Welcome to your week late Link Payday! It’s been a horridly busy few weeks with the fumigation, the century ride, and life in general. Now that I’m having a weekend where I’m not ridiculously busy (just the typical really busy), I’m trying to get caught up here on Uncommon Cents and giving you highlights of some of the best personal finance blog posts of the last few weeks:
JD over at Get Rich Slowly shares a post by guest blogger Erica Douglass who shares the secret to Finding Time to Pursue Your Dreams. The big secret: turn off the TV! I’ve already done that, though; I have to find 750 more post TV hours to pursue my dreams here…
One of my favorite personal finance bloggers (actually, one of my favorites regardless of area of interest), Mrs. Micah discusses some of the benefits of Combining Kiva Lending and Birthday Presents and how it can be a way to give back to the community and the world. While Kiva is interest free lending, it can benefit those in developing nations big time and has very little in the way of default risk. I’m thinking about doing just this.
Frugal Dad spends some time doing dirty work for the rest of us when he puts his energy into Evaluating the Best Gas Credit Cards for Rebates. While I agree that the Discover Open Road is a great card (I have one), my personal choice, the Pentagon Federal Credit Union Platinum Visa isn’t mentioned–until it was commented on by another reader and myself, anyway!
My buddy Ron over at The Wisdom Journal gives us 17 Sneaky Savings Strategies. These c an help whether you’re trying to pay off debt, save for specific goals, or save for retirement. This is a fantastic post for all of us who are interested in trying to save.
Finally, Trent over at The Simple Dollar gets right to the heart of the matter of people living beyond their means (which is the primary cause of financial distress) when he says it right out loud and pulls no punches by telling us to Stop Trying to Impress Other People.
And that’s your Link Payday for October 12, 2008!
What’s the main driver of the U.S. economy?
The answer is in your mirror. It’s you.
Consumer spending is the biggest single factor in the well being of the U.S. economy. Notice how the second quarter (2.8% annualized growth of gross domestic product) wasn’t so awful? That coincided with the delivery of economic stimulus payments going out across the nation. Those dollars got spent, and the spending helped the economy.
While the economy has grown over time, driven by spending, during that same time the savings rate of those in the U.S. became negative–people spent more than they made. Anyone can tell you that can’t go on forever. People went into typical consumer debt (including credit cards) and then, hanging on the coattails of the housing boom, took out home equity to keep spending.
All things come to an end.
The current credit crunch and real estate debacle have devastated these money supplies; combine that with the increase in fuel prices (which follows into the realm of essentials), and it’s clear that the average consumer can’t keep pumping more dollars into the economy, because they don’t have the dollars to do so–not even borrowed dollars.
Until consumers can somehow put more dollars into the economy, the economy will continue to suffer, and until the economy improves, it’s hard to imagine consumers putting more dollars into the economy. Seems like a Catch-22? In many ways it is, but that’s the situation we’re facing ourselves in today. Stay tuned!
I think the answer is a yes with caveats.
It has always struck me as interesting that the prices on the brick and mortar and Web stores are not the same. In fact, the Web prices are not even always lower, as might be suspected. I recently purchased a wireless adapter at Best Buy which was listed for $10 less in store than online! On the other hand, I’ve often ordered online for pickup at discounted prices and/or using Discover Card’s ShopDiscover program which increases–sometimes to as much as 5%–the reward received for purchasing with that brand of card.
It can also be helpful if the Web site allows in store pickup and to check the stock (accurately!) of an item. CompUSA (back when they actually existed as a brick and mortar store) was notorious for having outdated inventory information; many times the Web site would say that the item was in stock at a store, but it really wasn’t. Best Buy and Circuit City both have pretty decent store pickup options (although Circuit City has been out of stock at least once on an item I purchased and never called me to tell me it was back in stock–I had to deal with their voicejail–not a typo–system to figure it out); Circuit City gives a reward card if they can’t fulfill the order in a really short amount of time too! CircuitCity.com also allowed me to avoid going there to try to purchase an item this weekend; their Web site verified for me that it was out of stock.
Some Web sites, however, offer neither in store pickup nor the ability to check if an item is in stock. Those sites are much less useful; at least if they offer a store locator and phone numbers and addresses of local stores, they are of some use.
