A credit card you can use to help others, and get a good rate too!
Helping others through microloans
A couple of weeks back we had a guest post on this blog talking about micro-lending. The post talked about how micro-loans through companies like Kiva or Grameen Bank, can help people in developing countries to get on their feet, get their business up and running, and how it can be much more effective than just giving aid. Instead of just giving them money, you are loaning them money so that they can become self sufficient.
The process is a win-win situation for everybody. The borrower gets a loan at a lower interest rate than they might have otherwise received, and the lender gets the satisfaction of helping, while receiving a small return on their money. I love the concept, and I am definitely interested in trying it soon.
photo credit: Keith Bacongco
While looking at some of the lowest apr cards this past week I came across a new card from Advanta that has a tie-in with Kiva. I was intrigued, and the card doesn’t look too bad either. The card has no annual fee and there is a 0% interest rate for balance transfers for fifteen months. On top of that, Advanta has a matching program, where if you submit a micro-loan grant to Kiva as a charitable donation, Advanta will match the grant up to $200 per month. Cardholders will have the option to withdraw or reinvest their donation as a grant to another business owner through Kiva in addition to receiving a 5% statement credit for having a bonus qualifying purchase. Not too shabby!
So if you’re interested in doing some micro-lending, and you need a new credit card (remember to always pay it off every month!), check this one out. I think you’ll be happy you did. Here is one borrower success story from the Kiva site:
You can find out more details about the card below in the mini-review.
Book Review and Contest: Does Your Bag Have Holes?
Don’t forget, after the review, subscribe to the site via email or RSS, and then leave us a comment on this post, and you’ll be entered to win the book! I’ll be choosing a lucky winner tomorrow morning. If you already subscribed to the site via email or RSS and left a note on the original contest post, you’re already entered to win. I must admit, that the book I’m giving away is a bit ragged around the edges as it was with me in my bag at the hospital, and then my in-laws borrowed and read the book. So I will tell you up front, that the book you’ll be winning is NOT brand new.
For a while now I’ve been meaning to sit down and write a review on a book I received in the mail called “Does Your Bag Have Holes?“. The author of the book, Cameron C. Taylor, had inquired if I was interested in reviewing his book on my blog, and I responded that I was.
I read the book pretty quickly after receiving it, but things kept getting in the way of me sitting down and actually doing the review. First, I was just too busy. Then my wife got a blood clot in her leg and was in the hospital for 3 weeks. Then as you can imagine, life just got busy again. So this week I figured I better just sit down and write the review or it would never get done.
The full title of the book I’m reviewing is “Does Your Bag Have Holes? 24 Truths That Lead to Financial and Spiritual Freedom
It’s a free book right?
When I first received an email from the author asking if I’d like a review copy of the book, I wasn’t expecting much. But hey, it’s a free book right? I got the book a few days later along with a nice note from the author. Because he was so gracious I felt like I should read the book right away, and I did. I wasn’t disappointed.
Right from the start, I should warn some of you that this book is geared towards a specific audience. This book is tailored for a Christian audience, and as such it talks in such a way that some non-Christians might not understand or appreciate. With that being said, I think the book has a lot of valuable insight for Christians and non-Christians alike.
The nuts and bolts
So where to start? How about the premise of the book?
The book revolves around what Taylor calls the “Prosperity Model“. The “Prosperity Model” is based on 4 principles of prosperity which when followed, can lead you to prosperity. Think of the principles as a road map of sorts. The 4 basic principles of prosperity include:
- Our creator gives us all good things: God is supreme creator of the earth and the father of mankind. All we have and are is a gift from him. We should be thankful to him.
- Liberty is given to all men by our creator: God has given us all liberty, the freedom to make our own choices. With those choices we have the power to make good, and bad decisions.
- Consequences are the result of our choices: Every time we make a choice we’re either moving towards freedom and prosperity or bondage and misery. Our choices have real consequences - and we can’t choose the consequences.
- Government is created by the people to protect our God-given rights: Government is the protector, not the granter, of our rights. It should protect our right to pursue prosperity, but not just give us prosperity.
