RevolutionMoneyExchange Referral

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I was able to catch the $25+$5 promotion that Sun mentioned in his post right before the promotion ends. It, however took them 2 weeks to set up my account since I have lived less than 12 months in my current address, and they had to ask me to forward a copy of my utility bills to verify it. But from talking to them, the account opening will be a soft pull, and hence won't affect your credit score. Now, they still have this $10 referral bonus for current account holders. If you are interested in establishing an account with them, I'm more than happy to refer you and share the $10 referral bonus with you. ($5 goes to you and $5 goes to me.) Just shoot me an email, and then I will send you a referral. Upon receiving the $10 from RevolutionMoneyExchange, I will send you $5 immediately via RevolutionMoneyExchange.

How The American Economic Association Allocated Its Dollars

The S&P 500 index gained 5.49 percent in 2007, while the portfolio of AEA gained 10.2 percent. Two things to take notice here:

1. The AEA's portfolio is composed of all vanguard funds;
2. The most significant change to the portfolio after April 2007 is a 20% shift from bond to foreign stocks.

Though the article didn't tell you what funds exactly the AEA is holding its assets in, you can easily look them up from vanguard's website based on the general funds' names given in the article. And you can also look up the corresponding ETFs' here.

As The Government Deficit Keeps Rising...

In a letter written to congressman Paul Ryan, CBO concluded that

The United States faces serious long-run budgetary challenges. If action is not taken to curb the projected growth of budget deficits in coming decades, the economy will eventually suffer serious damage. The issue facing policymakers is not whether to address rising deficits, but when and how to address them. At some point, policymakers will have to increase taxes, reduce spending, or both.

This gives another reason why one should consider a Roth IRA rather than a traditional one. But as the deficit keeps climbing up, we may have a much gloomier future as put by the CBO in the letter,

If foreign investors began to expect a crisis, they might significantly reduce their purchases of U.S. securities, causing the exchange value of the dollar to plunge, interest rates to climb, consumer prices to shoot up, and the economy to contract sharply. Amid the anticipation of declining profits and rising inflation and interest rates, stock prices might fall and consumers might sharply reduce their purchases. In such circumstances, the economic problems in this country would probably spill over to the rest of the world and seriously weaken the economies of the United States’ trading partners.

This makes me wonder whether it would be wise to put my money in the U.S. stock market at all. But we knew the inflation is going to shoot up, and putting money in the market seems to be a good if not the only way to provide an aegis. Maybe a good solution would be to quit my job and live on the money I saved up so far, and at the mean time, really concentrate on personal investment such as studying Economics, and that will certainly get you a job when the Economy goes bad in the future. Well, maybe not. But the idea of personal investment rather than monetary investment should be right.

Get $75 from Bank Of America

Open a checking account (either online or via a local branch) using offer code AOU260508 with Bank of America before July 31, 2008, you can receive $75. Click here for more details.

Notice that it says this offer does not apply to existing BoA customers or student account. If you are a current BoA customer, I strongly encourage you to visit your local branch and talk to the personal bankers. Most of the case, they can still find a way to get this $75 for you. Believe me, you just need to ask. If you just move to a different state, then this problem will be solved easily. You can just cancel your account opened in your old state, and open a new one in your new state. And your personal banker will be more than happy to do so.

Provident Direct Lowers Its Interest Rate

Today, I received an email from Provident Direct saying that their online saving interest rate will be dropped by 0.25% to 3.50% on May 19th, 2008. I've covered it as one of the highest yield saving accounts before. It still will be even after the 0.25% cut. Here is a comparison list:

Bank	Online Savings Annual Percentage Yield**
Provident	3.50%
FNBO Direct	3.25%
HSBC Direct	3.05%
ING Direct	3.00%
Emigrant Direct	2.75%