Money Walks

It looks like my money market account’s interest is finally stabilizating at 4.50%, which is .4% lower than the last time I had mentioned my money market account which is over at gmacbank. Which is okay with me, not like I’m happy that it went down but the amount of money in my account right now doesn’t make any significance difference losing that .4%. Losing the interest rates is all handy and dandy but today I encounter something that was more of a worry than just losing some interest rates.

For the most part, I try to stay away from checking my investment accounts as much as possible because then I would not be inclined to touch or do anything with the account but yesterday I checked my account and I’m glad that I did. As I was going over my account summary, I realized that there has not been to much activity going on in the account. Thats mainly because I haven’t been putting any thing into my account, so the only thing in my statement was my interest rates that were credit into my account for the past 4 months. While looking over the statement, it made me realize that I was actually making some decent money and I thought to myself, “wow, I’m glad that I had started this account a while back. Look at all this interest it’s making and how much I would have been missing out on”. But thats when I realized and said, “wait a minute, these numbers don’t seem to be adding up right”. Then after careful review of the account summary, I was right, they weren’t adding up right. Each month was credited some money from the interest rate but was not the full amount that month had earned.

Now what I am to think. There has got to be an explanation right? I mean, gmac bank is a pretty big online banking firm and I doubt that they’re trying to cheat me out of my money so I decided to give them a friendly call to see what the problem was. Maybe it was some kind of a monthly fee I didn’t know about?

So I called them up and this woman answers. The conversation was pretty quick, after giving her all my account info and my security questions, the conversation went something like this:

Me:” So I was looking over my account summary for my money market account and noticed that my interest rates weren’t adding up, whats the issue here”?

Gmac representative: “Okay, let me take a look at it.”

(Silence and some keyboard tapping noises…)

Gmac representative:”Hmmm…this is pretty interesting. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here. Let me take out a calculator to verify that they’re not adding up.”

now I’m thinking…wow. Its an obvious miscalculation, I mean you can look at the credited number and see that it doesn’t add up ( kinda like you know 1+1 is not going to be a two digit number)

me:” …ok”.

(more silence and some calculator tapping noises…)

Gmac representative:”wow, you’re right. It doesn’t add up. I’m really not sure what’s going on here.”

Me:”So it’s not any kind of fees that maybe you’re deducting each month?”

Gmac representative:”No, when we deduct fees, we list them as such. What we’ll have to do is put in an investigation ticket in and someone from the department will contact you within 2-3 business days”.

Me:”…oh…ok”.

Gmac representative:” Is there anything else I can help you with”?

Me:” No”

…

So that was pretty surprising. I mean, even if the interest rates don’t add up to that much, its the trust thats the issue here. Whether it’s two dollars or two hundred dollars, money is money. I’m not sure what would have happened if I didn’t call them about this issue. How long would it have taken until it was fixed or would it ever have gotten fixed? I’m not so sure.

I’m curious, has anyone else experience anything like this before? Maybe you might want to check your investment accounts and see if your interests are adding up.

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So today I decided to take a look at my Money Market account, which I usually try to check only once a month, and saw that the interest rate went from 5.30% to 4.90%. I was surprised that my initial reaction wasn’t disappointment but rather quite passive. There was a point in time where I used to think that every one hundredth of a percent counted and mattered and that I would find the best money market account accordingly. But the truth is, unless you have a nice amount of money, say a million dollars, it really doesn’t matter too much.

I think people who are new to finance and just started saving have this same problem just as I did. People are always looking to get the highest percentage rate on their interest, but the thing is, the percentage rate really doesn’t matter unless you’re dealing with substantial amount of money. Instead of concentrating on trying to find an account that offers a percent higher than the current one you’re considering, you should put that energy into concentrating on how to stay saving for more than 3 months. Most Americans fall short on their savings goals, I don’t have a percentage rate to offer you but I’m sure its quite high. The personal savings rate in the United States is a negative number, but majority of Americans think of themselves as people who “always look for ways to save money“.

So back to the money market account, lets do a quick example to demonstrate what I’m talking about.

