Free Money Finance

Five Ways to Save Big

A publisher sent me a copy of SAVE BIG: Cut Your Top 5 Costs and Save Thousands awhile ago. The book's philosophy is that it's not the "latte factor" (small amounts of) spending that kills people, but the big items. That's why they focus on the five BIG ways to save. Here's a summary of what they suggest -- contrasting small spending to their "better" suggestions:

• Houses: You can buy low-flow showerheads and save $5. Or get a fast flow mortgage and save $103,536.
• Cars: You can save $9 a month by inflating your tires right. Or save $31,279 by choosing the right car.
• Credit: Going to your own bank's ATM will save you $3. Calling your own bank could save you $1,272.
• Groceries: Packing your lunch will save you $7 a day. Shopping strategically for those lunch fixin's will save you $7,904 a year.
• Healthcare: You can save $75 a year by canceling your magazine subscriptions. Or save $6,350 a year by choosing the right medical prescriptions.

I haven't read the book and probably won't (since it doesn't sound like there's a lot of new news here. But I wanted to make some comments on the items above as follows:

1. Saving money doesn't need to be an either-or decision. You can save on BOTH big-ticket items as well as "small" spending. If you can manage them both, you can save more than only focusing on one of them. Besides, small spending opportunities happen much more frequently, and as such are not inconsequential.

2. I'm guessing that their mortgage savings is based on early pay-off of the debt. Novel concept, huh? Wish I'd suggested it. ;-)

3. I'm still wondering how I can save $7,904 per year on groceries when my budget for them is less than $5,000 a year. Maybe government math at work?

I've heard of all these ideas so I don't think there's much here for me. How about you? Anyone out there read/seen this book? What did you think of it?

Are Outlet Stores a Good Deal?

There are two outlet malls I stop by on occasion. One is when I'm traveling to Detroit (or into southern Michigan) and the other is on a frequent business roadtrip I take. Both have Nike outlets and I like to see what they have if I can get in and out rather quickly.

What I like about the outlets is that they have lots of stuff to look at from the company -- items that you'd have to search several stores if you wanted to see as many options. On the down side, they don't have their "best" stuff (though the items are nice) for sale there.

But are the prices really that great? Back in the day (when I was a kid), outlet stores were manufacturers' versions of Goodwill shops. They sent what was leftover or what they couldn't sell for some reason and marked the items down at really good prices. You had to hunt for something you liked, but if you found it, you were almost guaranteed to save a bundle.

These days outlets seem to offer closer to "normal" prices than discount prices. For instance, Nike had t-shirts for $19 the last time I stopped by. That's about what I could find Nike t-shirts for at almost any store. Granted, they had more selection than most other stores, but still, the price wasn't a deal in any form or fashion.

Now the Nike outlet store (and probably others) does have a clearance racks. But these make up only a small part of the store. Not many really great deals compared to what I used to see (and what I expect to see.)

What do you think about outlet stores? Like them? Do they offer great deals or not? Are they worth the trip if you live far away?

Even I Have My Limits

If you've been a long-time reader here at Free Money Finance, you'd probably say that I'm "frugal." You might even say that I'm "cheap." (That’s ok, I can live with it.) :-)

People who know me better range in their descriptions of my cost-awareness as well. They range from "wise" (from my wife, who's cheaper that I am believe it or not) to others that kid and tease me about being "tight."

One person who often teases is both my boss and a good friend. He teases me and another guy in our office about being too frugal quite often. So imagine our surprise when my boss revealed the following to us the Monday after Thanksgiving:

• On Thanksgiving at 10 pm, he had dropped his son-in-law, his son, and another friend off at Walmart to wait overnight for the Black Friday deals (that were available for sale at 5 am).

• He went inside (they didn't have to wait outside -- the store was open) and they had lines set up for each big deal. My boss and his co-horts separated and took different lines.

• The store provided chairs for them to sit in and handed them tickets to buy the big-deal items (for instance, if Walmart had 30 of one deal, they handed out 30 tickets and told everyone else they were out of luck.)

• My boss was #7 in line for a computer that they had 33 of. Once he got there, he got caught up in the "excitement" and decided to stick it out for the night.

• So he sat there for several hours, until 5 am the next morning. His seven hours of waiting got him a laptop for $290 (or something close to that).

• He didn't have a book or anything to do, so the seven hours were a bit boring.

• He said the lines to pay started forming at 3 am and they snaked to the back of the store. They avoided them by paying in the jewelry department (good tip!)

• If they wanted to go to the bathroom, they got a 10-minute line pass. After 10 minutes, they had to be back or they lost their spot.

• My boss said the employees assigned to watch the lines loved the power. Great, just what you want -- to be under the thumb of a power-hungry Walmart employee who probably didn't graduate 8th grade!

• He said there were a couple fights/heated exchanges -- especially once the "late arrivers" came at 3 am or so and tried to cut into line. Yikes!

• He told the story of one guy that had waited for a TV and was then intimidated into giving it to two big guys in the morning. Ugh.

• In his defense, he said it was "fun" and "exciting", that's why he did it. I'm not buying it. I think he's a closet cheap-o.

We were stunned to hear this news. Stunned because:

1. He calls us cheap! Is there anything cheaper than waiting seven hours overnight for a "good deal"?

2. Walmart. Of all places, Walmart. Waiting for snobby Macy's or even Best Buy to open is one thing, but this guy hates Walmart (or has at least made past comments about how poor their stuff is.) And this is where he chooses to go?

There is NO WAY I would do this, even if it saved me $100 on a laptop. My time is much more valuable than that -- not to mention the boredom, frustration, and potential for a riot. I may be "cheap", but even I have my limits!!!!!

