Dug an old post out from my archives of long lost blogs:
I’ll be digging up more and more when I have time.
Monthly Archives: May 2006
Chasing the Online Savings Rate
When does it make sense to chase that interest rate? Currently, I’m considering the following:
- ING Direct: 4.15%
- HSBC Direct: 4.65%
- Emmigrant Direct: 4.65%
Currently, we are with ING but they’re just not keeping up with the other banks. When the fed increased the interest rate by say .25%, ING will only bump up by a fraction of that, essentially pocketing the difference and not sending that down to their clients. To me, this is getting to be unacceptable and I’ve stuck with ING b/c I believed they would make things right, but it’s not happening.
Currently, Citibank E-Savings product is offering 4.75% but you have to be banking with Citibank or have one of their checking accounts to qualify. This kind of removes them from the list b/c we already have another bank for our checking.
Based on this rate chaser calculator and using HSBC as an example, I woud lose roughly 2 days in lost interest, however it would only take about 17 days to break even and after that, it’s “money in the bank”. At this point, it really seems like a no-brainer and the only reasons for considering HSBC over Emmigrant is that I’ve heard of HSBC before.
[edit: The Citibank E-Savings/EZ Checking Account actually has three conditions in which to avoid the monthly charges:
- Direct Deposit Into the Checking
- Conduct 2 monthly bill pays
- A combined average balance of $1,500
Personally, option 3 is a winner for me. Since the main focus of the account is for savings, I feel it would be quite easy to keep a minimum of $1,500 in the account.
So, what will the difference in interest rate pay off?
With a balance of say $10,000, the yearly interest would be
- 4.15% APY = $415
- 4.75% APY = $475
Difference: $60
Not too shabby for letting the money sit. That’s roughly a month’s internet/tv bill for some! A good option for those wanting to keep a safety blanket of 6 months’s worth of expenses in a liquid account.
So you think you can dance
Another season has started for the Fox show, So You Think You Can Dance. I must admit, I am a sucker for this show and tend to watch the whole season unfold, unlike American Idol where I mainly just watch the first couple of shows to laugh.
Last night’s episode was pretty good, the one that caught my attention the most was of this fella that did poppin. He was quite good and could “Hit” really hard! Watching him reminded me of the old days when I was a raver and mostly did “liquid pop” kinda of stuff. I still bust it out ever now and then when I’m at family parties and such and it seems to shock a lot of the young’ens who think they can dance 
Morning Mow
In the drive into work yesterday, I noticed someone mowing the lawn at 6:30am! While this person may be super productive and start the day early, I couldn’t help but wonder how her neighbors felt? Perhaps it was not such a big deal as it was during the work week and people tend to get up early, but still …
This reminds me a bit of a podcast on manager tools regarding time management, which basically noted that people are generally more creative more focused concentration between the hours of 7am and 10am. I would agree with this as I do feel as if my mind is at full operating speed during this time. Perhaps it has nothing to do with my finishing my morning coffee during that time.
Spreading the taiji gospel
Shang Lee wrote an interesting post about how to tell others about taiji. This is something I’ve encountered and thought about a couple of times myself and wanted to expand a bit on it here as it’s more than a couple of sentences.
What I generally do is to tell people the are many reasons for practicing taiji, whether it be for health, meditative (spiritual), or martial reasons (in that order). This way, I don’t scare people away with the martial stuff off the bat but to focus on the health aspect (most common reason and understanding of taiji) and talk about how it helps to lower blood pressure, decrease stress, increase balance and can be a pretty good leg workout!
This is usually enough to “plant the seed” and let it germinate for a bit before they come back for more. If they are still interested, then I generally bring up the meditative aspects of the art and how it helps with awareness and mindfulness in movement. How it can be thought of as “moving meditation” or a way to get in touch with oneself. If the person is really into the meditative aspects, I’ll usually go into how I feel taiji is like 30% physical and 70% mental and describe the following scale:
- Zazen: 5% physical, 95% mental
- Zhan Zhuang: 15% physical, 85% mental
- Taiji: 30% physical, 70% mental
- Yoga: 50% physical, 50% mental
I then generally go over how I feel the hardest things to do are those that are the “most mental” due to the concept of the monkey mind and ways to tempt this. It can be done gradually and start with something a bit more physical and transition to something more mental upon comfort level. This is not to say that one practice is higher level than the other, but it serves different goals, and as such, they are different vehicles for the various goals.
Then I get into the martial chatter. But then again, this all depends on the type of person I’m talking with and their own levels of experience and I try to approach as such (upaya – buddhist term roughly translated as skill in means or teaching at various levels of understanding). This is generally the hardest part to describe and explain, especially if the person is from an external martial arts training background as the common preconception of taiji is for health.
But if it get here, I generally ask if they subscribe to the notion that the amount of power one can generate is directly proportional to one’s ability to relax? If not, I describe it in terms of physics and acceleration and perhaps even plot things out on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most “tense”) and how a route of 2-10 would generate more power than a route of 8-10.
If they’re still with me, I then start to bring up the sensitivity aspect of it and how taiji trains that. I may even show a slight demonstration on the effectiveness of sensitivity and maybe show an application of grasps swallows tail to demonstrate the concepts.
Whoa.. that was a bit more long winded than I had expected but this is the route I follow