Because people are imperfect they don’t live their lives in accordance with those principles, or don’t even realize they exist to some extent, they end up not being successful or happy.
You have to make a choice!
The book goes on to discuss 6 “choices of prosperity” that people have.
- Blame or responsibility: You can blame others and make excuses or be responsible and take control of your fate. Being responsible will give a great sense of freedom.
- Pride or humility: C.S. Lewis - “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it that the next man”. Things mean social status when pride enters our lives. Humility means that we realize our dependence on God, and that all we have is a gift from him.
- Hypocrisy or Integrity: You have the choice between having your outward and inward appearance not coinciding, or having integrity and having your actions align with your beliefs.
- Idleness or industry: You have a choice between working little or doing the wrong kind of work, and working hard and on things that matter.
- Debt or ownership: When you have debt, it is like putting your money into a bag with holes. (thus the name of the book). The debtor is the slave to the lender! Ownership brings freedom and prosperity.
- Greed or charity: Greed is unsatisfiable desire for money or things. Charity is the highest, noblest, strongest kind of love. It will motivate us to care for the needs of our fellow man. If we share what we have, people’s lives can be blessed.
According to the book the choices you make in these 6 areas end up leading you down a certain path - either towards “freedom and prosperity, or bondage and misery”.
24 truths that lead to freedom and prosperity
Throughout the book Taylor illustrates his points through talking about myths that many people believe. They choose to believe these myths because it’s easier, or because they don’t realize the truth. Belief in those myths causes them to stray from the principles of prosperity, and aids them in making the wrong choices along the road. For example Taylor’s myth number 12 states:
Everyone is entitled to a high standard of living.
People choose to believe that they are entitled to everything they want or need, no matter what the cost. They think they should have that new car, a big beautiful house, a vacation house and all the latest electronics. But when they have to borrow money to buy all those things they become a slave to all those things. Their “high standard of living” has made them miserable, and prosperity slips through their fingers. If they were to realize the truth that true freedom and prosperity comes from ownership, hard work and initiative, they’d be a lot happier.
Another myth Taylor says a lot of people believe is in the area of greed and charity. The myth is:
That’s their business, not mine.
In other words, suffering and problems in the world don’t mean anything to me - they are someone else’s problem. Taylor talks about how we need to think of the world’s population as just 2 people - Christ and you. When we help the poor and downtrodden, it is as if we are helping Christ. We are commanded to help others in need, and we need to make giving a priority in our lives.
Taylor lays out 23 more myths, and their corresponding truths throughout the book to great effect. There were a multitude of times when I would read one of his myths, only to realize that at some point or another I had bought into that particular myth. You may not agree with every one of his myths, but I think that a majority of them are very valid.
Conclusion
Overall the book was a good read. Taylor makes good use of storytelling in the book to illustrate his points, and the writing style is engaging. His prosperity model really makes you realize how important personal responsibility and the choices you make in your daily life are to your success.
The book isn’t long on practical step by step ways to become prosperous, but it does give a good 50,000 foot view of the principles Taylor believes you need to guide you on the road to becoming free, happy and prosperous. The book is less of a how-to, and more of an inspirational read to get you fired up about being responsible and becoming part of the ownership society.
I give this book a thumbs up, and would recommend it to anyone.
Stay tuned because in the coming days I’ll be posting an email interview that I’m doing with the author!
THE CONTEST
Don’t forget to enter our book giveaway contest! We’ll be choosing a winner of the book and audio cd tonight and posting them here tomorrow! What do you need to do to enter the contest? Get one entry by doing each one of these things:
- Subscribe to Bible Money Matters by RSS: Leave me a comment here to let me know you’ve subscribed, and you’ll get one entry.
- Subscribe to Bible Money Matters by email: Each email I see subscribe will get one entry.
- Follow me on Twitter.com: If I get notified that you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll get one entry.
LINKS:
DoesYourBagHaveHoles.org
Does Your Bag Have Holes? 24 Truths That Lead to Financial and Spiritual Freedom
One last chance! $25 signup bonus with Revolution Money Exchange
Today is May 15th, and you know what that means.. it’s the last day that you can sign up for Revolution Money Exchange and still get the $25 signup bonus!