How to Get Consumer Reports Online Access for Free

ESI Money is now offering a free ebook titled Three Steps to Financial Independence. Get your copy here.

Here's a simple money saving tip that I hit on recently. Some of you probably figured this out a long time ago, but for me it was a very nice discovery.

I've been a subscriber to Consumer Reports magazine for years, and even subscribed to their website for some time. But it irked me that the cost for their website subscription was so high -- $19 a year if you're a subscriber to CR magazine ($26 per year if you're not a magazine subscriber.) That's a ton of money for a website subscription! So I let my subscription slide since I really didn't need access to their site information that often.

Then I was on my library's website looking for books when I saw an "ad" that noted I could get Consumer Reports information for FREE since I was a library member. I clicked on the ad, put in my library card number, and presto, I was on the CR website with access to EVERYTHING -- free of charge!

Not only that, but my library has online access to many popular magazines including Money, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and many more. Sweet! I'll check them all out in the future, but the discovery that Consumer Reports online access was free was the most wonderful surprise for me!

Is This a Viable Way to Save Money When Buying from an Infomercial?

In a piece about the secrets of telemarketing from an industry insider, they say the following about buying from an infomercial:

We used simple circle talking techniques to trick people into buying our product. In the infomercial it was $120. We had a list of people that called the number from the infomercial but didn't buy the product. We called them back and offered the same product for $45. Then if they refused we'd go down to $35 and eventually $25 as a last resort effort. They were willing to sell this product for $25, and people were buying it for over 4 times that much! (Employees got the product for $5)

So this got me to thinking -- what if you really wanted a product from an infomercial but wanted to save on it? Why wouldn't you simply call the number, let them do their sales pitch, and then say you don't want the item since it's too expensive? Then you hang up and let them call you with a lower price. The longer you say "no", the more you save.

Of course not every infomercial outfit works this way, so you could be risking losing out on something you really want, but couldn't you always go to their website later and get the item at full price if no one calls?

Seems like a decent method to save some money to me. What do you think? Will it work?

Is Eliminating a Car (Or Two) Worth It?

This post from MSN Money got me to thinking. They quote the annual cost of owning a car as follows:

AAA says fuel, tires, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, license, registration, taxes and financing for a year really cost this much:

• Small sedan, $7,086
• Medium sedan, $9,108
• Large sedan, $10,972
• Minivan, $9,903
• Four-wheel-drive SUV, $11,473

In this example, the author got rid of her one-and-only car. She's saving a lot of money and is feeling great (walking a lot.) But I've been wondering about a different scenario -- is it worth it to get rid of a second car in a family?

Almost every couple I know has at least two cars. One guy in my office even has five cars and only four people in his family (only three are driving age)! In America these days, many kids get cars as soon as they are old enough to get behind the wheel. We have cars, cars, cars everywhere!

I think this stems from the fact that we love our freedom -- and nothing says "freedom" like being able to go wherever you want whenever you want. And how can you do that unless you have a car? It's hard to be "wild and free" on a bus schedule.

Here's the breakdown of the pros and cons of owning a car IMO:

Pros

• Freedom to go where you want when you want
• Convenience (don't have to plan to manage one car or public transportation)

Cons

• Costs
• Convenience (in many bigger cities, having a car is a huge convenience hassle)

Now, can you make a compromise between having two (or more) cars and only having none? Is it worth it to move to one car?

Well, you and I would certainly save a ton doing this, but for me the convenience factor far outweighs the cost. As long as I can afford a second car (and I can -- we've paid cash for all the cars we've ever purchased including our second car), I'm going to have one. If it costs me $10k per year, it's worth it. I see this as one of the fruits (benefits) of hard work -- the ability to have a second car and make life much easier for me and my family.

When we were first married, I spent about a year taking the bus to work. We lived in Pittsburgh and our company had just moved from the Northside (a relatively easy place to drive to from where we lived) with company-designated parking to downtown (across the river) with very few parking options (and the ones that existed were expensive.) I wasn't at the level where the company paid for my parking, so if I wanted to park anywhere close to work, I had to foot the bill myself. So, I took the bus. It was a nightmare -- having to be on a set schedule, lacking any sort of flexibility, having to deal with delays, having to deal with the sort of people that ride the bus (I know, that can sound terrible, but if you've ever ridden the bus, you know what I mean.) Other than days when we had bad snow and hideous traffic, riding the bus was the worst. The absolute worst. (BTW, I tried the option of driving to the Northside and taking a shuttle over to downtown, but that combined the worst of both worlds -- still cost a good amount and involved all the issues that made riding a bus a problem.) Ultimately, I decided to pay for parking myself and park downtown. It was a big budget hit for me, but made my quality-of-life so much better.

On the other hand I'm guessing that people that live and work in cities like New York and Chicago, cities that have good public transportation options, can make it pretty easy without a car. In fact, this is one cost in favor of living in a big city (and there aren't many, as you know.) Sure, you'll have costs of cabs, subways, busses, etc. and have to put up with some inconvenience (plus a sorted cast of characters that also takes public transportation), but you'll still end up saving a ton and won't have to deal with the inconvenience of trying to drive and park a car in a hostile environment (which is what an ultra-urban setting is for many drivers.)

Not much of a real conclusion in this post, but I wanted to bring up the topic, ramble on it a bit with my thoughts, and hear what all of you think of the issue. Have at it!

How to Regift

Consumer Reports lists six steps for regifting the right way as follows:

• Ensure the gift is something you really can give again.
• Check the condition.
• Consider the gift's desirability.
• Think: Can you get away with it?
• Wrap it up nice.
• Explore other options.

