Finance Gets Personal

While I’ve been debating between buying a Dyson for $440 and a cheap vacuum for $100, it turns out there are a few other options I hadn’t considered before.

The first option is buying a cheap vacuum with my American Express card and paying it off immediately. It turns out that if I would have purchased my last vacuum with my American Express card, I’d be able to get my money back even though the manufacturer’s warranty had already expired. That’s because AMEX doubles the manufacturer’s warranty up to one year for any item with a warranty of five years or less. That means my Kenmore, which had a manufacturer’s warranty of one year, would have been covered for two years had I paid for it with my card. Since my Hoover also died within two years, that vacuum would have been covered too.

The second option is to purchase a vacuum from Costco. Costco offers a “lifetime guarantee” on most products (excluding plasma TVs and computers), which means that if I purchased a vacuum there and it broke five years later, I could get my money back as long as I saved the original receipt (or a copy of the receipt, since they usually turn black after a while) and the packaging. I had heard about this before, so I called the store to confirm - it’s true! The only problem with this option is that we don’t have a Costco membership. Our parents have Sam’s Club memberships, but despite their website’s claims of a “100% Satisfaction Guarantee,” they said I would probably not be able to return a vacuum I’d been using for any amount of time over 60 days.

So now the question is, do we buy a vacuum with the credit card to extend the warranty by a year, or do we buy a $50 Costco membership to get a lifetime warranty?

While I realize that a lot of people save money shopping at Costco, I’m worried I might end up spending more than I otherwise would, especially since I usually shop sales and use coupons.

Balancing the checkbook and paying bills used to be so easy.

Well, maybe not easy, but definitely simple and low-tech.

Every time money came out of your account, there was a check associated with it. You simply recorded the check number, payee and amount in your checkbook register. Then, when it was time to pay bills, you grabbed a calculator, book of stamps, your checkbook and your pile of bills. An hour later, you’re done.

Things are so much more advanced now, but I’m not sure it’s gotten easier. Until I switched computers, I used the desktop version of Quicken. It took me hours to set up all my accounts, and I never did get them synced with my online accounts. I stopped saving debit card receipts because the transaction usually cleared before I had a chance to record it, and my free checks no longer have that little carbon copy. I get some bills online through my bank account, and some still come in the mail. I pay most bills online through my bank account, but some are set up as automatic debits, and others I still have to mail in. In short, there are a million little things that could go wrong and make me think I have more or less money than I actually do.

Now, a used PC has replaced my aging Mac. But I don’t intend to purchase another desktop version of Quicken for PC when there are so many online programs that supposedly do the same thing - for free.

Except, they don’t all do the same thing.

First, I tried Mint.com, which is actually a pretty cool site. The problem I had was that you can’t record upcoming transactions. You can get a good idea of the history of your accounts and where your money is going, but have no idea how much money you’ll have left at the end of your next paycheck. Fail.

So, I then set up all my accounts on Quicken Online. It was working pretty well until I discovered that my repeating transactions only show up once in my register. The next scheduled transaction doesn’t show up until the previous one has cleared the bank. This is definitely a problem, because while I write a check to daycare every week, they often cash them once a month. Luckily, I’ve found a tedious way to work around this - list all my transactions as “one time only.”

From what I’ve seen so far, there is no perfect program (especially a free one!) to balance your checkbook and track all your expenses. One of my Twitter friends has recommended I try his site, BudgetPulse. While I haven’t had a chance yet, you might want to check it out. The only downside I know of is that the site doesn’t sync with your accounts online, but this does give you peace of mind if you have security concerns.

How do you balance your “checkbook” these days?

Photo Credit: MmHnCnChBkMt by Hello Turkey Toe, used under Creative Commons licensing.

I’m afraid that my plan to transfer prescriptions between pharmacies for gift cards has turned out to be a little less lucrative than I originally thought.

Friday night, I took $40 worth of change to the CoinStar machine at CVS, thinking I would get an Old Navy gift card to take care of a few Christmas presents (plus, I’d get an extra $10 gift card in the mail with the CoinStar holiday bonus program). Alas, Old Navy was not one of the gift cards offered at that location. No problem, I thought - I’ll just get a CVS gift card and use that to buy an Old Navy gift card, since I knew they sold them inside. Only…no. Apparently, you are not allowed to use a CVS gift card (or ECBs, but you probably already knew that) to buy other gift cards.

No!!!!!

Since, I assume, you get an actual $25 CVS gift card when you transfer a prescription to CVS, there is no way to turn that gift card into anything besides CVS merchandise.

