has a 30-day price guarantee. If a price drops within 30 days of your purchase, Amazon will credit you the difference. Nice policy, but it can get tedious to track each item purchased... until now! Rather than manually tracking all of your Amazon purchases, you can use this nifty tool at Amazon Credits You. You just enter your purchase price, date of purchase, ASIN, and your email and you will receive notification if the price drops. Follow the instructions in the email to receive your refund! Pretty nifty, eh!?!
I think $50 seems to be a fairly reasonable account transfer fee, since it would cost me $19.95 per trade to buy these stocks at Fidelity. I can buy them cheaper at ShareBuilder and transfer them to Fidelity and it theoretically (depending on the number of different stocks owned) could be cheaper than buying them all at Fidelity. It does sound like it could be a big hassle, but the last time I transferred assets into Fidelity, Fidelity handled all the paperwork and coordination.Full Transfer
In order to transfer all of your assets from your ShareBuilder Account to another brokerage you will need to obtain a copy of the receiving broker's Account Transfer form. When you complete the form, please include:As only whole shares can be transferred, any partial shares that you have will be sold and the proceeds will be transferred with the money market cash balance.
- The ticker symbol for each security being transferred
- The number of whole shares for each security
- The amount of cash funds being transferred
There is a fee of $50 for a full account transfer to another brokerage. This includes the transfer of all whole shares of securities held in your ShareBuilder Account, the liquidation of any partial shares (as needed), and the transfer of the money market cash balance.
When you submit the transfer form, please inform the receiving brokerage that ShareBuilder Securities is not an ACATS (Automated Customer Account Transfer System) eligible broker and that the transfer will need to be completed manually. In addition, the form must have a Medallion Signature Guarantee.
Please be sure to include a printout of your most recent ShareBuilder statement with the transfer form. The transfer will take approximately 30 days to complete.
As promised, here is a tale of four cell phones. If you can make it to the end, there is a small financial lesson to be learned.
Way back at the beginning of 2005, then-Fiancé and I had brand new cell phones because we had recently taken the step of combining our individual cell phone plans to one account with one provider (the background on this is that Mr. Savvy broke his US Cellular phone, so it was a good time to switch and get a new phone with Verizon). Our phones were a mere month or two old back in January when Mr. Savvy lost his phone. In the dark. In the snow. And then he ran over it with his truck. Then he found it. No worries though, I had my old Verizon phone from before the big cell-account-merging. A phone call to Verizon and he was back up and running in 15 minutes.
Phone Zero- US Cellular phone, broken by Mr. Savvy at work. Not included in the "four phones" because it was last year.
Phone One- Samsung flip phone from Verizon. Lasted a mere couple months before being unceremoniously dropped in the snow and run over.
Phone Two- My old Verizon phone. It was use by me for about a year, but still in very good condition.
Well, since we have about a year and 10 months before our contract is up, and Mr. Savvy has a long track record of breaking cell phones, we decide to put insurance on Mr. Savvy's new-old phone. Called Verizon, started paying $5.99 per month in phone insurance on an old phone.
Mr. Savvy breaks Phone Two in mid-summer (after about six months of use). We call the insurance company and get a phone sent to use. Costs $50 for a crappy old refurb phone, which is now Phone Three, and the insurance company made it as difficult as possible to get a replacement phone. This is on top of the $6/month we've already spent in premiums. Total cost for Phone Three is almost $90. The charger for "new" crappy phone immediately breaks, we order a new one on eBay for $10, making this a $100 phone that is a piece of crap. We cancel the insurance.
Phone Three- Yucky old refurb phone from the phone insurance company.
Last weekend, Mr. Savvy loses Phone Three in the woods. In the dark. In the snow. No word on whether or not it has been run-over, but we are guessing we'll never find it. Since we have no insurance, I order a new used cell phone on eBay. Paid $74 including shipping, but got a pretty nice phone that is a somewhat recent model (Phone Four). (Make sure if you buy a phone on eBay that you buy from a reputable seller and that they guarantee that the ESN is clear - meaning the phone isn't stolen or lost by someone else). I call to activate the phone and the Verizon associate was very nice and even agreed that the phones on eBay are a pretty good deal compared to the insurance. She said she couldn't believe the insurance company gave us a model that was so old (Phone Three). Phone Four is up and running.
Phone Four- Used phone purchased on eBay. Pretty nice and a decent deal. Mr. Savvy has had the phone for less than 24 hours, and as far as I know it is still in his possession.
Two lessons...
1. Mr. Savvy loses everything that isn't attached to him. We both know this already, and it is kind of a joke between us. We've lost more keys, phones, hats, sweatshirts, hardhats, tools... I have learned to plan for this by never leaving the house with him without my own set of keys and my own checkbook. Luckily our dog is smart enough to find her own way home, or I'm sure we'd've lost her a long time ago. This is why I'm thinking the Travelers Cheque/Card would be a good thing for us on our trip.
2. Phone insurance may not be a good deal, even if you are the type of person who loses and/or breaks a lot of phones. Look up the current going rate of your phone on eBay and figure out how many months of your insurance premiums would make up the cost of that phone (remember the price will likely go down over time as well). Use that to determine if phone insurance is right for you. Even with Mr. Savvy going through multiple phones per year, we think we'll stick with eBay.