We're regifters, though I realize not everyone is. That said, regifting isn't something only a few people do. According to CR, it's done by 36 percent of Americans and is growing (up from 31 percent the year before.)

Here's what we do when we receive a gift we don't want (assuming we can't return it):

• If we think it's a nice gift but just not something we would personally use/like, then we put it in our "regifting dresser" (we have a couple drawers set aside for items that can be regifted). If it's a total loser item, we put it in another drawer to be donated at a later date.
• When a birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc. comes up and we need a gift, we check out the drawer and see if there's a suitable item available. By "suitable item" I mean we ask ourselves "would the recipient like this?" If the answer is "yes", we give that gift. If there aren't any gifts that we can say "yes" to, we go out and buy them something else.
• Every year we look through the drawer and see if there's anything in it we have had for awhile and we don't think we'll ever get rid of. If there is, we give it to charity at our next group donation (we let a few things build up and then drop them all off at once.)

How about you -- do you regift? Why or why not?

Mindless Spending: Frequency Matters More Than Height

The following is a guest post from Marotta Wealth Management.

Dieting and budgeting face similar hurdles in the American lifestyle. Some of us live to eat; others eat to live. Attempting to reduce our spending is every bit as challenging as trying to slim our waistlines. Some shop to live; others live to shop.

We can better understand mindless spending by looking at some of the psychological studies that Dr. Brian Wansink describes in his book "Mindless Eating." He explains, "Everyone--every single one of us--eats how much we eat largely because of what is around us. We overeat not because of hunger but because of family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers."

"We all think we are too smart to be tricked," warns Wansink. "That is what makes mindless eating so dangerous."

One study compared the amount people would drink using two differently shaped glasses. One glass was tall and skinny. The other was short and wide. Each glass had the same capacity, but people would drink 25% to 30% more from the short glasses than the tall ones.

Interestingly, our brains focus too much on the height of objects and underestimate the effect of their width. So people with short wide glasses had to fill them more before they believed they had consumed the same amount as those with the tall skinny glasses.

We all think we can't be fooled by something as obvious as the shape of a glass. But our brains are wired that way, without exception. If you want to drink less, you can measure every portion or simply buy tall skinny glasses. Better yet, buy glasses that are very narrow at the bottom or elevated on a stem.

Finances work the same way, and by extension, so does mindless spending. Many families are struggling to get a handle on their savings. They are trying, often in vain, to find ways to cut back. But when we are worried about our expenditures, we tend to look at the dollar amounts more than the frequency of our purchases.

For example, a young woman named Emily inherited a sizable sum of money. She could have used it to make a sizable down payment on her first house. But instead of protecting her windfall, Emily attached a debit card to the account for the convenience of paying for a few items she needed.

In less than two years she had spent most of her inheritance in increments of no more than $35. That doesn't seem like a lot of money because the $35 height is relatively small. Given a width of three times a week, the height isn't even noticeable. The same $105 Emily spent would have seemed like a much larger budget item if it had been in a single purchase. In that case she might have refrained from handing over her debit card so casually.

Other purchases were $50 monthly memberships or $100 a month services. Very few of these purchases were over $100, but when they were added up, Emily had drained her account.

The frequency of a purchase matters even more than its height. But our brains tell us to be more concerned about the height.

Marketing firms use this principle all the time to bypass our defenses when they break annual purchases down into low monthly payments.

An offer I received in the mail recently explained its cost as "Only $4.99 per month with an annual subscription (billed as one payment of $59.88)." The advertised rate only applied if you were willing to purchase the entire year. If you wanted to be billed monthly, the rate was $9.99.

Advertising a $59.88 annual subscription fee as $4.99 per month relies on the fact that consumers are more sensitive about height than breadth. Note that the primary way they advertised the subscription, $4.99 a month, was not one of the options! Even more deceptive would have been making the offer 16.4 cents a day for an annual subscription. Less than a penny an hour!

They even marketed as a feature the service of charging your credit card automatically each year: "All subscribers get the hassle-free advantage of the Unlimited Automatic Renewal Program. At the conclusion of your first term and each subsequent term (one year or one month) we will automatically renew your membership upon expiration for the same period so you get continuous service unless you tell us otherwise."

Madison Avenue takes advantage all the time of the way your brain works. So it's in your best interest to learn to use your brain to your own benefit.

We recommend that every household have a dollar limit that domestic partners agree not to exceed without consulting the other. This way they can avoid budget busters, single items that can wreak havoc on a spending plan. The same caution ought to be put in place for any reoccurring charge, no matter what the price.

Similarly, when people are seeking ways to reduce their spending, they tend to look at big-ticket items or daily needs. A much less painful and more productive alternative is to look at the purchases you don't have to decide about every day (e.g., automatic subscription services).

Consider that the average family spends hundreds of dollars on a host of monthly services such as iPhone, Skype, TiVo, Netflix, Palm Pre, GPS Pet Locator, World of Warcraft, The Sims Online, anime subscriptions, comic subscriptions, health clubs, season tickets, and online file sharing or backup. Average people who can't afford to pay for their own health-care costs pay twice that amount in monthly subscription fees.

And each of these monthly fees is laden with extra features for an additional charge. Before the era of cell phones, I would save my quarters. If I needed to call home, I would stop at a pay phone. In addition to driving safely without the distraction of talking at the same time, which of course is still advisable, my phone expenses for the month were minimal. The latest base cost for an iPhone over two years is about $4,000, which could go a long way toward covering a family's annual health-care costs.

If you can afford a full-featured cell phone, by all means indulge. I assume you've done your retirement planning and are saving more than enough each month. If not, and you only need a cell phone for emergencies, however, buy a single-use cell phone and keep it in your car. You will only pay for the minutes you use, and the money you save will be significant.

