Not quite a year ago, I highlighted SmartMoney’s rating of the best online brokers. Today, I thought I’d take a closer look at the results of their 2009 survey.
As you skim through the list (reproduced below), you’ll notice that it’s quite similar to last year’s version. There are, however, some differences. Here’s a quick rundown [...]

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A few weeks ago, we received a letter saying that GMAC Bank had been re-branded as Ally Bank. We actually opened a GMAC account last fall (more on this below), so I was quite interested when I heard this news.
If you’re in a rush, and just want the executive summary, here it is:
Ally Bank is [...]

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Peer-to-peer lending has become increasingly popular in recent years. In fact, the Harvard Business Review named it as one of their “breakout ideas” of 2009. While I’ve long been a skeptic of this sort of thing, I ultimately gave in and decided to find out what all the hype was about. Earlier this spring, I [...]

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Consumer Reports just released the results of a survey aimed at identifying the best brokers in America. They surveyed over 9,000 readers, asking them about their experiences with various brokers between January 2008/January 2009. Topping their list were USAA Brokerage, Vanguard, and Edward Jones.
USAA Brokerage
USAA has received high marks in the past for other financial [...]

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In spite of the ongoing credit crisis, Discover has launched a new credit card. It’s called the Escape Card by Discover, and it offers some fairly generous travel rewards as well as a 25,000 mile bonus, whih is the equivalent of a $250 signup bonus. The reward program offers two miles for every dollar spent. [...]

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Last night I finally found the time to open an account with DollarSavingsDirect. For those that are familiar with it, DollarSavingsDirect is a new(ish) high yield savings bank. Amazingly, despite month of falling rates, they managed to stay atop my list of online savings account interest rates with a juicy 4.00% APY.
While DollarSavingsDirect is a [...]

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Over the weekend, I opened an account with Zecco. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time, but never found the time to do so. In case you’re not familiar with Zecco, they burst onto the scene back in July of 2006. Their name, which stands for “Zero Commission Cost,” pops up in [...]

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I’m in the process of reading The Four Pillars of Investing (an excellent book, by the way) and I thought I’d share with you some of William Bernstein’s insights into investing. According to Bernstein, you really only need guidance in two areas: asset allocation and self-discipline. And how should you go about learning about these [...]

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I’ve been on a bit of a reading kick lately, so late last week I decided to solicit book recommendations from a few of my fellow bloggers. I asked each of them to recommend one (and only one) financial book, and to also provide me with a sentence or two describing why they chose that [...]

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Good morning, and welcome to Day #2 of the Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing October project. In short, JLP at AllFinancialMatters has organized a group book review, with different bloggers covering different chapters. For more information and links to the participating sites, please visit the project home page. With that said, let’s get to it!

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