Save money on the internet and saving time as well!!!!

Today I was talking to my roommate on how I convinced my mother to join ebates, a cashback website, for her online purchases, when I realized that I should check if petsmart had free delivery and was on ebates.  We normally get discounted gift cards from cardpool and then buy our food and litter from persmart.  But why am I taking my very limited time and going to petsmart if I don't have to?

I found out that petsmart has free shipping on orders over $49, plus there is an online sale going on which will save me 10% today.  So I ordered the cat food and litter to be delivered to my house with the petsmart giftcard which I had purchased at 90% of face value.  So I spent $60.88 at pet smart, on a giftcard that only cost $55, plus ebates will give me back $3.04 so really I spent about $52 for a purchase "worth" $61.  So, I saved $9 for less work than driving to the store, plus I did not have to waste our time.  Because it would have taken much longer to drive and shop than order online.  Don't you love when money savings are a time savings as well.  Most times I either need to spend a lot of time or money to do what I want, here I saved both.  What a good start to weekend!

Is anyone else found a money saving trick this weekend?


The links is this article are my referral links, if this is the first time you have heard of these websites and decide to try them out, I'd love if you used my links.

Millionaire Update February

I now have $14,179 in my invesments.  Because of the cost of school I have not been able to invest lately except for credit card rewards from FIA card services (https://www.fidelity.com/cash-management/american-express-cards).  February we deposited $59.45 that we earned from the credit card into my husband's Roth IRA, however most of the increase was just from the market.  We still have a long way until I reach my next mini-goal of $25,000 but we are inching towards it.  We are also $821 short of having six months worth of expenses in our investment account, and given that Fidelity recommends having one year worth of your income at 35, I think we are doing alright for now. 

I should be done with my Master's in August so either I will continue on with my PhD which will mean a paycheck, giving us money to invest or we will be done with daycare, again, giving us more money to invest.  If I do not go on to my PhD, I am going to try to find a community college or two that will hire me to teach night classes. I prefer older students when tutoring so I assume I will prefer them while teaching as well and it will allow us not to pay for daycare which will save a ton. 
I have also thought about teaching online classes but I don't know much about them, maybe someone on here has an idea on where I can look. 

But for now, life is just staying busy with our new baby, classes and trying to get some writing done on my thesis, so I can graduate in August. 

2012 End of the Year Round Up

This month I added $105.46 to my husband's Roth using our FIA Card services cc rewards.  This was not the only time I have used credit card rewards to help fill out our budget.  This year I have gotten a total of $255.46 from FIA towards retirement which is about 1% of our income.  1% may not seem like a lot but it can seriously add up.  And honestly, right now is the best time for us to be saving for retirement.  Not only do we benefit from compound interest, but our loans are at the lowest they ever will be at.  Right now all our student loans are deferred, so all we have is the mortgage at 4.75% and a personal loan of 3.49%.  Once my husband graduates he will have $17000 in graduate loans at 6.55% and $5500 in undergraduate loans at 5.75%, and then when I graduate I'll add on another $5450 of undergraduate loans at 5.75%.  Once we are paying those higher rate, it will be hard to throw all extra money into retirement, so any bit now, will help then.  Before I found out that I had gotten into graduate school, we were putting money aside for retirement.  Total with the FIA rewards and our own savings we put about 5% of my husband's salary in retirement.  Naturally, if my husband and I were not students we should be saving 16%-18% of our salaries, but I think for students even a few percentage of your annual salary is enough. 

We also have gotten $150 worth of cvs gift cards from discover. Normally it would be a lot less but I paid for my school fees with discover this year.  I love that my school takes discover without any additional fees.  These gift cards have helped us stretch our grocery budget, along with the grocery game, using iheartcvs.com.  I don't think we did as well here as we could have because: 1)we were lazy and 2)we were extremely busy.  Also, I was adjusting to eating differently because of being pregnant and shopping for that, so that could affected it as well.    We did get better at using coupons for only what we needed, but we splurged a little too much.  Next year I am going to work on improving our grocery budget and not going out to eat.  We still have about $75 from the cvs gift cards so that should help next years budget.  I am still trying to think of ideas to be more organized in regards to cvs.  I am pretty good at checking deals at tops, and staying on top of them.  I don't know why I am so bad with cvs.  If anyone has any ideas on how to get better organized, I'd love to hear them.  I am going to start planning meals better, and getting back to using the crockpot.  Does anyone have favorite crockpot meals?

