Money, Love, and Change

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I have mentioned before that we use a credit card for daily expenses that we pay off in full each month. We are currently using a Discover card because of the Cashback bonus award, which we usually redeem for gift cards. Last week, we used part of our bonus award to get 2 ($40 and $80) Sharper Image gift cards.

We’re not huge fans of Sharper Image, but Discover would double your reward for Sharper Image (ie. redeem $20 to get a $40 gift card). We had picked out a new beard trimmer and headphones for my husband. When our gift cards arrived, I went to the Sharper Image site to order our items. I did my usual online search to see if there were any additional deals I could take advantage of (ie. free shipping), and found out that the Sharper Image has recently filed for bankruptcy. After a little more investigating, I found a message on their website stating that they were no longer accepting gift cards (in-store locations or online).

I was able to call Discover and get the amount we spent credited back to our rewards account. They were really nice, and the whole process only took a couple of minutes. I recently checked the Sharper Image website, and it states:

Gift Cards, Reward Cards, Gift Certificates, and Merchandise Certificates

On Tuesday, February 19, 2008, The Sharper Image commenced a case under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Court for the District of Delaware.

The company intends to continue to conduct business as usual while it devotes renewed efforts to resolve its operational and liquidity problems and develops a reorganization plan.

However, The Sharper Image is suspending the acceptance of Gift Cards, Reward Cards, Gift Certificates or Merchandise Certificates as a form of payment.

We appreciate your understanding that according to Bankruptcy law, store employees, managers and the Company do not have the authority to override this directive.

The Company is urgently working with the Bankruptcy Court to quickly come to a solution for this issue. Please check back with us in mid-March for further updates.

To receive updates, including status of the Company’s Card and Certificate programs:

Visit a store
Visit our website www.sharperimage.com
Call customer service at: 1:800-344-5555
Visit www.kccllc.net/sharperimage for all public filings related to the case.

I hope this helps someone out – I know I tend to keep some gift cards in a drawer until needed, and would not have known about this otherwise.

**UPDATE 9/24/08:  There is no longer a $25 sign-up bonus, but there is still a $10 referral bonus.  If you would be so kind as to consider using the button below to sign up, I would greatly appreciate it!

If you’re tired of Paypal fees, you may want to take a look at revolutionmoneyexchange.com as an alternative.  They are a scaled-down version of Paypal, and allow you to transfer money for free to other account holders as well as to and from your own bank account.  They are FDIC insured, and according to their website, there are the following account limits:

Current transaction limits:

• MoneyExchange has a maximum sending limit of $1000 per day, not to exceed $2500 per calendar month.
• MoneyExchange has a maximum receiving limit of payments to your MoneyExchange account or electronic transfers from your linked bank account of $1000 per day, not to exceed $2500 per calendar month.
• You can add money to your MoneyExchange account and withdraw money to your bank account up to 30 times per month.
• You can maintain an aggregate account balance of up to $2500 at any one time.

This will be a nice alternative to Paypal for my husband and I, as we currently cannot transfer money to each other (between checking accounts) without incurring fees.  We do have joint ING savings accounts, but it takes awhile for the money to get from one location to the other.  I will be interested in testing the transfer time between our checking accounts using revolutionmoneyexchange.

On the plus side, I did notice that you could easily cancel your account under the “help” tab once logged in.  The only disadvantage that I see right now is that the money does not earn interest while sitting in the account.

They are currently offering $25 for free if you sign up for an account – mine showed up immediately after signing up, before I even entered my bank account information.  Also, they are giving a $10 referral bonus.  If you want to be really nice and spread some good karma, please leave a comment with your e-mail and I will send you a referral e-mail asap.

What do you plan to do with your $25 if you sign up?  I am going to use mine to help with those $700 plane tickets we just purchased!

After getting back from visiting family, there was a pile of mail waiting for us.  One of the most annoying things we receive is the Valpak (the big blue envelope of coupons we never use), so today I decided to do something about it.  After a little online investigating, I found that you can take your name off the Valpak mailing list by filling out this form from Cox Target Media.  I also found that if I ever have a burning desire for some of the coupons I never use, I can go to Valpak.com and enter my zip code to print them off.

Just thought I would share – it’s an easy way to save a couple of trees, and help decrease your junk mail!

We’ll be traveling this weekend again to see family, which got me thinking about balancing frugality with life in general.  To me, material possessions aren’t very important.  This isn’t to say that I’m not thankful for what we have, but our life isn’t focused on getting more “stuff”.  On the other hand, when it comes to traveling to see family, our costs seem to be getting increasing with each trip (gas, tolls).  However, we’re not willing to cut the number of trips we make to see family each year.

