No More Fees

I have had enough of paying fees to use my money!! I have been with TD for awhile now and I'm really sick of it. So I got a Thrive chequing account with ING direct. I have a few savings accounts with ING and I love them.

I'm still going to have some savings with TD and I have my car loan with them but from now on its ING for chequing!! I already gave the information to my work for payroll so I just have to give it to the bank for taking out my car loan payments and then we're all good!

And right now there is a promo going on until Dec 31st where if a new customer opens an account and uses a referral code, we BOTH get $50!! Usually its $25.

So if any of you want to sign up with ING, I would really appreciate if you use my code! This only applies to new customers, if you already have an account with them and just open another one, it doesn't count unfortunately. I've put a little widget on the side of my blog with my Orange Key :)

Getting a new savings account!

After doing some research online with regards to savings accounts, I'm pretty sure I'm going to open up a savings account with ING Direct. My current savings account at TD Canada Trust is 0.05%!! Thats pretty much nothing. I have been saving a lot lately now that I am making a somewhat half decent wage and all my savings is sitting there not getting any interest. The only other savings account that gets higher interest is 2.25% and thats for a $5000 minimum. If you have less than that you don't get any interest. And 2.25% is the highest it goes.
With an ING Direct savings account I would get 3% interest! And there is no minimum, no fees or service charges. You can enroll online or over the phone, then you send them a cheque in the mail written to yourself for your first deposit, which automatically links your checking account to your ING savings account for future deposits.
I'm still going to use the same bank for day to day banking but I think I should atleast put my savings somewhere where it will grow, even if its only a bit. Every little bit counts, and 3% is the highest rate I have seen so far. They also have a great mutual fund account I am thinking about.
What do you guys think? Anyone have one of these ING savings accounts?? What are your thoughts on this?

New goals for the near future

I started this blog around the middle of February. My intention was to be able to make money off my blog with those websites that pay you to blog about stuff. Some sites only require your blog to be 1 month old so I figured hey, ill be able to start earning by the beginning of April. Or NOT!

I'm not even going to bother to submit my blog to these sites yet because I am almost positive I'll get rejected or put on some probation status for lack of traffic to my blog. So, I'm going to do a lot more research and put more effort into getting traffic to this baby before I event think of submitting my blog to these sites.

Since I recently got a raise at work I've been thinking about investing. I still don't make a lot, but I figure I can put about $50-150 a month into investments. I think I am going to read some books first, maybe "Investing for Dummies" or something like that because I honestly don't know anything about RRSP's, mutual funds etc etc. If anyone out there has read any GREAT books about personal finance for beginngers, please recommend!

Another thing I've been thinking about is starting to save my small change in a jar. Whenever I have small change in my wallet I'm going to put it into my little money jar and watch it grow. Today I put about $1.00 or so into it.

Once again, I would appreciate any book recommendations!