That’s right, you read that right. Through today if you sign up for a new account for Revolution Money Exchange, you’ll get a $25 sign up bonus. Signing up is easy. All you have to do is click on the button below, and you’ll be taken to the first page in the sign up process. If you sign up through my link, I’ll also get a $10 referral bonus.
Upcoming Book Review and Contest
UPDATE: The review is now up! CLICK HERE.
I was recently contacted by author Cameron C. Taylor, because he wanted to send me a complimentary copy of his new book, “Does Your Bag Have Holes? 24 Truths That Lead to Financial and Spiritual Freedom
I agreed to read the book and do a review.
I just received the book a few days ago, and started reading the first couple of chapters today. It is written from a Christian perspective, and I can already tell that it’s going to delve into some very deep topics related to Christian theology, finance, and how our money and faith are intertwined. Its been a very good read so far, and I’m excited to read the rest.
When I’m done reading the book I’m going to give a full and complete review on this blog, as well as attempting to do an email interview with the author. Check back soon for that!
BOOK GIVEAWAY CONTEST
Starting today I’m going to be running a contest to give away my copy of the book, along with the abridged audio version that comes along with it.
So what do you need to do to enter the contest? Get one entry by doing each one of these things:
- Subscribe to Bible Money Matters by RSS: Leave me a comment here to let me know you’ve subscribed, and you’ll get one entry.
- Subscribe to Bible Money Matters by email: Each email I see subscribe will get one entry.
- Follow me on Twitter.com: If I get notified that you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll get one entry.
Again, once you’ve done any or all of these things, leave a comment on this post or send me an email, and you’ll be entered once for each action you’ve taken. If you’re already doing any or all of these things, just let me know you’d like to enter the contest, and I’ll put your hat in the ring.
On the day the review is posted, I’ll choose a winner of the book and it’s audio companion using http://www.random.org. U.S. Residents only please!
Thanks and good luck!
LINKS:
Author’s Website - DoesYourBagHaveHoles.org
Does Your Bag Have Holes? 24 Truths That Lead to Financial and Spiritual Freedom
3 weeks with Geezeo.com
Geezeo.com is another one of a myriad of new personal finance sites that have popped up over the last year or two, along with competitors like Mint.com and Geezeo.com. We’ve already reviewed those other two services - now its time to take a look at Geezeo.
As part of keeping track of my family’s finances, my wife and I need a way to keep track of our finances online. Ideally we should be able to keep an eye all of our accounts, regardless of what institution they’re held at. We should be able to track balances, monitor big transactions, and be able check it from anywhere.
I signed up for Geezeo a few weeks ago, and here is what I found.
DESIGN:
The first thing you notice when you come to Geezeo.com is that they’ve got a clean design, with a whimsical piggy bank mascot. The page has a black border across the top with site links, and then your main account area and activities area resides at the middle and bottom of the page. When you first login you’ll be taken to a summary page that allows you to add accounts, view a list of your current accounts, spending trends graphs, spending and savings goals and your discussion groups. The design of the site is web 2.0 feeling, while not being over the top with lots of shiny buttons and other miscellaneous things you don’t need.
FUNCTIONALITY:
The first thing I did after creating my account was to try and setup my 8 checking, savings and mortgage accounts that I wanted to track. The credit card account setups went pretty smoothly except for my American Express card, which took several minutes to sign in. In fairness that was probably an issue with the American Express site, not Geezeo.
Then I set up my main checking, savings and money market accounts which are all at the same bank. A couple of the accounts are actually under different sign-in names, which normally isn’t an issue. I discovered, however, that at the time I signed up with Geezeo, they wouldn’t allow more than one sign-in name for any one bank. So for now I had to manually enter the one rogue account into their system (a huge pain, and something I wanted to avoid). I talked with Geezeo support, and they admit that this is a problem, but say that they are working on a fix, and multiple sign-ins for one bank should be available soon. (Support was very responsive and helpful by the way.)
