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How do you take care of your personal finance?

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen

Joined
5/2/06
Messages
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Points
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As students or practitioners in the areas of finance, probably we would be more aware of our personal finance than most people. By discussing these, hopefully we can improve our financial knowledge and grow our money at the same time. I think we all benefit by sharing knowledge.

What are the methods you are using to grow your money?
  • Do you just park your money in a very low APR checking account.
  • Do you put it in a long term CD?
  • Do you buy stock, T-bonds?
  • Do you invest in other high risk area (real estate, oversea gold, etc...)
 
My questions are rather basic, for the moment.

Which bank gives the highest fixed deposit interest rate in New York? Is there a compilation of interest rates offered by competing financial institutions? It would be helpful if there was a website link. For your information, the local banks currently offer foreign currency FD at 5.0% per annum.

Which bank charges the least for services? If you don't mind sharing with us and should it not be too personal, who do you bank with and why? Are there banks in NY who deals solely via online banking?

I have heard of ING Direct. Do they have branches in NY or are they mainly online?
 
ING direct is online only. They offer rates higher than some brick-and-mortar banks. I'm not sure how you access your money from ING if you don't have a bank account at a physical bank. I have my checking/savings with one of the large banks and when I use ING, I transfer the money online to my physical bank and take it out from the big bank's ATM.
 
Frank is right. ING is online bank. It used to be one of the online banks with highest APY but now it falls victim to the interest race. I belong to the crowd who chases after highest APY so I should know.
ING currently offers 4.25% APY.
Emigrant is a big bank in NYC and their online banking www.EmigrantDirect.com offers 4.8% APY at the moment. I moved my money from ING to ED for sometime.
I banked with Marine Midland Bank before they were bought by HSBC. The rate at HSBC is low but their Online Saving account offers 4.80% APY and that's what I'm using since last year. The website is www.hsbc.com
For a list of highest APY banks, look here http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/437553/
If you are after banks with highest APY, you will have better chance with online-only banks and you may have to move your money around quite often. Some banks will take up to a week to clear your money so it defeats the purpose.
Most if not all of banks checking and saving accounts are FDIC-insured up to $100,000 for each person so this is much better than oversea banks.
 
I use North Fork Bank. Like any other bank in NYC, it tries to rip people off. I bank with them because as a union member, I do not have to pay many fees.

For convenience, I would the following banks because they have many branches:

1) Citibank
2) HSBC
3) Chase
4) Commerce
5) North Fork


Jimmy
 
Chase has the most branches in NYC and probably in the northeast - I'm an ex-employee that works for one of their major competitors - so I'm saying this as fact, not as an endorsement.
 
Bank of America is also greatly expanding their presence in NYC and has a lot of branches in the city
 
Frank, you live in Queens so you may know this. Is it true Queens has the most banks branched in any of the NYC five boroughs? A walk down Main St, Flushing would probably gives a taste of the diversity of the banks there.
On another note, besides accounts with high APY, what else can we do? Anyone keeping some long-term CD or T-bonds? I think CD or even CD-ladder is not attractive anymore since the fed pushed interest around 5% now. i think they will push another .25% when they meet this month.
 
For convenience I say use Citi or Chase since there is a branch from either of these two banks in pretty much every neighborhood in the city. The negative is that you need to maintain a high balance in order to avoid paying monthly fee.

On the other hand, Washington Mutual offers a free checking account
http://www.wamu.com/personal/accountchoices/checking/wamufreechecking/default_NY.htm

I have a diversified portfolio of mainly mutual funds, some stocks, cash in money market (for emergency purposes), some collectibles. I think mutual fund investing is a good way since it gives you instant diversification, plus with no-load mutual fund, you can buy shares of open funds without paying broker fee. I personally have set up monthly investment plans which automatically debits my checking account and purchases shares in the mutual funds.
 