If you saved and invested $2,000 a year at market rates of 10% a year, you would have about a million dollars in 40 years. Every young person with an iPhone is missing a million dollars at retirement to fund that trendy subscription.

Cutting back on reoccurring spending is easier because you don't have to decide every day to refrain from spending. Sometimes it is as simple as deciding to eliminate features. Extra charges accrue for voice mail, another for call waiting and still another for unlimited text messaging. If after you have dropped all these subscriptions and features you decide you really miss them, you can always add them back later.

If you are trying to cut back on your spending and save money, review every reoccurring charge on your credit card. Try living without the service or at least eliminating features. Many companies will release you from your contract and cancel your service for reasons of financial hardship. If you need to stop paying immediately, cancel the credit card being charged and get a new one.

Take your savings and set up an automatic transfer to your investment account. You can achieve big goals by making small changes consistently over time, which is the cornerstone of successful financial planning.

And although our brains aren't wired to realize it, frequency matters even more than height.

Eight Steps to Lower Your College Costs

The following is an excerpt from America, Welcome to the Poorhouse: What You Must Do to Protect Your Financial Future and the Reform We Need, courtesy of FT Press, imprint of Pearson. Originally published in "America, Welcome to the Poorhouse." I don't agree with everything that's written in this book (you'll be able to see pretty clearly where we differ), but it often offers an interesting perspective that I thought would start some discussion here.

In Collinge’s book, The Student Loan Scam, he provides heart-breaking, horrific testimonials of borrowers who were hounded to pay their debt. He describes a man who borrowed about $7,500 in the 1980s who subsequently was found to have a form of autism that prevented him from finding a job. Despite being declared totally and permanently disabled by the Social Security Administration, he was still getting collection calls from the lender two decades later. Another borrower tried to repay her loan in full in order to save on interest costs, and the lender refused; instead, it garnisheed her wages so that it could collect the full amount. Still others took desperate measures, including leaving the country and committing suicide.

Your first plan of action should be to protect your college-bound kids from having their lives destroyed if they fall behind or are unable to make payments and wind up having their credit rating destroyed—even being deprived of a job in some circumstances. First, seriously consider whether you, the parent, ought to be the borrower and not your son or daughter—especially if you and/or your spouse has a well-paying and secure job. Unfortunately, a student loan is especially risky if my prediction about the retirement crisis is on target: if the first wave of Boomers is supposed to be able to retire in 2011 but can’t afford to, my daughter’s graduating class of 2011 is going to have a tough time landing jobs. Saddling an unemployed graduate with loan responsibility could very well mean sharing the same nightmarish fate as Collinge’s.

On the other hand, if the parents’ job situation is shaky or their income is below $60,000 or so and the son or daughter is an A student majoring in medicine or engineering or a similar lucrative pursuit that will enable him or her to repay the loan, the student loan may be the way to go. What’s more, a few dozen wealthy colleges now offer “free rides” or “cheaper rides” to students from families with less than $60,000 in household income—and sometimes more (details at the end of this chapter)—so a loan may be unnecessary.

Until we get some genuine college cost reform in Washington, there are still steps you can take to lower college costs:

1. Take advantage of free money. Before we talk about cutting costs on borrowing for college, make sure that you take advantage of grants or scholarships.

Grants, scholarships: The bad news is that they are a small percentage of the total cost of college—and most kids won’t get them because there’s only so much money to go around. For example, in 2005 a mere 2.1% of students got tuition and fee waivers—which is essentially the same thing as a full scholarship. That same year need-based grants were awarded to more than 10% of undergraduate students but averaged only $3,300. That year merit-based grants were awarded to 7.9% of students, with an average award of $4,269, and federal Pell Grants were received by 26.8% of undergraduate students, with an average amount of $2,492—plus you probably won’t even qualify for the latter unless your household income is less than $50,000. In summary, at best you’re getting around $10,000 a year. But it’s better than nothing and it’s $10,000 less that you have to borrow and pay interest on for many years.

Most of Uncle Sam’s money—about $7 billion—is distributed through Pell Grants. To get this money, you need to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the federal government’s instrument for finding out how much each family can pay for college. The FAFSA generates an expected family contribution that guides colleges in the distribution of federal funds and serves as a baseline for calculating eligibility. See the end of this chapter for the website that tells you how much of the bill you’ll be footing.

Merit aid: This is when the college gives you a “reward” for having good SAT scores so that you’ll apply and doing so will boost its rankings with U.S. News & World Report. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense but every little bit of money helps, $4,000 or so worth in this case. Keep in mind that SAT scores matter even more for merit aid than for admission; some schools even publish cutoff test scores for scholarships on their websites. So if your kid’s SAT scores are close to the cutoff, it’s worth spending the money to take the test again and potentially save you $4,000 or so.

2. Is your kid Harvard- or MIT-worthy but you’re short on cash? Apply to a “rich” college that will subsidize most or all of the cost. Most likely thanks to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) efforts to put a harsh glare on colleges with rich endowments who charge sticker-price tuition, more than 60 colleges have either replaced loans with grants or eliminated tuition altogether for those falling under certain income ceilings, most often under $60,000—some offer free education for everybody, regardless of income, under certain circumstances. See the end of this chapter for some sample colleges and the link on the internet to the complete list.

