About a week ago we returned home to an urgent sounding phone message from our mortgage lender, Provident Funding Associates, saying that we needed to call them. Having been through this before, I knew exactly what they were going to say — they sold our mortgage.

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Okey-dokey. After a day of instability, it looks like the Emigrant Direct website has settled down… Last night before I went to bed I fired up my web browser and was able to login without any problems. The first time through the login process on the new site has a few extra steps. Here’s what [...]

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Just a quick note to report on Emigrant Savings Bank’s total incompetence when it comes to running an online bank. If you’re not familiar with Emigrant, I’ll just say that they run a relatively popular online bank known as Emigrant Direct. And as I mentioned previously, Emigrant Direct went offline this past Friday, July 21st [...]

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Awhile back, I set a goal of substantially reducing our electric bill as compared to the $165 monthly average of the previous owners. For a quick bit of background, our house is roughly 3,000 square feet, completely electric (including the water heater and furnace) and located relatively deep in the southeastern United States.

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Here’s a quick money earning tip… If you’re carrying a balance in your PayPal account, make sure that you’re earning interest… While PayPal offers a ‘Money Market’ account that’s currently paying 4.98%, the default setting is for you to earn no interest whatsoever. While I wouldn’t use this as a substitute for a bank account [...]

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Over the weekend my family made our first trip to an IKEA store. We’ve been in the market for a relatively inexpensive, yet reasonably good table for our dinette, and we haven’t run across anything that we like (either in local stores, in the paper, or on craigslist). We live about an hour from the [...]

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Here’s a quick look at some of my favorite posts from a year ago this week:
• Free Access to Consumer Reports (and More) – A quick tip on how to access Consumer Reports (and other publications) for free.
• Yes, Virginia, There is a Two Dollar Bill – A recap of an amusing exchange involving a [...]

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Here’s a quick rundown of the personal finance-related articles that caught my eye this week…

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Well, the telecommunications spending poll has run its course, and the results are all over the board. At the bottom, we had one person (1%) spending less than $20/month, whereas 17% are spending over $200/month. The most popular reponse (by a hair) was $81-$100/month. I’m guessing that people in that category have a phone (either [...]

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FiveCentNickel participated in three carnivals this week. Here they are along with links to my articles that were included in each.
The Best of Me Symphony, which is up at The Owner’s Manual, included “All About Title Insurance.” Also included was “Sedating Your Kids on the Road” from raising4boys.com.
The Carnival of Personal Finance, which is up [...]

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