Ways I Made Extra Money This Year
As a year-end wrapup, I present to you the many ways I made extra money for myself this year.
We filed our taxes early, as usual, this year and got a nice refund. Instead of blowing it on something silly, we plunked $2500 into starting our emergency fund.
I realized that I had not updated my IRS withholdings lately to reflect our latest family situation, so I sent that in to my company. I was still conservative in the changes I made, and it got us and extra $140/month, which is better than giving it to the IRS for 12 months.
We started regularly feeding our emergency savings account, which is an HSBC Direct Online Savings account. This earned 5.05% for most of the year, which is way better than our regular credit union's rate of 1.something%. We earned more in interest in the first month than we had all last year. Later on in the year, when the Fed cut rates, we were able to lock some money in a 3 year CD at 6% from Pentagon Federal Credit Union.
I got a surprise bonus in May, which also got put right into the savings account.
We refinanced our house in June. This allowed us to skip our July mortgage payment of $1800. We also reduced our payments to about $1500/month by taking our property taxes into our own hands instead of doing the mortgage company's escrow. They always seemed to underestimate us and we ended up paying extra every month to make up for it. Obviously the difference went into our savings and will be used for the taxes.
We cashed out a good chunk of change on our refinancing, which we planned to use for getting new windows and redoing our bathroom. While we waited, the money earned some extra interest for us until we needed it. Getting our windows done this year will also allow us to take advantage of the last year of tax credits for energy efficient upgrades, about $200.
Started bringing my morning and afternoon coffee. Even at $8-10 for a bag of the good coffee, that covers a week's worth of afternoon coffees made by someone else. I also drank water instead of soda with lunch.
Switched to Sunrocket VOIP. We paid $199 for 15 5 months of service from Sunrocket. I also got $80 back from CrazyRefund.com. The combined savings was $17/month before long distance charges. We did spend part of that savings by switching to FIOS for a faster and more stable Internet connection though. We eventually had to switch to Verizon's VOIP, VoiceWing, in July, which runs $19.99 plus taxes for 500 minutes, more than enough for us.
I had my vasectomy in June, just before our new health plan kicked in. You're probably wondering how this saved me money. We had already used up our deductible for the year after Evan was born, so I was fully covered and paid a small amount rather than pushing it into July and having to start our deductible all over again. As a result, I paid $76 for the procedure instead of nearly $800.
I opened a Citibank "Ultimate Savings Account" with a $5 deposit and got $100 bonus, no strings attached. The rate is actually decent, 4.6% or so, and they have ATMs in every 7-11, so I may actually keep it around for travel cash purposes.
We rearranged our checking accounts so that we have a bill paying (and interest earning) account, and a regular grocery, gas, etc account. We didn't earn a lot of interest, but anything is more than $0, and it's also helped us keep track of our spending better.
I finally got a "rewards" credit card. It only gives me 1% of each transaction, but it's better than nothing. The rate is also better than my old non-reward credit card. Plus, since the card is issued by the same credit union at which we have our checking account, we can use the card all the time for points, then just immediately transfer money from our checking account to "pay" for what we just bought.
We got rid of a bunch of stuff on Craigslist in a cleaning binge, which also allowed us to declutter a bit while making some cash as well.
Here's to making the most of 2008!
Cool It
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg
My review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I tried to come into this book with an open mind, but I was probably skeptical of the skeptical environmentalist. I don't know that I am too much less skeptical, but Bjorn Lomberg coolly dissects the carbon dioxide cutting arguments, deftly presenting what he describes as more humane alternatives. It's hard to disagree with a lot of what he has to say. He thinks that the Kyoto treaty costs too much for the little good it does in the long run (especially since it takes a political commitment over several generations), and he is able to lay out ways in which we could take on global suffering more effectively and more cheaply. I may not be a convert to Mr. Lomberg's camp, but I am probably going to be more skeptical the next time I hear a media report of a coming ice age and global devastation due to climate changes.
Next up is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, which was recently mentioned on NPR and was also mentioned as a "Lost" allegory, so I decided to read it in anticipation of Lost's imminent return.
2007 Favorites
We're nearing the end of 2007, so it's time once again for my favorite stuff of the past year.
I tried 28 new beers this year and came up with one new summer favorite, Dogfish Head Festina Pêche and two new winter favorites which both tied my all-time best beer rating, Bell's Kalamazoo Stout and Dogfish Head World Wide Stout.
It was a prolific year of reading for me, as I raced through 45 books! Ten of those books managed to garner 5 stars, but my overall favorite was The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The other 5 star ratings went to Maxed Out, I Love You, Beth Cooper, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Little Children, Soon I Will Be Invincible, Boomsday, The Zero, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, and Lisey's Story.
We had a great vacation to Disney World, including our awesome dinner at Victoria and Albert's.
