PSA: ING and Arts Cow

PSA means 'public service announcement' if you didn't know. :)

I wanted to share about two companies, ING and Arts Cow because I really like them both!

ING
http://www.ingdirect.com/
ING is an online bank that offers savings, checking, loans, etc. I have used it for a number of years for our savings account.  It's FDIC insured so you have the same protection as a brick and mortar bank.  With ING, you can have multiple sub-accounts.  You can also set it up so money is transferred from your checking account to your sub-account automatically, on the day of the month that you choose.  I have several sub-accounts with ING.
1) General emergency savings
2) Tax and Insurance
Each month a sum of money is transferred automatically to this account to cover our property tax, car insurance, and house insurance. 
3) Christmas
Each month $75 is transferred to this account automatically.  We don't really miss $75 each month, and when Christmas rolls around and we have $900 saved in this account, it makes a huge difference! It is SO nice to buy Christmas presents with money that is already saved up-- there's no worrying about how Christmas will fit into our budget and no feeling that you can't really "afford" Christmas.  It's a joy to be able to shop for friends and family without a worry about the money.  I totally recommend doing this!!! (Even if you don't use ING, you could take an amount out in cash each month and sock it away). 
4) 10 Year Anniversary trip
I recently started having $50 transferred automatically into this account each month for a big 10 year anniversary trip four years from now.  We found a place in our budget for the $50 and it will be nice in 4 years to have $2400 saved up already for our trip! I'm hoping to increase this amount in a year or two so we have more saved up and can take a wonderful trip, again without worrying about money!  $50 each month is certainly a lot different than thousands of dollars at one time!

So those are our four sub-accounts.  I originally opened this account because they were offering a 4.5% interest rate (I know! Can you imagine?!).  The interest rate has since decreased dramatically due to the economy and whatnot, but it's still a lot more than you'd get with a traditional bank.  Plus, ING is very user friendly and it's easy to manage your money.  You can transfer the money back into your checking account but it takes a couple days (which has its own benefits).

If you want to open an ING account and you do so with at least $250, let me know, because if I refer you, you will get a $25 bonus and I will get $10.  (I'm certainly not advocating ING because of this bonus.)  Let me know if you have any questions!

Arts Cow
My second PSA is about Arts Cow. 
http://www.artscow.com/

For the past year, I have purchased my Christmas cards, shower and birthday party invitations, and birth announcements from Etsy.  It's pretty cool.  There are hundreds and hundreds of designs to choose from and most cost $15.  You email your pictures to the seller and they email you a jpeg of the finished product (in my experience, it takes between 2 to 24 hours to get the completed design, depending on the seller).  They are typically completely customizable (if you saw Max's birth announcement, I changed some things around-- I removed one picture and added the bible verse, etc).  Once you have the jpeg, you can upload it to any site and buy prints.  I had always used Walmart (yuck!!  I had the pictures shipped to me so I didn't have to subject myself to the store) and bought 5x7s for $0.58 each.  The $0.58 plus the $15 for the design, plus envelopes from Office Max or Archivers, ended up being cheaper than Shutterfly or Snapfish.  It was a WIN!

But now I have discovered Arts Cow!!  I used Arts Cow this year for our Christmas card and birth announcement.  A 5x7 with Arts Cow costs....... only 12 cents!!  It's ridiculous. 

Here is the breakdown of my Christmas card cost this year, for a total of 115 cards.
Design from Etsy:  13 cents
Printing from Arts Cow:  12 cents
Shipping from Arts Cow: 17 cents
Envelope from Archivers: 8 cents
Grand total: 50 cents each

It actually cost even less than this because your first 50 5x7s are free.  This is significantly cheaper than most picture cards.  And, if I had placed my order just one day earlier, I could have taken advantage of their free shipping special!

I ordered the pictures on a Thursday, they shipped on Saturday, and arrived on Tuesday.. from Hong Kong!!!  The shipping cost was kind of high so I thought this is where they made their money but when it arrived in two business days from Hong Kong, I realized it was the actual cost of the shipping.

To sum it up, using Etsy and Arts Cow is...   Fast. Cheap. Unique. Customizable. 

Hope you enjoyed my public service announcements. :)