Archives for August 2013

RedBox Instant by Verizon Free Trial Sign-Up

Posted on August 15, 2013 // 5 Comments

(Updated: Added details about newly-available Roku app.)

Redbox, famous for their $1 DVD rental kiosks ($1.20 now), recently launched a movie streaming service called RedBox Instant by Verizon. We like their kiosks and the fact that you can browse DVDs first and reserve them online before going to pick them up. There is currently a 1-month free trial that includes 4 free DVD rentals, so we paused our Netflix subscription (easy to pause, skip a month or more, and reactivate later) and signed up to try it out.

Redbox Movie Streaming Review

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Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Frugal Living //

Rewards Program Lessons from Perkstreet Financial Shutdown

Posted on August 13, 2013 // 14 Comments

Perkstreet Financial started in 2010 as a plucky internet bank start-up that told us credit cards were dangerous and unethical, and you should use a trusty debit card instead. They offered attractive features like 2% cash back on all purchases and 5% cash back on special categories. But then new laws were enacted that limited debit card merchant fees, and Perkstreet took a hit to their main revenue source. On August 12th, they announced that they were shutting down. Oh, and all that cash back “Perks” that their customers earned? Gone with zero prior notice. *Poof*

Consistent with the terms of our Rewards Program Agreement, we have discontinued our perks program and cancelled all perks balances as of today, August 12, 2013.

Consistent with what terms? Wait, I thought you said you were trustworthy? They meant this part:

The Rewards Program and its benefits are offered at our sole discretion. We reserve the right to cancel, terminate, change or temporarily suspend the Rewards Program and to amend this agreement at any time without notice.

Translation: We can do whatever the %(#& we want. But you can’t.

I never had an account with Perkstreet and didn’t lose anything, but many people did. This is a good opportunity to talk about rewards programs in general. Some thoughts:

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Filed Under: Credit Cards, Deals & Offers //

Vanguard Balanced Fund: The Benefit of Balancing Stocks and Bonds

Posted on August 12, 2013 // 14 Comments

An important tenet of portfolio construction is diversifying between stocks and bonds. While poking around on Morningstar, I stumbled across a quick real-world example of how this works.

Let’s say you had $10,000 back on January 1st, 1993. Now, let’s see how that money would have grown over time until today (August 9, 2013) depending on what you invested it in. That’s means holding over a 20-year period – that’s 20 years of bubbles, crashes, euphoria, fear, and a constant flow of bold predictions and catchy newspaper headlines.

1. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Investor Shares (VTSMX).

Let’s say you invested in this huge, popular index fund that passively tracks the entire US stock market. (See What’s Inside the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund?) From afar, you may be happy with this chart. But having lived through it, I can say that it was quite a wild ride. People tend to remember the highest value of their portfolio. Your money would have grown to $37,000, only to fall all the way back to $23,000 in the Tech Bubble Crash (a 38% drop). Later, your $46,000 would have dropped 50% all the way to $23,000 during the Housing Bubble Crash. So between 2003 and 2009, your money would have gone nowhere even as inflation rose. Many people went to cash. But if you stuck it out, today you’d be sitting on a balance of $58,621.

2. Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund, Investor Shares (VBMFX)
Now, what if you invested in this fund that tracks the overall US bond market?

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Filed Under: Investing, Retirement //

Cost of Convenience: Homemade vs. Frozen Pizza

Posted on August 8, 2013 // 40 Comments

Inspired by both the book Cooked and my Live Below the Line experiment, I’m doing a series of posts investigating how much extra trouble it is to cook at home. How much time do you really save? How much more does it cost? Plus all the intangibles like taste, knowing what’s in your food, the lack of various food additives, and the feeling of self-sufficiency. I’ll try not to be too preachy, as I’ve eaten my share of prepared food and take-out. In fact, don’t be surprised if the food-in-a-box wins sometimes.

So what’s a good place to start? Pizza! It’s quite easy to make your own pizza, but yet the frozen food aisle is packed with shrink-wrapped dough discs. It’s time for a showdown.

Making Your Own Pizza

Pizza dough only has a few ingredients, most of which are probably already in your pantry. Here’s one sample recipe that we worked off originally, but have adapted over time to our preferences. As for toppings, let’s start with a simple mozzarella and basil pizza with tomato sauce. Here’s a table of the ingredients and their cost for two medium pizzas. Unlike my poverty challenge, in real life I can buy things in bulk like a Costco jug of olive oil.

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Filed Under: Frugal Living //

Amazon Student $10 Referral Credit Promotion

Posted on August 7, 2013 // 1 Comment

Back to School time is here again, and Amazon has a promotion where you get can $10 free credit for each new Amazon Student member that you refer to sign up. If you’ve got some social media influence in college or just met 100 new friends in your dorm, this would be a pretty easy way to rack up some pizza money as it’s completely free to sign up and you get 6 months of free Amazon Prime 2-day shipping. “All Amazon customers can invite friends to join Amazon Student via email, Facebook post or by sharing a personal invitation link on social media sites.”

