Rule Your Wallet Blog

Have you ever wanted to build your own mutual fund or ETF? I know I have. What if you could build your own mutual fund or ETF at no cost? Would you be interested? If that doesn’t interest you, then how about this. The company also offers mutual fund like products with no maintenance fee. Are you interested now?

What is Motif Investing?

Motif Investing is a different kind of brokerage. They allow you to purchase and/or modify motifs. Motif Investing allows you to invest in 77 different motifs. The motifs are divided into different categories that are sort able by idea type and industry.

Idea type motifs include some well know investing strategies. These range from the “Dogs of the Dow” to “Bullet Proof Portfolio”, which contains companies with huge cash balances (APPL anyone). On the other end of the Idea Type motifs, are the cultural motifs. These include motifs with names like “Income Inequality,” “Democratic Donors,” and “Republican Donors.”

There are also fixed income motifs to choose from. My favorites are California Munis and New York Munis for residents of those states. Why? Tax free investing if you invest in your states municipal bonds. Continue Reading

The best finance app, in my opinion, is Mint.com’s mobile app. Here is a list of its features and finance app alternatives if you prefer to use an app other than Mint.com.

Mint.com (Free)

I have been using mint for a long time now and believe it is the best finance app. Intuit bought this website a while back so it is very secure, using bank level encryption.

Mint gives you a quick overview of your finances, which you can put on one of your main screens in the form of a widget. The widget will show your current cash amount and your credit debt. It will also show you the last time your information was updated, so you can be sure that you are looking at the most recent information.  

Once you set up a monthly budget, you can access it with the app to make sure you are staying on track for the month. Mint is very good at knowing how to categorize your transactions for budgeting purposes and it will let you know if it does not know how to categorize a transaction.

The app automatically gives you alerts for various things, which include the availability of large deposits, what bills will are due in the next few days, etc.

You can get a very general picture of you investments with this app. By that, I mean if you simply want to know the balance of you accounts, you will be happy with this app. If you want to get more information about the performance of specific investments, you will need to go to the website.

To set up this app, I would suggest you log on to the main website to input all of you account information and set your budget. Once that is completed, you simply download the app, log in, and all your accounts are ready to go.

Best Finance App Alternatives

Adaptu Wallet (Currently Free)

Adaptu Wallet has many unique features like tracking loyal programs and creating spending forecasts. The app also allows you to store photos of insurance and business cards, which will decrease the clutter inside your wallet. The app is currently free, but the word on the street is they will start charging for usage sometime in 2012.

Pageonce (Free or $4.99 for Gold version)

Pageonce arguably has the best interface of all the finance apps. Your key account balances are placed in thumbnails that appear on the home screen. Contrary to popular belief, this app does provide PayPal support even though many claim it doesn’t. Balance updates are not as fast as Mint.com or Adaptu, some transactions take days to update. The Gold version has the useful ability to pay bills directly from the app, and this is the only finance app that can do this. The gold version also removes all the ads from your app.

Contrary to popular belief, COBRA is not a type of insurance company for former employees or retirees, but in fact, it is a federally mandated law. Passed in 1986, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, also known as COBRA, gives certain individuals who qualify, the right to temporarily continue the group insurance policy they previously held. COBRA insurance allows past employees the ability to continue health coverage under the group discount rates.

Unfortunately, life insurance is not covered under the COBRA plan, but qualifying individuals may be entitled to dental and vision, prescriptions and even inpatient and outpatient hospital care.

While many companies pay for a portion of the group health care, one stipulation of COBRA insurance is that the individual covered must pay in full for their coverage. Usually this is more expensive than what they paid toward their employer sponsored group policy while they were employed.  However, the policy will still at a better group rate than if the individual were to get insurance coverage on their own.

Family and dependents are also covered under the COBRA law.  If your group insurance plan covered your family while you were employed, they will receive the same benefits if you continue coverage under COBRA.

One of the biggest benefits to COBRA insurance is that it provides much needed protection to those with pre-existing health conditions. When you take advantage of continuing coverage under COBRA, you are under the same policy you were with during your employment.  If you choose not to continue your coverage under the COBRA plan, and are without insurance coverage for more than 63 days, you will not be covered for pre-existing conditions when you go to buy an individual policy. The COBRA plan ensures that you are continually covered until you switch to an individual plan, keeping out of the ‘pre-existing conditions’ nightmare.