What about Walgreens? Well, it turns out you are still safe with that one, because Walgreens typically gives you a $25 gift check, which you can use to purchase other gift cards. But, like at CVS, you can only buy other store’s gift cards with cash or a credit/debit card.

At least I know there will be plenty of Black Friday deals to spend my CVS gift card on! And since my stepson busted his chin open while ice skating and had six stitches yesterday, there’s no money left in the health care spending account now anyway :).

Photo Credit: ClearRx prescription bottles by bartificial, used under Creative Commons licensing.

As my husband and I were searching the Internet for free hobby ideas, we came across a comment from someone about “geocaching.”

Apparently, geocaching is an outdoor high-tech treasure hunt using GPS. People hide “treasures” in containers throughout the world, then post the coordinates and other clues online at geocaching.com. When you find the geocache, you usually sign a log book and replace the treasures (often special coins or other unique but inexpensive finds) with your own, then go back and post your pictures and thoughts about the experience.

I think it sounds really cool!

You can do a search here to see how many geocaches are hidden near you.

Obviously, this hobby is frugal, but not entirely free unless you already own a GPS. My husband and I plan to each save $20 from our personal “allowance” every paycheck to purchase one. Assuming we can find one for around $100, we’ll be up and running in another month.

I think it’s a great solution for us because it’s something we can all do as a family (including the dog!) and is an active pursuit. Plus, we live within a few miles of a lake/state park and own a Jeep that hasn’t seen much off-road action.

Have any of you heard of geocaching or tried it before? I’d love to hear your experiences.

<Photo Credit: Claxton Crossroads by Thomas Powers, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Yes, today is Halloween. (Happy Halloween!)

But if you are truly frugal, your mind has already moved on to Christmas.

I know, I know, it’s sacrilege to begin thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving, let alone on Halloween, but if you want to do some major Christmas budget slashing - get over it! And with that in mind, I present…

The Second Enemy of Frugality: Not Planning Ahead. (If you missed the first Enemy of Frugality, click here.)

Of course, this one is easier said than done.

But let’s look at an example of how not planning ahead can cost you:

Today, of course, is Halloween. Let’s say you have two kids that you’re taking trick-or-treating tonight. Your son wants to be Spider-Man and your daughter wants to be a fairy. So, on Tuesday night, you took the kids to Target on the way home from practice. Your daughter found a great Tinkerbell costume for $29.99, but the Spider-Man costumes were all sold out in your son’s size. You made some calls, but none of the other stores had one in his size either. “Are you sure you don’t want to be Batman this year?,” you asked. No dice. So, you grabbed 4 big bags of candy for $28, a pumpkin for $4.50, and two pumpkin pails for $2 each and headed home to order a Spider-Man costume online. The $24.99 Spider-Man costumes were all sold out at Target.com, but you found a “puffy muscle” version for $39.99, and paid $12.66 for 2-day shipping in order to get it in time for Halloween. Tonight, you’ll order pizza on the way home from work for $25, since you won’t have time to cook anything. Total cost of a “basic” Halloween (no decorations, no costume accessories, etc.): $119.14 plus tax.

Now, let’s consider what tonight would be like if you had planned ahead (and thus were able to start thinking about Christmas!):

A few days after Halloween last year, you hit up Target with your kids to look for this year’s Halloween costumes. Everything was 75% off (yes, you could have waited for 90% off, but then your picky kids probably wouldn’t have found anything!). You were able to purchase costumes for both kids for a total of $12.50. You knew better than to purchase Halloween candy a year ahead of time, so a month or two ago, you started watching the drug and grocery store ads for sales on Halloween candy, and began printing and collecting candy coupons. Between sales, instant rebates and coupons, you were able to get all of your Halloween candy for $3! Last week, you also scored free pumpkin pails and safety glow sticks for trick-or-treating at CVS! You talked to your boss on Monday about leaving work a little early today, and plan to pop in the D’Giorno pizza you bought on sale for $3.99 while the kids are getting their costumes on. Total cost of a “basic” Halloween: $19.49 plus tax, for a savings of $99.65!

Apply the plan ahead principle to anything, and you’ll soon find you can save money on EVERYTHING.

Photo Credit: The Tree’s Up by yvestown, used under Creative Commons licensing.

As the months go by, I find myself becoming both cheaper and more adventurous.

Hence the decision to trim my own bangs last month.

You see, I’m growing my hair out to donate to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program (when am I going to be done with this?), so my haircuts have become further and further apart. Add to that the fact that I’m usually broke and I hate getting my hair cut, and it’s often way past time for a trim.

But how hard can a little bang snippy-snippy be, right?