3. Consider a state school, especially if you live in one of the 35 states that offer merit programs. While the price tag for many state colleges has risen because of shrinking budgets due to economic doldrums, there are still a few bargains around. For example, Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship allows any high-school student with a 3.0 GPA in core subjects to get free tuition at the state’s public schools or up to $3,000 a year at its private ones—a fantastic deal. The reason Georgia can still afford to do this is that the revenues come from the state’s lottery. Not all states are as generous as Georgia—the average grant is around $1,000—but it’s worth checking out. The following website contains links to each of the state programs: http://www.nassgap.org/links.aspx.

4. Consider one of the best bargains around: community colleges for the first two years, or maybe even all four! The average annual community college tuition is $1,500 to $2,000, compared to $5,000 to $20,000 at four-year public schools and $30,000 to $50,000 at private four-year universities. What’s more, some colleges have articulation agreements that make it easier for students to transfer from a community college to a four-year institution. Even better: some states, like California, Florida, and Pennsylvania, guarantee that students who receive an associate’s degree will be admitted into one of the state’s public four-year colleges. It gets even better: As of 2009, 17 states, including Nevada, Florida, Texas, and Washington, have allowed community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees, so you’ll be saving big bucks for all four years of schooling, as long as your son or daughter doesn’t mind commuting to college—as opposed to living there. Even if you live in a state that offers only a two-year program, community colleges are definitely a deal to consider. The only downside for students—depending on the personality of your son or daughter—is that it may be tougher to make friends at their new four-year college if they’re transferring from another college. Many students may have already joined clubs or sororities and have made “ties that bind.” Make sure that the community college of your choice has an articulation agreement.

Great resource for community colleges: http://www.ccweek.com. If you click on “Top 100,” you will see how your local community college stacks up.

Resources for four-year community colleges: Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a website with this information; presumably your child’s high-school guidance counselor will keep up-to-date on whether your home state permits community colleges to offer four-year programs and which of those that do are within commuting distance.

5. Most of us will have to borrow to afford paying for college—so keep your borrowing costs as low as possible. Unfortunately, while a home-equity loan was a good option for my Dad, it may be a risky approach these days, given the melting housing market. So what options do you have? First, consider the federal direct lending program—and make sure your child does not apply to any college that Sallie Mae has convinced to drop the loan program, which means you’re likely to be stuck with a high-cost “opportunity” loan. There are two components: a loan that parents take, and one for students. The Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS), a federal loan program for parents of college students, is the best deal around that Sallie Mae doesn’t want you to know about; that’s why less than 10% of the population has them. You can borrow up to the amount of college expenses, regardless of income. The Stafford loan is a federal loan taken by the student. While its interest rate is currently lower than on a PLUS loan, 6.8% versus 8.5% for the PLUS loan, there are limits on how much can be borrowed. (Don’t ask me why the rate on the parent loan is higher since parents have better credit ratings.) That’s why the best course of action is for your son or daughter to borrow up to the Stafford limits and you the parent take out a PLUS loan for the rest. Two websites with more info on the Stafford and PLUS loans are http://www.parentplusloan.com/ and http://www.staffordloan.com/.

6. Whether you, your kids, or both of you wind up being the borrower, have a serious talk with your kids about choosing a major that will lead them to a career that will make the investment worthwhile. Whenever one of my kids’ friends tells me they are majoring in English, I have to bite my tongue—what kind of well-paying jobs can you land with an English degree? Some colleges actually charge more for majors that lead to low-paying jobs, such as education, fine arts, and journalism. (As a former journalist, I can attest that this is a poorly paying profession unless you’re the next Katie Couric or Anderson Cooper.) In fact, if your child is seriously interested in careers in low-paying or hard-to-get professions such as these, he or she should definitely consider a state school/community college so that your/your child’s debt load will be lower. Better yet, convince your kid to opt for a career that will enable him or her to pay back the loan. A good resource for hot job growth can be found on CNN Money’s website: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/nextjobboom/. Promising careers range from physician’s assistant to computer software engineer to college instructor (most likely because college professors often have tenure and pensions so that they can afford to retire).

7. Needless to say, don’t consult U.S. News & World Report’s rankings when considering a college. A much better guide is America’s Best Value Colleges, published by the Princeton Review.

8. If your child has stellar grades and SAT scores, consider the universities that are now offering great deals—replacing loans with grants even if your household income is $200,000 or more in some cases. This is one area where Congress has tried to do right and basically shame some of the richer private colleges into shaking their money trees. Here are some examples: Stanford University, which eliminates the parental contribution for families with annual incomes below $60,000; Yale University, ditto; Dartmouth College, which offers free tuition for students from families earning less than $75,000; Princeton University, which replaces loans with grants for all students who qualify for financial aid (you have to go online and apply to find out); Columbia University, which replaces loans with grants for families with incomes below $60,000; and Harvard University, which dramatically reduces the amount families with incomes below $180,000 have to spend. This is only a partial listing, because colleges are updating their criteria all the time. To find out current offerings, visit the following page on FastWeb.com: http://www.finaid.org/questions/noloansforlowincome.phtml.

How to Get the Best Deal on Cable or Satellite TV

Bible Money Matters has a great piece on how to get the best deal when signing up for cable or satellite TV. He details the process he went through to get a cable package that retails for $84.99/month for only $36.99/month and offers several tips along the way. But here's the one that really stands out to me:

After some more research on FatWallet I found that most people weren’t able to get the great deals on their cable bill just by ordering service through the website, or by phone.  The trick was to go on the company’s online chat and to work with the sales agents on there.  From what I could gather, the agents when you call are actually Comcast employees, and they toe a hard line on giving discounts or special deals.   The chat agents are outsourced, and are more likely to give you a deal.  I found the chat agents much more helpful later on when I was ordering.

Really? Has anyone else had this experience? Do you think it's true or did he just happen to get lucky? I'd be interested in hearing your take.

