Short answer: Live in Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey or Vermont.

Long answer: In the seven states listed above, there are state laws that that require the credit bureaus to provide your credit reports absolutely free. These laws are in addition to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (technically, it’s the 2003 Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act which amended the FCRA) that requires the bureaus to provide your credit reports once twelve months, which you can access through AnnualCreditReport.com.

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Up until August 18th, if you’ve ever wanted to touch a 16.5-karat gold bar, you could make short visit to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West. The treasure hunter Mel Fisher, after which the museum is named, found the bar in 1980 from the wreck of the Santa Margarita located 25 miles west of Key West. The Santa Margarita, and it’s much larger and more famous sister the galleon Atocha, were Spanish treasure ships and they were on their way back to Spain loaded with gold and silver (and other precious items). A hurricane pummeled the entire convoy and the Santa Margarita was spread out across the ocean… and this gold bar came from Mel Fisher’s discovery of a portion of the loot.

History lesson aside, the 16.5-karat, 74.85 ounce gold bar was in the museum and any visitor could touch it. 74.85 ounces of gold has a market value of around $92,589 (at ~$1,237 an ounce) but it’s “uniqueness” and history puts the value at over half a million bucks. I’m surprised that the case was designed in such a way that someone could remove the bar. It seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult to build a case that would make this impossible… then again it sat undisturbed for twenty-five years.

I really hope the thieves don’t melt it down.

No arrests yet in theft of gold bar from museum [CNN]

(Photo: meltmatter)

Pick any action movie ever made and chances are someone is trying to steal a boatload of bearer bonds. My first introduction to them was in the Bruce Willis classic Die Hard but my favorite movie involving guns and bearer bonds was Heat. As a kid, all I knew was that bearer bonds were valuable. Very valuable.

They were so valuable that guys would arm themselves with automatic weapons and assault rifles just to steal a bunch of them. As a kid, and honestly that’s all you needed to know to understand the plot, I thought bearer bonds were the bee’s knees. Move over Benjamins, I want some bearer bonds.

Only later did I learn that, while still awesome, bearer bonds were just bonds… and bonds are actually quite boring.

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There’s a “special limited-time online offer” for Bank of America credit card holders (I put that in quotes because these promotions come and go all the time) when they open a MyAccess Checking account online. It’s an online only offer of $75 when you open a new MyAccess Checking account and make a qualifying deposit. A qualifying deposit is one that is at least $125 made within 30 days of opening the account. There is no direct deposit requirement for this bonus, though it’s a way to avoid the maintenance fee (the other way is maintaining a balance, more on that in the fine print section).

The offer code for this promotion is CH75OL1 and you can find out more on their promotion page.

Some of the other fine print:
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I was reading my latest issue of the Motley Fool Stock Advisor when I saw them use a term I’ve always found entertaining – ten-bagger. The newsletter itself was talking about how Netflix has become a ten-bagger since David Gardner’s recommendation in 2004. The term ten-bagger refers to a stock that is worth 10 times more than its original purchase price, or an appreciation of 900% over the holding period.

The origins of the term are from One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch and it’s most often cited by long and hold investors because it’s so hard to do. Before a stock is worth 900% more than what you paid for it, it has to be worth 200% and 300% and 500%. All the while you have to stick with it, before it’ll reach 900%. And when it does become a ten-bagger, that doesn’t mean you should sell it, it’s as meaningless a benchmark as any other (the market has no idea where you purchased it).

The closest I’ve ever come is a hair over 200% on shares of Apple stock I purchased early last year when Steve Jobs took medical leave in early 2009.

Do you have a ten-bagger?

I’ve always said that I view insurance as protection against the catastrophic, not against the routine. It’s why I don’t have collision and comprehensive insurance on my car. So how does this change with pet insurance? Why do we have pet insurance on the little guy instead of self-insuring his health?

I do this because I view Tobey as priceless. By priceless I don’t mean he’s worth a bazillion dollars, I mean I have no way to determine how much I’m willing to spend for his care. I recognize that it’s my responsibility to take care of him as long as he can live comfortably (otherwise we shouldn’t have adopted him), but without insurance I have to be the arbiter of his fate if he comes down with something. (it’s really my lovely wife and me deciding, but you get the idea) How much should I spend on his care? $500? $1,000? $5,000? $10,000?

I have no idea. In fact, I don’t even want to think about it.
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One of the things most taxpaying adults realize early on is that tax law is really confusing. Nothing is every straight-forward or simple, which is why most people fear doing their taxes even when it’s a “simple” two-page 1040-EZ form! For the longest time, I didn’t invest outside of my Roth IRA and 401(k) because I didn’t want to deal with the taxes (and I didn’t have much money to invest). Fortunately, I’ve since learned that the taxes aren’t that complicated, as long as you keep good records, but one area that has confused me a little was the topic of qualified dividends versus ordinary dividends.

When you get a dividend from a company or a mutual fund, you need to find out if it’s an ordinary or qualified dividend. If it’s a qualified dividend, it “qualifies” for the lower tax rates of long term capital gains. If it’s an ordinary dividend, it’s taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. That’s the main difference that matters to you and me.

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I received an email from Reader Danny the other day, after my post about Credit Karma catching an error before I did, thanking me for the post. Every few weeks I get an email thanking me because a post I wrote fixed a problem for them or revealed one they didn’t know existed. It got me thinking… how many success stories are there for you guys who read my ramblings?

If you’re wondering if this is just some public ego stroking session, it’s not (well, not entirely ). Some of you have been reading since the very beginning, some of you for a year or two, and some for a few months if not a few days. I’d like to think there are a few older gems that don’t get much love lately and hopefully hearing some success stories will bring those guys back to life.

I’ll share my own – I’ve learned a lot in the last few years writing at Bargaineering in the realms of personal finance, investing, running a business, and working with other people. It’s been a great experience that I hope to continue for many years into the future and I hope that you’ll stick with me throughout (and a big thanks to everyone who has stuck around thus far!).

Please, if you have a success story, no matter how big or small, please let us know!

(Photo: seeveeaar)

I didn’t know much about Steve Siebold before I received his book, How Rich People Think, but he’s a “mental toughness” couch who has written books about mental toughness, weight loss, and other “mind over body” type of subjects. After doing some research on him, he did have a bit of that “information product” salesman type of look, the ones you see on late night infomercials telling you that your inability to succeed was entirely mental (some of it is, but all of it?). He has a “no holds barred” type of approach in his directness and I can see why some people would be turned off by him. However, other than the lack of mainstream recognition and pedigree, he’s really not much different than Larry Winget.

That being said, how was the book? It contained a hundred ways that the thinking of the “middle class” differed from the “world class.” The basic premise is that the approach of most Americans, the non-world class category, is fundamentally different than that of the world class category. Siebold illustrates a hundred different ways this is so and then discusses how you might want to change your thinking. He follows each brief “chapter” up with a book you should read, an enlightening quote, a critical thinking question followed by an action item.

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It’s been a while since I’ve written about career, I think we fired off both barrels during Career Week 2009 last year. However, with the economy recovering and a new jobs bill, I wanted to discuss something that falls under the category of “obvious but clearly not obvious enough.”

You should treat the people that you work with, regardless of where they are in the “hierarchy,” with dignity and respect.

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