Happy Birthday Suzanne!

We finally got together Sunday to officially celebrate Suz's birthday. In this picture Suzanne is leaning over to listen to something very important that Danielle has to say to her.

And here is the other end of the table:


The cake was a very tasty lemon raspberry cream specialty from the Cheesecake Factory. We had a great time. Happy Birthday, Suzanne, I'm glad we could get together.


Note in the top picture, what looks like tulips in front of Barb are actually "Hershey's kisses wrapped in red cellophane" roses that Mutti made with her Young Women's class back near February 14th. I wanted to mention them also, because the original design had no leaves. These were Mutti's original creation out of some green wrapping paper we happened to have. I think they are very well done!

A 5.01% Checking Account? From First Community?

Our family friend, First Community Credit Union, is offering a brand new checking account, apparently to encourage electronic banking. I got a notice about the new account in the mail this past week, but all they said was that to qualify you would need to make at least 12 debits per month, have your paycheck automatically deposited, and switch to electronic from paper statements. They mentioned a few perks, like a $25/per month refund of any ATM fees, but nothing specific about interest rate--they just said that it was "great" and a "mouth-watering ... reward".

Today Mutti & I went to First Community and the teller who helped us told us about this new checking account and said the interest rate was going to be 5.01%! So, what's the catch? There is no minimum balance and no monthly fee. Other than meeting the above electronic conditions about debits, transfers and statements, the catch is that they will only pay 5.01% on the first $25,000 in the account, amounts above that only get 1.01%. (Too bad for you high rollers out there.) Previously the best they would do for a checking account was 0.5%. Even their CD's are only yielding about 3.55% to 4.10%, depending on term.

Any reason not to sign up? Sounds good to us. If we are fortunate to keep $25,000 in the account, 5% interest works out to a little over $100 a month.