Archive for October, 2006
Since it’s November, it’s time to talk about Black Friday AKA the day after Thanksgiving. Somehow, this has turned into the #1 shopping day of the year with stores offer deep discounts like $200 laptops to get people in the door. In turn, these deep discounts have led to special websites which leak the upcoming deals way ahead of time.
Why? So people can game the system by doing one of the following:
Rebuy. If you know that, for example, the Xbox 360 is going to be on sale for $50 on Black Friday, you go and buy it a week or two beforehand for retail price. Then, on Black Friday, you strut past all the hordes, march up to the customer service desk, asking for a pricematch to the new price. In essence, you are (1) returning the item for full price and the (2) buying it back right away for the sale price. Thus the term “rebuy”. Worst case scenario, they refuse and you simply return the item.
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Posted in Frugal Living | 24 Comments »
Back in my post Why You Shouldn?t Settle For a 1% Cashback Credit Card, commenter TW raised a good question:
Isn?t the best ?return? on credit card use found using a 0% on purchases card and put the money you would use to pay it off in an interest account (5.5% E-Loan account, etc.) instead of trying to use the best rewards bonus card where you?d need to pay off the monthly balance to avoid fees?
On one side, we have the interest earned off of “borrowing” at 0%. On the other side, you have plain cashback rebates. Which is better? This is a question I asked myself a couple of years ago, but due to the low interest rates back then it definitely wasn’t worth it. Now that ELoan Savings is offering 5.5% APY and other banks are close to that, I think I need to run the numbers again.
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Posted in Credit Cards | 21 Comments »
I’ve tallied up the answers to the multiple choice portion of my feedback survey, and here are results complete with pretty pie charts!
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Posted in General | 26 Comments »
Wal-mart has a new program that offers certain generic prescription drugs for only $4, with or without insurance. Available in-store only, no mail orders. I don’t know much about drugs, but that sounds pretty cheap to me. From their press release:
The $4 generics program includes 314 generic prescriptions available for up to a 30-day supply at commonly prescribed dosages. According to www.rxlist.com, the list also represents 14 of the top 20 prescribed medications in the United States.
The 27 participating states currently are: AK, AL, AR, AZ, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, MD, MI, MO, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, SD, TX, VA, VT.
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Posted in Frugal Living | 15 Comments »
As suggested in my survey, I am continuing to freshen up the parts of this site that are getting a bit dated. My old online savings account comparison just wasn’t cutting it, as a lot of new competitive accounts have entered the scene recently. I can’t keep up with every single bank, so instead I decided just to list what I see as the major ones and link to all the information that I’ve gathered about each. It’s now up on my Popular Posts section on the right.
Or, go directly to my new Online Savings Accounts Comparison page.
Posted in Banking | 13 Comments »
TradePub is a site with a big list of free subscriptions to trade magazines in various industries, from finance to IT/engineering to healthcare. It’s all advertiser-supported, so just pick out what you want. Here are a few financial mags that caught my eye:
Financial Planning - “Delivers in-depth features and articles that help advisers build their practices and enhance planning and investment.” This one would be interesting just to see what they talk about behind our backs.
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 5 Comments »
Free 250 Delta miles for telling them what you like to do while in-flight. Easy-Peasy. I can’t wait for free WiFi to hit airplanes.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 12 Comments »
Whether trying to get a fee waived, or calling in to check up a signup bonus, here are 3 quick tips for dealing with phone reps:
1) If you can’t get to a human within 30 seconds, try finding a better number at GetHuman.com.
2) If you ask nicely and don’t get what you want, don’t get mad. Just hang up and try again. You may have caught someone trying to reach a quota or simply on a bad day. If it doesn’t happen in three tries, it probably won’t happen.
3) When you do get what you want, try to have it credited immediately. If it is one of those “it should show up in 4-6 weeks” situations, have them type a note in your account. This can save a lot of research time later on, and helps make sure you get what was promised.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »
If you have an MBNA credit card, you may have noticed that the credit card site is no more. When you try to log in, it says that your cards should be at BankofAmerica.com. But if you have certain co-branded cards like Fidelity ones, you can only access them at IBSNetAccess.com. My other MBNA cards were automatically merged into my BofA Online Banking.
Posted in Credit Cards | 22 Comments »
There are a variety of reasons to get higher credit card limits, including improving your credit score by using a lower percentage of your available credit, and also the ability to get more free money from credit cards, and thus make more interest. Some people say there are disadvantages too, but it’s really easier to decrease your credit limits if somehow you need to.
Sometimes your issuer will automatically increase your limits without asking, like Citibank and MBNA. But many times you need to ask and it often involves a credit check. To be honest, I haven’t very aggressive recently in getting my credit limits as high as they could be. The only thing that I do, because it literally takes 5 seconds to do, is to occasionally request an instant credit limit increase online with Citibank. It doesn’t even hit you with a hard credit pull! Here’s how:
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Posted in Credit Cards | 64 Comments »
I’m looking at a few online hire-a-freelancer sites, including eLance and Guru.com, and comparing the project descriptions and the winning bids. Most of the bidders are from foreign countries and the prices are amazingly low. Some of the finished projects are pretty awful, but many coders are obviously very skilled. With the proper manager mentality, a U.S.-based freelancer could probably arbitrage themselves quite easily. You’d have to coordinate things like taxes and confidential client information, but hey, don’t corporations do this every day?
Most of these sites have a mutual ratings system, much like the eBay seller feedback ratings. I get the feeling that some of the newcomers are so desperate to get a few reviews under their belt that they are willing to work for nothing. This is why I only take local jobs, where I can get personal referrals and offer better service in order to justify a higher price. Has anyone used one of these sites?
Posted in Entrepreneurial | 14 Comments »
In geek speak, the term “noise” is any disturbance that interferes with or prevents reception of a signal, like the static on your cell phone. In the financial world, the intended signal is trying to tell us how to best accumulate wealth, and the interference is 95% of what you hear from the media. Forbes Magazine’s Mutual Fund Honor Roll? Well-packaged noise. Jim Cramer of Mad Money? Annoying noise. This is according to Chapter 18 of The Bogleheads Guide to Investing.
I think that there is much truth to this assertion. In essence, anything that attempts to “beat the market” is saying this:
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Posted in Investing | 16 Comments »
If you haven’t filled out my feedback survey yet, doing it now would be simply fantastic. I’m only going to keep it up until the end of Wednesday, so let your voice be heard!
Posted in General | 4 Comments »
Thinking about moving your cash to a higher interest rate? There are a lot of banks paying 5% interest or more out there. Many are online, but some might already be in your neighborhood.
Next, use this handy calculator to find out how much more money you’ll be looking at:
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Posted in Banking, Tools & Calculators | 34 Comments »
I’m tinkering with my site right now, and I managed to kill my e-mail address 
Update: E-mail was down for parts of Sat/Sun/Mon. If you sent me something during this timeframe, please resend. It is back up now.
Posted in General | No Comments »