While I was working, this year, we paid out of pocket for my classes, and put money aside for the baby.  However, we did not save up for the rest of my classes ($11,000 between the two semesters).  We have been using the money from our renters ($550/month), after expenses to pay for the classes but we are still short.  Therefore we had to dip into the student loans my husband took out a year ago and set aside, when we found out about graduate students losing the ability to get subsidized student loans.  This does cause a problem because my husband will have to start paying back the loans before I graduate.  This does mean that I am going to try to cut back even more next year.  Every cent I save, is a cent that can let aside to pay off these loans.  I think I am going to start giving myself one hour per day to work on being frugal, if that is couponing, doing a survey or writing a meal plan.  This will do two things, help me decrease costs and help me work on organization before the baby comes.  Readers, how do you keep organized?

My weekend plans include loading every item we have in the kitchen, into supercook.com.  We keep buying things that are good deals, but not using things up.  I am going to make myself make at least one recipe from supercook per week until the baby comes.  This will help me keep to my budget, and will help us discover new things to eat.  Part of why we are eating out, is because we are getting bored with what we have to eat at home.  How do you fight boredom with meals?  I'd love advice.

I also received $50 in amazon gift cards from swagbucks.  This was lower than years previous and I believe it to be because I do not have the swagbar on my ipad and have been using that most often.  How am I going to ramp up the amazon gift cards?  Well, this will be part of my one hour of frugality per day.  There are free swagbucks for listen to certain swagTV shows, often only a few minutes, which I can do while I do other frugal tasks.  This should help bump up the amazon gift cards a bit.

However, I did get a $10 home depot gift card from https://www.recyclebank.com/ this year as well as an extra $1 coupon I wanted, for an item we would have purchased anyway.  Given that I normally get about $60 from swagbucks, this does make up for the loss of the amazon gift cards.  I hope that next year I earn another $10 gift card from recyclebank, while still making $60 from swagbucks.  We will see if I can achieve it!   

I received no cvs gift cards from mypoints though.  I made enough to turn in for a $10 cvs gift card, but since we still have cvs gift cards from discover I chose not to redeem the points.  Normally, though, I make enough points for about $40 worth of gift cards.  I think this drop can be accounted for by the ipad use, and my crazy schedule.  My goal for next year will actually only be $25 worth of gift cards, because of the craziness.  It would be great if I am able to get more but I'll be happy with $25.

Overall I think I did less well this year than I wanted to, but that is one of the great things about being young.  I can take this year and learn from it and improve as I get older. 

There is a "cash back" offer for amazon

I, like most students, love using amazon.  We mostly use swagbuck earned giftcards, but will use the amazon chase if we are spending more than we have earned from swagbucks.  However, today I have learned of two better ways to get "cash back" or similar when shopping on amazon this holiday season.

First, discover is allowing 5% cash back on all online shopping, including amazon, up to $1500, until December 31st.  That is a better deal that three points for every dollar you spend on amazon, that you can get from amazon chase.  It does require that you sign up, but there is no cost involved.  However, not everyone has a discover, is there another way to get money back while shopping at amazon?  For some items, yes.

Swagbucks is offering for a limited time 6 swagbucks for purchasing any jewelry, clothing, watches, handbags and purses, shoes and strange category called MYHABIT. It does not matter if you a credit card or a gift card, you can still get points back from swagbucks.  Go to this link to start.   http://www.swagbucks.com/shop?merchid=793

Happy shopping everyone!

Millionaire Update-September 2012

I have been a bit lax in posting my month updates for our retirement saving, but I had to post this month.  As of October 8th, we have $13,482 in our retirement savings.  This is over half of our annual wage ($26,000)!!  Granted, if we retired now, we would need to pay for health insurance ($550/month) so it is not half of our annual retirement spending, but is a lovely start.  Sadly, other than credit card rewards from FIA Card Services, we will not be putting any money in until at earliest June of 2013 because I am back in school.  However, at least .2% of our income being saved ($50 credit we normally get annually from FIA card services), is better than nothing, so we will take it.  Hopefully the market helps us as well.  Is anyone else doing creative things so get more money saved for retirement?