COBRA benefits usually continue for eighteen months after initially signing up to use COBRA. There are options to extend this amount of time with certain qualifications, which must be met. Electing COBRA insurance also helps if you have a relationship with a specific doctor that you would like to continue. Nothing changes while you are under the COBRA plan.

Time is of the essence when leaving a group health plan and opting for individual coverage. COBRA has an eighteen-month time frame which should allow most people time to find an adequate individual plan. It’s wise to use this time to price multiple individual health insurance plans which provide access to the doctors and clinics that are preferable.

If you do choose to accept COBRA coverage, you have 60 days to file the notice. After you have accepted the COBRA insurance, you then have 45 days to make the first payment into the plan. Many previous employers will follow up by the 44^th day to make sure you did not forget about the option to elect coverage under the COBRA law.

If you have recently lost your job or are concerned that your employer may be downsizing, COBRA insurance is definitely an important program to research. Signing on with COBRA will ensure that any pre-existing conditions are covered once you leave COBRA for an individual policy.  Taking full advantage of COBRA is well worth the cost just to provide peace of mind for you and your family.

Are you one of those people that have a car sitting around? Try renting it out. You could make several hundred dollars a month.

Cars sit idle most of the time.  Frequent travelers and many commuters do not use their cars during the business day.
RelayRides.com, JustShareIt.com and Getaround.com are among several startups in different cities around the country that let you monetize your cars downtime. Some of these sites allow you to rent older cars cheap.

As the owner of the rental car, you keep around two-thirds of the money and the peer-to-peer (P2P) keeps the rest of the rental fee.  The P2P claims that they provide insurance and that is where their share is spent. Also, be prepared to be screened, as many of the P2P’s will pull your driving record from the DMV.

Insurance issues?

Insurance is a major concern for people wishing to rent out their automobiles. These businesses are so new the liability issues can be unclear.

The New York Times reports that only two states, Oregon and California, have laws specifically that allow you to rent car and not be liable for what the renter does. For everyone else, you are on your own with no laws to back you up.

Your insurance company will not like you renting out your car, which makes sense considering the agreement you have with them. However, Progressive is the only insurer who has at this time agreed to let its customers put their cars up for rent with these services.
There’s definite risk if you have a lot of assets, a home and money in the bank. On the other hand, if you are somebody who rents a home and you have few assets, this might be a way for you to generate extra cash.

The benefits for renters and owners

How do you get a renter into your car?

“When [a] reservation [is made,] RelayRides uses global positioning technology to transmit the exact location to the client,” The Los Angeles Times writes. “When the renter gets to the car, he or she uses a smartphone application or series of text messages to unlock the vehicle and find a key hidden inside.”

Meanwhile, Kiplinger says typically you’ll make a couple of grand a year by making your car available for about 2 hours a day. This is not a lot of money for the risk, but it could offset the cost of owning the automobile. So far, insurers have not weighed in on these new businesses by automatically canceling anybody’s policy.

The free option in this equation is Hulu.

Hulu.com – Watch your favorite series on the internet free. Sign-up is extremely fast if you have a facebook account.

The services that cost a small fee are below.

Amazon.com – Now you can stream free online content from Amazon.com if you have a Prime Membership. Try Amazon Prime Free for one month. Total cost is $79 per year, plus you get free 2-day shipping on all amazon products.

Netflix.com – Netflix cost $7.99 a month, and you get unlimited viewing ability. Try it for one month free.

The total savings per year if you use all of the above would be $185.00. (Assuming you have the cheapest Direct Tv Package of $29.99)

1. The easiest and most obvious solution is to re-gift it.

2. Sell it for cash to a gift card buying website. There are several sites on the internet that will purchase gift cards for a discounted price. Some examples Plasticjungle.com, Cardwoo.com, Cardpool.com, Swap-a-gift, and Cardavenue.com

3. Trade it for another card – Use Cardavenue.com if you want to trade for another gift card.

4.  Auction the gift card – Ebay.com com is the obvious place to sell a gift card by auction, but Cardavenue.com will let you sell, trade, or auction your unwanted gift card.

5. Finally, you can donate your gift card. The end of the year is a great time to make donations for tax benefit.