My daughter got an Aeropostale hoodie for Christmas, but it was too small for her. Armed with the gift receipt, we headed to the nearest mall with an Aeropostale store. Luckily for us we found an exact same hoodie in a bigger size. I noted that the hoodie was already in the bargain rack along with other winter clothes, giving way to spring items. At the counter the sales clerk was about to do a “like for like” exchange but I asked her:
“Is there a price difference?”
The clerk kindly obliged me and checked. There was an $11 difference! She could not give me cash back, but gave me a store gift card with that amount. Of course my daughter happily turned around and found something else to buy in the store,
$11 might not be much in this case (although that is half a tank of gas for me). However, it is money that you are entitled to. Why not take it? Some store clerks might tell you that it is not possible to give you money back. Just point out that it is just like you are returning the item for a full refund and buying the same item for its current cheaper price.
My daughter noted that the clerk did not volunteer to check for a price difference, and admitted that she would never have thought to ask about it either. I hope she learned a valuable lesson there, just as she did when we went clothes shopping with $50 and a coupon.
At the beginning of the year I had signed up for The Self Jump Start Diet, which is a day-at-a-time makeover of your food habits. I learned a couple of things there that I am putting into practice that I know will save me money, and hopefully will help me lose weight:
Tip # 4: Have a Game Plan — Plan your healthy meals and snacks in advance.
Tip # 7: Stash Snacks — Stash a supply of filling snacks to grab when you need a bite.
On a normal work day I do not eat breakfast, I have a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then a mid-afternoon snack. I am ashamed to confess that for the most part, the snacks come from the vending machine. The items there cost between $0.50 to $1.00 so I will just average it out to $0.75 per item, which makes it $1.50 per day. Lunch costs between $6.00 to $10.00, so an average of $8.00. So everyday I spend around $9.50 on lunch and snacks at work for a total of $47.50.
So on Sunday I went grocery shopping and planned my lunch and office snacks for this week. Lunch will be my favorite frozen entrees. They cost $1.78 x 5 = $8.90. Since those darn things never keep me full until dinner, I have a variety of snacks: chocolate animal crackers (they are great with tea, and satisfies my craving to have the chocolate taste in my mouth), fresh cherries, fruit cups and yogurt-covered raisins. Overall I spent less than $20 for this week’s planned lunch and snacks, and they are much-healthier alternatives than the vending machine and fast food selections.
The evidence is already clear: if I stick with my plan this week and not be tempted to go out and get sushi, my savings this week is at least $27.50. 50 weeks of that comes to $1,375! Wow, that’s more than my monthly mortgage payment!
I am eagerly awaiting the other half of the desired results: losing weight.
What about you, what are you doing different this year?
I just stumbled upon a very affordable 2-year web hosting deal from DreamHost for $21.48. It included unlimited disk and bandwidth plus a free domain registration. This is for TODAY ONLY, January 4, 2009.
Yes, I signed up!
We do not have cable or satellite TV.
While this would have been enough to elicit a reaction years ago, the number of people getting rid of their cable or satellite TV subscription has been steadily increasing in recent times. The most common reasons are:
- It costs too much.
- There is nothing to watch.
- To watch what you want when you want it, it costs extra.
A computer we purchased in December 2007 came with a TV tuner, and that has been such a wonderful device! If you have a relatively new computer, check the connections in the back. Find a port that has no cable connected to it yet. Check out its labels. My TV tuner card has “DTV Ant”, “FM Ant” and “Analog Ant” underneath the ports.
This is the indoor antenna I have sitting on top of my computer. It is a Philips High Performance Amplified Indoor Uhf/Vhf/Fm/HDTV Antenna
. I connected the antenna cable from that to the port on the back of my computer marked “DTV Ant”. Then came the fun part of trying to get the right orientation.
My computer has Windows Media Player and it made setting up the indoor antenna so much easier by providing feedback on the antenna strength of each channel available to me. Click here to check if your computer already has Windows Media Player.
Another thing that helped me find the right orientation is a website called antennaweb.org. I entered my address (and made sure I unchecked any subscription opt-ins) and it gave me a listing of the stations in my area plus their compass heading, frequency assignment, and distance from my location.
