The general idea of my financial planning is to save every penny possible, only allowing for business and limited social expenses, i.e., birthdays, holidays, and every now and again a treat.

For legal reasons, which I am not going to reiterate in this post, I also like my financial picture to be totally transparent.

This- the reason I provide the illustration below of the "overview" of my Mint account, showing a redacted accounting of all of my active financial accounts.

If this is meant to be a transparent overview, why is the illustration redacted? Legal authorities, businesses, agencies (e.g. Maryland Real Estate Commission) and higher education institutions can all easily verify the information I am providing, so I mean transparent in that regard.

Recently, I have had a series of appointments with one or two of my banks for a couple of reasons. One, I needed a notary and two, I have a 5 year CD that is about to mature.

You will note from the above illustration, most of the financial institutions I deal with are primarily online service providers. Wells Fargo and Bank of America have local branches that I visit on occasion and represent the institutions I use for both business and personal checking and savings accounts respectively.

Interest yield rates are going up, and my business bank no longer charges as much for the monthly service fee and has also lowered the amount I need to maintain to avoid the fee altogether. So I no longer need to maintain a $10,000 CD with the bank to avoid the monthly service fee and I wanted to ensure the CD would not automatically rollover when it matures next month.

I also needed a notary for some legal documents. I made three appointments and attempted one walk-in (UPS Store in Hanover), before I finally had my document notarized. I was surprised by how hard this was, especially, in that I made appointments. The last bank appointment worked.

I have no choice at this time but to save money and try to find the best rates possible. I really cannot afford a financial planner (for market investments) so as with everything else, I learn what I need to learn and do it myself which means in my case, no risky investments.

Some of my recent issues rather surprised me, so I thought I would note it for the record. I mainly do things like this for legal authorities.