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Here I am, back at home after an almost 2-week long business trip and a day-and-a-half at the lake (yes, I'm writing this post right now with a slight hangover… I do have some other hobbies besides Go Be Rich).

I had a good time, but boy oh boy am I glad to be home again, and more than eager to get back to work on Go Be Rich. So to delay the instant gratification that is GBR no longer, below you'll find a Yakezie Challenge update, some of the recent Go Be Rich articles you may have missed, and links to some of the best personal finance stuff out there.

By the way, considering it's Memorial Day weekend, I just want to give a shout-out to all those men and women in our military that work and fight everyday and sacrifice much of what they love in order to protect this great American Country. Without you all, I wouldn't have the freedom to create an amazing, award-winning, incredibly successful blog (okay, future-award-winning blog).

Yakezie Challenge update

It's getting closer and closer, that far-off goal of Go Be Rich ranking at or below 200,000 in this crazy messed-up blogosphere. Kinda like that star that you're pretty sure you saw out of the corner of your eye but when you look directly at it, it disappears… yes, I just compared my blog to a celestial object… that's how awesome this blog is.

1,198,313 is where we were at as of the 20th of May, last Friday. Today I'm proud to say that Go Be Rich is ranked at 649,465 as of Saturday, May 28th. That's a drop of 548,848! Thank you to everyone who stopped by, commented, shared, talked about, tweeted, "liked", or did anything else that had and/or has anything to do with Go Be Rich! Without you readers there would be no blog!

Go Be Rich's Posts of the Week

Not as many as usual for the past week or so, due to my trip. Oh, and for those who actually pay attention to what I write and when I say I'm going to posts certain stuff (like, all 2 of you out there), I didn't forget about the whole Prosperity Plan postings, I just didn't have time to write any more. The follow-up article to Prosperity Plan #4: I'm Going on a Trip, and week 5's concept will be up as soon as possible.

1. Peaks and Valleys: a Review, which is what it sounds like, a review of the book Peaks and Valleys written by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

2. Founding Principle #3: Virtuous and Moral Leaders (and their salaries). Ever wanted to simply give yourself a raise? These guys can, and do so more often than not.

3. A World Without Money. Terrifying, I know… In fact, after writing this post I went to bed, had feverish nightmares, and abruptly awoke in a cold sweat… okay, not really.

Posts From Around the Blogosphere

1. Ashley over at Money Talks Coaching shares with us her $12,000 Costco bill. Also, Ashley was chosen as #1 Editor pick in the Carnival of Personal Finance held over at My Personal Finance Journey. Congrats Ashley!
2. Jeffrey asks his readers what they think are the best Online Personal Finance Tools over at Money Spruce. Also, you still have time left to get his free E-Book, "Money After College".
3. Hunter from Financially Consumed has a post concerning two of the world's largest driving forces, SEX and MONEY. Okay, so it's a post about the different approaches to investing between the sexes… got your attention though right?
4. Moving on to Money in the 20s, Dave has a post about the benefits and disadvantages of Health Savings Accounts. Pretty informative post, as I didn't really know a lot about these things, just that they had something to do with not paying taxes. Also, be sure to check out his $25 PayPal giveaway. All you have to do is pick one single stock, and if it out-performs the stocks chosen by the other participants, you win!  
5. Justin from Money is the Root also has an awesome $25 giveaway going on now. This one's a gift card from Amazon, which means it's good for just about anything. You can also read about why he Bewares Those who Bear Gifts. There's also a little talk about the world ending thrown in for good measure.
6. Frugal Beautiful has a post about how to Whiten your Teeth for $20 or Less. Yup, there's a reference to Suze Orman's ridiculously blinding-white teeth here to chuckle over.
7. In case you need some sugar to rot out those pearly-whites, JT McGee writes about how to buy 56 ounces of Hershey's chocolate for $24 shipped, using this fact as a way to tie in a study done about how waiters and waitresses get more tips when they give out chocolates, which in turn may prevent his pet peeve from from emerging: food service people who complain about their pay.
8. David over at Money Under 30 writes about a reader's issue with not being able to bring himself to spend money. Complete with hand-drawn pictures (the best kind, right?).

That's about it for this week. So go chew on a few of these links, keep checking back with Go Be Rich for even more awesome content, and stay in school kids.

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Rarely do I spend money on something, be it a product or a service, and feel more than satisfied with every dime I’ve spent.

Every once in a while though something comes along that I do in fact feel this way about. This time around, it’s Hulu.

For those that don’t know, Hulu is a service similar to Netflix that allows viewers to stream recent episodes of television shows and movies online, through a PS3 and Xbox 360, or an internet-capable TV.

