500 Amazon Coins ($5 value) for $1 at HumbleBundle

The current E3 digital ticket game bundle on HumbleBundle has 500 Amazon coins included at the $1 purchase level.  500 coins would cost you $4.90 to buy at Amazon so this is basically $5 worth of app purchases.    You can get the bundle for as little as $1.   Of course you can pay more if you want to donate to the charity in question too.    There are some video game items too but it looks like "digital content" or downloadable content more than full games.

Note :  Make sure you've got a good use for Amazon coins.    Their app store doesn't have everything and theres plenty of free alternatives.    Some of the games I like aren't on Amazon at all.  


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PSA : Credit Card Sign Up Bonus Gotcha To Watch For

I've been rotating through new credit cards to get sign up bonuses for a while now.   I've been targeting the best cash bonuses or at least cash/ travel bonuses.   Over all this has worked great for me and I netted over $2000 in various rewards in 2015.  

Unfortunately I just struck out with a Capital One Venture card.    Annoyingly it was my mistake that lost the bonus but I think its a slight trap anyone could fall into.     I signed up for the card in January of this year.    The sign up deal is that you get 40,000 bonus miles when  "once you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months".    OK thats easy enough and I've done this kind of spending deal on several cards before.   But no.

Make sure you figure out when the clock starts and what the exact time period is to meet a sign up bonus.

Some cards start the period on the day you sign up for the card.


Today I added up the spending on my first 3 monthly statements and I'm a bit over the minimum required $3,000 at about $3,025.   So I should get the bonus right?   No.    The clock for the bonus spending requirement started the day that I applied for the card.   The clock did not start when I got the card.   The clock didn't start when the statement periods started either.      I spent my $3000+ in the first three statements and missed the deadline by two weeks.    So that is annoying.  Lesson learned.    At least I can do is pass on the heads up to maybe help someone else from finding the problem.


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$5 per Month Cell Phone Service from Speedtalk

Speedtalk has a $5 monthly plan for cell phone service.   You can get their preloaded SIM at Amazon for $5 plus $4 shipping.

The service level includes 250 minutes OR 250 text or 250MB data per month.   So its pretty limited, but for $5 its a pretty decent offering for light users.

You can also get 12 months of service from Speedtalk for $60 at Amazon with free shipping.    That works out to $5 per month and the shipping is free.  However it does NOT have rollover so the monthly allotment is use-it-or-lose-it.

Speedtalk is a reseller that uses the T-mobile network.   I haven't used them myself.



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Effective Federal Funds Rate for 60+ Years (1954 to 2017)

The St. Louis Fed's FRED database has historical info on the federal funds rate

Wiki says that "In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight, on an uncollateralized basis."

Here's the graphic - click the picture for a full size version:

(source St. Louis Fed )

Seemed to me the trend was gradually going up and then peaking around 1980 then going down.   I used Excel to plot a (polynomial) trend line :

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