How odious are the “qualified purchases” rules?
“A “qualifying purchase” is a purchase of goods or services made through use of the T-Mobile MONEY Mastercard® Debit Card, whether you use the physical card, the card numbers (as with a “card not present” transaction on the Internet), or an e-wallet like Apple Pay®, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay. Purchases will qualify regardless of whether “debit” or “credit” is chosen at the point of sale.”
I had one of these accounts for my daughter a while back. It all seemed very iffy, and IIRC, they just randomly closed the account at some point. Apparently, the sponsoring bank is Customer Bank, which does not have a good reputation. Credit unions often have much better interest rates than banks, so look into those as well.
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When I last looked into this, no one came close to Ally.
you are also forfeiting the 2-4% cashback that you get with your creditcard with every purchase you make on that debit card. probably not worth it.
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So are we good to go on stuffing that Roth back door?
I did ours Jan 3rd.
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Who’s this roth chick?
Stuff it, at least for now. The legislation to limit backdoor Roth IRAs is wrapped up in the Build Back Better bill and who knows when that will be voted on and passed. If the bill does pass soon, I’m not sure how it will be implemented. Will it just start on the date the legislation is enacted, Jan 1 2023, Jan 1 2022? 
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Yeah, already done.
I seriously doubt that future legislation will make it impermissible this year. But even if it does, there will have to be a mechanism to undo it.
Just got a lease extension email from my landlord with another year of no increase. He hasn’t raised rent on us for the best apartment in the building in 3 years… honestly shocked that I wasn’t looking at a minimum 10% increase the way things are.
The valuable lesson in all this is to be nice to the maintenance folks and hook them up with free beers when they fix stuff for you.
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Just a friendly reminder that you can buy $10k more of I-bonds this year
What are I bonds and why do I want them?
If you have some cash sitting in an emergency fund, then i-bonds are a great place to store them. You will get at least ~3.5% interest in one year. The downside is that it is locked up for 1 year. After that you can redeem for a small penalty. After 5 yrs, you can redeem for no penalty. Since they are a govt bond, there s ~no risk. So, it’s better than things like CDs or online savings accounts.
The interest rate changes every 6 months, so this window is an anomaly (compared to the recent past). Maybe it will stay high, maybe it will go down. But even if it goes to zero, you will get the ~3.5% after the first year (i.e., after penalty is applied).
It doesn’t even really have to be emergency fund cash. If your investment strategy calls for a fixed income allocation, current i-bonds are a good deal.
Also if you’re married, you and wife can do 10K each.
I’m about 95% sure of above, may have gotten a detail wrong somewhere, but that is the gist of it.
I am skeptical that these behaviors influence the landlord’s rent decision.
Still good things to do, nonetheless.
If you cash out after one year, swongs don’t matter. So really you should just think of it as a one year investment that you can let ride if conditions are favorable.
Agreed. That 3.5 is absolute worst case.
also potentially a good hedge against stonks crashing. if inflation is higher than expected this year fed has to raise interest rates more than expected which will send stonks crashing. if inflation goes to 0 this year your ibonds dont return anything but it allows fed to keep interest rates low.
Ibonds are limited to $10k/year purchase, though, so probably a poor hedge against a market crash for those who are in a position to buy $10k of ibonds.
Grunching but I actually just came in here to post about i-bonds as I just learned about them. Is there any downside to buying them right now? 7 percent current rate seems pretty good. Only downside is that you have to tie the money up for a year and if you cash in less then 5 you pay back 3 months of interest, right? Otherwise it’s risk-free?