Time to move!

ING dropped rates .2 % this week (see Boston Gals letter to them here: Dear ING ) and just today it appears that HSBC has dropped theirs .55% to 4.50%! Why such a steep drop??? Countrywide has a 5.65% 12 month cd that I need to lock in ASAP. It also appears Emigrant Direct is still holding at 5.05% as well. Might have to move some money over there and monitor it for a while.

On a better note, mortgage rates are down and Pen Fed has a very attractive 5/5 arm that I want to enquire about today. More to come on that...

Double your money?!?!

Can I do it? Well, that's my goal for my savings in the next five years or more precisely by Dec. 31, 2012. Ok, I should say it's not quite double, but close to it. The reason I'm trying to see if I can do this is because the wife has this wacky idea to move to a new house (and when I say new, I mean a brand new home) in the next 5 years or so. A new neighborhood is going up and they look like they are going to be VERY nice. They will also most likely be extremely expensive. I've got to sock away a bare minimum of another 110K in the next five years. I've worked it out to be 1700 a month increase in my savings account. I just ran some numbers from some fixed costs we have and it will be tough...very tough. One thing to remember though is that this 1700 does include interest income. But even with that, we'll need to sock away 1300 a month ourselves. Time to take the CC's out of the wallet and pass on that Subway sub and start making some pb&j sammiches.

I'm thinking of throwing some of my savings into a 12 month cd. Countrywide has 5.65% APY currently so this might be a good move. Why do I feel a commitment to HSBC though? Ugh. Gotta get rid of that mindset, that's for sure.

More to come

Current status: $107,152 to go...

Rate Wars

Well, the online banks have been offering some juicy rates lately, but are things going to drop? Rumor has it the fed is going to drop rates so this could negatively impact those that have been taking advantage of the good rates from the online banks. Countrywide is 5.50 apy right now. That's almost a half percent better than what I'm getting. That's around 300 bucks a year I'm missing out on. I might have to take half out of HSBC and move it to another account or maybe just a CD to take advantage.

The reason I'm brining this up is the wife wants in on a new neighborhood that may or may not be going up starting at the end of the year (I'm guessing at least another year before the first houses are released). So this puts us on perhaps a 5 year plan to save as much as possible for the down payment. It'll be pricey, but if we can do it, it would be great. Can we put away 100K plus in the next five years? It's possible, but it'll be tough.

August Networth Review

Well, things turned around a bit and I managed a +$5500 month. That puts me past my 2007 goal for the year. Of course I've had down months before so I can't rest on that. I'm hoping I can do another 10k for the remainder of the year and that would put me nicely above my goal. So all said, I am $2900 past my year end goal. I'm very excited with the way things are going and am looking forward to what the final '07 number will be. I'll definitely be making some adjustments for the 2008 year end goal. Hopefully by '09, I'll have a half million net worth. Still a long way to go though.

Resolution of the day is to post more "stuff" on this here blog. And hopefully some of it will be useful info and not just ramblings.

One more update...I did NOT win Mega Millions. That definitely put a wrench in some of my plans.