Uncommon Cents

As you know by now, I’m a bicycle guy. Bicycling is not a ridiculously expensive sport, but there are equipment costs; parts wear out or need replacing frequently (chains, tires, tubes) and less frequently (chainrings, cassettes, bottom brackets, and headsets). Some last close to but not quite forever (seats and handlebars) but might be changed just because you want something newer; and every so often a new bike becomes just a “must have” expense. Sometimes it really is must have–like when your frame is toasted beyond repair–and sometimes it’s actually a want.

In any case, I was perusing the Web site of one of my favorite bicycle shopping sites to see an interesting offer:

Save 10% on any order over $50;
save 15% on any order over $100;
save 20% on any order over $200

The enticement is to get you to spend more, because the more you spend, the more you save.

Huh?

Let’s look at that:

“the more you spend, the more you save.”

No, the more you spend, the more you spend! This is not to say that 20% off your order isn’t a great deal; especially if you buy heavily discounted items, it can really make things worthwhile. The key here is this: don’t spend money just to spend money (or in this case, “save” money). If you are going to make a purchase, great, and if you add things to get additional discounting, that’s fine, provided you actually use the items. If I was thinking about buying, say, $50 worth of bicycle tubes (that would last me maybe two years), I’d take the 10% discount and call it a day; it doesn’t seem like a great choice to buy eight years worth of tubes to spend 10% less!

Be cautious with these; they can really help you spend less, but they can also get you to spend way more than you originally intended!

There are some brands that I just stick to–for operating systems, Apple. For motor vehicles, Toyota. For bicycles, although I’ve gone back and forth, I’ve mostly settled on Cannondale. This is known as brand loyalty, a commitment to keep purchasing products from the same manufacturer or company over and over again. There’s variations on brand loyalty; for instance, while Long’s Drugs isn’t (with rare exception) a manufacturer, people in Hawai’i will buy products there almost without regard to comparison shopping because they’ve done so for so long–the loyalty is so strong that despite the buyout of Long’s by CVS, CVS will allow Long’s stores to keep the Long’s name in Hawai’i and nowhere else. When someone asks me about mutual funds and one of the fund families involved is Vanguard, I’m tempted to say that you can’t go wrong there.

Brand loyalty is built by marketing, recommendations by influential people (which can be a celebrity spokesman or the word of a friend or someone you respect as an expert in the type of product you’re considering), and personal experience. Which of these plays the largest role in development of brand loyalty is hard to say; for me, my personal experience with Toyota, Apple, and Cannondale means a lot; for others, if they ask me about a computer and I recommend Apple, they are likely to take that into consideration if they consider me an expert in computers.

Is brand loyalty sensible? To some extent, it is; after all, it’s a lot easier for someone to keep doing the same thing over and over again then try something new. The question is if you’ll continue to get satisfactory (or better) results if you keep going with the same brand instead of researching other brands. It’s a tough question to answer, and it’s likely going to vary from situation to situation. For instance, I stay with Sprint not because I like their customer service, but because I like their pricing and their data speed; I was on TMobile previously and loved their service but they didn’t have the data speed I needed. While I consider other brands of bicycles based on price when I look at them, I tend to go back to the one I like provided that the price is at least in the ballpark.

So, in the end, my take is this: brand loyalty exists for a reason. If you are loyal to certain brands (or stores or mutual fund houses or banks or whatever else), consider what your reason is (or reasons if there are lots of them). Don’t be afraid to re-examine your brand loyalty! After all, it’s your money; don’t throw it blindly somewhere you had a great experience before. Consider carefully how well founded your loyalty is, and if it’s for great reasons, keep at it, but if those reasons have changed (or if the reasons weren’t all that great in the first place), consider switching.

This month’s Costco coupon book showed up a few days ago and I’m just now taking a look at it to see if there’s much that I like. As I’ve stated before, due to the large quantities that Costco tends to sell items in, non perishables are typically best to buy–just remember what I think about waste.

Costco again has coupons that primarily list the amount of a discount but not the total price of the item which makes price comparisons very difficult. Again, I realize that they have stores all over the country and there are price variations between regions, but without knowing a final price, it’s really tough to figure out if the sale items really are a great deal.

