Irregular Payments

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So it looks like we’re in collapse and people are killing each other in the streets. Oh, wait, no, not really.

Sure, the markets are having a fit, which makes it painful to look at our retirement accounts. Except that we aren’t planning on touching them for many years, so eh. Feel a little bad for the baby boomers inching up on retirement, but really, not much. Yes, I know that schadenfreude isn’t exactly a positive emotion or anything, but many of them have defined their lives by excess so they shouldn’t be surprised when it comes around to bite ‘em. A little frugality isn’t perhaps a terrible thing.

photo credit: missdesigndiva

Meanwhile our politicians are tripping over themselves trying to do, well, I don’t really know. Looks like they are hellbent on trying to find a way to spend my son’s future income in an effort to stave off what will be an admittedly painful correction. Personally, being a free market kind of guy, I say go ahead and let it correct. But I am probably missing the big picture.

That said, at least in our household, things are certainly not flying off track. In fact, despite the supposed tightening of the credit market, we just received notice that one of our credit cards has substantially increased it’s limit. Thanks, but we really don’t need it. We won’t mention that to the government, because they may just decide they need that as well!

We did a decent job of killing off more debt this month. Broke well past the $1000 mark. And honestly are still living quite comfortably even with that kind of progress. We could probably introduce a little more pain and get the ball rolling a little faster. But that’s a budgeting issue, not a reporting one.

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently with my side business, and it’s beginning to really take off. Right now it is not adding any to our debt attack plan, as I am stockpiling cash right now in anticipation of further expansion. The holidays are rapidly approaching, and I have a feeling I’ll be spending a fair amount on advertising soon!

Oh, and oops, I will take a cue from Wall Street and restate some debt. I misread a medical bill statement and understated that debt by around $800. Where’s my bailout?

Not exactly breaking any news to those of you following the personal finance blog world, but HSBC has out of the blue decided to lop off a quarter percent on their HSBC Direct savings accounts. Mind you, the email I just received from them didn’t mention that fact, just that their summer high-rate promotion had come to an end (hmmm, I don’t recall a notice that their high-rate promotion had begun), but that the rate is still .2% above the rate they were offering before the promotion.

Oh, and that they were now offering the incredible rate of 3.75% on a CD…

Which just reminded me that I want out of HSBC-land. I only log into the account once or twice a month, either to deposit my monthly non-monthly bills money (ala something like 1/12th of our property taxes or 1/6th of our car insurance payment) or, if when it becomes time to pay one of those irregular bills, to withdraw what was set aside. And each and every time, I’m annoyed by their login process. On two occasions now, I’ve had to waste my time calling them up and plead to let me back into my account after screwing up the login a few times in a row.

If I truly value my time, just one call to restore my account after a login foul up will easily kills a few years in extra interest beyond what I can get elsewhere. It’s just not worth it to trade that five bucks or so a year extra my irregular bill fund earns at HSBC with the simplicity that is ING Direct (where I keep my side business money partitioned away from our ‘regular’ money).

So I just opened another sub account at ING, and in a few days, I can remove one more bank from my Financial Institutions I Have Accounts With list.

On the heels of the recent Federal rate cut, ING Direct acted the early mover and dropped their interest rates on the Orange savings as well as their Electric Orange checking accounts. The other shoe fell with HSBC Direct stripping off a half-percent, plus a bit.

So I’m left oh-so-patiently waiting for the inevitable next step: the lower interest rates reflected on my credit card statements…