If you do not have a TV tuner card on your computer and you know what you are doing around electronics, you can get one like this Hauppauge 1128 WinTV-HVR-1800 Internal Hybrid TV Tuner/Video Recorder
. You will need to install it in your computer and set it up. I recommend you get a techie to do that for you. A computer is expensive and you don’t want to mess it up!
More “Cable and Satellite TV Alternative” articles to come. Check back soon!
For the past 15 winters I have kept my house at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, it is pretty warm for most people, but I am a tropical island girl and love to roam the house barefoot, in short sleeves, and shorts. We also have a parrot who starts shivering and sneezing when she gets too cold. This winter, things are different.
We invested in a Honeywell programmable thermostat almost like this one
, the house is much cooler, and I am making everyone, including myself, dress for a cooler indoor climate. The thermostat has a Monday-Friday and a Saturday-Sunday schedule, and four triggers: Wake, Leave, Return and Sleep.
My daughter has to be in school by 7:15 a.m. and she finds it hard to leave her nice, warm bed so early in the morning. During the weekdays, the thermostat is set to “Wake” at 5:15 for 76 degrees. This seems to thaw everyone out of their deep sleep as they start kicking off their bed covers as the house gets warmer. The thermostat is set to “Leave” at 72F while the humans are gone. The dog loves the cooler temperatures in the house, while the parrot has a heated perch and layered cage covers to keep her warm. About 15 minutes before the children return, the thermostat triggers “Return” and raises the temperature to 74F. “Sleep” sets the overnight temperature back to 72F at midnight. I am a night owl, and having the house go cold forces me to go to bed by around 12:30!
For the weekend, “Wake”, “Leave”, and “Return” triggers are set to the same temperature – 74F starting at 7:30 a.m. – and “Sleep” sets it to 72F at midnight.
What about you? Do you have any tips to share on what you are doing to lower your heating bills?
This past Christmas was quite a desperate time for retailers, who tried their best to entice shoppers to part with their money by offering them deep discounts. One of the most popular electronic purchases was an MP3 player. Did you get one? What kind did you get? Did you get a great deal?
I did not have much money for gifts this year and told the kids so. They are wonderful, understanding kids and for that I am thankful. They only got one item this year: an MP3 player. Now they are busy ripping CD’s and downloading MP3′s. Luckily, there are tons of legally available FREE MP3′s from digital download sites, and you can listen to snippets of the songs before you download them.
A note of caution about file-sharing websites: the file-sharing service is legal, but sharing copyrighted files (such as songs and movies) on these legal file-sharing websites is still illegal. Know the difference.
As of this morning, Amazon.com has 684 FREE MP3′s
available for download. If you sort the list by “Bestselling”, most of the songs in the top 25 are geared towards the holidays but that is just because of the season. Browse through the list. You might find an old favorite artist with a new song, or an entirely new favorite artist.
Finding fast, cheap, easy and healthy lunches on the go is challenging. Usually the fast, cheap and easy lunches you will find out there are not so healthy.
I have never been a Subway fan until they started giving customers the option of toasting their subs. To me, a warm meal feels for filling than a cold one! My favorite one to order was their Chicken & Bacon Ranch sub. However, Subway came up with a selection of $5 footlong subs. The Chicken & Bacon Ranch sub footlong was approximately $2 more, so I decided to go for the cheaper subs.
Meet my new favorite: the Oven-Roasted Chicken Breast from Subway’s Fresh Fit menu and part of their $5 Footlong Subs. I order it with Italian Herbs & Cheese bread, admittedly not the healthiest bread there is, but I love it and would rather not give that up. I top it with American cheese, spinach, tomatoes and cucumber, then some ranch dressing. I do not care for their shredded lettuce, hence the spinach for alternative greens. The tomatoes provide a nice sweet counterbalance to the saltiness of the cheese and ranch dressing, while the cucumber gives the sandwich a crunchiness reminiscent of my favorite bacon, without the fat and cholesterol.