I’ve found BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com to be pretty useful when dealing with their brick and mortar stores; OfficeDepot.com, OfficeMax.com, and Costco.com a bit less so (although Costco.com has one big advantage over Costco the brick and mortar store–you’re not bound to only using American Express!). Stores that are a bit more general, like Longs.com and WalMart.com, have been much less useful for me.
I conclude that some Web sites for brick and mortar stores work really well, and some work really poorly–which ones do which varies considerably. Take a look carefully when you want to try to use these Web sites to your advantage.
One of my friends is having a baby, so, in keeping with one of my previous posts on maximizing credit card rewards, I purchased a couple of gift cards for her from a local gas station. I did this because the credit card I used to purchase these gift cards has a 5% reward.
However, I was in for an unusual surprise when I signed the card: they charged me sales tax when I bought the cards. I objected but was told this was the store policy and they would not budge, even when I stated that I had never paid tax on gift cards before, ever.
I then put a letter in the mail (yes, an actual paper letter in the U.S. mail) to management at the gas station and received a reply that they were in error and would refund the amount of the tax.
In the end, while this was not a huge amount of money (less than $3), my feeling is it was worth making an issue of just because of principle. I was fortunate in that I was able to resolve this in my favor relatively quickly, and all it took was a letter to management. I doubt I would have followed it up with a second letter if I had not received a response (or received a negative one) but I’m glad I pursued this. Score one for appropriate complaining!
Welcome to your belated Link Payday for August 26, 2008. As the last days of summer unfold around us, let’s take a look at the best posts from the personal finance blogosphere of the last couple of weeks:
Frugal Dad weighs material possessions versus simplicity and finds that simplicity wins in his post entitled How to Live More Simply, and Why it is so Important. I constantly consider ways to simplify my complicated life as time goes on.
The Frugal Duchess discusses a necessity (water) and its extravagant sibling (bottled water) as she comes up with Thrifty Alternatives to Bottled Water: A National Campaign. Yes, bottled water is handy, but it’s expensive, and all that plastic can’t be great for the environment!
JLP over at All Financial Matters has a great point on the quality of things we buy when he says Warranties are Nice but What I’d Really Like is a QUALITY PRODUCT! Yes, it was nice for me to get a big credit on my Die Hard battery, but it would have been nicer if it hadn’t died when it die.
This is something I do, but JB over at Get Rich or Die Trying won’t do (anymore): Paying Bills with a Credit Card. I actually do this as much as I can, but I certainly can see some of JB’s points.
Finally, Mrs. Micah looks back at her time growing up and lays it on the line when she discusses What My Parents Did and Didn’t Teach Me About Credit and Money Management. I think her parents did pretty decently, better than mine did!
And that’s your Link Payday for August 26, 2008!
How do I know that this offer from MyGPSOffer.com–giving you a free Garmin nuvi 200 without charge if you apply for, are approved for, and activate (meaning “use”) a Miles by Discover Card–is for real?
Because I took advantage of the offer and I now have one!
I learned about this offer through Frugal Shopping With Julie; it definitely looked too good to be true (I have wanted a GPS for quite some time now) and when perusing the Web site I expected to be inundated with required surveys and offers to review. To my pleasant surprise, I just simply applied for the card; in a day or two, I got an email saying the card was on its way. Once the card arrived, I called to activate it, used it a couple of times, and waited (this was in mid June).
A few days ago–early August–I got an email saying that my GPS was on its way. Today–August 9, 2008–a package arrived via the USPS from, of all places, Amazon.com. In it was my new GPS. It works great, and the price was unbeatable.
I also discovered (no pun intended) that there are several other similar offers available, including a free iPod nano, Canon PowerShot A590, and 500 gigabyte Western Digital MyBook external hard drive. I can’t vouch for the others, but I can definitely say MyGPSOffer.com is for real!
As I’ve stated before, I am not one of the personal finance bloggers who will say to cut up your credit cards, put them in a blender, or make them into blocks of ice. Instead, I am of the opinion that credit cards are like a sharp knife–they can help you do great things, or they can cause you great harm. The difference is in you.
