Money Green Life

Right now, EZtrader is offering a deposit bonus of $85 when you deposit $500 and $600 bonus when you deposit $2000. Starting in August, the bonus increases to $100 for $500 deposit, $875 for $2,500 deposit, and $1,800 bonus for $4,000 deposit. To take advantage of this offer, you can sign up for EZtrader.com here. Simply deposit using your credit card and the bonus will be reflected in your account the following business day. Once the bonus is received, you need to trade at least 3x the total value of your deposit + bonus for the bonus to be cleared for withdrawal. So, if you deposited $500 and received $100 bonus, you need to make $1,800 worth of trades for the bonus to be cleared. There is no expiration date.

How To Trade Binary Options

I tried EZtrader and I like it. The process is very simple. EZtrader offers a list of common stocks that users can purchase options. You can either purchase a PUT option or a CALL option. If you purchase a PUT option, you’re hoping that the stock price will go down below the strike price that was agreed upon before the transaction. If you purchase a CALL option, you’re hoping the stock price will go up above the strike price that was agreed upon. The options expire at the end of the hour. The image below shows a few of about 10 stocks EZtrader allows you to participate in. You can also trade in Indices, Currencies, Commodities, EU Markets, and others.

Some stocks have higher payout rate than others. The higher payout stocks are less volatile so it becomes more difficult to predict how the stock will behave during the next hour. All that’s needed to be done is select the stock you are interested in, click the green CALL button if you think the price will go up by the end of the hour, or click the red PUT button if you think the price will go down by the end of the hour. So, let’s say you placed a $100 CALL option on JPMorgan Chase at $40.283, as the image above shows. If at 2pm when the option expires, if the price is above $40.283, you earn 65% or $65 on your money. A total of $165 will be funded to your account. If the price went down below the strike price of $40.283, then you receive 5% of your original investment, or $5. If this happens, you lose $95. The most you can purchase in one transaction is $1,500. The minimum is $30.

Deposit and Withdraw Methods

EZtrader only allows deposit methods using a credit card. Mastercard, Visa, or American Express will work. There is no charge for this transaction and your credit card company will not charge you a Cash Advance fee. To make a withdraw, EZtrader automatically funds back to your credit card used for the deposit, up to the deposit amount. The remaining amount must be withdrawn using bank wire and it costs $25 for each transaction. So, if I made a deposit of $500 and I made a profit of $1,000 and want to make a full withdraw of $1,500, $500 will be funded back to my original credit card, and $1,000 will have to be withdrawn using a bank wire process. EZtrader does not charge any other fees associated with your account.

Customer Service

Customer service is actually pretty good. As soon as you sign up, a real live person will give you a call to make sure all your questions have been answered. There is also a live chat feature that can get the answers to your questions quick. If you have any questions or concerns, you should have no problems in getting the answers right away.

Real Time Stock Prices

EZtrader does not provide any analytical resources to help you with your trades. All they provide is the real time stock prices. I suggest using eTrade, Scottrade, or TradeKing to help you look at charts and graphs in real time. All of these stock brokers have trading platforms that are integrated with real time charts and graphs that will definitely help you make better decisions when it comes to binary options. By looking at these charts and graphs, along with Ask and Bid prices, you will be able to predict the behavior of the stock’s momentum more accurately.

So, go ahead and give it a shot. Try a practice trade first before you deposit and see if you come out on top.

Everbank is offering up to $75 cash back bonus with two of their online accounts, their Yield Pledge Money Market Account and their Freenet Checking Account. You can stack this offer with their ongoing offer of 2.25% apr for the first three months. Yield Pledge Money Market Accounts will return to its normal variable rate of 1.25% after the first 3 month period. Freenet Checking Accounts will return to their normal variable rate of 0.51% for accounts up to $10,000 after the first 3 months.

Account holders will receive $50 bonus after 4 months of maintaining minimum required balance for the money market account. Checking account holders will receive $25 bonus after 4 months of maintaining minimum required balance. Account holders can take sign up for both offers and receive $75 total bonus.

Yield Pledge Money Market Account Requirements

• $50 Bonus.
• Deposit $20,000 minimum and maintain this minimum balance for 4 months. Bonus released during the 5th month.
• 2.25% APR introductory rate for 3 months up to $50,000. 1.25% after 3 months. Any balance above $50,000 will earn 1.25% even during the first 3 months.
• $8.95/mo fee if the average monthly balance falls below $5,000.

