Yodlee hooks up with Zillow!

I have talked about Yodlee before. Let me re-iterate that this totally free service is amazing. I use it to keep track of over 20 accounts! MONEY

Now you are probably thinking that 20 accounts is a few too many, and I can understand that. But when you start to count each account you have, checking, savings, visa, discover card, Roth IRA, 401(k)/403(b), and then double that if you are married, you get up there pretty quick. When I bought my hybrid, I opened several credit cards with 0% balance transfers to get 0% financing over an extended period of time. So on and so forth. With a tool as nice as yodlee.com, why bother closing accounts? MONEY

So I have my mortgage set up in yodlee, and pay my bill each month there. But I had to create a custom entry and enter the estimated value of my home as a manual account to get a realistic picture of my finances overall. Until this week that is. MONEY

I was browsing around one night and saw a link called "Real Estate Center." I clicked it and there was an option to set up my address in a tool that automatically goes to zillow.com and grabs the estimate. If you own a home or are shopping for a home and have not checked out Zillow, you should. It complies local sales information and tabulates home values and contains tons of tons of great information on top of a really neat interface that uses google maps and microsoft's visual earth. MONEY

And like yodlee, zillow is free. MONEY

So now Yodlee goes out and grabs my account values as well as my home's estimated value and pulls all the info together and provides charts and graphs of changes in value, spending, and now equity in my home = zillow estimate - mortgage! MONEY

Saving money on home improvement

I have several posts mulling around in my noggin but I have been too tired at night to get them out this week as we have been getting home from work and going straight to work, scraping the old peeling paint off the side of our house.


You can tell from the second picture how high I up I have to go to clean up the second floor windows and and digging into the old paint with a hand scraper that high up is kinda not cool.


But we have been scraping and painting one side of the house each year for three years. I have not priced out how much we are saving, painting ourselves, but I imagine it would buy a Wylie fund or two...


I just realized I do not have a good picture of either of the two sides we are done with. This one shows the front which we painted last year. The new color we are using is similar, but a bit more blue. You can also see the bags of leaves and pine needles we raked up, waiting to be taken to be composted by our town. Yes, we also do our own 'landscaping' which probably saves us enough for a few months of subsequent investments in a Wylie fund or two.

Wait to file your taxes if...

...you own a brokerage account. money

I was jealous of a colleague who declared that he already had his tax refund on the way. I was even more jealous of the fact that his refund was small. money

Why would I be jealous of a small refund? money

In this case the government has been taking only as much money from my colleague over the course of the year as he ultimately would owe in taxes. Some people like getting big refunds, but that is a big interest free loan you are giving to the government... If you have enough income to do that, I've got a bridge for sale... money

So if you can only have what you will owe withheld (takes good planning), you get paid more throughout the year meaning you have more every two weeks to donate to charity, spend on bird seed, or spend at the movies. money

Anyway- last year I got an amended tax statement from my brokerage and I was really glad I had not submitted my taxes, because I would have had to re-submit them with the new form if I had been more on the ball. This year, I have yet to receive my tax statement from etrade and when my colleague was like "I'm done with my taxes" I was all like- "what is up with my stuff?" money

So I logged into my etrade account and found this buried in the page that allows you to view your tax forms:

"If you hold a mutual fund, REIT, or RIC, we may need to issue you an amended Form 1099. This may affect the date you will want to file your tax return. To minimize the possibility of multiple corrections, we will not be generating amended 1099s until late February 2007." money

I didn't even know what a RIC was but I own Mutual Funds and a REIT (Boston Properties).

My initial reaction was- why can't etrade get this stuff right the first time? Then I read an article by Andrea Coombes that led me to believe that brokerages are required (perhaps by law?) to send tax info by Jan 31st, but that many mutual funds and REITS send updated info to brokerages after this date forcing brokerages to send multiple copies and forcing those of us who invest in Funds and REITs to wait to file our taxes or file multiple times. Andrea specifically notes that some Brokerages are seeking permission to wait to send their tax info to clients. money

Since etrade bought my old brokerage, but the transfer did not happen until a couple of weeks into Jan. I wonder how may tax forms I will actually get... money

etrade does have this message on my account home page:

"1099s Available by January 31st.
This year as part of your move to E*TRADE Financial, you may receive TWO tax statements for 2006. Your tax statement(s) will be mailed to you and made available online by January 31." money

What this should say is that I may receive FOUR tax statements and should not even bother trying to figure out my taxes until the end of Feb. money

But regardless, the confusion and how long it is taking for me to receive this info does not appear to be etrade's fault, but rather a result of changing and complicated regulations. money

Non-Ret: Specialty Real Estate

My Pick: SSgA Tuckerman Active REIT Fund SSREX

These days may be the worst possible time to invest in Real Estate in general as prices have run up tremendously over the last few years. That said- Office Real Estate has still been rising- Boston Properties for example (Stock symbol: BXP) has been doing well- even as residential real estate has struggled. money

Etrade's funds screener does not distinguish between funds that focus on commercial vs Residential Real Estate sectors- or a combination, etc. so it will be difficult to focus on a sub-sector using this research tool. This is OK as I do not want to try and chase market trends- I want to pick a good fund I can contribute to over time. Regardless, I picked the order of categories to diversify according to a progression and if I wanted to build a portfolio of 9 funds, Specialty Real Estate would be the category I would pick from next. money

The best performing No-Load fund Etrade offers requires an initial $15,000 investment so I am not picking it. It also lists a turnover ratio of 1411%. This goes to show you that some managers can make big profits buying and selling constantly, but I would hate to get the tax bill for profits earned this way! money

My pick is SSgA Tuckerman Active REIT Fund SSREX. It has a $1000 minimum initial purchase and lower than average expenses 1.00% and turnover 35%. The average for Real Estate Funds is expenses 1.48% and turnover 81.98%. It does make you wonder why Active is in the title since the turnover is only 35% but what are you gonna do? money