I don't know if is true that Queens has the most branches of the 5 boroughs. If I had to guess, I would say Manhattan, but I could be wrong. Flushing is def a good indication of the wide variety in banks - i don't think BofA is there yet though - and includes many unique, single location Asian banks (due to the second largest Asian population in NYC outside of Chinatown). I agree with Andy that CDs are probably not a greatmove right now as the Fed is still raising rates - almost definetely this month and according to some, probably 2 or 3 more times. It might make more sense to stay in a money market fund. You may not earn as much a CD (although you could if you look around enough) but you'd have easier access to your money and hopefully the rate will rise as the fed increases rates. Depending on how much risk you want to take, you could invest in a short-term bond mutual fund or a closed-end fund too.
 
frankm1342 said:
Flushing is def a good indication of the wide variety in banks - i don't think BofA is there yet though - and includes many unique, single location Asian banks (due to the second largest Asian population in NYC outside of Chinatown). I agree with Andy that CDs are probably not a greatmove right now as the Fed is still raising rates - almost definetely this month and according to some, probably 2 or 3 more times. It might make more sense to stay in a money market fund. You may not earn as much a CD (although you could if you look around enough) but you'd have easier access to your money and hopefully the rate will rise as the fed increases rates. Depending on how much risk you want to take, you could invest in a short-term bond mutual fund or a closed-end fund too.
Click to expand...

Frank, you are right, there are a lot of Asian banks in Flushing, and if you have a small business there, you will appreciate the type of relationship banking these banks offer. As far as money market account, there's a bank (I think its name is Hong Ton, across the street from East Buffet restaurant on Main Street) that offers very attractive rates. It offers almost CD-like rates but allows you the flexibility of withdrawing cash at any moment's notice (your are limited to three withdrawal transactions per month I think).

I will look into short term bond mutual funds.
 
John said:
It offers almost CD-like rates but allows you the flexibility of withdrawing cash at any moment's notice (your are limited to three withdrawal transactions per month I think).
Click to expand...
John, what is the advantage of this bank over HSBC's Online Saving account. HSBC's rate is 4.8% with $1+ mininum balance. It limits to 6 transactions a month. You can link this account to your other accounts for free pulls.
John said:
I will look into short term bond mutual funds.
Click to expand...
What is the return of these kind of accounts?
 
short term bond funds and fixed income closed end funds can offer rates as high as 8-8.5% in some cases (could be higher sometimes). The downsides include expense ratios and volatility.
 
Ah...a wealth of information. This thread should prove popular with most of us. Lurkers, ignorance is an instant so do ask or contribute if you want to understand further.

Anyone with an appetite for 'risky' ventures such as stocks and options/warrants?

Let me begin with an observation. These days, just about everybody who has a 9-5 job knows about putting their finances into equities. There are some who does it out of greed, some out of fear, but the vast majority does it just because everybody else is doing the same thing! It appears to me that only a group of minorities are really making intelligent investment decision. What about the rest? They buy/sell when they feel like it. Emotion is a chief investment advisor, and they listen to it religiously. Is it any wonder that the financial market behaves the way it does? According to Benjamin Graham, the sillier the market's behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business-life investor.

Has anyone used Baruch's trading floor and the AMF rigours to trade derivatives? It should be interesting to hear of your successes and experiences. I myself have dabbled in options, and believe me, you better know what you are doing because you may end up broke without proper risk management.
 
The conventional wisdom is to diversify your portfolio. Is the traditional 60/40 (stock/bond) still true today?
I guess it's up to one's risk tolerance to diversify his portfolio. A link from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_allocation shows some projected returns with various mixtures of stock/bond.
People in the finance field, please comment on the trend today. With stocks bombed badly, I think people favor bonds now? Maybe 30/70 (stock/bond) is a better mix?
 
In my 401K I have a small percentage in fixed income (somewhere in the teens) and the rest in equities (small, mid cap, large cap and international index funds). In my personal portfolio it is 100% equities. I think options are powerful and fascinating, but as Sangfroid said, you have to know what you are doing. I've only done the basics - selling covered calls and buying calls. I hope to learn more about derivatives from this program so that I can use them more in my personal investing.
 
The 60%/40% is too conservative. At least for my taste.


For quality mutual fund companies, we have Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price.



Jimmy
 
Andy said:
The Fed just boosted the rate to 5.25% for the 17th conseccutive time. Now let see if my bank can follow up and move its rate from 4.8% to 5%. If not, then I'll be searching for some other fund to park money in.
Click to expand...
Wish granted. :D Just received this email from my bank
Dear Andy:

Your money is earning even more for you! Effective June 30, your HSBCdirect.com Online Savings Account rate is 5.05% APY*. That's our highest rate ever - and more than 8x the national savings average**. Now is the right time to deposit more money with HSBCdirect.com. Just click here.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, nice information. Now I shall have a bank to park my umbrella funds.
 
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