Archive for August, 2006

Since we’ve moved into our new home, I’ve been itching to replace our dated 27″ CRT with a brand new 42″ LCD HDTV. I’m a gadget nut and usually am the first on the block to have such technological marvels as HDTV, but the $2000+ price tag was hampering me. Now they’ve gotten down to around $1500 for a 1080p set (some of the lower quality 42″ sets can even be had for under 1k) I’ve got the bug.

I’ve had my eye on this Westinghouse for a while, got excellent reviews over at the AVSForum and there have been some good deals on it posted over at Fatwallet and Slick Deals. Yesterday there was a deal posted where it was $1549 with free shipping & no tax at Crutchfield which is one of the best electronics sites as far as customer service and reputation out there.

I resisted. My emergency fund is lower than I want it to be, and I’m hoping there will be a killer deal around Christmas time (Black Friday possibly). But darn it would be nice to watch the baseball playoffs / start of the football season in HD, not to mention look very stylish over the fireplace. Ok, I know most people think thats tacky, but its my house and I’ll do what I want!

While not a power seller or the sorts, I do tend to put quite a bit of stuff up on online auction sites like Ebay, Amazon Marketplace, and Half.com. For smaller items like DVDs, books, and collectables sometimes the money you spend on shipping will make the difference between a good sale and a bad sale. The key is being able to take advantage of all the USPS has to offer.

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Typically the two sites I find myself deciding between while shopping and looking for a cashback program are Fatcash and MyPoints, usually opting for FatCash since its easier to navigate and I get cash instead of points to use on gift cards.

Well there is this cool little site called Ev’Reward which lets you search for a store you are looking to make a purchase at and it will list all the companies that offer cashback on the site, and what the amount is.  So for instance if I was shopping at Target, FatCash only gives me back 4.4%, Citi Dividend gives me back 6% cash, and the equivalent at MyPoints is 7.7% (they base it on 100 points being $0.77).  Unfortunatly I have to read the fine print for Target… the 7.7% is based on 10 points per $1 but you have to spend over $65 to get that, if you spend under that you only get 5 points per $1.

But overall, a pretty cool site to help in deciding where to get cashback from.

I’m not a big gabber on the phone, so I tried to look for ways to save on my home phone and cell phone service. I used to be with Sprint on a fairly good corporate plan where I paid about $35/mo after taxes and fees. But I found myself only using about 100-150 minutes a month and figured there had to be a better deal out there for someone like me. I also had home phone service through Verizon which ran about $45/mo after fees, plus any long distance I used. I searched out a way to save on the $80/mo I was paying for phone service.
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payday loans for everyday money needs

My parents were always big on giving me stock on special occasions. Usually it was a large company that they direct invested in through the company plans. Most of these were in the days before discount internet brokerages were offering $5 trades, and the main advantage to these was that you could invest small amounts for no to little fee and dividend reinvestment is usually free. Another perk to having the shares directly registered to you is that some of the companies will send you freebies around Christmas or annual report time.

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Linktified for your pleasure:
The Carnival of Real Estate is up at TheLandlordBlog.com.  Lots of great real estate articles.

The Carnival of Personal Fiance #63 is up at My1stMillionAt33.com.  Vote for me!
The Question of the Day at MoneyAndValues asks the burning question “Do you involve your values in your money decisions?”

Almost 3 years ago the company I work for announced they were closing my local office. They let about 50% of the workforce go, and gave the rest of us the option to either relocate to our out of state headquarters or work from home. Since I had met a girl, and just purchased a home, I elected to work from home.

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The gym my fiance and I used to frequent closed their doors abruptly about a month ago and we have been debating our options for a new gym. They just build a brand new $5 million Gold’s Gym right down the street from us about 5 months ago. We saw an ad in the newspaper yesterday for a free 2 week trial so decided to check it out. Our old gym was pretty much just a small room with some workout machines (of which about 10% were broken) with no showers. Gold’s in an immaculate palace compared to it with TV’s in all the machines, a sauna, movie theater room, yoga studio, and free classes every hour. The price also reflects this - our old gym was $30 for both of us and the Gold’s is $88.

There is also a new gym which is not complete yet going in about twice as far as the Gold’s, but still within a reasonable driving distance. It looks nice, not as nice as Gold’s, but still nicer than our old place. They are running an introductory offer now for $20/mo each, which is less than half of Gold’s. But they do not have the free classes which are a big plus for the fiance - she usually takes a separate Yoga class which she could then take at Gold’s for “free”. I would probably take advantage of them too since they are included. Plus its on her way to work, where the other gym is the opposite direction.

So, is $1056 a year too much to pay for a gym membership? If we each go 3 times a week that’s about $3.50 per use. I’m sure most of you with S.O.’s know you have to pick your battles, and unfortunately this is one that’s probably not worth fighting.

I’ll admit right now, I do not have my important documents stored in a safe place.  My property deed, birth certificate, social security card, and a few stock certificates are sitting in an unlocked file cabinet in my home office along with my fiances jewelry upstairs.  If my house is broken into, or worse burns or floods then I am pretty much SOL.  So is it worth it to get a safe deposit box?

Most of these items would simply be a gigantic inconvience if I were to lose them except the jewelry, but I can’t count on my insurance to cover those items since you need a special rider to cover anything really valuable.

Most people seem to recommend calling your local credit union for the best prices.  The boxes themselves can range anywhere from $20 to $70 depending on where you choose to store it.  I think I am going to call around here on Monday to see what local prices can run.

If you open an HSBCDirect Savings account right now, not only will you get a very healthy 5.05% APY but you’ll also get a $25 Gift Card to Best Buy. What I particularily like about this account is that I can walk into the HSBC branch a few minutes from my home and withdraw cash from this account, whereas most online banks you have to wait 3-5 days for the funds to ACH into your checking account. I find this much better for an emergency fund because of that.

Unfortunatly when I signed up it was $25 cash instead of a gift card, but hey its still better than nothing.

BEWARE THE FINE PRINT:  Must be a Best Buy cardholder to qualify for gift card offer.

After a long and gruling process, the site has moved from its blogger beginnings to its new Wordpress home at http://www.thefinancejourney.com!

The RSS Feed will remain the same (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheFinanceJourney) but check out the design and let me know what you think.

The Festival of Under 30 Finances is up over at Pragmatic Finance. Some good reads in there including a post by yours truly.

For anyone unaware, Yodlee Moneycenter is an online aggregation tool for checking all your banking, credit cards, investment, rewards programs, and pretty much anything else that has your information on a website. I login every day in the morning, update all my information, and can view all my balances and transactions in one easy to read screen.

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Up for a slightly higher interest rate on your savings? Ford Interest Advantage is offering up to 6.10% APY on your money marketesque fund with free checks, check writing, and bill pay.

The catch? Its not FDIC insured, so if Ford goes belly up you can kiss your cash goodbye. Personally I’m sticking with my HSBC savings account for now.

Amount Invested
Up to $14,999 - 5.79% APY
$15,000 to $49,999 - 5.95% APY
$50,000 and Above - 6.10% APY

So I have a plan to finish my basement before the end of the year. Well, not really so much of a plan as an idea. I wasn’t going to start until fall/winter but saw Lowes has 20% off ceiling tiles until this weekend so I decided to jump on those.

How I try to save money is by using my previously posted Dealpass gift cards as well as the readily accessable 10% off coupons. The coupons are pretty rampant on ebay - just search for ‘home depot coupons’ and you should get a slew of results with prices around $1.50 per coupon.

So, for tiles that are normally $30.74 a box it ended up as:

$30.74 - 20% sale = $24.59
$24.59 - 10% coupon = $22.13
$22.13 - 20% gift cards = $17.70

So that ends up being 43% off or $13.04 per box. 9 boxes purchased ends up being a $117.36 savings. Just an example of how I try to purchase things I know I will need.