The Always Frugal Blog

Canival of Personal Finance - CCXLIV - The Fiscally Irresponsible TV Characters Edition

2010-02-20T21:30:15Z

Check out the latest Carnival of Personal Finance. My favorite entry this week was:

Eating Healthy and Inexpensively

This blog highlights something I've noticed on the frugal forums I hang out on. Many of the people there will load up on starches like rice and beans or Ramen noodles because they are cheap forms of calories and then a disproportionate amount compared to other people I know seem to have diabetes. It seems like people who are frugal because they have to be get caught in a Catch-22 situation of low cost starches now - health issues later.

Six Ways to Make a Side Income from Blogging

2010-02-15T06:46:18Z

1. Think about the topics you may know something about - more than the average person. My first web site was on some weird health problems that ran in my family and how we corrected them. It turns out the problems weren't as rare as I thought, and now that site gets thousands of visitors a day. Try to write about a topic you enjoy. Then writing about it won't even seem like work. My first sites had thousands of visitors a day before I even realized I could put ads on the sites and make a living just by making web sites, writing about my hobbies and solutions to health issues.

2. Start out not investing any money in your web sites at all. Okay, maybe you can buy your own domain name. But really, you don't need to spend a lot of money to make money on the web. My first web site was on the free hosting from my ISP. I got kicked off of there eventually for using too much bandwidth as my web site grew in popularity. Your best investment is most likely going to be really interesting articles that just take time to create. You can do this with a totally free blogspot blog.

3. Start out with easy to rank for terms. The longer the term, often the less competition there is for that term.

4. Get links for the easy terms first, start ranking, get traffic and then if people enjoy your articles they will give you free "natural" links and you will soon be ranking for shorter, more competitive terms. Links from other sites are currently the currency of the web. The more links you have, and the higher the quality of the sites are that are giving you those links, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. My main Always Frugal site started out ranking for the terms like "how to make extra money when you don't have a job" . It's a long term for sure, but in the current economy I actually started getting traffic on this term. Eventually, without much extra effort on my part, I started getting traffic for the shorter term "how to make extra money" and other variations with more traffic.

5. Look for topics with lots of advertisers but not a lot of competition. If you enter a term in Google and there are lots of ads long the sites of the listings, that is generally a good sign. If you enter a term and there are no ads, then write about your topic it if is a hobby topic but don't expect to make a fortune from it even if you end up getting traffic.

6. Don't get discouraged. Many bloggers fail because they are only making $1 or so a day from their blogs and give up. Remember, most bloggers and web site publishers don't start out on day one with thousands of visitors. If you know how to make $1, then repeat what you did to make that $1 and start making $2 a day.

Freebie Stuff You Can Get Online

2010-02-15T05:51:46Z

1. Make your own greeting cards for free. The Hewlett Packard site has hundreds of free downloads. Invest in a pack of greeting card paper, select the card you want, print it and you are good to go. I just made a store quality valentine card for my husband in under 5 minutes. Four of those minutes were spent finding where I put the card paper stock. You can buy a pack of greeting card paper with envelopes for about $9, so each card can be printed for around 30 cents, plus a few minutes of your time.

2. The actual, official free credit report site is at www.annualcreditreport.com. This site allows you to order a credit report once every twelves months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian.

Many of the free credit report offers online are in fact scams. If you sign up with them, you (maybe) get one month for free and the get your charge card billed for access to credit reports monthly until the end of time. In a way you have to give admire the diabolical cleverness of the credit reporting agencies for finding a way to make money for a problem they helped to create (easy credit fraud).

3. You can get many free books online at books.google.com and www.gutenberg.org.

4. Get free books, audio books, DVDs and subscriptions from your local library. Most people know that libraries offer free book rentals, but these days the freebies don't just stop at books. My favorite freebie from libraries is subscriptions to online journal and magazine sites. Most libraries subscribe to a number of these subscription services. If you write for a living like I do, or do other kinds of research, access to these online services is a fantastic resource. In California you can get a library card from many different cities, and correspondingly many different journal services, as long as you are a resident of the state. If you live in California, or a state with similar library rules, stop in to various libraries whenever you travel and get a card. This will give you access to a wide range of online, free full text articles you won't find in the search engine listings.

Hint: The libraries in cities with the highest home prices tend to have the best online research tools.

5. If you have a Kindle book reader, there are some books you can download for free at Amazon.com.

6. iTunes has many free podcasts. I like to download the self improvement topics, like the ones from the nutrition departments at colleges on how to eat healthy.

Smart Ways to Earn Passive Income

2010-02-08T18:15:45Z

Make It Once, Sell it Until the End of Time

The beauty of passive income is that you can create or invest in something once and earn income from it for years. If you make a bead necklace and sell it on eBay for $30, that's great. You have $30 more than you had before. But to make another $30 you now have to make another necklace. If you make a web page that makes $30 in one month, you might still make another $30 the next month without having to do any extra work. In fact, if you are lucky, you might just make $30 a month or more for years into the future with that one page.

One of the reasons many people aren't more financially secure is that they do not understand the concept of passive income generation. Years ago I made a small web site in a couple of days that started making $3 a day after it had been online about a month. The topic was evergreen content that would require little updating over the years. In my mind I was going to make $3 a day, 365 days a year for 5 years (or more) for two days work. That comes out to a total of $5,475 over 5 years, or $342 an hour for my 16 hours of work.

I was really excited at the concept and told one of my friends all about it. She looked at me like I was a 5 year old who had just found a quarter on the side walk. She kept asking me why I was so excited over $3. For years afterwards, she would send me job ads for intern positions and minimum wage jobs. She thought I was desperately poor because I was so excited over making $3. In her mind she was trying to be a good friend and help me out by getting me a "real job". I tried to explain to her the concept of passive income generation, but it never really clicked. She never got past my excitement over making $3 for one day. So for years my friend would send me the low paying job ads and for years I would politely express my thanks and let it go at that.

Some days my little site makes more than $3 a day and some days less, but since it has been online it has consistently averaged at least a thousand dollars a year for little extra work on my part each year except to pay the small hosting fee.

Ways to make passive or semi passive income include:

Royalties on books, DVDs, online videos, audio books, etc.
With the advent of the Internet age and easy self publishing options, almost anyone can create their own book or DVD these days, My idol with this model is J.K. Rowling. She wrote each Harry Potter book once and has now earned over a billion dollars in royalties and licensing fees with no end in sight.

Income from revenue sharing sites for blog posts, forum posts, and article writing
Since the revenue is shared with the site owners, the income per word on revenue sharing sites is generally much lower than most good writers could do with their own blogs or web sites. The advantage to revenue sharing deals is that it is easier to get traffic since these large sites are already ranked in the search engines. Though it may be an easy way to make some extra income, in order to make a living at this model you often need to have thousands of articles online, because the pay per article is often very low. Many freelancers who use this model claim to make average anywhere from 30 cents to $2 per article per month.

Rent from real estate
In terms of tax lingo, real estate rent may be a passive income activity, but in terms of hours of work needed to generate $1 of income, personally I think real estate is a lot of work. Initially looking at properties, finding one to buy, and sorting out the financing and acquiring the property is quite time consuming. Later on there is finding and keeping good tenants and keeping up the property. If you have an older rental that needs a lot of maintenance work, have tenants that don't keep up the property or pay the rent on time, dealing with these issues can take up a lot of your time.

Licensing inventions
This is a good option for creative types, but not everyone can think up ideas worth licensing. If you like this option, watch the show Shark Tank on TV. Budding inventors present their ideas to a panel of money sharks who either invest in their businesses or send them packing. Hint: most people get sent packing.

Interest income from financial instruments like savings accounts, certificates of deposits and Treasury bills and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS)
This option is the least work but you have to have the money to invest upfront in order to make money. Right now with interest rates so low it you need a very high principal to make a living off interest income.

Ad revenue from web sites and blogs
This is one of the easiest ways to get started with literally zero upfront costs. Anyone with basic computer skills can sign up for a free blogspot blog and have a blog up and running in an hour or so with Adsense ads on it. The downside is that you have millions of competitors in most popular topics. Plus it may take time to build up a readership and achieve decent search engine rankings. I like to write about personal finance so I keep up this blog and companion web site up more as a hobby, but my web sites that make the most money are generally the ones on much less competitive topics.

Dividend income from stocks
This was a safer strategy years ago. With the seesaw fortunes of major banks and other industries these past few years, dividend income isn't something to be counted on for stability as much as it has in the past. Still dividend income makes stock ownership less volatile than just counting on capital appreciation.

Capital gains appreciation from assets like stocks, real estate, gold, collectibles
Over the really long haul, inflation often helps assets like these rise in price, but it isn't something you can always count on. During recessions and after market "bubbles", assets like these can take a huge tumble.

Cash Back Credit Cards
If you pay your credit bills off each month, consider getting a cash back charge card. Some pay as high as 2% right now. I pay for groceries and utilities with my cash back cards simply for the rewards. You have to buy food and pay your phone bill anyway so why not make a little extra money off each transaction? After the initial work of finding a high paying rewards card, you can earn money, airline miles or gift certificates with little extra effort throughout the year.

Buying Groceries on Sale
This requires a non-passive effort, but most of us have to buy groceries anyway so it is not a lot of extra work for the amount of money saved. Stockpile those nonperishable or freezable groceries when they are on sale at 2 for 1 prices and make 100% return on your money. Since you are buying groceries with after tax money, the $10 you save on loss leader groceries after tax might be equal to earning an extra $20 in income after state, federal, local, social security and medicare taxes are deducted from your pay.

Maximum Rewards for Least Effort
Passive income is helpful for making the most income with the least amount of effort. That $3 a day web site today might just turn into thousands of dollars over the years without any extra time invested in it. When groceries are on sale at half price, it is almost as easy to buy 6 tubes of toothpaste as it is to buy 2. Each time you make an investment, spend money or envision a money making project, think about how much work it will take over the long term to bring in each $1 of future income.

Book Review: Making a Living Without A Job

2010-01-31T02:05:09Z

Book Review: Making a Living Without a Job: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love, by Barbara J. Winter

This is a book published in the pre-Internet days in 1993. I checked it out from the library to see if it had any golden nuggets of wisdom that could be applied to today's job seekers. Ironically, it has a chapter on "Becoming Joyfully Jobless". Well, a lot of people are jobless these days but not too many are joyful about it.

It has one cool quote by Aristotle, "Where Your talents and the world's needs cross, there lies your vocation." Other than that, the book seemed kind of scattered. It had few suggestions on actual jobs people could do, but more on how to brainstorm how to create your perfect job, more along the lines of "What Color is Your Parachute." Most of the kinds of jobs she lists in the book seemed like a lot of work for low pay pay, and the author herself talks about so many different jobs it is kind of scary.

In contrast, in The Millionaire Next Door books, many of the millionaires are self employed but they have a single traditional business they own and manage, like a dry cleaning business or a janitorial service. They aren't just sitting around thinking about a classes they could teach here and there, tour groups they could charge for, or seasonal jobs they could get in their area of interest. In the Making a Living Book, Ms. Winter also discusses the importance of having multiple streams of income. Again to contrast with TMND books, the best way to have a safety net on income is to have one business with many clients, and then to save and invest the profits from the business. Having income from 5 different jobs seems like a bad idea, since each one is likely to be part time and low paying, and it is especially unrealistic in today's job market when people are lucky to have even one job.

To sum things up, the title is catchy but it isn't the kind of book that stands the test of time. It isn't really worth reading for today's job seekers.

Where to Get High Rates of Return on Your Money

2010-01-23T01:19:36Z

1. Buying necessities on sale. Everybody need things like toilet paper, toothpaste, shampoo, right? When you buy items at a 2 for 1 sale, you are getting a 100% return on your money. If you buy a tube of toothpaste for $2.49 and get one free, then you are earning $2.49 on your initial $2.49 investment. That is a better rate of return than you can get even in most bull stock markets. This works only if you buy necessities and the price of the item hasn't been increased to cover the sale. Many stores have loss leader sales to attract customers. Take advantage of these loss leader sales and stock up when you can.

2 for 1 ROI: 100%

2. Discounted employee stock purchase plans. You can make a great rate of return on your money if your employer sells stock at a discount with no vesting period required before you sell the stock. At a former employer, my husband buy company stock at a 15% discount. We signed up to buy $20,000 worth of stock each year. The money was subtracted in equal installments from my husband's paychecks twice each month. The stock was bought at the end of each quarter. At the end of each quarter we would then turn around and sell the stock right away for the full price.

Each quarter my husband had $5,000 deducted from his paychecks in equal amounts over the quarter. The average amount of money we had in the stock purchase plan during each quarter was $2,500 - zero at the beginning of the quarter and $5,000 at the end. At the end of each quarter $5,000 of company stock was bought at a 15% discount, or $5,882 worth of stock. We then sold it right away making a profit of approximately $882. (The amount varied slightly because of changes in the stock prices during the settlement period. But more or less, we averaged $882 profit each quarter, before taxes and less minor transaction costs.) Over the course of the year we had an average investment in the stock plan of $2,500 and made $3,528.

Employee stock purchase plan: ROI: 141%

3. Shopping at Costco of Sam's Club - A local leading consumer magazine recently calculated that Costco and Sam's Club prices were approximately 37% lower than retail store prices for comparable items. I have compared prices myself and agree with this figure. This means that if you spent $63 on groceries at a warehouse club, those same groceries at a regular supermarket would cost $100. In effect, you are saving $37 on your $63 investment, for a rate of return of almost 59%.

Costco/Sam's ROI: 59%

4. Outsourcing your life - If you are self employed or paid hourly, and you make significantly more than minimum wage, then consider hiring teenagers or other people willing to work for minimum wage to do the routine tasks of your life, such as mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, and going to the dry cleaners. If you can work more hours at $30 an hour and hire someone to do routine chores for you at $10, then that is a 200% return on your money.

Outsourcing Routine Tasks ROI: 200%, varies based on your hourly income and what you pay your helpers.

5. Hire someone to shop at Costco for you - If you don't have the time or interest to shop at Costco now, you could potentially pay someone to do monthly shopping there for you. If your helper buys $128 worth of groceries and other necessities that would have cost $200 at the regular grocery store and you pay them $10 for the Costco shopping trip, then you are in effect earning $62 on your $10 expense of labor costs.

Hiring a Costco Shopper: Potential 620% ROI

6. Signup Bonuses to Open New Checking Accounts: I just opened an account for $500 to get a $100 signup bonus. The only condition is that I have to leave my $500 in the checking account for 3 months. The ROI for this is 20% for one quarter so if I can do this 4 times a year with other banks the annual ROI on my $500 will be 80% ((4X100)/500).

Checking Account Bonus ROI: Up to 80% Annually

7. Use Sam's Club Click N' Pull Service - Sam's web site has a feature where you can order your groceries online and they do all of the shopping for you. They send you an email when your cart full of goods is ready to be picked up and paid for. Best of all this service is completely free. If you are self employed like me this is a real time and money saver.

Sam's Click N' Pull Service ROI: It's free, so it save you per hour whatever your time is worth.

How to Use Mastercard, Visa or American Express Gift Cards at Amazon

2009-12-30T07:05:48Z

Amazon is one of the few places online where you can easily use American Express, Visa and Mastercard gift cards for purchases. Here's is how I've done it in the past.

1. Place the merchandise you want to order in your Amazon cart. Go to the place your order screen. Click the "change" circle under payment method.

2. On the payment method screen, under "Other Payment Options", click on the add a new card circle.

3. Enter your gift card number, card type and expiration date as shown on your card. (You may need to activate your card first, depending on the instructions that came with your card.) Under the name on card field, type in whatever name is printed on your gift card. The one I have commonly used in past is "GIFT CARD RECIPIENT". Yours might also say something like "A gift card for you" or "Gift Card Holder". Whatever is on your gift card for name should go into the name field on the Amazon payment options screen.

4. Select this new payment option to make your Amazon purchase. If your purchase is equal to or less than the balance on your card, that should do it. Otherwise you will need to add the step below

4A. If your purchase is MORE than the balance on the gift card, send your self an Amazon gift card for difference prior to finalizing your checkout. Then at check out time, apply your Amazon gift card number FIRST. This will reduce your total due by the amount on the Amazon gift card. Next, select your American Express/ Visa/Mastercard for the remainder of the purchase. This way you can use up your gift cards to the penny before they expire or incur service charges.

For example, if your American Express/Visa/Mastercard gift card is for $50 and you buy something at Amazon for $21.50, including taxes and shipping, then just follow steps 1 through 4 above. You should still have $28.50 left on your card when you are done with your purchase.

However, if you have a $50 Am Ex/ Visa/ MC gift card and your Amazon purchase totals $61.50, then you will need to add step 4A above. In this case, before you finish your purchase send yourself an online Amazon gift card for $11.50. Then at checkout apply this Amazon gift card to your purchase first and pay for the remainder with your Am Ex/ Visa/ MC gift card. That way you use up your $50 gift card to the penny.

If you have any questions, please feel free to add them to the comments below and I'll try to answer them. You can also visit my main site for more ideas on how to make money by rounding up your old gift cards.

The Carnival of Personal Finance - The 232rd Edition

2009-11-23T16:56:45Z

Check out the Carnival of Personal Finance - The Thanksgiving Survival Edition Hosted by Fiscal Geek. My entry for this Carnival is Ten Creative Ways to Boost Earn an Extra Income. It is worth the click just to see the cute Lego Thanksgiving picture.

Check out the Carnival for tips on living on one income, lots of Black Friday shopping tips and even some special tips just for Thanksgiving, like don't give away all of the leftovers.

Well, there won't be any leftovers at my house this year. We are going out to a swanky restaurant with scenic views of the bay followed by a hike, if the weather is nice. Usually we go away for Thanksgiving but as our kids are getting older it is hard to find places to go that everyone enjoys. Spending a week in a retirement community in Arizona to visit the grandparents is getting harder to pull off each year. So this year we succombed to the path of least resistance and will have a relaxing, and hopefully whine free, holiday at home.

Ten Creative Ways to Earn an Extra Income

2009-11-16T04:59:05Z

Many of us are conditioned to think of earning our main income in one specific way: we look for a job, get hired, and at the end of the week or month we get a paycheck. For those with an entrepreneurial spirit, there are probably thousands of ways to earn extra money even when you don't have a regular job. Here are a few suggestions to get you started on a journey of self employment, or at least maybe a little extra side income.

1. Repair Other People's Discards. If you are handy at fixing things, you can repair other people's trash and then resell the refurbished items. Robert Jessberger repairs other people's discards and as a result, "donates thousands of dollars' worth of goods he saves from the garbage to charity and neighbors every year. He sells what's left at an annual garage sale that has paid for him and his wife to go on seven cruises."

Jessberger is now in trouble because it is illegal where he lives to go through other people's trash. But perhaps all of you handymen and women out there could find a legal way to repair and sell other people's discards by going to garage sales, thrift shops and picking up unwanted items on Freecycle (www.freecycle.org). You know the old saying, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

2. Sell Refurbished Web Sites. Go through the search engine search return pages looking for old sites that have been neglected and abandoned, make offer to buy them, spruce them up and then resell them for a profit at Flippa (www.flippa.com) or Ebay (www.ebay.com).

3. Sell Your Old Jewelry. Shop around at local pawn brokers for the best deal on selling your old gold jewelry or other gold items. Though a little more work, selling locally and getting competitive bids for your items is apt to pay much better than the web sites that have you mail in your items. For a list of places to sell your jewelry, check out the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers membership directory.

4. Write an ebook. Most people have at least a few things they know more about than other people. What is your specialty? Marking great salads, kid's soccer drills, car repair or raising dachshunds? If you have a subject you are an expert on, write an ebook, post it on Clickbank (www.clickbank.com) and pay web site publishers a commission to sell it for you on their web sites.

5. Sell your old gadgets. Visit sites like Gazelle (www.gazelle.com) and get paid for your old gadgets. Gazelle is interested in buying the following types of items:

Cell phones
MP3 Players
Digital cameras
Calculators
Lap Tops
Gaming Devices
External Drives
Games
DVDs

6. Sell Your Old DVDs. At sites like DVDPawn (www.dvdpawn.com) you can sell your old DVDs for cash. You can enter the bar codes for your DVDs at their site and get a price quote immediately.

7. Create Web Sites to Sell. Make generic web sites for local businesses, like www.oaktownplumber.com. Fill them up with some unique plumbing articles, get some links and try to get them to rank in the search engines for terms like "oaktown plumbers". Local search terms are usually pretty easy to rank because the competition is so low. Then sell the sites on places like Flippa and Ebay, or offer to sell them directly to local plumbers.

8. Design T-shirts, mugs, and related gift type items. If you can make a cool design or think of a witty saying, Cafepress (www.cafepress.com) is a made to order site that sells items like buttons, T-shirts, mugs, etc. with your creation imprinted on the items. I have used them to buy niche hobby items for my family, like paintball mugs and mouse pads, that I couldn't find at a regular retail store.

9. Start a newsletter. If you have an area of expertise, start a newsletter on the topic. You can get subscribers through your own blog, web site or by paying for advertising through programs like Google's Adwords (adwords.google.com).

10. Make a directory. Start an online directory that people might find useful, For example you could list all of the archery ranges, clubs and supply stores in Montana or all of the karate schools and teachers in Michigan. You could make money by placing ads on the directory, and once your directory is established you can charge businesses to be included.

Related Articles:

Five Ways to Make Money Without Leaving Home - from Second Rotation, the company behind electronic recycling site, Gazelle.

Sam's Club vs Costco: Which is Better?

2009-11-13T02:18:54Z

From what I've read and my own shopping experiences, the prices are pretty similar. According to a recent study in a local magazine, in my area you can save around 36% off retail grocery store prices by shopping at either warehouse store. Costco has an optical department that was highly rated by a leading consumer magazine for product quality, so in my myopic family we use them for prescription glasses and sun glasses. Between the two stores located near me, Costco has by far the quicker check out lines, though the lines at Sam's Club aren't bad if you go during the off hours. Both stores have very similar product lines, though the Costco near me has a lot of organic items while the local Sam's Club has few, if any, organic products.

The big advantage to my local Sam's Club is their Click and Pull service. It allows you to select products online and then send your list to your nearest Sam's Club with the click of a mouse. Sam's Club employees put the items on your list in a cart. (I guess "pull" is warehouse lingo for putting items in your cart.) They email you when your cart is read for pickup, usually within a day. They also create one sheet with a scan code for your entire order so you don't have to have each individual product rung up at the register, which also saves a lot of time.

I think it is great. It is like having concierge shopping service with warehouse prices. I can't believe more people don't take advantage of it. I asked recently at my local Sam's who used the service and they said it was popular with business owners. I'm surprised more soccer moms and other people like me don't make use of it. I'm trying to spread the word because I love it and I want them to keep the service going. By using my online shopping list, I can check at home which items I need so I don't order too much of any one item or not order something I'm out of. It save me hours of going through their store putting items in my cart. I think it saves money, too, because it cuts down on impulse buying. The only additions I make to my cart when I get to the store are freezer and refrigerator items. Other than that, there is no shopping required anymore. It is more like an order pick up instead.

How to Get the Best Deal on a New Refrigerator

2009-10-28T23:45:30Z

Recently our old refrigerator finally gave out, so I have been a frugal shopper in trying to get the best price for a new one. We needed a stainless steel model within a certain height and depth range, so picking out a new one was actually pretty easy since there are only about four that exist on the planet that we could fit in our kitchen without remodeling and tearing out the existing cabinets. Of these four the cheapest one looked nice, had a decent capacity, and had a good repair record on Consumer Reports. So with a little online searching, and hours of reviews of height and depth specifications, I'd found the one for us. The next step was to get the best price. Here are the steps I took:

1. I entered the model number into Google and found the prices at various comparison shopping sites, including Google shopping. A lot of places I'd never heard of were pretty cheap and there would be no sales tax getting it from out of state. However, I have had enough problems with misdeliveries and malfunctionings on appliances in the past to want to go with a local store. If you are more of a large appliance risk taker than I, your rock bottom prices will probably be at some online stores in New Jersey that you never heard of before. Order it and good luck. However, if you are more of the cautious type like me, you may want to order your refrigerator locally. Then read on.

2. I checked the price of my new appliance to be online at Sears, Costco, Lowes, Sam's Club, Best Buy and Home Depot. Sear's had the best price at $1,742. (Now I know that is not a particularly frugal price, but remember it is still much cheaper than remodeling my kitchen to fit in a standard size refrigerator at a lower price point.) These are all of the stores in my local area that will price match each other. They will not price match Internet ads from out of state.

3. Next I went in person to Home Depot but they could not order the brand I wanted. I followed this with a trip to the local Best Buy store. Best Buy offered to match the Sears price online, but would not give me a better deal. Next I went in to Sears to find out their best deal and they would not budge on the price. They said if I could find it cheaper and in stock at a local store they would match the price, but other than that it was no refrigerator deals for me that day.

3. Next I tried all of my special shopping deal programs. My Discover Card, American Automobile Association, Entertainment Book online and Border Rewards program all have partner deals for shopping at various stores where you can get 5% or more discounts as long as you make your purchase through their online links. I checked all of them for discounts with Best Buy and Sears, and came up with a winner. My Border's Rewards Perks program has an appliance discount program with Sears. I called a toll free number, gave the woman my appliance model number and coupon code and was quoted a price of $1,672 plus free delivery after rebate. Woohoo!

4. It took me probably 15 minutes to check my different online shopping programs for appliance discounts and I ended up saving $130 on my new fridge. How cool is that?

5. I paid for my fridge with a rewards back charge card for an extra 1% back.

If you are not already a member of Border's Rewards program, you may want to sign up. It is free to join and besides the shopping deals, you get coupons for up to 40% off on books and related items online and at their stores.

Carnival Of Personal Finance #228 - The Halloween Edition

2009-10-28T19:38:01Z

Check out the cool tips from the Carnival Of Personal Finance - The Halloween Edition. My post on "Are Rechargeable Batteries Cost Effective?" has been included. Yeah! It is my first blog carnival.

Costco Membership Discount Offer

2009-10-28T07:07:36Z

Ebates currently has an offer on Costco memberships. It expires 12/31/2009. It costs $50 to join Costco. This offer is good if you either join Costco as a new member or upgrade a current membership. Ebates is free to join and they give you cash back on your online shopping. Basically Ebates has an affiliate program with different merchants like Costco and they share their commissions with their customers.

If you join or upgrade your Costco membership through the Ebates offer, Ebates will give you cash back of $1.75. The catch is that you have to have a minimum of $5.00 in cash back for Ebates to cut you a check, so this offer only works if you use Ebates for other online purchases.

Beside the cash back from Ebates, Costco will give new or upgrading members coupons worth more than $50 including:

1. A free rotisserie chicken.

I don't usually buy this item at Costco but I'm guessing this is worth about $5.

2. Free photo processing.

We just print our own pictures on the PC printer, except for one of my kids who is taking a photo class, but he has to develop his own pictures anyway as a part of the class. So to me free photo processing isn't worth anything.

3. A two pound bag of coffee. The brand is Cosco's house brand, Kirkland signature.

We only drink instant, organic coffee so to me this isn't worth anything. I don't normally even buy ground coffee, but I would guess this is worth about $7 to people who like to drink generic ground coffee.

4. A 48 pack of AA batteries.

Name brand AA batteries go for around $1 a battery at warehouse prices, but the house brands are usually considerably less. I couldn't find a price for a Kirkland AA batteries online, but the Member's Mark brand AA batteries at Sam's Club sell for around $10 for a pack of 48 single use batteries.

Then they offer the nebulous "and more" which could be more of the above or totally worthless stuff. Who knows? They also say they will give you multiple certificates to give as gifts, but they don't say what the certificates are for.

So is this s good deal? If you were going to join or upgrade your membership anyway, then sure, anything extra that is free is worth it.

If you are a current member, is it worth it to upgrade? Maybe. The Executive membership costs $100, $50 more than the standard membership, and gives you 2% back each year, so if you spend a lot at Costco, then the upgrade can pay for itself even without the free coupons. Personally, I've started buying more at Sam's Club, because they have this new service called Click N' Pull. This service allows you to place your order online and then they assemble and put everything in the cart for you. You get an email when your basket is ready for you. So you get warehouse prices with a concierge shopping service. That is a neat feature that is hard to beat, and as far as I know Costco doesn't have anything comparable.

I still keep my membership at Costco because I like their optical department, and we have enough myopic people in my family that the Costco membership fee is worth it just for that, if nothing else. Other than that, these days I'm personally a Click N' Pull shopper at Sam's Club.

Can Rechargeable Batteries Save You Money?

2009-10-23T19:57:16Z

Rechargeable Batteries Provide Electrifying Savings

Kids and all of their toys and gear can use up a dry cell battery faster than most moms can say "turn off that Xbox and do your homework." According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's web site, Americans purchase nearly three billion dry-cell batteries every year to power products like cell phones, toys, lap top computers, tools and portable radios. The vast majority of these purchases are single use batteries. If you want to be a frugal consumer, be aware that one battery that is rechargeable can substitute for hundreds of single use batteries.

One Rechargeable May Save Up To $500 Over Its Life Span

So let's do a little math to see how much you can save by using rechargeables. As of this writing you can buy a regular, name brand AA alkaline battery in a bulk pack at Sam's Club for about $1 a battery. You can buy a rechargeable AA battery at Sam's Club in a bulk pack for around $3 a battery. If we use estimates previously published from Uniross, a rechargeable battery maker, we can assume that each rechargeable lasts the life of 500 single use batteries. This means that each rechargeable AA battery you use instead of a disposable battery may save you $497 over the life span of the rechargeable battery.

Or to put it mathematically:

500 single use AA batteries @ $1 each = $500

1 rechargeable battery @ $3 = $3

Difference = $497 savings

Return on your $3 investment: 16,566.67%

Kind of beats putting the money into CDs, doesn't it?

If you live in state with a high sales tax, the savings are even greater. Sales tax on $500 worth of disposable batteries in a location with a 9% sales tax would be another $45.00, while the tax on the $3 rechargeable battery would be 27 cents, for an additional savings of $44.73.

Please note that these calculations do not include the cost of the battery charger, which would be a small one time expense for the first year. You can buy an inexpensive battery charger from Amazon or Sam's Club for about $10 - $15. You only need one charger for all of your rechargeable batteries, so this cost is pretty nominal on a per battery basis.

Good For Your Wallet, Good for the Environment

As an added environmental benefit, by using rechargeables in every appliance where it is practical and properly recycling them, over your lifetime you will be keeping thousands of single use batteries out of landfills.

We still use single use batteries in our smoke detectors because they last longer than one charge life of a rechargeable battery. No one wants to risk having a smoke detector lose power, so this is one are where you don't want to be penny wise and pound foolish. However, since we've never had a catastrophic Xbox controller failure at our house (at least not from my perspective), devices like these are perfect for utilizing rechargeables.

Some people also recommend single use batteries in emergency flashlights where there may be a long period of time between uses. I solved this problem at our house by purchasing power failure nightlights that plug into the wall outlets turn on when the power goes out. I also purchased several wind up flashlights to keep around the house. So now when we have a power failure at night the emergency nightlights turn on automatically, which gives us just enough light to stumble through our house trying to remember where we last left the wind up flashlights.

How Much Do Most People Spend on Groceries?

2009-10-22T04:59:35Z

According to the Food CPI and Expenditures table at the United Sates Department of Agriculture's web site, per capita spending on food in the U.S. in 2008 was $3,832. Of this total, $1,973 was spent on food prepared at home and $1,859 was spent on food prepared away from home. If you multiply $3,832 X 4, then a family of four would be expected to spend $15,382 per year on food, including both grocery store and restaurant expenditures. Food prepared at home only would be $7,892. ( Of course, this cost would vary from family to family depending on factors like the regional prices of food in your particular geographic area and the ages of your family members.) Visit my main site for tips on how to reduce your grocery bill.

In a separate study from the U.S. government's Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average "consumer unit" of four spent $9,478 on food in 2008. Of this amount, $5,478 was spent on food at home and $4,000 was spent on food away from home.

Just for grins, the average of the two study results for a "consumer unit" of four comes out to $12,430, for the total amount spent on food, both home and away. If we only consider food prepared at home (what most normal people would simply call groceries), then that amount averages out to $6,685.

According to an article at MSNBC, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates about 12.5 percent of the average family's spending goes toward food, while the Department of Agriculture puts the figure at 9.8 percent."

How much do you spend on groceries?