For the sake of my story, lets use my interest rate(in case you were wondering, my account is with Gmacbank) at 4.90%, which used to be at 5.30%. We’ll say account 1 has $5,000 and account 2 has $500,000. Lets crunch some numbers.

Account 1($5,000):
In one year, at 4.90%, this would make $245/year ($20.42/month).
Now at 5.30%, we get $265/year ($22.08/month).
So not a huge difference eh? Just 20 more bucks a year or $1.66 a month. I somehow doubt I’ll even notice this small difference. Now account 2 on the other hand…

Account 2($500,000):
In one year with 4.90%, this account would make $24,500/year ($2,041.66/month).
At 5.30%, this account would be $26,500/year ($2,208.33/month).
Now in this case, the difference is quite notable. This account dropping by as little as .4% makes a difference of $2,000/year and $166.67. If I was in this case, my reaction most probably would have been quite different than that of today.

The point I’m trying to make is don’t worry about the percentages now and focus more on getting our accounts to $500,000. Lets continue saving and worry about the minor details later. Chances are, you don’t have $500,000 so percentage rate is not going to help you become rich, well at least not now. The idea of saving on the other hand is a complete different story.

Quick note: If you are looking for a place to put your money into for savings and also concerned with not having to worry about commitment, then you should really consider looking into getting a money market account. I strongly suggest going with Gmacbank. I’m not saying this because they’re paying me or anything like that but just from my personal experience, they really have it well together. They are really helpful each time I call and all my calls end with the feeling of satisfaction. For more information, you can go here.

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Hey guys, I’m going to be hosting the next edition of the Carnival of Money Stories #13 here at Moneywalks, so if you have any money stories please submit here.

Also, please keep in mind that you should only submit articles that are stories or experience dealing with finances. I’ve already received tons of articles that were just personal finance and has no personal experience/stories behind it and I’m going to have to reject for the carnival.

Anyway, have a great weekend and check back on monday for the upcoming carnival.

I hope everyone had a great Memorial weekend. With school finally over for the semester, I’m definitely ready for summer to kick off. I know I have been quite dormant with my posts but since I’m finally out of school I can spend a lot more time on the site.

Happy Memorial day.

Recently I have been so busy with school preparing for these final exams and projects it’s been quite difficult to keep up with my site. I know that I have to set my priorities straight and school is definitely on the top of the list. Aside from the obvious reason why school should be placed as top priority, let me list some other reasons why keeping up with school helps me save more money(or even make money).

1. I’m on a full scholarship which pays for tuition and fees, room and board and even as far as all my school supplies including my books. In order to keep this I need to maintain a semester and cumulative G.P.A of 3.6.
2. Aside from the full scholarship, which is provided from the school, I also receive some scholarships and grants from the government. This extra money is then turned into a refund check and I get to pocket all of it, each semester! I usually get somewhere between 1,250 to 1,750.
3. If for some reason I don’t graduate on time, I would have to pay for whatever credits I need in order to graduate because my scholarship only covers for 4 years.

So for the next two weeks (until exams are over), I still may not be able to post as frequently as I like to due to crazy hours spent at the library. Believe me when I say, I’m ready for summer and looking forward to full time blogging.

Good News: last week I was able to pay off a little over a thousand dollars off of my credit card. Woot! Right now it’s at an even three thousand dollars. Looking at my current funds, I may be able to pay off some more next week. I’ll keep try to keep you updated and post my total credit card debt sometime next week.

This past Tuesday was Five Cent Nickel’s second year anniversary and he is celebrating by giving away free ipods! There is a total of 5 prizes and here is the list of goodies from 1st to 5th:

1. iPod nano (2GB)
2. iPod shuffle (1GB)
3. USB Microdrive (5GB)
4. Encyclopedia of Financial Planning
5. Time is Money

He has laid out simple rules for contest and you can enter just by submitting a comment on the post(don’t forget to tell a friend). Aside from entering the contest, his site offer tremendous amount of good valuable content. Definitely one of my favorite blog sites. So if you have not been to his site, take this opportunity to visit his welcome page and subscribe to his feed. The deadline for the contest is may 11th.