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!

Welcome to your Link Payday for September 5, 2008. As the kids head back to classes for the onset of another school year, let’s take a look at the best posts from the personal finance blogosphere of the last couple of weeks:

JD over at Get Rich Slowly discusses How to Win the Lottery–it’s not as glamorous as you might expect!

Here are Nine Things to do When the Going Gets Tough courtesy of Trent at The Simple Dollar. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I cringed when I read a story about How Laziness and Stupidity Cost Me $60 Today at the Online Savings Blog. Lucky I live where I do–only one commercial airport!

The Frugal Duchess gives us some useful advice on How to Complain: Getting the Most from Customer Service Reps. Yes, I’ve had to do more than my share of complaining to get my Sprint issues resolved (thanks to a blog reader who assisted!) but it was quite an ordeal!

And finally, How Far Would You Go for $5? Paidtwice asks and tells in this great blog post!

And that’s your Link Payday for September 5, 2008!

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.

While this blog is (mostly) about personal finance, I think that every so often when times get tough–which includes this week for me–we all need a way to feel a little better. Note that not all of these are necessarily great for you over the long term, but they can help you out when you’re in a pinch.

1) Get a haircut

2) Take a shower

3) Brush your teeth

4) Breathe deeply

5) Have some ice cream (in moderation!)

While these things won’t necessarily help your wallet (and haircuts might be expensive for some!), they certainly can be quick things to help your stress level. One of the nice things about them is that they also tend to be things you can do relatively quickly and easily. Try these quick stress relievers when you’re having a tough day!

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.

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!

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 could do an entire blog on Sprint, but someone beat me to it.

The truth of the matter is that because I have a SERO plan and because I desperately need 3G data through a tetherable phone, I’m married to them for as long as my $30 a month deal survives (and as long as there’s nothing that’s better and close in price that comes along).

That said, in all the years I’ve dealt with Sprint, I have had absolutely horrible customer service experiences with them all except two times.

I am trying to get a phone number ported to them right now. I called on Saturday and spoke with someone who said she had all the data she needed to make the port. Of course, the port was not made. I have since received several messages from them via voicemail that they need me to call back. So I did, even though I greatly dislike talking to them. And of course, I got through to their voicemail system once that proceeded to tell me my call would be answered in under two minutes, then five minutes, then ten minutes, then twenty minutes (with not so much as a second of pause between the announcements)… and then hung up on me. I followed up with an email telling them I tried to call but their voicemail system was obviously not working properly and would like to know if it was repaired. In short, their reply did nothing to answer my question, instead directing me to call again.

I made it quite clear that this did not answer my question but I would really like them to list in email that I would like a list of information they need beforehand so I could make sure I had everything available. While they have responded, they have not provided such a list, and they have made it clear to me the only way to do the number port is by a phone call. So I called again, and the customer service representative acted like there was absolutely no record of this issue, then proudly transferred me to someone who could help me–except “someone” was a phone number that had a recorded message stating they were closed and no way to leave a message.

Another series of fruitless email followed. I have yet to call them back, and I realize that the reason why I don’t like calling them is the same reason that those of us who hate calling customer service hate it: it’s an exercise in frustration. All of the things that I try to make this less painful (like contacting them in email to try to do the whole process that way or at least getting a specific list of needed information) have been totally futile. Does the modern large company not understand that their customer service representatives are wasting their time and money and their customers’ time and money, and moreover, alienating their customers at the same time?

I continue to be amazed at how poor customer service has become.

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!

I’ve written briefly about the Drain King in the past. Basically, it’s a great alternative to potentially harmful (both to your pipes and the environment) Liquid Plumr which can handle far more difficult clogs than your typical plunger can. If you’ve got a clogged drain and you want to avoid calling the plumber, you may want to try this.

I have used Drain King for years. I recently needed to use it twice within a month; once for my mom’s shower drain and once for my own. I was considering doing a video on it, but I found this one available already on YouTube (note: the video is not in English but it does a great job of showing how to use the Drain King, except I don’t believe the Drain King is recommended for toilets, which they also show. Please read the instructions carefully and remember, I’m not a plumber, I’m just a social worker, blogger, and happy Drain King user):

The way I figure it, every time I use Drain King I probably keep $100 or more in my pocket. If that’s not frugal, I don’t know what is!