Sunday, September 28, 2008

Monthly Interest for September 2008

Making ends meet on minimum wage, currently at $6.55 per hour is tough. As the numbers for a basic wage, tax and net pay breakdown show, there is not a whole lot left over after the “Tax Man” gets his cut. Just the tax on the wages earned come to just over 22% of gross wages and that’s not including the medical deduction if you’re lucky enough to have an employer who offers it. I distinctly remember working for minimum wage when my wife and I were starting out.

As the month of September draws to a close, it’s time to see how much interest I’ve earned toward my goal of "A Dollar A Day". As the downloaded information below shows, I’ve earned 48 cents toward my goal of a dollar a day in interest. Yeah! Only $364.52 left to go. Also as the statement shows, there was a long lag time between opening the account and actually getting access to it to add the rest of the start up deposit.

HSBC Direct’s account opening process is a right pain in the posterior. At one point, I was berating the poor representative because the answer to security questions can’t contain two of the same letters adjoining in the answer. So for example, if the security question is, “What is your father’s middle name?” and your answer is “Larry”. This is an invalid response and the password creation program will flag it as an error. The suggestion from the representative? Make the response “Lary”. So as I see it, HSBC Direct is encouraging you to lie about the answers to their security questions and then remember what lie you told to them.

I did apologize to the poor representative that had to listen to my short rant concerning this, but I still stand by my response. It’s a silly process to encourage your clients to lie about the answers to the security questions and then expect them to remember the lie.


ONLINE SAVINGS: ######### (Acct number hidden)
Bank Balance: $267.48 Available Balance: $267.48
Last Statement: 09/26/2008 Interest Earned Year To Date: $0.48
Information as of: 09/27/08

Date Transaction Description Debit(-) Credit(+)
09/26/2008 INTEREST PAID FROM 08/27/08 THROUGH 09/27/08 $0.48
INCLUSIVE AVERAGE DAILY AVAILABLE BALANCE
$167.34
09/17/2008 DEPOSIT FROM HSBC ONLINE-TRANSFER $14.00
09/11/2008 DEPOSIT FROM HSBC ONLINE-TRANSFER $153.00
09/02/2008 DEPOSIT FROM HSBC DIRECT-ACCT FUND $100.00

No comments: