Mail-In rebates are evil, AVOID THEM!

If I had a choice between an instant $5 off on a product or a mail-in rebate of $20 off on a product I would pick the first one.

Mail-In rebates are a scam in my opinion. First you have to mail in the rebate, UPC, and any other junk, then you have to wait 6-2,343 weeks just to get the thing! And you only have a limited time to do it before it expires! Plus you have to pay for the stamp just to mail the stupid thing! Just give me the instant rebate anyday, I don't care how small it is compared to the mail-in.

An article on MSN puts it best:

"Rebates can often take months to be paid out, and some you might not get back at all. Some manufacturers and rebate-fulfillment houses have a bad track record of paying rebates. Government watchdog agencies are trying to crack down in this area, but there is still some risk involved in buying and expecting to get money back later."

Be a smarter shopper

This video clips tells you tricks that retail uses to get you to spend more.

Cut It Out: Things you should cut out to save some money

I got this from Yahoo Financial

I'm particularly guilty of #1 and #4

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When it comes to cutting costs, consumers always look at the big stuff. Postponing that vacation. Keeping your car a few more years. Nixing the addition on the house.

But it's often the little things that can make an even bigger difference. For instance, Joseph Montanaro, a certified financial planner for USAA Financial Planning Services, says he saved $130 a month just by kicking his daily Dr Pepper habit. That's a savings of $1,560 over a year.

We calculated the savings you might see from making various adjustments over a period of one year, from carpooling to work, to drinking a cheaper cup of coffee, to taking a quicker shower. If you do all the things we suggest here, you could save at least $5,000 over a year's time. That's real money.

So, what lifestyle change can save you the most cash? Read on.

How much can you save over one year if you...

1) Cut your daily shower to 10 minutes from 15 minutes?

$102. A 10-minute shower uses about 25 gallon of water (that's assuming the showerhead emits 2.5 gallons of water a minute). That means a total water and energy cost of 57 cents a day, or about $208 a year, according to Seattle City Light's Conservation Resources Division.

By contrast, a 15-minute shower consumes 37.5 gallons of water with a total energy and water cost of 85 cents. Over a year, that 15-minute shower costs you slightly more than $310. So get out of the shower faster to save some money.

2) Reduce your home's water heater setting to 120 degrees from 140 degrees?

$125. That's if you use an electric water heater. The annual savings would be somewhat less -- $75 -- if you have a gas water heater, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's EnergyStar program.

3) Brew your own cup of coffee instead of picking up a latte at Starbucks?

$912. A tall latte at the local Starbucks will run you about $3 a cup, or $1,095 a year, if you go there every day. If you brew your own at home for 50 cents or less per cup, you'll pay nearly $183.

4) Prepare your own lunch rather than buying out?

$1,460 to $3,650. If you make lunch from last night's leftovers, you can avoid spending an extra $4 to $10 a day, says Dwight Raiford, a senior financial planner with MetLife.

5) Hit the water cooler at work instead of buying bottled water?

$260 to $390. If you can avoid paying for the bottled stuff (at $1 to $1.50 a bottle), you can save at least $5 to $7.50 for each five-day work week. Yet one more reason to gossip around the water cooler.

6) Carpool or work from home one day a week instead of driving into the office each day?

$423. Let's assume a gas price of about $4.07 a gallon (We know. It's much higher in a lot of places and it's not going to stay at $4.07 a gallon.) Let's also figure on a daily round-trip commute of 30 miles and that a full-size car or SUV can get about 15 city miles to the gallon. An employee who logs on from home or catches a ride with a co-worker a minimum of once a week can avoid spending at least $8.14 at the pump a week.

7) Cut your lawn yourself instead of hiring a lawn service?

$1,040 to $4,680. You can trim costs substantially by cutting your lawn yourself. Lawn services generally charge $20 to $40 for a weekly cutting for an average lawn, and as much as $90 if you throw in leaf blowing and hedging, etc. But you'll have to subtract what it costs to fuel your mower. Obviously, you'll have to use a manual mower to get the most savings.

8) Polish your nails at home instead of getting a weekly manicure?

$520 to $1,040. Skip the salon and buff your nails yourself, and you'll pocket $10 to $20 a week.

9) Order a film from a movie-rental service instead of going to the nearest multiplex?

$36. This assumes that a movie ticket is about $7 these days (yes, such places exist. It can be more like $10 or up in many places). It also assumes that you go to the movies once a month, and that DVD services like Netflix.com, Blockbuster.com and Intelliflix.com offer plans for as low as $3.99 a month.

More benefits: The flat monthly DVD service fee often includes more than one rental a month, and the popcorn you pop may be cheaper and healthier than the stuff at the local theater. And we won't even begin to discuss the cost of a baby-sitter.

10) Use compact fluorescent bulbs in your lamps and light fixtures instead of the old incandescent type?

$120. If you replace just one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent one, you'll save $6 in electricity costs over a year, according to the EnergyStar program. If you've got 20 bulbs in your house, those savings will start to look even brighter.

Put Savings First

This is a must read for people who are trying to budget their money

http://finance.yahoo.com/how-to-guide/banking-budgeting/12832

Things to do to lower your gas price

I got this from a website:

Everyone’s feeling the pinch of high gas prices, but there are a few things you can do to slightly ease the pain:

• Stay on track. Map out an efficient route to combine your shopping assignments with errands to minimize driving. Saving 8 miles per day in a car that gets 20 miles per gallon can save you $600 per year!
• Watch the clock. Leave early enough to reach your destination on time without driving aggressively. Driving over the speed limit and “jackrabbit” starts and stops use more gas.
• Downsize. If you have more than one vehicle, drive the smaller one whenever you can.
• Put your car on a diet. Remove anything unnecessary that adds excess weight to your car (get the junk out of the trunk and take off the luggage carrier when you’re not using it). An extra 100 pounds can reduce fuel economy by 2%. A loaded roof rack can reduce it by 5%!

For more ideas, visit these government web sites:
www.fueleconomy.gov
www.ftc.gov

A great way to save money, your neighbor!

It seems nowadays people, especially here in DC, don't talk to their neighbors. That's really a bad thing because your neighbor can be a great way to save money.

Now some of you are saying "what do you mean?" What I mean is this: There are some things you should buy with a neighbor rather than by yourself. Lawnmowers, weed wackers, and other expensive outdoor tools and equipments should be bought with a neighbor. One reason is that unless you're running a landscape business it's not used more often than once a week.

Another benefit that cooperating with a neighbor can provide is buying bulk food. You and your neighbor or neighbors can go to places like Costco or Sam's Club and purchase those bulk item which then you can divide them up.

With a neighbor you can buy stuff cheaper, help reduce consumption, and put more use into the products you buy.

Not only does this help you build your liquid assets but it also builds something else: trust. There are many times when you're going to need help from your fellow neighbor and visa-versa. After all no man is an island.

Power to the Zip Lock bag!

The Zip Lock bag is a great invention. It can hold almost anything that isn't liquid, and it can hold liquids as well but you might see a few leaks coming out. It was made to be used one time however if it's a good quality one you can use it many times.

Of course the obvious reason this is better because you can save money on reusing the bags, but another good reason is because it reduces waste which is also good for the environment. All you have to do is wash out the bag, dry it off and use it again. Don't buy the cheap knockoffs because they won't last long get some good quality ones.

Everyday Cheapskate

Debt-proof living is one of my favorite sites because of one section: Everyday Cheapskate. On that section you will find simple tips that will help you save more money in your pocket. Check it out!

Two for One...Free Delivery...Hooked Yet?

I found this article on Yahoo, I found it interesting.

Two for One...Free Delivery...Hooked Yet?

Saving, the key to being rich

If there is such a thing as the "golden rule" for financing, then this would be it: It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.

Saving is a big issue here in the United States, where the average person has more debt then liquid cash. Of course the whole ARM housing loans and bankers carelessness had some contribution to our economic problems but for the most part we are the ones who caused it.

Here are some websites to check out for more about savings:

BestCashCow.com is an excellent website where you can see the top rates for online savings, CDs, bonds, funds, etc. It also has articles about personal financing, retirement planning, etc. It's a great site so check it out.

BankRate.com gives an in-dept analyst and comparisons of home equity, cds, checkings and savings, retirement, etc. What I really like about the site are the calculators they have on there. You can calculate you mortgages, CDs, and probably the most important one is the home budget.

SmartyPig is a rather unique online savings site. It helps you save up for any goals that you want (buying a new house, getting a new iPod, saving up for a vacation, etc.) What's also good about it is that you can have other people contribute to it. Hey does anybody wanna contribute to my grand vacation to Russia? :-)

Tips on using these GPT sites

Hi again, the last blog I talked about GPT sites, this time I'll give you some tips on using these GPT sites.

You really don't have to follow any of these advices except this one:

NEVER EVER DO AN OFFER MORE THAN ONCE EVEN IF IT IS ON ANOTHER SITE! The only other time you can do an offer more than once is if you never got the credit and you remove it from your pending list. The consequences are the you never get the credit and your account can be deleted.

The best thing to do is to keep track of all your completed offers, I use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the offers I do and what site I completed them on.

Voicemail and Phone

The one bad thing about filling out offers on these GPT sites is that these marketing site will bombard your email with spam and will blow up your phone with offers. The one thing you want to do before you get heavily involve in GPT sites is to get an extra local phone number that provides voicemail. There used to be free voicemail services but they're all gone and the cheapest one I've found was around $9.95 a month, please tell me if you know a cheaper one. However I would suggest another alternative and that is to get a prepaid cell phone. A prepaid cell phone with a local number is perfect since there are no long term contracts and those telemarketers won't be calling your regular phone or cell phone.

If you do decide to go that route then you should be looking for a prepaid cell phone that's cheap, does not charge for activation or the activation is cheap, don't charge for daily access, and the minutes doesn't expire quickly.