With those caveats out of the way, here’s my favorite coupons from this month’s book:

$2 off Charmin
$2 off Bounty Roll Towels
$5 off Gillette Custom Plus Pivot Disposable Razors
$2 off Kirkland Signature Household Surface Wipes
$2.50 off Gillette 3x Clear Gel Antiperspirant Deodorant
$2 off Head & Shoulders Shampoo
Buy One Get One Free Sony CD-R

Note that I have a significant bias in that almost all of these products are ones I use a lot; I didn’t include the $2.50 off Oral-B Advantage Plus Toothbrushes or $3 off Aquafresh Advanced Toothpaste because those aren’t brands I care for. It looks like this month’s Costco coupon book has more stuff I use than usual, which makes me even happier to be a member!

As a devoted hunter of lower prices, I often peruse Craigslist, eBay, or just the Internet in general in search of products I’m interested in. For instance, it’s clear I’m going to need a new crankset on my bicycle, so I’ve been checking out eBay and qbike.com on a semi-regular basis to see if there’s anything offered that I’m interested in.

Today I found a crankset that I was mildly interested in. It’s definitely a vintage, quality product at what seems like will be a reasonable price when the auction is over, but the description includes the following:

“Shipping is $10 to the continental U.S. only.”

Elsewhere in the listing the seller indicates he’s using the United States Postal Service, so I’m wondering why this is an issue? Fortunately, this seller, when contacted, was more than willing to make allowances for Hawai’i–which is a state of the union, and in fact is the one I live in–but there are so many other sellers who refuse to ship here, and even when they do, it’s at very high prices.

A few weeks ago I was interested in an item being sold by Woot; I was so interested I tried to order it, but I found that they, also, do not ship to Hawai’i (except for t shirts!). Some vendors will indeed ship here, but since they won’t ship by the least expensive of the shipping services (USPS), the price for shipping is often ridiculous–so much so that I sometimes have an item shipped to a friend on the continent who will then reship the item to me via USPS.

Why is this such a problem? Don’t they want my business?

Free shipping isn’t an option for every vendor, of course, but it’s one of the reasons I order more often from The Apple Store or Amazon than just about anyone else. I don’t mind paying for shipping as long as they actually let me get the item and then find a reasonable way to send it to me. Please, sellers, let me buy from you in a way that works for both of us! I’d love to give you my business–and so would my neighbors.

One of my best friends told me today she’s been buying the chicken caesar salad at Costco for lunch; it’s right next to her office and costs about $4, roughly the same size as the Jack in the Box salad that I regularly eat for lunch when I’m off on the weekends. Today I decided to give this a try.

The salad itself is fine, and at $3.99 it’s cheap, cheap, cheap compared to the one at Jack in the Box; my total for the meal was about $4.75 vs. the $7.50 I spend for about the same food and drink at Jack in the Box, and both places have all you can refill soda fountains.

The big differences between the two are the horrible parking situation at my local Costco, the indoor seating area at Jack in the Box vs. the outdoor seating area at Costco, and the crowd. So while the food itself is fine–and way less expensive, almost half the price–at Costco, it’s a lot harder to find somewhere to eat there, even if you do find somewhere you may be pretty exposed to the elements (yes, my weather here is better than the vast majority of the country’s, but it can get pretty hot and windy out there), and the bathroom is considerably farther than at any of the JitBs I usually frequent. It also took a lot longer to find parking and to order (but once I ordered, the food was ready just about instantly).

Most of this is not an issue except for the outdoor seating, and if the weather is decent, this wouldn’t be a problem of any magnitude except that I like to break out my MacBook and do work–like blogging–while I eat. In the exposed open area of the Costco I was at, doing anything on my MacBook was just shy of impossible. This doesn’t count against getting food there, just against actually eating there, so the next question is if I really need to do work while eating lunch; if I decide I want to do that, I’ll need to figure something out to keep Costco as a viable option. However, once again, at least in terms of price, Costco is again a winner.

I’m not quite sure why, but I’m missing socks. I spent some of my time this morning going to two stores that are in the same complex: Ross Dress for Less and Marukai 99 Cent Store.

I’ve bought socks from the 99 Cent Store before, and they usually go for a little more than $.99 (like $1.49 per pair). I had to go there for some pens and bicycle tube patches, so I checked out their sock selection, and sure enough, they were $1.49 per pair–which is quite affordable.

