ING Direct lowered their interest rates on a number of bank products yesterday. It hasn’t been all that long from ING’s last rate drop which I wrote about on December 30th, 2008, so I’m guessing this answers my previous question regarding how frequently ING changes its rates. More often, but smaller sized changes.

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A couple days ago my wife and I were getting annoyed watching some TV news story about the request for the second $350B of TARP authorized funds. The nerve of asking for more funds given the lack of accountability that has been applied to the first $350B just drives us nuts. How did any of the money “lent” out actually help things? No one can currently tell us!

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I recently posted a numerical analysis that determined a retirement savings rate based on the goal that spendable income did not drop upon entering retirement. There were necessarily many assumptions that went in to this analysis, but a reader named RedG3 asked specifically about one of them: how do changes in income during working years effect that rate? I’ve been thinking through how to answer RedG3 for the last two days. That’s long enough that I figured it’s time to put some thoughts down and see what he, or others, might have to say back.

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A friend of mine recently asked my thoughts about what percentage of earned income should go towards savings, which I presumed to mean for retirement savings. I gave him an instantaneous answer (10%) without putting too much thought behind it beyond a consideration that he was young and anything more was unlikely to be achieved. However, I think this question deserves a bit deeper of an answer.

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Yesterday (yes, on Christmas day) I applied for and hopefully opened the third of our CDs in our emergency fund CD ladder. This is the first time I’ve tried to open a CD at FNBO Direct and I’ve got to say, I’m not impressed at all with the process. Worse than that actually, I’m now motivated to find somewhere else to do my future banking.

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