The best one I've found is T-Mobile with their cell phones as cheap as $29.99 for a Nokia 2610 with their Pay-As-You-Go plan. The Pay-As-You-Go come with refills of 30, 130, 400, and 1,000 minutes for $10, $25, $50, and $100 respectively. The minutes last for 90 days for the first three refills but if you get the $100 one your minutes won't expire for one year! This is very much a good plan.

However if you use your minutes very wisely you can use the $10 and refill three more times for the rest of the year, it averages out to only 3 minutes per day. You also need to take in account that the phone number is good for only 90 days after expiration before you lose it. So if you bought the phone for $30 and only spend $40 for the next year you will only spend $70 for the entire year, much cheaper than the $9.95 voicemail service. However if you think it's impossible to do the $10 per 3 months, then get the $100 one and don't worry about it for a year.

This is better than a voicemail because there are some offers that requires you to pick up and answer the phone. However there are a few offers that do not allow cell phones to be used.

Since you will get quite a few call from these telemarketers why not get paid for it? Brring is a free ringback service that will pay a short ad when someone calls a number they provide for you. The Brring number is linked to your number thus you get paid for every time they call. Give it a try!

The Gmail Dot Trick

Here's something I wish I have done in the first place, then I wouldn't get so much spam. It's best to do no more than 2-3 offers at a time so that you can get the credit for those offers. This may sound weird but the more offer you do at one time the less likely you'll get credit for them. After you finish doing that group and they have approved you should use another email for the next group, that way you reduce the number of spam mail you receive. However if you have a Gmail account you can use the dot trick. Here's how it works, you put another dot anywhere before the @ symbol.

For example say your email is foobar@gmail.com, so for the next 2-3 offers you would use f.oobar@gmail com and for the next batch you would use fo.obar@gmail.com and you will keep on doing this just before you reach the @ symbol, so the last one will look like this: fooba.r@gmail com. After that you will use 2 dots for the next one like this: f.o.obar@gmail, then the next one for the next batch will look like this: f.oo.bar@gmail.com and so on. The hint here is that the longer the email name, the better.

Proxies

Another thing you don't want to do is never use a computer that has a proxy. That includes mostly any computer that is for public use (work, school, library, Internet Cafe, Kinkos, etc.) Any computer that is not individually owned usually have a proxy. You can get you account deleted and you many never get your money, so it's best not to use a computer that has a proxy.

Forums

The forums at some GPT sites are usually great at obtaining advices and tips on completing offers and getting referrals. The ones at Cashcrate and GPTCashcow are very active. There are people on those forums who are willing to help you out if you have any problems or in need of an advice. I got a lot out of them.

For more info and tips on GPT sites go to the follwing sites:

Survey
Makin' Money from Home
Make Money Online with Cashcrate
The noob guide to making $$$!

GPT/Survey Sites

One way to make money is to join a Get-Paid-To site (GPT). It's a basically a site where you make some money buy completing forms, taking surveys, and buying products from other companies. You won't make a lot of money that way but it can give you some spare change to carry around so that you don't have to rely on you paycheck too much when you plan to buy that latte at a coffee shop :)

However I should warn you that some of these GPT sites are really scams and that you should avoid them at all cost. A website called GPTBoycott gives a good listings of GPT sites to avoid. Also you can refer other people to these GPT sites and make some money off of them when they complete offers or fill surveys, however it takes time and effort to make that happen. This is not a "get rich quick" scheme, just like anything else you reap what you sow. I'll talk more about referrals at a later date.

Here are some GPT sites you can check out. Click on the either the image or the highlighted text to visit the site.





CashCrate is probably one of the easiest GPT sites to use. It has a clean layout, easy to follow rules for completing an offer and they do pay!, however they don't update their offers very often. This is a good GPT site to start off with.






GPTCashCow is another GPT site where you could earn some money. It's somewhat difficult to navigate and the layout is not as clean but the site constantly have new offers and there's a lot of contests and an active forum as well. I recently joined this one and I liked it so far.





Your Action Pays is another GPT site worth visiting. It has three different compensation plans to choose from and there are 10 referral levels as well.

And last but not least is myLot. It is a bit different from the rest of the GPT sites, instead of filling out surveys and offers you get paid by posting new discussions or contributing to old discussions. I just recently joined this one so I haven't got paid from them yet, however it doesn't hurt to try it since it is free to join. It might turn out to be my favorite one since I rather be posting discussions than filling out surveys and forms.

Speaking of which if you're into Westcoast-AOR or Yacht Rock or late-70s/early-80s adult contemporary rock and soft rock then come and join my discussion board at myLot. I just started it but I want it to be an active discussion board of Westcoast/AOR music.

The next blog I will talk about tips on completing offers on GPT sites. Until then take care and make that money!

A Short Intro

Welcome to my blog. As you can tell by the title the blog is primarily about money. Yes the blog will deal with making money but it will also deal with saving money, getting free stuff, financial news and tips, frugality, and finder cheaper ways to buying products or other things.

My plan is to build a website based on this but for now most of my information will be on this blog, so please come here very often.