Immigrant Money

Summer season finally arrived in WA state with temperatures reaching into the 90-ties. After some persuasion from my wife I decided to take one day vacation and finally bring my family to a local U-pick Blueberry farm. This was a first for us and we are happy with the trip. And what’s not to like? Nice weather, bellies full of fresh blueberries (…and for my little daughter - belly full of berries, leaves, twigs, ants and some dirt ), happy kids and 12 1/4 lbs of fruit for home - some to give away to friends and family, some to enjoy fresh, some to freeze and some to bake in the best homemade blueberry muffins my family have had!

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I was at home deciding what topics to include on the blog in the future

But there were other things going on in the meantime and here is a short list:

Moving money out of our joint CD account
Our 6 month CD account expired at the end of July, bringing 4.75% compounded annually. We didn’t want to renew the CD account as the rates on 6-month CDs at WaMu are at less than 4% (currently at 1.98%). We decided to proceed with a different strategy so read below…

Opening a new Money Market account at Everbank (4.75% introductory APY ratefor 3 months, 3.75% after)
Reason: The main reason is that we don’t want to keep all our (financial) eggs in one basket. We still have some left over money at WaMu, but the majority of our life savings will be in Everbank which does not experience the same financial risks as WaMu currently. Read more about the (sorry?) state of WaMu here: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/07/death-spiral-financing-at-wamu-merrill.html

Even though our savings are less than what would be covered by FDIC we don’t want to have to rely on this last resort process if we can help it. If WaMu fails, which is still unlikely, it may take some time to transfer all your assets to a new institution, change your direct bill payments, etc. etc.
In addition to providing alternative place to store our cash at Everbank offers some financial tools which no other bank currently offers and having an account open with them might prove to be beneficial if we are to use some of these instruments in the future. More specifically the ability to purchase gold, International CD accounts, Keep money in alternative currencies, etc.

Reading “The Complete Tightwad Gazette”
Unfortunately some of the tips in the book are a bit outdated for this day and age and a lot of the other tips we already use in our life or we have decided AGAINST using them because they do not apply to the way we want to live our lives.
By living frugally we currently save more than 50% of our income on one person’s salary. No special goal for this effort, other than the possibility of Early Retirement maybe?
We expect to have a huge expense in the summer next year because of a planned trip to go back to our country of origin to visit our relatives.
For two adults with two children we are looking at close to $6000 just for the airfare!!!
I’m hoping the price of airfare will go down just a bit in the next months. If anyone has tips on how to save on International airfare please do not hesitate to comment

Some if not most of the new immigrants to US originally have the (false?) notion that all Americans are completely honest in their business practices and that majority if not all of any bad business activities had long been eradicated. This may partially be due to the other (false?) notion that we have - that most Americans are rich and as such they don’t need to lie, cheat or curb the law in any way to try to make more money.
Unfortunately because of these same notions immigrants can be much more prone to falling prey to Scams designed to take advantage of their inexperience with the American way of life. Too often this results in a loss of some (or lots) of your hard-earned money - which in limited cases can be rather devastating for one’s financial future.

What is a “Scam”?

- noun
1.  A fraudulent business scheme; a swindle
- verb
1.  Deprive of by deceit; to defraud; swindle

“A confidence trick or confidence game, also known as a con, scam, swindle, grift, bunko, flim flam, or scheme, is an attempt to swindle a person or people (known as the “mark” or sometimes “griftee”) which involves gaining his or her confidence.”

The above entry is per Wikipedia’s current article on scams – see more information here.

…enough definitions for now I think.

So here is the latest scam that reached my postal mailbox a week ago:

An official looking letter from National Deed Service, Inc., which suggested that I should “Order a Certified Copy of Recorded Deed for your house for the low fee of $59.50”

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Many of us know that cell phone service providers are no fun to deal with when trying to make changes to your cell phone account. In lots of cases you will be transferred to a 3rd world country helpdesk representative with limited communication skills and knowledge of the company’s own products and services. Or even worse – you will finish a call happy that all has been taken care of just to find out at the end of the billing period that what you have requested verbally over the phone and was confirmed by the company representative on the other side of the line was inaccurately entered in “the system”. The usual result is that you or the company you work for end up paying more for cell phone service, because of the mistakes of others.
One of my duties as a Network Administrator at the company I work for is to assist with activation and configuration of mobile phone devices with different service providers. Our company has been dealing with Nextel, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile as “main” providers of cell phone plans for our employees through the years and all have been at approximately the same level of overall customer service – DISMAL!

Of course there are periods when you are provided with good quality service, even possibly a dedicated account representative but that usually doesn’t last – after all cutting costs takes precedence over taking care of existing or future customers . Or at least this has been the case with the wireless phone service providers we have had to deal with.

I have been thinking on consolidating our company’s cell phone plans ever since I learned about the availability of Business plans with Shared Minutes. Today I was able to do this for ALL our mobile phones with one of the service providers, which will result in about $350/mo of savings to a total of $4200 per year.

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Welcome! I hope you will enjoy the stay. This blog will try to help you get started with your financial life as Imigrants to a new country. It’s goal is to provide information on how to make more money and how to keep more of what you already have. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions