announced their best year ever despite other retailers reporting one of their worst holiday seasons in years. How did Amazon accomplish this? Through two distinct advantages they have over traditional, brick-and-mortar retailers: 1) Amazon doesn’t have the overhead associated with a physical store and 2) They don’t charge customers sales tax. As a result, Amazon can often sell items for less than many of their brick-and-mortar competitors.

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

Note: This article was updated on January 30, 2009 to reflect changes to Zecco’s $0 Stock Trade policy.

Zecco Trading advertises $0 stock trades. Read their advertisement a little closer and you’ll see that they cap $0 trades at 10 per month - after which time all trades are $4.50 each. Still, $4.50 per trade is the cheapest online trading price I’ve come across.

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Written by J.P. Wicklein

     I enjoy writing personal finance articles. Periodically I find time to read some as well. There are a lot of personal finance articles on the web so sometimes it can be hard to find articles that are original, unique, or really stand out. That said they do exist. (I’d like to think I produce some every now and again.) Here are 5 of the more interesting and useful articles I’ve come across lately:

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