There are alternative routes to save on tolls, but it increases our 6-7 hour road trip to 8-9 hours, and increases our gas costs.  We have been able to convince some family members to travel our way, but there are members of the family (great-grandparents, great-great aunts and uncles) who cannot make the trip.  Traveling by plane isn’t really feasible in terms of cost or location.

We do travel with a set budget, and we do an excellent job of staying within our means, but it is still a decent amount of money, especially when we end up traveling more frequently due to unexpected circumstances.  We’re currently living in a location where we are not close to any family, but the job market in the Midwest is horrible (and we are not sure that we want to return there anyhow).

This is one area of our lives where I really don’t see a feasible solution.   If you are not close to family,  what do you do?  Have you sacrificed traveling?  Or is it something necessary that you’re not willing to compromise?

I can say that after this trip, I hope that we can be closer to home until nicer weather!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Our family is taking our first real vacation since 2004 – now that our son is 2, it is time for him to begin to see the world (we’ll start with the USA).  We have close friends that live in Arizona, a state which neither my husband nor I have seen.   These friends are getting ready to return back east in another year or two, and have been wanting us to visit.   The time seemed right for us to plan a trip.

We thought that sometime around Thanksgiving would be a good time, and our friends have been looking for plane tickets since January.  My friend called us yesterday with some great flight times and prices, and we decided to take the plunge.  We’re really excited to be going, and have set aside $1500 for this trip.

Our plane tickets were $700, which leaves us $800 for everything else.  If we use it, airport parking will be about $75 (we have friends that may be able to help us out here), and I am not sure if we will need to rent a car or not for part of the trip.  We’ll be staying with our friends for most of the time, but we would like to spend a couple of nights in Sedona (we’re looking into discount lodging right now for this part of the stay).  We do want to see the Grand Canyon (yes, I know, big hole…), but other than that have no tourist attractions planned.

So here’s my question: for a family of 3, is my budget reasonable?  We tend to be pretty frugal at home, but would like to have money set aside to take our friends out to dinner, etc.  I wouldn’t say that we want to be able to blow money uselessly, but we don’t want to spend our trip pinching pennies either.  This is our first big trip with the kid, and we want to be prepared.  I like the fact that we have a lot of time to plan ahead, but I would still appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have!

“So toss away stuff you don’t need in the end, but keep what’s important, and know who’s your friend…” –Tom Marshall (lyricist for Phish)

I mentioned that I picked up a bin for our bathroom this weekend. Our bathroom is not that large, and we only have one of them (gasp!). Since I’ve been getting some good deals at CVS, I have been running out of room to put things like toilet paper and shampoo – hence the bin. While transferring items to the bin, I was forced to come to terms with all those useless gifts I’ve been hesitating to throw out.

A useless gift? Could there be such a thing? In this case, I’m talking about lotions and other crap like body sprays that I never use but are always in some gift that I receive. I have a bottle of Suave cocoa butter (I think that it was in the $2-$3 range) that I use in the winter, and that’s all I need. I hate to throw out these things – some of them are from Bath and Body Works, and I keep thinking that there has to be someone who would take them. I do like to use Freecycle, but for these items I rather have them in a location where people can try them before deciding if they want them or not.

I was talking to my mom this weekend, and she suggested bringing them home with me and putting them out at my grandma’s senior citizen complex for free. She did this herself last year, and said that everything was gone within an hour. I would have never thought of this, but I really like the idea. A lot of the people there are on limited incomes, and would greatly appreciate (and use!) these items.

Do you have any other ideas for giving away these items? My mom did check with my grandma’s complex manager, and she thought it was a wonderful idea. I can’t wait to clear up the additional space in our bathroom, and am happy to see these items go somewhere other than the landfill!

Most people know that they are entitled to a free annual credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) using Annualcreditreport.com. However, it now appears that people can access their credit score as well.

Credit Karma is offering free daily credit scores, and from what I can tell, they are from TransUnion. The code CKFRND can be used (I got this code from slickdeals), or you can request a code be sent to you via e-mail. The site is sponsored by advertising from sites such as Zecco and Prosper (if you join Prosper as a lender using this link we both earn $25).  This isn’t one of those trial program offers where you get a free credit score but then have to pay at a later time if you don’t cancel.  Credit card information is not required, but there is a chance that you will receive partner offers via e-mail.

I signed up, and was a little surprised at how high my credit score appeared to be. According to other comments on the site, there were a couple of other people who reported the same thing. I am curious to see what others say as more people sign up and become aware of this site. Also, according to their FAQ, the request does not affect the score since Credit Karma makes the request on behalf of the individual.

If you try it, I would be interested to know what you think – does your credit score seem high?

We are home for one weekend before hitting the road again, so we spent some time running errands. I mentioned how we are trying to control our “extra” purchases here, and thought I would start to report on how we are spending our money a little more often.