Favorite event (outside of kids walking and other various accomplishments): buying our minivan
Favorite album: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon. I really dig this band.
Favorite new TV show: Pushing Daisies. The most visually interesting new show of the year, and it even manages to breath new life (har) into the old "will they or won't they?" saga.
Another year has passed, but I look forward, as always, to the excitement of the new year ahead.
The Abstinence Teacher
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
My review
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The plot of this book didn't really surprise me. You can pretty much see where it's going most of the time. Where the book really shines is in the way Perrotta treats his characters. You might expect him to be biased one way or the other: toward the born-again Christian, or toward the agnostic sex-ed teacher. But he actually manages to treat both sides with respect, and portrays the characters as they probably would be in real life: they're only human, after all.
Next up is Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomberg.
Amazon 30 Day Price Guarantee
I just saved an extra $6 on my holiday shopping! How? By using Amazon.com's 30 day price protection guarantee. I filled out a form, and literally 10 minutes later, I got an email informing me that I was getting a refund.
If you want to get a price drop refund, just follow these simple steps (blatantly stolen from FiveCentNickel):
(1) Visit "Your Account" and look at all invoices from the past thirty days.
(2) Click on the item names to pull up the current item description/price and compare to the price that you paid.
(3) If you paid more than the current price, copy down the order number and go to:
» Returns and Refunds Contact Form
(4) Check of the item(s) in question and then click the e-mail button. Select "Refund Inquiry" as your subject.
(5) In the body of the message, tell them that the price dropped and that you want to be credited for the difference. It might help to mention the item name as well as old and new price, but I’m not sure that’s entirely is necessary.
That’s it. And keep in mind that this even works if you used a coupon and/or "Buy Both & Save" deal and the regular price later drops, even if the new 'regular' price is higher than what you paid after the coupon/discount.
Here's a tool to help you keep track of your purchases and any price drops: PriceProtectr (with the obligatory vowel dropped). You enter the URL of your item, and optionally when you bought it and what you paid for it (the tool will automatically fetch the current price for you), enter your email address, and they'll monitor the price for 30 days and let you know if it drops.
More on freebies, Guitar Hero
First, I'm absolutely puzzled about this Guitar Hero thing. No one has fessed up to buying it off my wishlist, so I'm baffled. What's also strange is that Amazon shows that it ships in 1-2 months, while I have seen it in stores at Costco and Microcenter, but the Wii version is completely out of stock everywhere (tip: sign up for Nowinstock.net's email alerts. They have a GH3 for Wii one too, and I could have bought it from Costco.com or Amazon yesterday if I hadn't already been in hot water for buying the Wii).
I canceled the last of my freebie signups today. I've qualified and been confirmed for a $500 Best Buy gift card and a $500 Visa gift card so far, and I think I will try for a $500 Lowes card next, since we need new doors for our basement and upstairs. You can see what I signed up for on this spreadsheet (the first two sheets are what I did). To summarize, for the first card, I paid $13.94 net, which included 50 songs from eMusic (I bought Spoon's latest and a bunch of versions "Jingle Bells" for Ellie, eMusic is also very easy to cancel by logging into your account on the website). I gave away the cat litter (and they canceled my trial via email without me really asking them to). Today I canceled Critic's Choice, even though I was tempted to keep it so that I could buy some gift cards for Christmas at a discount. On the second card, I actually made $6.35, thanks to the $20 Exxon gas card that Great Fun sent me. They were also the most annoying to cancel, though it wasn't horrible. They just offered more stuff for staying signed up, but I really wasn't interested. Grant Consultant canceled via email, real easy. And Rising Star was a tiny bit of a hassle just because it required shipping stuff back to them.
So there you have it, all told, I spent $30.58 out of pocket, got a $2.99 refund and a $20 gas card, for a net $7.59 spent. And for that, I should be getting $1000 worth of gift cards in a couple of months.
Spook Country
Not particularly one of my favorite Gibson novels, but still readable and interesting if only for its commentary on current events. The plot moves along like a Dan Brown novel, with short chapters which alternate between characters who inevitably come together near the end. Unfortunately, you realize that this is going to happen and it makes the story somewhat predictable. I still found it good enough to read through fairly quickly, and I wouldn't dissuade anyone who was planning on reading it. But at the same time, I don't think I could recommend it to anyone who hadn't been planning on reading it already.
Next up is The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta.
Throwing it out there
Since I haven't yet been able to figure out who got it for me, would the person who bought the Guitar Hero 3 for PC off my Amazon wishlist please email me? I just managed to snag a Wii from Amazon, and I'd like to switch my request to the Wii version. I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I just didn't get the Wii until now. Anyway, if the person who bought it reads this, get in touch with me so we can figure out how to switch if it's still possible.
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