Our situation was a bit different. We were mailed a killer promo deal that had a special phone number to call (not the general Comcast number.) We lost it for a bit and called the general number and got quoted a very high rate. We then searched high and low for the flyer, called that number, and got (what I consider at least) to be a great deal. Since then, we've been enjoying lots of TV -- especially soccer from the Premier League.

Our next challenge will be to keep the same costs when our one-year promotional rate runs out (next July). I'll blog on that effort as it approaches, but I'm already watching ads from DirectTV, DISH, and so on to see what they are offering. If I need to switch I will and if nothing else, I'll use the competitor's rates in my negotiations with Comcast. Should be a fun time, huh? ;-)

Car Care Maintenance Myths

Consumer Reports lists care-care maintenance myths (along with the truth about them) as follows:

• Myth: Engine oil should be changed every 3,000 miles. Reality: Stick to the service intervals in your car's owner's manual.

• Myth: Inflate tires to the pressure shown on the tire's sidewall. Reality: The pounds-per-square-inch figure on the side of the tire is the maximum pressure that the tire can safely hold, not the automaker's recommended pressure, which provides the best balance of braking, handling, gas mileage, and ride comfort. That figure is usually found on a doorjamb sticker, in the glove box, or on the fuel-filler door.

• Myth: If the brake fluid is low, topping it off will fix the problem. Reality: If the fluid level drops to or below the Low mark on the reservoir, then either your brakes are worn out or fluid is leaking. Either way, get the brake system serviced immediately.

• Myth: If regular-grade fuel is good, premium must be better. Reality: Most vehicles run just fine on regular-grade (87 octane) fuel.

• Myth: Flush the coolant with every oil change. Reality: Most owner's manuals recommend changing the coolant every five years or 60,000 miles.

• Myth: After a jump-start, your car will soon recharge the battery. Reality: It could take hours of driving to restore a battery's full charge, especially in the winter.

• Myth: Let your engine warm up for several minutes before driving. Reality: Modern engines warm up more quickly when they're driven.

• Myth: A dealership must perform regular maintenance to keep your car's factory warranty valid. Reality: As long as the maintenance items specified in the vehicle owner's manual are performed on schedule, the work can be done at any auto-repair shop.

A few thoughts on this issue from me:

1. I've been onto the oil change issue for quite some time now and I think that people are becoming more and more educated on it. No longer is "every 3,000 miles" the rule. Read the manual and follow it. For my current car, I get the oil changed every 7,500 miles (as stated in the manual) and it's been fine (at 90k miles now).

2. I don't check the tire pressure in my car's tires often. I need to do that more.

3. I don't mess with brake fluid, coolant, and so on. That's what I rely on a mechanic for.

4. Always use regular gas unless the car requires premium. Can save you a bundle over the years.

5. We haven't had to jump-start a car in years (after owning a car my wife had to have jumped many times over its life -- it had no warning for lights left on.)

6. I think we covered the idle or not idle issue awhile back.

7. I take my car to a local garage for oil changes and basic maintenance. For big stuff I go to the dealership.

8. For those of you who want more tips, see 10 Ways to Save Money on Car Ownership.

How to Buy a New Furnace and Air Conditioner

Ok, so this post isn't as much about "how to buy a new furnace and air conditioner" as it is "how we bought a new furnace and air conditioner", but I liked the former title better. :-) Anyway, this post will highlight how we recently got another purchase off our to-buy list when we replaced our home's old furnace and air conditioner with new ones. If you’re looking for some tried-and-true tips for saving money on a new furnace or air conditioner unit, this post is for you.

Background

Our home is 22 years-old, a relatively young age for a house, but not so for a furnace and air conditioner. For years now we've had our furnace checked before the winter season and we've been told "it has one or two years left in it." This year, when the AC was checked, we were told it had a few (minor) issues and that the furnace "has something major wrong with it -- I wouldn't ever start it again." Whether or not it was in this bad of shape, we knew that the time to replace it was not that far off. And since the federal government is offering a $1,500 tax credit when a new furnace is purchased (with certain requirements, of course), we figured that this was the year to replace the unit and the AC as well.

Step One: Get Referrals

Several of our neighbors have been through the same situation recently, so we called them to ask who they used and would recommend. From their recommendations, we identified three local heating/cooling businesses that got the thumbs up. None of our friends used or recommended national businesses like Sears (not that I would have used them anyway, but I'm just noting the fact.)

Step Two: Invite Them Out

So we invited each of the three companies to come see our house (on separate trips, of course), give us their opinion, and quote on a new system. (FYI, this was in June/early July of this year, so we've been at this for awhile.) Here's what we received:

• They all said that our current system was way too big for our home (162,000 BTUs). No wonder it sounded like an airplane was taking off every time it started up. :-)
• They all recommended relatively the same furnace/AC set-up (95% efficient heater, 13-SEER AC, 100,000 BTUs -- heating is what's most important up here in winter country).
• The first guy was a very slick marketer and was all schmoozy with us (at least I thought so, I'm sure my wife thought he was nice -- she's always seeing the good side of people). Anyway, his price was way over the top -- around $9,000 before the government tax credit. He also quoted $192 for annual check-ups.
• The second guy seemed very informative and business-like. His pitch was different in that he would repair ANYTHING on the unit for ANY reason for 10 years if we committed to two annual check-ups totaling $278 (the others simply had basic manufacturer's warranties). His price for the units were $7,500 before the tax credit.
• The third guy was the only one I wasn't there for. My wife really liked him because he would 1) talk to her in plain language and 2) tell us if we really didn't need this or that. His price was $7,400 before the tax credit and he had annual check-up costs of $135.