Well, when your idea of a “good hair day” is getting your hair into a ponytail without any bumps, your eyebrow scissors should come with a warning that says, “Do not attempt to cut your bangs with these. You will end up looking like a flying nun, not Mandy Moore.”

Still, I bravely took my miniature scissors and pulled my hair tight between my fingers. Snip, snip, snip. Snip snip.

Repeat.

Shit, the sides aren’t even.

Snip, snip, snip. Snip.

Hmmm….I think I need a little bit more volume.

Snip Snip.

Where did this hair come from? Is this part of my bangs? I’d better cut it, too.

Snip, snip, snip.

Now, let’s see if these line up. Is it supposed to be the same length all the way across, or angled down toward the ears? Hmm.

I think I’d better stop.

The next day, it looks like I have wings.

So the following day, I try blow drying those suckers flat against the side of my head. But they’re not having it. So I break out the scissors again for a little damage control.

And again the following day.

And the following day.

At this rate, I’m going to have Betty Page bangs!

One month later, I finally go in for a real haircut.

“I tried to trim my bangs and it was a disaster. Please fix them!”

(As she’s cutting) “Some of the curl you’re experiencing is because of this hair here. This is your new growth. You never want to cut that. You might want to smooth that down with some product until it grows back out.”

Oh, of course.

(This post was included in the Carnival of Money Stories, hosted by Out of Debt Again.)

Photo Credit: Day 81: trimming by bookgrl, used under Creative Commons licensing.

“Did that pumpkin cost twice as much as the other pumpkins?” - DavidDaddy1

Drastically cutting your monthly expenses takes sacrifice, perseverance and a small bit of insanity.

Today, we’ll begin examining the “insanity” portion of frugality with a series on the mental roadblocks you must overcome to save big bucks - i.e., The Enemies of Frugality (insert ominous music here).

The First Enemy of Frugality: Brand Loyalty.

I’ve never really thought of myself as a brand loyal person, yet I used to continually purchase the same brands at the grocery store and Target because they were “cheap enough” and I’d been satisfied with them in the past.

Take All laundry detergent, for instance. When I was in college, it was the lowest price brand that I’d actually seen others use, so I decided to try it. It worked, so I kept buying it, even though Purex was sometimes cheaper. For some reason, I thought Purex wasn’t a good brand - otherwise, why would Tide be so much more expensive? I eventually stopped even looking at the other brands, and purchased All exclusively for years.

In fact, I did this for many things: shampoo, deodorant, clothes… I would even buy the $16 razor replacement cartridges because they were the same brand as the razor I once bought on sale!

Needless to say, my brand loyalty was slowly costing me money.

Was it worth it? No, it usually was not.

The “cheap” Suave shampoo I used? It’s not nearly as nice as the Herbal Essences shampoo I often get for free after sales and coupons. And that Venus razor? Well, now I’ve got one of each kind of razor: Venus Breeze, Bic Soleil, Schick Intuitions, etc. I just buy whichever replacement cartridges I can get for free or next to free! (Or, sometimes I just buy another starter razor kit if it ends up being cheaper per razor!)

After trying so many different brands, I’ve learned that my brand loyalty was often misguided. And rarely worth the extra cost.

But if you just buy generics, none of this brand loyalty stuff applies, right?

I used to think the same way. In one of my early posts, Snowflaking: 100 Ways to Come Up With More Money for Your Debt Snowball, I wrote that you should only clip coupons for items you already use. My reasoning was that you should only buy it if you were already going to buy it anyway, and to buy generics for everything else. Well, I was most certainly WRONG!

Couponing and drug store shopping has opened my eyes to a lot of things: primarily, that I can get many name-brand items for much less than the price of generics, as long as I’m willing to sacrifice brand loyalty.

Which is not to say that I don’t still remain fairly loyal to a few brands. Coke, Puma and Banana Republic, for example. But my list has shrunk considerably, and my decision to stick with those brands is now a conscious choice instead of one made out of habit or convenience.

Likewise, I also have a list of brands I refuse to use - but my requirement is that I’ve tried them recently. For example, last week I added Mitchum antiperspirant to that list after sweating through work the first day I tried it - I wouldn’t buy that again even if it was free!

So the next time you go shopping, take note of which brands you are loyal to, and why. How much money could you save by “sacrificing” some of your loyalty?

(This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Greener Pastures.)

Photo Credit: True Brand Loyalty by unertlkm, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Even before the Chinese “Women’s” Gymnastic team won the gold medal yesterday, doubts were raised about the team members’ ages. Could these 4′9″, 77 pound, undeveloped girls (one with a missing tooth!) really be 16? Although the New York Times has discovered evidence to the contrary, the IOC does not seem particularly concerned with the potential scandal.

