Archive for August, 2007

It seems like the price gouging for a passport photo keeps getting worse and worse. The Post Office now charges $15 for a quick shot, and most other places charge between $10 and $20 for it. Occasionally you can get a coupon at Right Aid for a couple bucks but that is increasingly rare.

So what are us frugal folks with a digital camera to do? Make your own passport photo of course! I just renewed my passport with a photo I created and have received the passport so I can vouch this works. So if you are willing to put in a few minutes of your time you can save some bucks and a trip to the passport photo store. Its also nice because you can take as many pictures as you like until you are happy with how it comes out.

Requirements for Do It Yourselfers

You can’t just pick out a 4×6 of you from your cousins bbq and send it in. The US State Department has a list of regulations on their website for your passport photo. These include:

• 2×2 inches in size
• Taken within the past 6 months, showing current appearance
• Full face, front view with a plain white or off-white background
• Between 1 inch and 1 3/8 inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head

For The PhotoShop Savvy

Since I have Adobe Photoshop I followed the tutorial over at DP Challenge - Making Your Own Passport Photos. I thought it was very thorough and easy to follow. Took me about 5 minutes to get the final product and it turned out great.

For Those Less Savvy

There is some nifty free software called DIY Passport Photo which is nice in that it is a photo editing package only designed to make passport photos so its really easy to use. Their website has the software as well as instructions on how to use it.

There is a free website EPassportPhoto that will take your digital photo and generate it for you. I didn’t read all the instructions but just tried to upload my photo there and it didn’t seem to create the correct proportions for my photo. Probably have to do some tweaking so I can’t give this one the thumbs up.

Getting It For Free

Okay, so now you have your passport picture… but where do you print it for free? I printed mine at CVS who has a bunch of free promotions through their website. Check out this Slickdeals CVS Photo thread for the full details.

Otherwise, you can always print them to Wal-mart for 12 cents. Much better than $15.

Kashi is currently promoting their new line of snack foods by giving out your choice of 3 different snacks for free! Follow the link below and click ‘get your free snack’. You can click ’skip all this, gimme my snack’ to by-pass all the questions they ask.

You have your choice of the following:

• Oatmeal Dark Chocolate TLC Cookie
• Original 7 Grain TLC Crackers
• Trail Mix TLC Chewy Granola Bar

Kashi OutReach: Free Snack

My wife and I have been going to Gold’s Gym for about 8 months now. Its important for us to exercise and stay active so the gym membership has been helping a lot. However every time I look at our monthly expenses that expense pops out as something that could be reduced.

Gold’s Gym has a lot of options over most of the other gyms in the area. There are free classes (yoga, exercise, spinning, etc), plenty of equipment so even at its busiest you don’t have to wait for a machine, a private tv in all the cardio equipment, and an immaculately clean facility that somehow does not reek of sweat. However it comes at a price, its about 20% more expensive than the YMCA which also has a basketball court which I would take advantage of, but has a waiting list for the cardio equipment and an older facility. And its about 3x as expensive as Planet Fitness which is smaller and has less bells and whistles.

You can’t really put a price on your health. I have a feeling if we had a membership to a gym that wasn’t as nice as Gold’s my wife wouldn’t be as inclined to go. For me, the price alone is a motivating factor - I’m paying that much a month so I better use it! We’ve been going pretty consistently since we got the membership so to me its money well spent.

After checking the mail today I was delighted to find my Chase United Mileage Plus Business Card. During my latest 0% app-o-rama that was dicussed a few times here I also applied for this card in order to take advantage of the 25,000 free miles they were giving away with it which is enough for a free round trip domestic flight.

However my experience with Chase was less than stellar. I was called by their fraud prevention department and asked to fax my business license to them which I did. A few days later a rather crass representative called me again stating my business license was not good enough, they would need some other documentation so I offered up my 2006 tax returns. Well then a few days later I received another call, but this time the woman on the other end was very helpful and did not understand why the previous information I had faxed was not sufficient. She eventually put my application through.

I guess they need to be thorough but I have never had this kind of difficulty opening a credit card before. Thank goodness I know how to use free faxing services or else this would have cost quite a bit to get all the documentation I needed in.

Now I just need to spend $250 on my card to receive my 25,000 miles. Hopefully there will be no problems there.

Here is another update on my latest credit card app-o-rama. I’ve just about wrapped the application phase up and am ready to get on with the tedious payment phase.

I applied for all these cards on July 20th and have had mixed results between the card providers.

Here is the current status on the 0% card applications:

Finished With The 0% Applications

I’ve now heard back from all the 0% credit cards I’ve applied for as you can see in the table above. Some were more generous than other with their credit lines. In total I received $67,400 in 0% credit for the next year. If I stick it in my HSBC account at 5.05% APY that would be about $3,400 in interest, I probably could squeak a little more out if I went rate chasing.

Chase Again

Having already called me twice to verify information, Chase United Business Card called me yet again. This time however the lady was very helpful on the phone and didn’t understand why the previous documents I had sent were not acceptable. She looked everything over and told me she was putting my application through to the next phase, which still doesn’t mean its approved but at least its going somewhere. I should hear back via mail shortly.

Taxable Accounts:

$8,799.41 - Liquid Savings - 5.05% APY HSBC Savings Account
$15,380.75 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$5,659.35 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$2,883.03 - Stocks - Zecco
$2,605.46 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$35,328.00 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:

$16,496.58 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$1,492.28 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$47,853.92 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$65,842.78 TOTAL

Debts

$3,220.43 - Student Loan - AES (3.625%)
$6,658.00 - Credit Card BT - Discover (0%)
$7,110.00 - Credit Card BT - Citi (0%)

$16,988.43 TOTAL

Housing / Automobiles

$267,779.86 - Mortgage - Countrywide
$339,900.00 - Approximate Home Value
$10,774.00 - Approximate Car Value - Edmunds.com

$82,894.14 - TOTAL (Approximate Equity)

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