Next I went to Ross. Six pair of socks for $6.99.

Even a really low priced store like the 99 Cent Store doesn’t always have the best price. It can pay–maybe not tremendously, but at least a bit–to shop around.

One of my personal finance blogging buddies is Squawkfox, a Canadian female who is athletic (finishing two Ironman Triathalons), educated (in topics as diverse as journalism and computer science), and irrepressibly female (she’s posted underwear pictures–just the undies, not her in them!–on her blog multiple times). Squawkfox recently put out a free for subscribers eBook called Frugal Food & Fitness–55 pages of material that are not available on her blog.

The book is split into three parts: Frugal Food, Meals and Recipies, and Frugal Fitness. Just the fact that the material presented here is new–meaning not on her blog–is amazing. As a blogger myself, I find it very hard to believe another blogger who posts as often as Squawkfox does has the time to come up with a 55 page book of original material, but apparently she does.

Squawkfox is an aspiring photographer, and this book shows it. She does lots of food photography in this book (this is not an easy subject to photograph, trust me!) to go along with some general and specific information on food (including quite a bit of education on the whys and hows of soaking dried beans–including frugal reasons as well as educational ones). The second part of the book–the recipes–may be the most practical. They are cheap, fast to make, and the ones I tried were great! In particular I liked the Spaghetti with Sneaky Black Eyed Pea Sauce (I’m a sucker for pasta). Finally, our author comes up with some great ideas on how to get into fitness frugally. As a cyclist and runner myself, I try to encourage the same kinds of activities. Squawkfox does a great job of giving bite sized suggestions as to how to get going on improving your physical condition.

In conclusion, I really like this eBook, and the price is unbeatable (the only way it would be better is if she paid me to read it). Squawkfox does a great job of taking some very basic needs–food and exercise–and making them seem easy and fun for people to take on, as well as frugal. All in all, I would call this a great job by one of my fellow personal finance bloggers. Well done, Squawkfox!

My good buddy Kyle of Rather-Be-Shopping.com returns, this time with some ways to save money each month as well as–you guessed it–more money saving coupons. Mahalo for doing yet another great guest post here, Kyle!

I was reading some articles on Yahoo! Finance last weekend and stumbled upon an article by Ben Steverman, titled 25 Ways To Save More Each Month that I thought had some great advice in it. I won’t go through all 25 because I don’t want to bore you, but I wanted to share what I thought were the 5 best pieces of advice. Here they are in no particular in order:

~ Stop Paying For Premium Cable. While this piece of advice is fairly straight-forward, I have found a way to keep premium cable and also pay less. About a month ago, I called up my cable company to cancel services and they offered me not only free movies channels, but also $10 off my monthly bill for 8 months. They want your business really bad. I would recommend you call your cable company today and say you want to cancel and see what they will give you! I think you will be really surprised with what they offer.

~ Pay Bills Online. I love the ability to pay bills online. Not only do you save money on stamps, but also time. I can sit down at the computer and pay 5 bills in a matter of minutes.

~ Consider Alternatives to a Gym Membership. I started riding my bike a couple years ago in lieu of a gym membership. Not only do I save money, but I get outdoors and enjoy the beauty of the area where I live. Another excellent option is a brisk walk in your neighborhood in the evenings or before work.

~ Waiting Period for Major Purchases. The article suggests 48 hours as a good waiting period. I love this advice and it definitely works for me. After the 48 hours period has elapsed I have typically lost the “buyers urge” and have moved on with my life!

~ Shop Smart, Shop Online. And of course my favorite piece of advice, shop smart by using coupons! Steverman also points to other ways to save money when shopping online. Printable coupons, online coupons, and price comparison websites to name a few.

And speaking of online coupons, here are the most popular ones on my website so far in August. Hope they can help you save some money.