Freenet Checking Account Requirements

• $25 Bonus
• Deposit $10,000 minimum and maintain this minimum balance for 4 months. Bonus released during the 5th month.
• 2.25% APR introductory rate for 3 months up to $100,000. Any balance above $100,000 will earn 1.25% even during the first 3 months.
• After first 3 months, the following rate tiers will apply: $100,000+: 1.26%, $50,000 – $99,999.99: 1.20%, $25,000 – $49,999.99: 1.16%, $10,000 – $24,999.99: 0.70%, under $10,000: 0.51%.
• $8.95/mo fee if the average monthly balance falls below $5,000.

You may also refer to other great online savings accounts with high interest rates.

Last week, I wrote about how my friend probably saved money by leasing a brand new civic for $199/mo with no money down. Yesterday, he told me that he has the option to purchase the vehicle at the end of his lease term at 60% of the MSRP price. He couldn’t remember what that number was so I went on to Honda.com and looked it up. Let’s just assume that his car is a brand new 2010 Honda Civic DX, priced at $17,205. Couple adys ago, I saw a Honda commercial that outlined $199/mo lease for 36 months or 0.9% financing. So, let’s compare the two deals and see which one makes more financially sense.

So according to the table above, financing makes more sense over leasing. You would save about $200 over the course of 36 months. If you’re able to sell it for more than 60% of MSRP, then even better. But let’s also consider the fact that you’ll be paying $285.58 less every month by leasing when compared to financing. This money can be put into an online savings account, such as Ally, which currently gives 1.29% return on your money. After every month, you deposit $285.58 into your new Ally account, you would have $10,414.53 at the end of 36 months. This earns you $133.65, meaning financing only saves you about $50 over leasing.

So, this proves that leasing is not always the better option. In the example above, it appears that there really is no big financial advantage one way over the other. Although tax, tags, and title fees are all included in the $199 monthly payment and not when financing, no one ever pays MSRP price anyway.

Bottom Line

You should lease a car if you like to drive a brand new car every 3 years or so, don’t like to pay for costly maintenance, and enjoy having lower monthly payments. You should buy or finance your next car if you need the comfort of having an ownership of your car and have plans to pay off your loan earlier to become payment-free, and understand the added costs for unexpected maintenance and repairs.

On a side note, visit Mrs. Accountability’s Outofdebtagain.com for her Yakezie Roundup this week.

I am a strong advocate of Netflix. I just love it. For awhile, I used blockbuster online rentals but once I switched to Netflix, I never turned back. Although Netflix already boasts over 15 million subscribers, they’re not done yet. They’re preparing themselves to tap into Canadian market and will start offering streaming only service in a few months.

Currently, due to lower profit per subscriber numbers, the Netflix stock price is declining. As of right now at 11:32 am EST, the price is down 10.66% at $106.81. I believe this might be a good time to invest in some Netflix stock. The fundamentals haven’t changed and the future still looks bright.

If you have not taken advantage of Netflix service, you can still try it out for free for two weeks. You can cancel within the two-week trial period and pay nothing. You can simply cancel the service online so you won’t have to deal with trying to come up with excuses talking to a real live representative.

I wrote about Netflix service a few times already. I have listed them here so you can refer to them easily.

Netflix Streaming Review: Save Money With Netflix
Roku Becomes Friendlier with Netflix
Use Your Wii To Stream Netflix, Save 10%
Hulu Competes With Netflix

I was watching TV one day with a few friends and they asked me what an APR was as we finished watching a Toyota commercial. I explained to them what it meant and then it dawned on me that not everyone understands the meaning of some of the key financial terms we toss around everyday. So I took it as an opportunity to make it into a blog post to define some of these key terms. As I was even writing this post, I had to look up a few terms myself just to make sure I had it right.

1. APR

Annual Percentage Rate refers to an interest rate that’s tacked on to the borrowed money. For instance, if you borrow $10,000 and the APR is 5%, then you would end up paying $500 in interests at the end of one year. However, if you borrow $10,000 and the interest due is 5% at the end of one month, then the APR jumps to 79% (1.05^12).  On the flip side, if you borrow $10,000 with an APR of 5% and pay back in one month, you would only end up paying 0.42%. Read the rest of this entry »