My home mortgage account was easy to setup as well - and was compatible with automatic updates, which was a surprise. Both Buxfer.com and Mint.com choked on that one. It makes it much easier when the account information updates automatically.
The 401k account had to be manually set up - but I only update this information every quarter or so anyway, so it isn’t a huge deal.
Once all of our accounts were entered, we started looking around the site to see what some of the things we could do were. On their site they lay out some of the features of the software:
- Manage all your accounts (worked well for the most part)
- Mobile Access (not something we’re concerned with)
- Painless budgeting (A definite plus)
- Create Goals (strong suit of the site)
- Join Groups
- Learn from Others
Geezeo, it seems can do a lot of the things the other personal finance softwares do, with the added benefit of active forums and groups to give the site a more social network feel to it. People supporting other people in their finance goals.
So where to start? Well, first let’s look at viewing your accounts and editing tags.
When transactions are downloaded to Geezeo, they are automatically put into different categories so that you’re able to track your expenses, and run queries on different income and expense areas. Previously I had gone into my transaction data and tagged all of the transactions in categories that made sense. The tagging schema was pretty easy to use, although a little confusing at first. A few of the transactions weren’t tagged with the correct categories, but after making some corrections things looked pretty good.
When i looked a little further at my data I realized that somehow the system had entered duplicate transaction data for a couple of my accounts. Admittedly this may have been my fault when uploading the .ofx files for the accounts. When I looked, I couldn’t find any way to delete or remove duplicate entries. This was a huge issue, one I’m waiting on an answer about from support.
In my opinion one of the strong points of Geezeo is it’s budgeting tools. Once in the budget section you can choose different categories that you have previously tagged in your register, and setup a budget goal for each category. Each budget goal is represented on the page with a bright red button (if you’ve exceeded your goal) or by a bright green button if you’ve met or come under your goal. It is an effective way to keep on track, and see what areas you need help in.
Another area that Geezeo is strong in is the area of setting goals. Like the budgeting tool, you can set up savings or debt reduction goals. The tool is pretty flexible allowing you to set up a specific goal, and tell the system when it is met (for example: goal is met when account xyz has 1000 dollars in it). You can also see what other people are setting as their goals - and choose the same goals. That way you can track your progress against other users. I can see this being very helpful for those trying to get out of debt.
There are other tools that I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of, mainly the social network aspect of Geezeo. I can see how the support group type social aspect of the site could be useful for a lot of folks as well, and I’m sure I’ll be checking that out more in the future.
With that said, here are a few pros and cons of Geezeo.com as I see it.
PROS:
- Simple to setup most new accounts.
- Eye pleasing design.
- Budgets: Ability to track and stay within a budget in one or multiple areas.
- Ability to track debt and savings goals: track what you owe, or what you want to save.
CONS:
- Problems in setting up accounts with some banks
- multiple logins not allowed with one bank
- limited options for investment and savings accounts: No simple way to setup 401k accounts or some other more advance savings options
- Clunky importing of data: Some data imports re-imported the same data as new transactions. No way to delete duplicates
CONCLUSION: So far in the three weeks I’ve been using Geezeo.com I have enjoyed using the software. The software gave us good feedback through its budgeting and goals tracking tools, and overall is a pleasure to use. On the negative side, the site still is in beta and sometimes it shows. From our clunky importing of .ofx data, to the problems with having multiple logins at the same bank, the experience left a little bit of a bad aftertase in my mouth.
I will recommend Geezeo.com to everyone out there with the caveat that you should be aware that the site is still in beta. Not everything will work as smooth as you might like. They are making improvements, however, and I expect things to get better.
If you’d like some other opinions, check out the further reviews of Geezeo.com below!
LINKS:
Geezeo.com
Geezeo.com - Money Confessions on Twitter
What money secrets do you keep? Geezeo Money Confessions
Chat, Chill, Pay the Bills
Geezeo - Check your bank account on the go
Geezeo.com - Social Networking & Personal Finance
Review - Geezeo Finance Management
