Savings Tip - Student Discount

Just recently becoming a student again, it provides me access into capturing additional discounts from many merchants. You should not hesitate to flex your student status and ask if there are any student discounts when shopping. This can provide you savings in the range of 5% to 25% depending on the purchase...

Just recently, I purchased the OS X Leopard software from the Apple store and was pleased to capture a 10% discount by flashing my student id. I saved $12.99 on this purchase and I will deposit this amount into my savings account.

If you are aware of some other locations that give you a generous student discount, please feel free to comment...

Best Coupon Sites - Web Article

How timely......I was catching up on my daily finance reading and came across this article "Where to find coupons online" on Yahoo Finance by Marshall Loeb. This is a great list to support my previous coupon post. I will utilize these sites for future savings.

In summary, he mentions the best online coupon sites are:

CouponMountain.com

Coupons.com

Dealcatcher.com

Currentcodes.com

FatWallet.com

Lease vs. Buy: Cable Modem Payback analysis

I try and make a habit of auditing a random bill once a month to ensure I am not being nickle and dimed. Picking out the Comcast cable bill just recently, I see that I am leasing a cable Internet modem at $3 per month or $36 for a full year.

The cable modem that I am using is the Motorola SURFBoard SB5101. I have been using this cable modem now for about 24 months since I moved into my new place. Looking at it, the technology doesn't seem to be that much different than the one I used about 4 years ago.

I scanned the Internet for some prices on this Motorola cable modem to use in my lease vs. buy analysis.

BizRate search results, click here

My initial Ebay search results show the total price ranging from $15.00 to ~ $65.00

So with the price range from $20 to $80, depending on condition and shipping, here is my simple payback analysis:

Purchase Price / Payback in months
$20 / 6.7 mos
$40 / 13.3 mos
$60 / 20.0 mos
$80 / 26.7 mos

Even if I were to buy a new modem when I moved into this place, I would be looking at owning a "free and clear" device in the next month or so....

With that, I am off on a fishing exhibition at Ebay for a cable modem. Any recommendations on which one works best would be greatly appreciated!

Personal Finance Tip: Coupon Savings

Don't overlook the power of coupons....I was sitting in the book store the other day and reading a few money saving tips from some of the latest money saving books. The majority of the books included at least a few pages or so dedicated to coupons. After thinking through some of my recent purchases, these savings can really add up.

It doesn't take that long to find savings in every deal and I am not just referring to clipping grocery coupons out of the Sunday paper, it is also about using the coupons you get in the mail and online codes.

My coupon savings in the last few weeks total $32.10 from 4 retailers, some of the savings coming from the doubling of manufacturer's coupons at the grocery store. I will deposit these savings in my blog account and will continue to clip those coupons.

In the future, I am going to try and call some customer service lines of the products I use often to see if they will send you some coupons in the mail. Also, I have been trying to research some websites that provide online coupons, but I can't seem to get through all of them...Can anyone refer some of the better websites?

Save an additional 10% by planning your future purchases

A great way to turn those unwanted gift cards into cash is to turn to Ebay, as mentioned in previous posts. On the flip side, if planning your purchases appropriately, you can create some additional retail savings for yourself.

At the time of this post, Ebay had over 17,000 auctions for gift cards ranging across almost every major retailer. Here are the retailers with the most activity:

450 auctions for Lowe’s
292 auctions for Home Depot
292 auctions for Itunes
289 auctions for Best Buy

These auctions are also across many price ranges, currently the highest value auction listed is for a $2500 Neiman Marcus Gift Certificate.

In seeing how much of a discount you can purchase these gift cards for, I searched some of the recently completed auctions for Best Buy. Picking a sample size of 30 completed auctions, here are the metrics:

# of auctions: 30
$ value of gift cards: $4,691.95
$ value of winning bids w/ shipping: $4,225.70
# of auctions that had free shipping: 18 (60%)
% final price to gift card value: 90.8%
Min % of gift card value: 75.0%
Max % of gift card value: 104%

So if still are saving up for that $1,000 flat panel TV at Best Buy, get in sooner by creating an Ebay id and starting bidding. You should expect to save an additional $100.

Here are some tips to be successful:

For Buyers

- Due Diligence: Make sure you read all of the feedback from the seller to ensure a valid gift card

- Don't Overbid: do not bid more than 91% of the gift card value.

- Be Patient: There are plenty of fish in this sea and hold out for the best deal. It shouldn't take too long to secure a significant amount of gift card value

For Sellers

- Don’t try and increase your final price by including a shipping charge. You will create animosity from prospective buyers. You will have better success by absorbing the 0.41 cost of a stamp.

Here is a link to the data sample for this post.

Author disclosure: I do not own any shares of Ebay or Best Buy

Personal Finance Tip - Sell your extra stuff on-line

“One person’s trash is another person’s treasure”…..

I am not calling your extra stuff trash, but I do think that keeping everything you own forever is a little excessive. A great way that I like to create extra dollars for my savings account is to sell my stuff online. This may seem somewhat obvious to many folks, but it does take some discipline and energy to follow through.

As each day goes by, it gets easier and easier to sell your stuff through the internet. I prefer to use sites such as Ebay and Craigslist because of their large number of users. I have just recently purchased a new digital camera online and decided to sell our old one. Nothing was wrong with the camera, I just decided to upgrade. It was one of the first generation Sony digital cameras, about 4 years old, but still worked great.

After listing the camera online, I was able to find multiple buyers that created a competitive bidding situation. After my auction timeline ended, I was able to sell the camera at a price of $86 plus shipping.

These sites also offer great savings opportunities for any holiday shopping that you need to do. I will deposit my auction proceeds in my personal savings account generated by this blog.

Author disclosure: I do not own any shares of Ebay.

