Archive for October, 2007

Here in the US, the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday. Its when retailers gear up for the holiday season to move from the red to black (financial wise) and have huge sales to attract customers. Its a great time to do some holiday shopping there are many door buster specials where you will see products at their lowest prices ever.

Rather than wait till Thanksgiving day to get your newspaper with the sales ads, you can usually find the flyers online as much as a month in advance. This year is no exception. My favorite site for this is BFAds.net which has adscans of all the advertisements as well as an RSS feed which allows me to stay up to date on the activity there without having to visit the site all the time. So far this year they already have Macy’s, Sears, Ace Hardware, Harbor Freight, and FYE with more coming.

BFAds.net

After doing quite a bit of squinting lately I decided it might be time to update my eyeglass prescription. My insurance only provides for an eye exam and either eyeglasses or contacts every 2 years so I went to the local Empire Vision and had an eye exam and ordered some contacts which I use for sports since those are more expensive than the glasses I had in mind. I asked them for a copy of my prescription and was on my way.

Ordering

I had been following this Slickdeals thread for a while on cheap prescription glasses and finally decided to take the plunge. I decided on this $8 style at Zenni Optical which seemed pretty much like my old glasses. I figured hey for $8 if they are terrible it won’t be a big deal.

The website is pretty easy to navigate, and for the most part you just fill in the drop boxes on your selected frame with your prescription information. The only part was the Pupillary Distance was not on my prescription which I guess is pretty common, so I had to measure this myself with a ruler.

So I placed my order and also got the Clip On Polarized 80% Sunshade for $3.95 which I regret. I had a nice magnetic clip on for my old glasses which was easy to put on while I was driving, however these clips are like a paper clip style and you have to take your glasses off and fiddle with them for a minute to get them on which isn’t always practical. My total with these and shipping ($4.95) was $16.90.

After The Order

About 2 weeks after I placed the order my new glasses arrived at my house via USPS mail in a bubble envelope and hard case. The feel of the glasses is very good, they don’t feel flimsy or cheap and I have been wearing them for about a month now with no problems. Overall I was very pleased with my purchase and barring the glasses falling apart in a month most likely will be ordering from Zenni again in the future.

Lowes is currently offering a $10 off $25 coupon through their fan website to kick off you fall project. I signed up and used this coupon today at my local Lowes so can verify it scans and works! Thats up to 40% off your next purchase so if you need something this coupon would certainly sweeten the deal.

Sign Up For $10 off $25 At Lowes

Some of you have been wondering why I have not been posting as frequently as of late. Unfortunately over the last few months I’ve been having some health problems that needed to be addressed. I was having constant stomach problems and weight loss over the last year or so which was progressively getting worse. I was finally diagnosed with Celiac disease about a month ago and have had to make some lifestyle changes to accommodate this.

What Is Celiac Disease?

Basically Celiac is an allergy to Gluten which causes damage to the small intestines and in turn creates stomach problems. Gluten is found in wheat, barley, and rye.

Many foods contain gluten including pasta, bread, cereals, and pastries among numerous other products.

How Has It Affected Me?

I am feeling better since switching my diet to gluten free which is obviously the most important thing. Financially it has increased our grocery bills quite a bit. Gluten free products I have found to generally be about 3x as expensive as their gluten equivalent. Things like rice pasta cost about $2.50 a pound versus 88 cents for regular pasta. Bread is about the same, and does not taste as good as regular bread.

It has cut back our eating out though, as it can be difficult to find gluten free items on many menus. Fast food is generally out as is pizza, sandwiches, most soups, fried foods… you get pretty sick of salad quick.

It’s been a tough adjustment but you gotta do what you gotta do for your health.

Now that all the heat seems to have died down from the latest Fed interest rate reduction I have decided to switch my high yield savings account. I was very happy with my HSBC Online Savings account, however they lowered their interest rate from 5.05% to 4.5% which is now a lot less competitive than some of the higher yield accounts.

I’ve decided to go with Countrywides 5.50% APY savings account which is up there with the highest rates out there. I do give up a few luxuries I had with HSBC though - there is a 10k minimum deposit with Countrywide (and a $10 fee if your balance falls below this). I also do not get instant transfers to my checking account but rather go back to the standard 3-4 business days that most bank to bank transfers have.

I can close the account with no penalty after 90 days so I suppose its worth rate chasing a bit.

Countrywide 5.50% APY Savings Account

Taxable Accounts:

$32,476.06 - Liquid Savings - 5.05% APY HSBC Savings Account
$16,416.72 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$5,772.37 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$3,067.39 - Stocks - Zecco
$2,625.52 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$60,358.06 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:

$17,559.20 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$1,369.42 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$52,575.18 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$71,503.80 TOTAL

Debts

$3,137.06 - Student Loan - AES (3.625%)
$4,484.00 - Credit Card BT - Chase(0%)
$18,176.28 - Credit Card BT - BOA NEA (0%)
$7,495.18 - Credit Card BT - Juniper (0%)
$20,400.00 - Credit Card BT - Upgromise (0%)

$53,692.52 TOTAL

Housing / Automobiles

$266,866.99 - Mortgage - Countrywide
$339,900.00 - Approximate Home Value
$10,380.00 - Approximate Car Value - Edmunds.com

$83,413.01 - TOTAL (Approximate Equity)

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