1-800-Flowers.com
Get 10% taken off your entire online purchase
Coupon Code: RATHERBESHOPPING
Expiration: 8/31/08
More 1-800-Flowers Coupons

Celebrate Express.com
Get $10 off your $80 or more online purchase
Coupon Code: BBSAVE10
Expiration: 9/30/08
More Celebrate Express Coupons

Kohls.com
Get 15% taken off your entire purchase
Coupon Code: AUG15
Expiration: 8/19/08
More Kohls Coupons

Limited Too.com
Get 25% taken off your entire online purchase through this link
Coupon Code: None Needed
Expiration: 8/25/08
More Limited Too Coupons

Old Navy.com
Get 20% taken off your order w/ your Old Navy Card
Coupon Code: STUFFSAVE
Expiration: 8/21/08
More Old Navy.com Coupons

JCPenney.com
Free shipping on your $49 or more online purchase
Coupon Code: WK28FS
Expiration: 8/21/08
More JCPenney Coupons

Red Envelope.com
Free Shipping on your $75 or more online purchase
Coupon Code: SUMMER75
Expiration: 8/22/08
More Red Envelope Coupons

Shutterfly.com
Get 15% taken off your $25 or more online purchase
Coupon Code: AF63-AG08
Expiration: 9/09/08
More Shutterfly Coupons

I’ve been watching and rewatching (well, more like listening to and relistening to) the late, great, Dr. Randy Pausch’s videos, both the well known Last Lecture as well as his presentation shortly thereafter on time management. One of the points he makes is that in America, we’re really good at thinking of money as a commodity (but concedes that not all Americans are all so great at doing so when he states, “that’s what makes the credit card industry possible.”) but not so good at thinking of time as a commodity when it’s even more of a precious resource: once you’ve spent time on something, you’ll never be able to get that time back to do something else. On the other hand, you can always make more money.

If we start considering time as money, will we get better at managing it?

Some ideas:

Doing things at the last minute is very expensive: Pausch uses the example of being able to use the United States Postal Service rather than FedEx if your package doesn’t need to be there overnight, because it’s much cheaper. But it’s not just expensive in the monetary sense to do things at the last minute. If you wait until time is running out, things must go a lot closer to perfect in order for them to work out–a consultant out sick or on vacation for a day or two can really be a huge issue when time is running out. You can also only really do one thing at one time and if something really urgent comes up, whatever you’re doing may be pushed to the side again!

Putting time into things early on can pay off in the long run: advance planning always helps in the long run. Figuring out things like a budget or a shopping list can save both money and time. Not being prepared can make what would be a difficult situation impossible. Think about putting a little time into planning your day, your finances, your expenditures, your retirement–so you can deal with these things better later.

Time really can be your money’s best friend: The longer you have to invest, the more compounding interest and returns can help you out! Don’t put these things off–the longer you wait, the more you’ll miss out. Wise use of time, planning, and prioritizing can make a tremendous difference in how you deal with both money and time. Remember we don’t try to manage our time better so we can become harder working workaholics (aside from a certain blogger); we manage our time better so we can spend more time with the people we love and doing the things we love.

Try to consider the way you use your time and how time is like money, as well as how poor use of time costs you money; this might be the mindset necessary to do a better job with both!

I’m not a fan of regular fees, including subscriptions. Everything I can do to eliminate fees I’ll do if it’s not substantially worse than keeping them. That includes banking, cable television, cellular phones, landlines, and magazines. In some cases–for me–it’s been necessary to keep monthly fees going (Internet access and cellular phones, for two) and in others I’ve cut them out completely (magazines–the public library and the Web make great alternatives). But how about newspapers?

My mother subscribes to the paper–like she has for longer than I’ve been alive. I’m not sure she’d know what to do without it. But is it a worthwhile investment?

It’s hard to say. In general, most (but not all) of what you get in the daily newspaper is available on the Web, sometimes faster than paper delivery. On the other hand, there are things in the paper–the Sunday advertisements and coupons in particular–that are not available, at least not as easily, without it.

Just today I found a Subway coupon good for $5, which was more than the cost of the paper by far; I’ve often found other coupons that were worthwhile. Still, this is the minority of the content, and at least the large national chains that send fliers inserted into the paper every week also have those same fliers on the Web. And while Craigslist, Monster, and CareerBuilder are stealing business from traditional classifieds in the paper every day, many people and businesses continue to use the daily paper as their way of getting ads like this out.

So is a newspaper subscription still worthwhile? It depends on your situation. My guess is if you’re used to it, it’ll be hard to do without it, and if you’re not computer literate (in which case you’re not reading this) it’ll be even more difficult. However, for someone like me, it’s probably wiser to skip the subscription and buy it maybe only on Sundays, when the coupons and ads come out–if even then.