First, I hit CVS again. Because it was a Saturday, a lot of the deals from the ad were already out of stock, but I still managed to do ok. Here’s what I got:

1 bag of Hershey kisses (discounted from Valentine’s Day) – $1.49

1 Fusion razor – $9.99 ($6 ECB)

1 Gatorade G2 – $1.29 ($1.29 ECB)

1 Hallmark card – $2.29 (I usually make my own cards, but I know I’ll be busy this week and our friends just had a beautiful baby girl).

I used one coupon for the razor ($4 off) and $10 in Extra Care Bucks, and paid $1.06 out of pocket. I got $7.29 in Extra Care Bucks back. Good stuff!

We also went to Walmart this weekend. I hate Walmart, but we still end up going there ever so often. We got some shelves for the bedroom (we had seen these before, and now they were on clearance, so we grabbed them), some Play-Doh for the boy (his new obsession – I plan on making my own soon), and a bin to hold our overstock from the bathroom. This came to $30.08, and we used part of our $50 Visa gift card from Boomertowne. I like free!

I’ve also ventured into the world of using coupons at the grocery, and am still figuring out how to do it efficiently. This week my total before savings was $61.26, and after savings was $37.42 (this includes coupons and the store deals from using their silly little card). Considering that I bought $10 worth of meat, 3 half gallons of organic milk, and some fruits and vegetables, I was pretty happy.

How do you think I’m doing? I think that I could do a little better at the grocery, but I am trying to balance time with finding the best deals. I do a majority of my grocery shopping at one store – they have pretty good prices, and the best selection of produce in the town (without going to the market). Also, sites like The Grocery Game and Coupon Mom do not have my local stores listed – I use a site called My Grocery Deals, but it does not match coupons from the circulars with the weekly sales. This site does compare my local stores, but I have found that not all the deals for a given store are listed.

We are $31,100 in credit card debt. It really sucks when looking at the number itself, but at least we haven’t been buying big screen televisions. The APR on this debt ranges from 0% – 4.99%. How did we arrive at this spot? Here’s a quick summary:

1. Roughly $20,000 of this debt is a result of my last year of undergraduate work (tuition and living expenses). Being a 5th year undergraduate really took a toll on my financial aid. Overall, I am still ok with this decision.

So what happened? Basically, I made the decision to major in biology at the end of my third year of college.  I spent the summer between my third and fourth year taking a biology course on an island – I didn’t make a lot of money that summer as a result, but learned that environmental biology was not for me. Between my fourth and fifth year, I did genetics research at The Ohio State University (go Buckeyes!) and found that I really enjoyed it (but again, I did not bring in a lot of money). I spread my fifth year of undergraduate work into two semesters so that I could work an internship in the afternoons and apply to graduate school. I made craptastic money during my last year, but learned a lot during a great internship at a wonderful hospital.

I think that this internship combined with some decent GRE scores made me an interesting candidate when applying to graduate schools. I went to a small liberal arts school in the Midwest, so I certainly did not have the pedigree for some of the top-tier schools. I still got in at a couple of the best ones, so I must have done something right along the way. This is why I don’t regret my decision – without the last year of undergraduate studies, I wouldn’t have been able to work the internship and give my applications the boost they needed to make it into the best schools.

Unfortunately, despite being frugal, I still had tuition and living expenses, and a lot of this went on the credit card. There were also the moving and living expenses associated with starting graduate school that are included in this figure.

2. Roughly $3000 is from contributions to my Roth IRA. I did this last year because we could get a 0% APR on the money, and knew we wouldn’t be able to fund it otherwise.

3. I also transferred the remainder of our car loan balance (about $2000) to a credit card to take advantage of a lower interest rate.

4. It’s a little difficult to track down the rest, partly we have paid some of the balances down. I know that we did have some expenses when we bought the house – there was no refrigerator and stove, and we felt more comfortable keeping our emergency reserves and putting these things on the card. The only “bad” decision we made with credit was that we would use it to finance Phish tours and travel. I put bad in quotes because I still do not regret it – these were life experiences that I would never trade in (please go see a show at the Gorge amphitheatre if you’re a music fan – you won’t regret it!).

In my next post, I’ll break down the debt into different cards and by APR rates. We also use a card for monthly expenses which we pay back in full each month. In general, do you think that it is ever ok to have credit card debt? Why or why not?

My friend just sent me an e-mail – she has become an Oprah addict, and wanted to let me know that Suze Orman’s latest book Women and Money is available for a free download until tonight at 8pm EST/ 7pm CST.

As you know, I have mixed feelings about Suze Orman (see this post). However, I would like to read one of her books, and now I have a free copy, so there is no excuse not to!

Follow this link or this link to download your free copy. I hope to read it over the weekend and post a review soon. If you read it, please let me know what you think!