The best part? I only eat half the footlong sandwich for lunch and eat the other half either for dinner or for lunch the next day. That’s a $2.50 lunch plus tax. What a great deal!
It doesn’t last until dinner however, and by mid-afternoon my stomach starts asking for snacks. I don’t mind that too much. I usually keep a stash of fruit cups or crackers in my desk. Eating snacks also keeps me from being desperately hungry in the evening and which allows me to cook dinner at home instead of going through the drive-through.
Here’s to a healthier, no-longer broke New Year !!!
What is your favorite Subway sub?
My new year’s resolution is to no longer be broke in America in 2009, and one of the steps towards that direction is to keep track of my finances better. The late fees and insufficient fund fees were bleeding me financially, and I just got so tired of juggling the bills. The insanity has to stop. I am not any good with paper, so I had to find a software that will help me do that.
It is past midnight and I had been asleep for over two hours when I was woken up and felt the urge to go online and search for Quicken. This is very strange in itself as I know what Quicken is and where to get it, and had no reason to Google it at all. The first website displayed by Google was Intuit’s Quicken site, and lo and behold, the word “FREE” caught my eye. “Quicken Online – Now FREE”, it screamed. I had to check for more information to make sure it wasn’t free only for the trial period. As far as I know, it is not a trial account and there doesn’t seem to be any hidden charges. If you have evidence that it isn’t so, please let me know!
So I signed up, all the while expecting to be accosted with “Aha! Now here’s the catch!” So far I haven’t encountered any. What freaked me out was it asked for the login and password of my bank account, and I had to make sure that I was still on Intuit’s Quicken website by checking the URL. Once I provided that, Quicken contacted my bank’s server and loaded all my transactions. Just like that, everything was in place.
I am excited with the Quicken Online. I love that I can access it from any computer with internet connectivity. It seems easy to use, and it has financial tools for budgeting and setting up financial goals. I was also pleasantly surprised that Quicken Online comes with Quicken Beam, a beta service that sends alerts to your mobile phone. It can send you your account balance, your last 5 transactions, when your balance dips below your set amount, etc.
If you have never used a financial tracking software before, now is a great time to start. Get your free Quicken Online account now!
Today is the beginning of the rest of my life, and I choose to no longer be broke in America. Worrying about my finances is taking a toll on my life, so much so that it sucks up all my creativity and my passion for life.
Instead of being reactive, I choose to be proactive, and here is the plan:
First, I have to stop the bleeding. The late fees and insufficient fund fees I paid in 2008 have been shamefully staggering. This tells me that not only was I broke, but that I need to keep track of my money better. I need to plan my expenses accordingly, and work from a budget. This is going to be tricky. I do not do well with paper, so it will have to be some finance software that is easy to use. The goal is to have a workable budget so that I will no longer pay any late fees on my utilities by the end of Q1.
Second, I need to raise my income. With the economy and job market the way they are, this will be hard to do. In order to be more competitive, I will need to raise my qualifications. I plan to get a certification in the technical field that interests me, and this will help me get a better position — and better pay, I hope — than what I have now. The goal is to have passed the certification exam by the end of Q1.
I am keeping it simple enough so that it is achievable. How about you, what are your financial goals or resolutions for the new year?
With the gas prices lower than they’ve ever been in months, people are starting to breathe a little bit easier again. However, there is a big likelihood that with the elections now over, the prices will start to go back up.
I have been looking for an economical way to commute to and from work and have semi-seriously considered buying a Vespa. I only have to travel 10 miles one way, but most of it is on state and interstate highways. However, the 2008 Vespa’s top speed is 59 mph, not ideal on the interstate. Then I stumble upon an article on the 2008 Piaggio MP3 500. I have to admit it is funky-looking, but those three wheels give it more stability than your standard two-wheeler. This Piaggio model can get 60 MPG and has a top speed of 90 mph. Zoom, zoom!
Though sorely tempted, all I have to do is look at my children and I come to my senses. But those with an adventurous spirit looking for something different, click here to read more about the Piaggio.
Photo from www.thepopularmechanics.com
