Great deals in your inbox: Travelzoo

A friend of mine pointed me to Travelzoo after he got a fantastic deal on a trip to Las Vegas. I decided to sign up and while I did get a lot of good travel deals (and I took them up on one), I've been more amazed with their local ticket deals on concerts and sporting events. They consitantly have fantastic deals (like 50% off Stanford football tickets or 35% off Wicked tickets) and since its delivered in your inbox you don't even have to look very hard.

The cool part of their technology is that they localize these deals, which is very important in travel. All the deals I see are for the area around SF which is very cool since I can use them all.

They don't actually book travel, they'll just refer you to the appropriate deals which means they can focus on well targetted deals. I've been very impressed.

Forget stocks, invest in washing machines

We all know 2008 was a bad year for the stock market. Down, down, down it fell. Well, just like everyone in those infomercials, I have a new sure-fire way of avoiding this downturn and generating a 50% profit: washing machines!

In 2007, I bought a used washer/dryer set for 60 bucks and today I flipped it for $90! That is an unbelievable profit of 50% considerably better than GM or AIG stock over the same period.

Washing machines are a fairly safe investment in these troubled times. Studies show that people wash their clothes consistently in spite of the US economy going to hell in a handbasket. If we look at the last 10 major recessions, clothes washing suffered a mere 5.3% drop while the markets were down on average 27.4%. Demand for clothes cleaning is currently at record levels in the smelly Silicon Valley.

Washing machines, while not offering an annual dividend, can generate create clean, wet clothes. The consume power however so investors should consult with their electricity advisers prior to investment.

As we all know, past results are not indicative of future returns and you can and may lose money! But these desperate times call for desperate measures, buy washing machines today!

The end of Wachovia

Well, Wachovia got theirs yesterday when they became a part of Citigroup in a firesale. I'm pretty sure this all went down because of a run on the bank triggered by this blog post.

Certificate of Deposit Renewal Scam

In today's volatile markets, it is a good idea to hold some percentage of your portfolio in cash. One great place to park your cash you won't use for a while is in a certificate of deposit (CD). CDs are FDIC insured and lock in an interest rate for a given term. In exchange for a fixed term an interest rate, there is a penalty for early withdrawl of funds. CDs will typically yeild more interest than money market accounts in exchange for less liquid money.

Since CDs are very similar, you should shop around for a good rate before getting a CD. Banks know this and they've arranged a nice little scam to have a high initial interest rate and then turn around with a pitifully low interest rate in the future.

They'll give you a good up front rate (say 4.25% APY) for 6-12 months. Then when your term expires, they send you a form telling you your CD is about up and that if you don't want to change the interest rate they'll renew the account for the same term. However, these "renewal" rates are much worse than the prevailing "new money" rate. As an example, Wachovia is offering a new money 4.30 APY 12 month CD. However, their renewal rate is 1.2 APY for a 12 month CD. I'm not sure how long this link will work, but it is really telling how this scam works. A 300% difference in rates is completely absurd and below market in every way and is there only to abuse loyal customers.

You might claim this is not a scam, but at minimum it is totally immoral that these banks are not upfront about this. The only way to learn is through losing a lot of interest potential the hard way. When shoping for rates look at both the promotional rate as well as the standard rate.

So do yourself a favor, if you have a CD coming due, ALWAYS call and ask for the best "promotional" rate and threaten to take your money elsewhere if they don't give it to you. 10 minutes of your time can make you hundreds of dollars in interest. The Wachovia rep told me today that "everyone does this", but just because everyone does it doesn't make it right. I'm never going to bank at Wachovia again. Everyone may do this (maybe you lose 1.0% APY other places), but I've never seen it done to the level that Whachovia does. If I can't trust them to do the right thing on CD renewals, why should I trust them with my money?