Enginero.com `en-jin-neer-o`

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, Quicken Loans has a new site on the net called Quizzle.com. The first time I heard about it, I was intrigued simply because they offer a free Experian Plus Score that you can pull every 6 months. However, upon further investigation, they offer a whole lot more and it’s free.

From their web site:

“Quizzle is the only place that gives you a simple understanding of your home and your money, all in one spot. You’ll get a free evaluation of your credit, home value, mortgage, budget and more, then get important tips on how to make the most of them (minus the confusing financial jargon). Just enter your zip code to get the simple home know-how you can’t get anywhere else.”

Quizzle provides different grades for each of several different criterion. They include your home value, your mortgage type, your credit, your monthly budget, and your “Rainy Day” (emergency fund). Those grades are then used to determine your Quizzle score. As one or more of the factors in the grading system improves your score goes up. The best way I can think to put it is like this; it’s a benchmark for your financial strength.

The whole thing sounds very interesting indeed and I would love to hear some opinions from those who have tried it. I have not yet signed up for Quizzle and this post was not sponsored by them. I do plan to sign up soon, but with the limited time I have right now, I could either sign up or tell you about it and I chose to tell you. Once I sign up, I will make another post about it or update this one. Until that time comes…

Have you tried Quizzle? And…?

I have now met the first goal that I have posted on the blog. My Zecco account is now fully funded and I bought some shares today. From a buying perspective, the system is set up pretty well. It was easy to get a realtime quote and initiate the buy order. I did a Limit Order instead of a Market Order because I wanted to set the price.

I decided to go with a short term hold on RCH (China Architectural Engineering, Inc.). I have been tracking them for a few days and they had an absolutely crazy day today seeing a 30+% increase in the stock price. My plan is to time the peak and sell. I didn’t invest a ton of money, so it’s fun to play with the timing. Once I get this hairbrained short term buying out of my system, I plan to settle down with some dividend paying blue chips, like these.

Do you invest in the market? Are you up, down, or flat?

Well, I’m getting closer and closer now to being ready to give Zecco a try. For those of you who haven’t heard of Zecco, they offer free trades when you keep a minimum of $2,500 with them; either invested or in the cash sweep. Free trades are just sooo tempting, so I have been planning to give them a try for quite a while.

Before I started this blog, my wife and I had a discussion about me signing up to Zecco to purchase some shares. She was not really excited with the idea of me making, what she deams as, risky investments. However, the trooper that she is, she came to terms with it and I have been slowly building up some side money to make it happen. I have just finished creating the Zecco account, so I’ll be all set to fund it.

Let’s split the bonus
If you would like to open a Zecco account of your own and get a little bonus at the same time, feel free to contact me or sign up using my personal referral link. They have a “refer-a-friend” program that pays the referer $50 and I would gladly split the referral bonus with anyone interested. Please keep in mind though that the referral bonus is only paid if the referee funds their account.

The small print:
If you are a Zecco Trading account holder, the $50 cash reward will be credited to your trading account in the first seven business days of the next calendar month after your friend opens and funds a Zecco Trading account. (This offer is not applicable to IRA accounts.) If you are not a Zecco Trading account holder, a $50 Amazon gift certificate will be sent to you in 2-4 weeks instead.

Do you already have a Zecco trading account? Are you happy with the service?

This is not a new topic in our house, but one that I did want to “blog” about because I am very happy that I finally took the initiative to start tracking our net worth. I decided to go the typical spreadsheet route. The spreadsheet I am using is based on the template available over at moneyunder30.com. It’s a basic month over month tracking spreadsheet that can be customized to reflect your individual accounts. I also prefer to use Google Docs, so we can access the information from anywhere.

We are now in our third month of tracking our net worth and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I actually look forward to updating it at the end of each month. I get to plug in the previous month’s figures and see how things look based on our overall financial picture. Granted it isn’t exactly constantly evolving on a huge scale, but it’s interesting information nonetheless.
Another interesting take on using your net worth the deduce Financial Freedom was blogged about by Jonathan over at My Money Blog. I have been a long time fan of Jonathan’s blog and his explanation of the theory is certainly interesting.

Are you tracking your net worth? How are you doing it?