Step Three: Determine a Winner

After talking about it, we decided to go with guy #2 IF he kept the guarantee but would cut his annual service cost in half. I called him, told him he was neck-and-neck with the other guy and gave him our offer. He took it right away -- something that killed me since I knew immediately that I'd asked for too little. Anyway, the next step was for him to come out and give us a "firm estimate".

Step Four: Get a Firm Estimate (If the Original One Wasn't Firm)

So my wife set up an appointment and he came out to our house, made some more measurements, and counted the registers in our home. Then he left and we didn't hear anything back from him for two weeks. We finally called him and he said he'd lost our number. Yeah, right. Then he gave us his revised/firm cost and it was $8,700! Yikes! It was $1,200 more than what his original bid was (and notice how it was similar to the amount we'd gotten him to come down on the annual fee over 10 years?) With this sort of change, we decided to re-look at our options.

Step Five: Confirm Option #2's Price

We thought that maybe we'd misunderstood and that everyone had given an estimate rather than a firm number. So we called company #3 and asked if the $7,400 was a firm cost or an estimate. We were told it was a firm cost. But their number didn't have a whole-house humidifier in it, so we got that added in and their new number came up to $7,932 before the tax credit -- $800 (or over 10%) cheaper than the next closest competitor. So we decided to go with this company. Even if the guy we'd originally selected had come down in price (we didn't ask), we felt like we couldn't trust him anymore, so we decided to move on.

Step Six: Check References Again

We told the new company that we wanted to go with them but would like three references from them. They provided the names of current customers and my wife called and checked with them. Of course they gave rave reviews (we wouldn't have expected anything different), but with $8k on the line, we didn't want to leave any stone unturned. (FYI, this company also received the strongest positive recommendations from our friends, so we had good confidence in them already.) With this done, we decided to proceed with this company.

Step Seven: Set Up Installation

My wife called on a Tuesday and the installation was set for the next Monday and Tuesday. Good thing because we were entering October and cold temperatures were surely on the way soon.

Step Eight: Installation

Two guys came out and installed the furnace and AC over a two-day period. I was only there for a bit of that time (stopped home for lunch with the family and to see how things were going), but my wife reported that it was mostly smooth sailing (their work did uncover an unrelated house issue that we'll need to look at, but nothing major -- I think.)

Step Nine: Payment

I'll cover details of this in a minute, but after all the work was done, they wanted payment (of course.)

Step Ten: Set-Up

When I arrived home on Tuesday night, the system was up and running. I programmed the thermostat to be at the temps we needed when we are/aren't at home (it was a very simple exercise.) The system is soooooooo quiet -- we can't even hear it when it's on (very nice, indeed.)

Final Cost

There were actually several incentives offered by various entities that dramatically lowered the cost of the system for us. Here's what we'll end up paying after all is said and done:

• $7,932 -- Cost quoted (gross cost)
• -$175 -- Instant rebate from the manufacturer of our unit
• -$1,500 -- Tax credit we'll receive from the federal government when we do our taxes this year
• - $670 -- Series of three rebates offered by our local electric utility for the installation of energy-efficient air conditioners
• - $300 -- Rebate offered by our local natural gas utility for the installation of energy-efficient furnaces
• - $155 -- 2% cash back we earned by paying for the $7,757 net cost (total cost less the manufacturer rebate) with our Schwab Visa card
• $5,132 -- Final net cost

Of course, we'll reap major benefits on the cost of utilities over the years to come as well, plus we were able to forego costs of repairing our old furnace (which probably would have been significant.) I'm not saying this further reduces the money we spent (it still cost us over $5k), but these were additional cost-related benefits of the new system versus the old.

My Tips

Here are a few things I would recommend for those of you buying a heater and/or AC unit:

• Get recommendations from friends, family members, co-workers, etc. on who you should at least consider. And after you go through the process of picking one company, ask for more recommendations from their customers.
• Get quotes up front (and in writing) and be sure the companies know they are one of several firms you're talking to -- that will have them keeping their pencils sharp.
• Be sure all the quotes you get are apples to apples -- the units are the same and the prices are the same (with and without credits, rebates, etc.) This is a difficult task and requires lots of back-and-forth questions to the various companies.
• Once you pick a "winner", call them, tell them you'd like to work with them, and ask if the price they quoted is the best they can do. In other words, try and negotiate their price down. We did this originally, but not on the second firm we selected, and we may have left some money on the table.
• Either use a credit card to get cash back or negotiate a better price if you pay cash.

I'll probably give an update in late February or March comparing our heating bills and usage this year versus last year, so stay tuned to see how much the new unit actually saves us.

Save on a Wedding by Having It in the Winter

Here's an article by MSN Money that says you can save a ton of money on a wedding by having it in the winter. Some of the savings you can expect:

The largest wedding-related expense is the banquet reception, which can cost more than $10,000, depending on the number of guests, location and menu, Markel says. Typically, banquet facilities charge a fixed price per person. But between January and March, the total cost often drops between 20% and 50%, Markel says. (The savings will be lower in states that have warm weather throughout the year, like parts of Florida and California.) Another option, of course, is to skip dinner. Lunch or brunch can save you 50%.

Fewer weddings mean fewer requests for photographers and videographers. Jeff Sharpe, a co-owner of Sharpe Photographers in Roseville, Calif., where the starting price for photos is $2,200, says the company offers 10% to 25% discounts for weddings between January and March. During the same months, Eli Allen, the owner of Majestic Images in Philadelphia, who charges a starting price of $7,000 for photography and video combined, offers a 20% discount.

Limos are at their most expensive during prom season and peak wedding season -- periods that winter weddings avoid. So expect to pay 10% to 20% less during the winter than you would in May or June, Markel says.