There are two routes to take to the Hulu experience, the free route and the subscription route. The free route has a ton of content available, as this is how Hulu began life, and it’s only recently launched the subscription service in November of 2010. The subscription service however, dubbed Hulu Plus, is really where it’s at.

Comparable in price to Netflix (in fact, exactly comparable to one of Netflix’s pricing options at $7.99 a month), it blows Netflix out of the water in my opinion. While I know a lot of people who like Netflix quite a bit, I for one had these two services at the same time. Once I subscribed to Hulu Plus, I never used Netflix again, for three reasons.

The first reason is that it seems Hulu Plus has more current, up-to-date content than Netflix does. Keep in mind that my focus is more on the available television shows rather than the movies. Whenever I was perusing Netflix’s content, I came away with a feeling of being detached from mainstream media and entertainment, especially concerning their movie selection, which seemed to cater more towards those with a taste in old B-rated sci-fi movies.

The second reason, oddly enough, is the interface. I streamed both Netflix and Hulu Plus through my PS3, and every time I got Netflix going I found myself thinking about how bland and unexciting it looked. Whenever I turned on Hulu Plus, I enjoyed a much more aesthetically pleasing experience, with its bright green logo and loading screens against a black background.

Lastly, the third reason is that Hulu Plus has nothing to do with DVDs. I can remember many times when I came across something on Netflix that I really wanted to watch, only to realize I would have to wait for the DVD in the mail, at which point it didn’t seem so important to watch anymore.

As far as functionality goes, they both seemed to be just about the same, with the streaming capabilities similar enough to not notice any difference. I do recall one afternoon though where I received an error on Netflix stating that the service was currently unavailable.

On the business side of things, there’s one little tidbit about Hulu Plus I’ve noticed recently that makes me think more advertisers will take an interest (meaning more money and growth for Hulu Plus), and that’s the Ad Tailor feature. This feature allows a user to click on a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button in response to being asked whether or not the running ad is relevant to you.

While this seems like a small thing, if I were an advertising agency, having this kind of information available to me would seem invaluable, making targeted advertising much easier. Of course this depends on enough users actually answering the question.

All in all, I really don’t think I’ll be subscribing to cable again, as Hulu Plus fulfills any need that having cable actually did, plus more, and all at the low price of $8 a month.

Update: Due to the recent Playstation network outage, I have been unable to watch Hulu Plus in my living room on my television (I stream it through my PS3, remember). I just received and E-mail from Hulu stating that my account would be compensated for the time the Playstation network was down, even though it’s not really Hulu’s fault. It makes me wonder if Playstation is compensating Hulu for this. Whether they are or not, they just earned a loyal customer for life.

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So I was driving around the other day when my right rear tire blew out, resulting in the purchase of 2 new tires (the other rear one had a low amount of tread). This got me thinking about how I wish I had some money set aside specifically for car repairs. Yes, I had money set aside, but in a sort of multi-purpose slush fund type deal, which got me thinking about individual savings accounts.

I had heard good things about Ally’s online savings accounts from a few friends, and found this post about Online Savings Accounts over at Moolanomy, so I decided to open one up, name it ‘Car Maintenance’, and transfer a certain amount of money a month into it solely for car repairs. In fact, once it was all set up it took me less than 3 minutes to schedule recurring monthly deposits, with weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, two months, quarterly, four months, and twice a year options.

No minimum balance is required and there’s no type of fee for opening an account, nor any monthly fees. This being a federally-backed, FDIC-insured savings account means you’re limited to 6 withdraws per statement cycle, which is no problem considering what I’m using the account for. For every withdraw over 6, a $10 fee is imposed.

The process was very simple and straightforward. I went to www.ally.com, clicked on the ‘open account’ button on the left-hand side, clicked the ‘new customer’ button, and filled out my information. I was able to specify right away the amount of money I wanted transferred over from my checking account, and that was that.

The only other thing I had to do was verify my checking account. Ally does this by depositing amounts less than a dollar in your checking account within a few days, and then requiring the account holder to provide those exact amounts to Ally, thus proving that you own the account. Or that you at least have access to it.  There is also a postal method of verifying your account.

The main reason for me opening an online savings account was really only to keep it separate from my checking account. The bank I’m with doesn’t allow multiple accounts or the dividing up and segregating of a single account. The interest rate is a nice bonus, at 1.57%. Not the absolute highest rate you can find on the internet, but my goal wasn’t really to find the highest rate.

I found the entire process and the website itself refreshingly uncluttered and to-the-point. In fact, I’m already considering opening more accounts with specific purposes and setting up monthly transfers. To me it seems to provide a certain peace of mind, being able to look at one account, knowing every dime in there goes to one thing.

I’ll post some updates after owning the account for a while letting you all know of any other discoveries or issues with Ally.