I already discussed one of my favorite money hacks: card timing, where you wait until just about the closing date of your credit card statement to make a purchase, with the purchase missing the statement that gets mailed to you that day and put on the following one, giving you perhaps two months to come up with the cash to pay it. This is a technique I use often, including with my recent purchase of a MacBook.
Another simple (perhaps too simple to call an actual) money hack is to charge things with the credit card that gives the best reward for that purchase. For instance, I will charge gas to my Pentagon Federal Credit Union Visa or my Discover Open Road because they give me a 5% reward on gas (with some limitations in the case of the Discover); if I’m buying groceries I’d also be likely to use the Pentagon FCU because it gives me a 2% reward there. It’s nice if these rewards can be combined, like I did with the MacBook: I ordered it the day my statement was closing and used their ShopDiscover program to get a 5% reward. Sometimes, however, it’s not possible to do both, so I’m beginning to wonder: if I have to make a choice between the best reward I can get (usually between 1.25% and 5%–1% is a “standard” reward) and maximizing the time before I have to actually come up with the cash to pay, which is better? Currently I’m still leaning toward maximizing the reward, but I need to think about this more. Opinions?
Your Link Payday for July 5, 2008 will be rescheduled for… it looks like July 6, 2008 (there’s a reason for this, but I can’t share it for a few days).
The summer here has been hot, hot, hot, and, fortunately for me, my snowflaking efforts have also been hot. Blog efforts in June netted its highest ever total: $142.12 (so well I doubt I can do quite that much in July, but I can certainly hope!). In addition, I received $4.55 in payment for an article (a really piece of an article, actually) I wrote, $10.37 from recycling, and $60 in a Discover Card “Cashback Bonus”. I was hesitant to call the money from Discover snowflakes since it was money I got back largely from a very large purchase via ShopDiscover (which I will cover at some point in the future, because it can be a great way to build Discover Cashback Bonuses), but since it wasn’t money I had coming in as any other form of income, I’m counting it.
So we’re looking at $217.04 in snowflakes in June! That’s the most since I started tracking this a few months ago by far, and added to my previous efforts of $293.83, it’s rapidly becoming “real money”: $510.87. If I was still saving for the MacBook, that would be close to 1/2 what I needed! Since I’m not saving for that, but instead to replenish some of the funds already used, I’ll take whatever I can get.
While I seriously doubt that I can match my June efforts in July, I will certainly give it the best shot I can. The power of small amounts is really showing over time, and hopefully I can keep the heat up on continuing to improve my finances this way the rest of the summer!
Are 7-11s named that because you spend 7 to 11 percent more there for stuff than anyone ought to? Perhaps, but there might be a time when you can use convenience stores like 7-11s to your financial advantage.
I recently discovered that in addition to the convenience stores associated with gas stations here, 7-11s are also considered gas stations to the credit card companies. This means that anything purchased there with one of my 5% reward for gasoline purchases gets the 5% reward. Yes, I know that items purchased at such stores tend to be pretty expensive, but there is at least one exception: gift cards.
So, if I want a gift card for, say, Toys ‘R Us, and it’s available at my local 76 station’s convenience store, I can get a 5% cash rebate by charging it on my Pentagon Federal Credit Union Visa. While it’s not necessarily the cheapest way to get gift cards (you may want to try eBay or the many different gift card swap and sale sites on the World Wide Web), it’s certainly an option and pretty convenient (given these are supposed to be convenience stores)!
I received a note from the State Tax Collector in the mail.
“Uh oh.”
The letter stated in a rather straightforward matter that I had miscaclulated and underpaid on my taxes. I immediately got out my photocopy of my 2007 taxes and discovered that yes, indeed, I had made an error. I had taken the amount I owed from a column one too far to the left while looking it up in the tax table, meaning I underpaid my taxes by $83.
Moreover, I owed a bit of interest and a penalty due to the underpayment. A statement would be forthcoming (it came about a week later), so my total owed was approximately $100.
A $17 lesson.
Next time I work on my own taxes–and I have a hard time seeing myself not working on my own taxes, even when they are a bit more complicated–I need to triple check them. That’s the lesson–we learn through mistakes, and the difference between a beginner and a master is 10,000 mistakes. There’s one of them.
The silver lining is that I can charge the amount owed online, which will get me a little back (1.25%) and let me get a little more time to come up with the cash. And hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson.