Students are verified by providing a working .edu e-mail address, although you can use another e-mail for your account. After the first 6 months, new sign-ups can continue Amazon Student at 50% off ($49 a year) and keep the 2-day free shipping as well as get access to the Amazon Prime streaming movie and TV library, as well as the Amazon Prime Kindle free borrowing service. You have to provide a credit card for the trial I believe, but you can cancel at any time, even immediately and you can still keep the free 6 months and it’ll just stop when time is up without charging your card.

Fine print:

Residents of AR, MN, NC, and RI are ineligible to receive Student referral credit. Credits may take 7 days or longer to appear in your account after new member signup. Credits expire one year from date of issuance, are one-time use, are non-refundable, and can be redeemed only on items sold by Amazon on www.amazon.com.

Sign up for Amazon Student here. Get your own referral links here.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

$30,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Experiment Update – August 2013

Posted on August 6, 2013 // 7 Comments

Here’s the August 2013 update for my Beat the Market Experiment, a series of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012:

  1. $10,000 Passive Benchmark Portfolio that would serve as both a performance benchmark and an real-world, low-cost portfolio that would be easy to replicate and maintain for DIY investors.
  2. $10,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Speculative Portfolio that would simply represent the attempts of an “average guy” who is not a financial professional and gets his news from mainstream sources to get the best overall returns possible.
  3. $10,000 P2P Consumer Lending Speculative Portfolio – Split evenly between LendingClub and Prosper, this portfolio is designed to test out the alternative investment class of person-to-person loans. The goal is again to beat the benchmark by setting a target return of 8-10% net of defaults.

As requested, I updated the scale to zoom in on the comparison chart. You can view it the old way here.

Summary. Values are as of August 1, 2013. 9 months into this experiment, the passive benchmark portfolio remains the leader and if anything is widening the gap. My neglected speculative portfolio has been more volatile and also consistently behind the benchmark in this bull market. As for the P2P portfolio, it is starting to look like LendingClub may perform better than Prosper. Although my Prosper portfolio is earning slightly higher average interest, it also has significantly more late loans which has more than offset the higher interest. I’m slightly above 8% annualized return for LendingClub currently using my metrics, slightly below 7% for Prosper.

$10,000 Benchmark Portfolio. I put $10,000 into index funds at TD Ameritrade due to their 100 commission-free ETF program that includes free trades on the most popular low-cost, index ETFs from Vanguard and iShares. Also no minimum balance requirement, no maintenance fees, no annual fees. The portfolio was based loosely on a David Swensen model portfolio. Screenshot, click to enlarge:

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Filed Under: Investing, Monthly Updates //

Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Card Review – Simple 1.5% Cash Back

Posted on August 4, 2013 // 16 Comments

card_name

The card_name is a cash back credit card that earns unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases.

  • $200 Cash Back after you spend $500 on purchases within 3 months from account opening. For a limited time, also enjoy a $100 credit to use towards flights, stays and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel during your first cardholder year.
  • Earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, every day
  • 0% intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for 15 months; reg_apr,reg_apr_type APR after that; balance transfer fee applies
  • $0 annual fee and no foreign transaction fees.
  • Earn unlimited 5% cash back on hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel.
  • No rotating categories or sign-ups needed to earn cash rewards; plus, cash back won’t expire for the life of the account and there’s no limit to how much you can earn

Bottom line. The card_name is all about simple cash rewards with no gimmicks. No points, no miles, no travel credit, no rotating categories. No annual fee. You can cash out for any amount, at any time. Your rewards never expire and you can redeem for straight cash via check or statement credit.

Filed Under: Credit Cards, Deals & Offers //

Satellite TV Retention Department Employee On Haggling Discounts

Posted on August 1, 2013 // 13 Comments

One of my more popular posts is about Haggling To Lower Your Cable or Direct TV Satellite Bill. Looking at the stats, I would confidently estimate that hundreds of people have saved hundreds of dollars each after reading it and taking some action. Today, a call center worker in the Retention Department of a satellite TV company (Dish? DirecTV?) left some interesting thoughts that I didn’t want to get lost in the 135+ comments. I’ve quoted it below, unedited except for a few spaces to break things up.

I work for a satellite company, I wont say which one. and might I just say that if you are going to call in and do all this just to get money off of your bill at least be up front about it. The worst is when people call in and try to give some sob story about not being able to afford it when they have like the highest package but wont go down to a more affordable one. We have done this long enough to know who is “blowing smoke” so if you want the best deal just be nice (we in the retention department deal with mostly escalated situations as well as customer retention)

If you call in and just say “hey, I know you guys have a lot of good deals going on for different customers, is there anything you can do for me” I PROMISE You you will get the best deal.

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Filed Under: Deals & Offers //
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