Why I Dislike Airline Reward Programs

It may seem strange that I dislike airline reward program yet like hotel reward programs but they are set up differently. My first problem with airline reward programs are that the points expire. Many programs have extended the expiration date (it used to be a year, normally), to 18-24 months and also wave the expiration on the points if you fly within that 18-24 period or buy more points but honestly it still seems like a pain.

My second issue with them is I cannot find a credit card without an annual fee that links up with a airline. I can get cash back without an annual fee but no airline card? That just seems weird to me. Does it seem weird to anyone else?

Also, and this just may be me, I fly mostly southwest and Jet Blue, neither of which have business or first class accommodations and one of the reasons for belonging to a reward program is the bump ups, either in class or in room type.

Some people like the airline reward programs for access into lounges but I do not fly enough to care about a lounge nor do I see lounges being a great perk. Maybe if they included free internet I would be interested. But I still do not think it is enough to make me pay an annual fee unless I was flying at least once a month and maybe not even then. Off the top of my head I can think of two ways to get internet anywhere, not just in airport, either through a data plan on my phone or an internet card. That would give me what I want (internet) without an annual fee.

At the end of the day, I just don't see the benefit of an airline reward program unless you fly monthly and most students do not. Even my fiance who flies at least twice a year, normally three times a year cannot get any benefit from a reward program. Maybe when we are older I'll change my mind.

Hotel Reward Programs and why students should join them

I love hotel reward programs, they allow to gain rewards for staying at certain hotels and often once you hit certain criteria you get "free" or complementary items, such as "free" breakfast or snacks. Between my fiance we belong to clubs from the Marriott, the Hilton and Holiday Inn (priority club).
So far, we have redeemed points from only the Hilton (one in Hawaii and one in San Fransisco) both for our honeymoon. We should however, get enough points through priority club to redeem for three nights before the wedding in California.

My fiance travels for conferences paid for by grants, his boss or the department depending on why he is traveling to conference. Two years ago we both were going to the same conference and one of the professors told us we should look into Marriott's reward program. We checked into it and seeing no fees, we signed up. Because we were there for a conference we received extra points on top of the points for the cost of the room but we still do not have enough points for another stay. Part of the reason for that is I prefer Hilton.

Both my fiance and I have Hilton credit cards, one visa and one american express and we have gotten most of our points through their signup bonuses, however, we also got quite a few when my fiance went to yet another conference.

My fiance could have stayed at a Marriott for this conference but decided on Hilton because the credit card we had gave him silver membership (instead of the lowest membership, blue). We chose to get Hilton credit cards instead of a card through Marriot because Hilton has two credit cards without annual fees, Marriot does not even have one. He got a Hilton visa and received 20000 points for signing up. Between the sign up bonus and conference stay he had enough for our night in San Fransisco. This will allow us to not fly fifteen hours from Hawaii straight back to buffalo but have a night's rest in San Francisco.

We also have gotten points for Hilton by doing surveys for erewards. Erewards also gives points for priority club. The other reward programs we joined expecting to get the most points when my fiance traveled for conferences, priority club is different. Most holiday inns and other priority club hotels include complementary breakfast and lower prices than other reward program hotels. Even we compared the cost of motel 6 to priority club, if we included breakfast and two people per night priority club normally won. Priority Club hotels are where we plan to stay on our vacations if we do not have enough points to stay at the other hotels for free.

I signed up for priority club and was able to find a code to start me off with 300 points. Granted that is not a lot, I need 5000 just to get a discount at the hotels, but it is something. This brings up a great benefit of priority club hotels, unlike the other hotel programs, you can use your points at 5000 intervals to lower the cost of your room. I do not however, like priority club's credit card. It has a $49 annual fee, though it is waved the first year. We did decide to get the credit card for the points after the first purchase, however, I just received the card and have not had a chance to use it yet. I will report how long it takes them to credit the points, they say it will take 6-8 weeks.

Now I know most students are not like my fiance and do not get a "free" trip at least once a year but I still think students should join multiple hotel rewards programs. As young people we will be traveling, visiting friends, seeing new places or even interviewing for a new job. It may take a while to get free night using these programs but they are free and why not take advantage if you can? Also, often hotels will give free points if a problem occurred during your stay, if you belong to their program, they will not offer if you do not.