Personal Finance Tip: Cable company savings

This personal finance money tip on Cable company savings was inspired by the posting at mymoneyblog.com

After reading mymoneyblog.com, I thought this was a great opportunity for me to shrink down my current cable bill. I was able to execute this savings in a relatively quick time.

Here are my suggestions on what to do:

1. Research what the current competitive offers are
2. Call your cable company and ask for the account management department
3. Highlight how long you have been a customer and positive account standing
4. Note the current competitor offerings and ask if there are available savings that can be applied to your account.

I was able to save approximately $40 per month for the next 12 months. I will deposit my monthly savings into my personal finance tracking portfolio.

Thank You Mymoneyblog.com for the great advice.

Personal Finance Tip: Avoid the retail stores for cell phone accessories

Capture significant savings from buying cell-phone accessories on-line rather than the retail stores.

Just recently, I had to accelerate my decision on which phone to upgrade to on my existing wireless plan with Verizon. My existing contract was up for renewal and I was in the process of selecting a phone I wanted to buy with my “new in every two promotional plan”, a $100 savings on your next phone with Verizon. In the due diligence period, my phone decided to go for a swim with my dog in the local pond ….It wasn’t my dog’s fault, she just wanted to retrieve her prized tennis ball in the water and I forgot the phone was in my pocket.

The next day, I traveled to the local Verizon store to select the LG VX8700 that I have been eyeing up for about a month or so. (I will save you the details on the “runaround” I received from some Verizon local and on-line stores).

Phone Price:
Retail Price $209.99
Less: Promotional Discount: ($100.00)
Plus: Taxes 5.50
Less: Mail-in Rebate: ($50.00)
Net Price equals $65.49

As in all purchases, the sales rep asked to “up-sell” me with the purchase of some accessories for my new phone, specifically a car charger for $30. I was shocked to hear that a car charger costs this much…so I decided to pass on this “great” offer to do some comparative shopping. As you might expect, I ended up saving 49% when I purchased the car charger from Amazon.com

Prices for the LG VX Car Charger:

In-Store at time of purchase with my phone: $31.49 ($29.99 plus 5% tax)

On-Line Verizon store: $26.76 ($29.99 – 4.99 online discount plus 5% tax) 15% savings from Verizon retail store

Amazon.com: $15.97 ($9.99 plus $5.98 in shipping and handling) 49% savings from Verizon retail store

Next, I am in the market for a Bluetooth enabled hands-free set, since my new phone only accepts that format. Email me if you have a recommendation?

To my surprise, it appears cell phones are magnetically attracted to water…If you find yourself in the situation (this is the 3rd time this happened to me), here is a link with tips on saving a wet phone….link

Personal Finance Money Tip – Reward Programs

Reward Programs can offer unconvential savings opportunities. In my short experience with these programs over the last few years, I came away with these three major points to help earn extra income from the initiatives:

#1 – The best program currently available is the American Express Rewards Program, but there are some unique attributes to other programs

#2 - Not all reward programs are created equal

#3 – Make sure you do your due diligence when redeeming your points

I currently only belong to 9 reward programs ranging from the frequent travel programs from airlines, hotels, rental cars to the credit card programs such as American Express. In my short experience with these programs, I found that the AMEX Membership rewards program is the biggest and best one available. With the AMEX rewards program, you can redeem your points across travel, hotel and merchandise awards.

Continental OnePass Program wins the award for magazine and newspaper subscriptions, with over 40 subscriptions available. If you don’t travel enough to earn awards for a ticket at 25,000 miles, a magazine subscription might be a nice way to utilize those stagnant miles. For just 1,600 OnePass miles, you can earn a year subscription to BusinessWeek, a savings of $252 from the newsstand price.

When redeeming awards, make sure you shop across all of your available programs to ensure that you are maximizing your points because many of these programs might offer the same rewards at different exchange rates. Here are a few examples:

Wall Street Journal Subscription
1,200 United.com points for a 13-week subscription or ~ 60 issues. Equivalent to 20pts/issue
3,300 Continental One Pass Program points for 230 issues. Equivalent to 14.3 pts/issue

$25 BananaRepublic Gift Card
2,800 StarwoodHotels SPG.com pts for $25 gift card 112pts/$1 dollar
2,500 AMEX membership rewards pts for $25 gift card. 100pts/$1 dollar

$100 BananaRepublic Gift Card
9,500 StarwoodHotels SPG.com pts for $100 gift card: 95pts/$1 dollar
10,000 AMEX membership rewards pts for $100 gift card. 100pts/$1 dollar

There are also ways to convert your points to cash or cash equivalents. The best option for me to convert my points to cash is with the AMEX rewards program

$100 Cash or Cash Equivalent
20,000 AMEX membership rewards pts for $100 gift card. 200pts/$1 dollar
Or
Redeem 10,000 AMEX pts for a $100 Banana Republic Gift Card and then give the gift card as a gift. With AMEX, there are a significant amount of vendors that provide gift cards through this program such as: Crate & Barrel, Barnes & Noble, Dell Computers, Home Depot, etc….

Also, when signing up for these programs, please make sure you read the all of the fine print details. Most programs only keep your points as long as you are an active member, which means different things to each program. There are options on many of the airline reward programs to transfer or buy additional points, which usually come with a significant transaction charge.

In summary, enroll in as many rewards programs that you can manage. Try to earn multiple rewards on the same purchase (i.e. buy your airline ticket with your American Express card). Try to find creating ways to convert your points to cash.

If you have any other reward programs savings, please feel free to comment or email me.

Here are the links to the reward programs that I use:

American Express
US Airways
Continental
United
SPG.com
Marriott

Author Disclosure: I do not own any stock of the companies mentioned in this article.