Schwab Checking Account

Schwab.com just started an online checking account that pays 4.25% interest. Here is a link with additional information: Charles Schwab’s New 4.25% Free Checking Account

Here is the link to open an account.

Check out the great features:

No account minimums
No monthly service charges
No ATM Fees
Free checks
Free bill pay
FDIC insured

Its like having an online savings account that works as a checking account. It also links to a Schwab brokerage account so you can easily swap money in and out to invest. Pretty good deal if you ask me. I just signed up for an account today.

Levels of Personal Finance Advice

From all that I read on personal finance, I think there are few basic principles we all need to follow. In fact, there are "levels of detail" per se, when it comes down to it. At a High Level its basically:
1) Save as much as you can
2) Earn as much as you can.

In a Middle Level its:
1) Contribute as much as you can to your 401k , but at minimum get the employer match
2) Save 4000$ a year in a Roth IRA
3) Save up 3 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund

And at a more detailed oriented Low Level its:
1) Invest you retirement savings (401k and Roth IRA) approximately 90% into stocks and stock mutual funds spread across Small Cap, Large Cap, and International funds.
2) Put your emergency fund into a high interest rate, no minimums or fees, online savings account: HSBC, Emigrant-Direct, iGObanking.com

All in all very good advice and something we all should be doing. I think going forward with this blog (when I have Finance posts) I will touch on different parts of these levels and expound on them. Also, I will talk about other interesting areas of investment (Prosper.com, creating cash flow,etc..) that are not usually covered by the personal finance gurus. Stay tuned.

Diet and Fitness Experts

Here is a list of some the best coaches and diet/fitness experts today. Most of these men write regularly for T-Nation.com and their articles are some of the best you will ever read. Most of them also have their own websites that you can check out. We all can learn alot from these individuals:

Dr. John Berardi - mentioned in my first post. The guru of nutrition.

Chad Waterbury - writer of many great articles on training. Do a search at T-Nation using the google search at the bottom of the blog to read one of his many great aritcles.

Dr. Lonnie Lowery - another nutrition guru in the mold of John Berardi. Lonnie is an exercise physiologist and licensed nutritionist. You can find out more information on him here.

Charles Staley - his colleagues call him an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. Charles calls himself a "geek" who struggled in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles' methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results. You can find out more information on him here.

Christian Thibaudeau - writer of many great articles on training. Do a search at T-Nation using the google search at the bottom of the blog to read one of his many great aritcles.

Chris Shugart - creator of the Velocity Diet. Currently he is writing a book outlining the Velocity Diet in more detail.

Charles Poliquin - one of the best fitness coaches in the world. You can check out his site here.

Personal Finance Blogs

When I started this blog I had no idea there were so many Personal Finance blog sites out there. Most of them are very good and very informative. In continuing with my first post, here some links to a few of the blogs I read daily:

Get Rich Slowly
Lazy Man and Money
Five Cent Nickel
The Simple Dollar
The Tao of Making Money

Websites

Hello all! For my first blog post on my new blog “Fitness and Finance” I thought I would post a few of what I feel are the best websites I use/reference daily in the world of fitness and finance.

Fitness

T-Nation.com – simply the best site on the Internet for anything related to fitness, weightlifting, nutrition, diets, supplements, etc… If you’re not reading t-nation then you really don’t what you’re doing when it comes to fitness.

Fitday.com – free site for tracking what you eat everyday. What you look like is 80% determined by diet.

Johnberardi.com – simply the man when it comes to nutrition. Some the best articles you will ever read on diet and nutrition are here. John is a regular contributor to T-nation.com.

Finance

Maretocracy.com – a free site where you can start a 1 million dollar virtual mutual fund and see how you do in the market. The top 100 investors on the site determine the stocks that invested in the actual M100 mutual fund. It’s a great learning tool about stock investing.

Yahoo! Finance – great place to simply read about everything in the world of finance.

Investorvillage.com – a free site to read message boards about many different stocks.

I’ll post additional sites as get this blog going over the course of the days/weeks/months. For now, check these sites out!