But let’s not pretend that lying about one’s age is unique to the Chinese, the Olympics or Charo.

My introduction to the benefits of lying about one’s age began when I reached the *dreaded* age of 11 and could no longer eat off some restaurants’ children’s menus. My dad, being the “frugal” (ahem, “cheap”) guy he is, would sometimes have me continue to order meals meant for the 10 and under crowd.

But sometimes it was more convenient for me to be older, like at Yellowstone National Park, where I was technically too young for the geyser tour, or at Disney World, where I magically became two years older to attend a taping of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Later, I started lying about my age for my own purposes, like getting into R-rated movies before I was 17, or drinking before I was 21. Although technically no one asked me my age, I was, of course, still lying.

And I have to admit that even after college, sometimes the benefits of student discounts overpowered my ability to not keep using my undated student ID.

I thought I had put all that behind me, when one day my stepson recounted a story of his recent visit to the zoo with his mom and brother. “We had to say that my brother was only two so he could get in for free, because we couldn’t afford it otherwise.” When I asked him if he thought that was OK, he said, “Yes, because my mom is kind of poor, and we really wanted to go to the zoo.”

I understand that age fabrication sometimes leads to a gold medal, more movie roles or a great discount. And I know that I have been unethical in the past when it comes to taking discounts I’m not entitled to. But I have to draw the line when it comes to letting, encouraging or conspiring with your children to lie. I know my parents did it, but I hope I’m strong enough not to.

If honesty should be worth more than a gold medal, shouldn’t it also be worth more than a small discount?

Last year, I went to dinner with a couple friends that I had not seen in a while. “We should do this more often!” we said, and one of the girls suggested we follow through - we’d continue to go out to eat the first Wednesday of every month.

This sounded great, but also expensive given my tiny restaurant budget. So I was relieved when the friend suggested having a rotating dinner party each month instead of going to a restaurant.

Now, I’m not really a cook, so I was a little spooked during the first dinner party at my friend’s house, where everything was homemade and pictures were taken for her food blog. But, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find myself mostly capable, even if I do try to choose desserts and salads that I can make ahead of time so there are fewer opportunities to screw up!

What I was unpleasantly surprised by was the cost of making a “fancy” dinner.

Here is the menu I put together the first time I hosted:

Cafe Caramel Fondue
Creamy Restaurant-Style Tortellini
Cheesy Garlic Bread
Individual Grand Rasberry Trifles
Francis Coppola Merlot

Notice that there is no meat in any of these dishes, but I still ended up shelling out close to $100, plus the half day I took off work to cook and clean!

Obviously, I needed a lesson in fancy-schmancy dinner party budgeting. So, one year and three hosted dinner parties later, here’s the menu I’ve put together for this month:

Bruschetta and Cheese-Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Italian Garden Salad
Squash Sautee
Banana Split Pie
Iced Tea (We’ve pretty much stopped serving wine since we live so far apart and can’t drink a whole bottle)

While I’ve done much better this month by purchasing the chicken and cheese on sale a few weeks ago and freezing it, choosing the pie based on a sale on strawberries and omitting the pecans, etc., total cost is still about $35, not counting the things I already had on hand like milk, tea and salad dressing. Sure, it will feed five people, but I usually spend much less than $7 per person.

I guess the good news is that I’ve finally reached the break even point for dinner parties versus restaurant meals. $35 every three months vs. $12 every month…?

Of course, now, we’ve decided to alternate restaurant visits and dinner parties. I wonder why?

(This post was an editor’s pick in the Carnival of Money Stories, hosted by Living Almost Large.)

Photo Credit: Elegant by Pinelife, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Money Saving Mom, one of my favorite bloggers, is offering an amazing deal on ebooks TODAY ONLY. I would normally highly recommend her Supermarket Savings 101 eCourse for $17.97, but today you can get that and her other 14 ebooks and downloadables for a total of $5.97 for everything! Check it out here: Click Here! Update: Although the $5.97 deal is now over, you can still purchase everything for $8.97 on Thursday, or $11.97 on Friday.

I have learned so many things that I never thought were possible from Money Saving Mom, and I’m now getting many household and grocery items for free or next to free (um, in case you haven’t noticed from my blog…). I’m really excited to take advantage of this deal for myself too, since some of the books cover things like growing your own groceries, inexpensive meal ideas and cutting your grocery bill in half.

I realize there’s a stereotype out there about coupon-using bargain-hunters all being stay-at-home moms or little old ladies, but as a 28-year-old who works full-time, I promise you it actually is worth your time!