Basic economics -- less demand = lower prices.

Is this why Billy Idol sang of a "White Wedding" all those years ago? Was he simply looking to get married on the cheap? ;-)

Anyone Use Restaurant.com?

Here's a Sound Mind Investing review of Restaurant.com, the website where you buy discounted gift certificates to restaurants in your area. Their main conclusion is that the standard offers at Restaurant.com can save you a decent amount of money and the special offers can save you a really good amount. Sounds like they deliver as promised.

I'm wondering if any of you have used Restaurant.com and what sort of experiences you've had. I have wanted to use them, but upon checking the locations in our area, they are either places that are too far away or spots where we'd never want to go -- hence I've never used them and can't offer any insight into how the offers really pan out.

Any Restaurant.com users out there?

Real-Life Money Saving Story

I love real-life stories/testimonials from readers. Here's one found in a couple comments left by the same reader on my post titled Change Companies, Save Money about the need to shop around for insurance. The first one:

I saved $1275 by switching my 2 cars and house from Allstate to Amica. A couple of my neighbors also switched from State Farm and saved $1100 and $1800. It took me ~ 2 hours to make some phone calls and shop around. Well worth it. I've been a customer with Allstate for over 20 years. I called asking them to lower my rates and they only reduced them by $37. What a joke ... I highly recommend shopping around. The reason I went with Amica is because they had great rates and were ranked #1 in JD Power customer satisfaction for 9 years for both auto and home. Funny because I never heard of them before shopping around. And no, I don't work for them :-)

Then here's a follow-up with some more detail:

For the record. I saved $1275 per year. Auto coverage is exactly the same. Homeowners is slightly better with Amica compared to Allstate. After comparing the homeowners policy line by line, I concluded that Amica was better because Allstate is a "named perils" policy and Amica is "All Risk". There were also a few other small advantages. They are also given the highest financial rating A++ for whatever that's worth in this day and age. So far, I'm very happy. Don't let others scare you into NOT shopping around. Too many people somehow think that just because you have been with a certain company for many years, somehow that company will treat you right when you finally need to file a claim. To that, I say baloney.

This is why I suggest shopping around for insurance on a regular basis -- you can save a good amount of money (I've detailed this fact previously from what other readers have experienced.) Of course, you don't want to go with a shady, unreputable, low service company simply to save money, but there are so many good choices out there that you don't need to sacrifice those things while you work to save hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per year. So shop around!!!!

Asking for Discount Nets Guy $40k

We've talked a lot about how asking for a discount can save us all a bundle of money (and, yes, you can ask at a chain store too). But those suggestions revolved around shopping experiences -- when you were trying to buy something and wanted a cheaper price. Here's a different example (at least different in a way -- I guess you still are buying something ultimately) -- a guy asks for additional scholarship money for his son's college tuition. What's he end up with? He gets awarded $10,000 a year for four years!

Of course, there had to be other things happening -- the son had to qualify for the school, the son had to meet certain academic requirements (I assume), and so on. But all of these conditions were already present, and the father then took the step to ask for more assistance. Simply by doing this, he saved himself $40k. Pretty nice amount to save, huh?

Just a reminder to all of us that it never hurts to ask for a discount -- no matter what you're buying.

What's Wrong with Warehouse Clubs

You all know how much I like warehouse clubs stores. I LOVE Costco and shop there quite often. That said, club stores aren't all milk and honey -- they do have their downsides. And while this list of 10 problems with warehouse clubs is over-blown IMO, they do have some legitimate points. For instance, here are a couple disadvantages of shopping at club stores:

7. "Try our website. It will try your patience."

10. "You'd better like what we like."

My thoughts:

1. I've already detailed the problems I had last year with the Costco photo calendars. My understanding is that they went with a new online provider. The process was much more difficult to complete (the forms were much slower to react), there weren't as many style choice, the pictures weren't as crisp, and one of the calendars came back wrong. Not sure whether or not I'll use them this year.

2. If you've ever shopped at a club store you know that you'll get great prices on the items they have, but they only have a few items in every category. It's a bummer because if you like Brand A even though it's not the leading brand, it's likely they won't carry it. Ugh.

These things said, I still like club stores and enjoy shopping at them (for obvious reasons). :-) I know I won't find every brand I want, so I simply deal with that problem. As for the photo calendars/online photo store, I hope Costco fixes their problems from last year. Otherwise, my photo purchases with them are history.

10 Ways to Save Money on Car Ownership

Here are some thoughts from the great personal finance book Grow Your Money!: 101 Easy Tips to Plan, Save, and Invest. They list 10 tips for saving money on owning a car as follows:

1. Keep your cars longer.
2. Buy a used car rather than an expensive new one.
3. Do your homework.
4. Finance over three years or less.
5. Avoid cars that are more costly to insure.
6. Don't get frivolous options.
7. Don't buy the dealer's "extras."
8. Sell your old car yourself.
9. Perform routine car maintenance yourself.
10. Find a good mechanic.

I can't really disagree with any of these tips, but I personally handle these issues a bit differently. Here are my personal attitudes on each of these:

1. We keep our cars about seven years -- until they reach 100k miles or so. This is for our main car (the car I drive.) My wife's 2005 car currently has about 28,000 miles on it, so it's got a long life left.

2. I don't buy expensive new cars, but I do buy new. I prefer to own a car that only I have driven, I know where it's been, and so on. I realize this isn't the most cost-effective way of owning a car, but I prefer it, can afford it, and so I do it this way.

3. Doing your research is a KEY part to getting the best deal on a car purchase.

4. Nope. I pay cash. I already have the money saved for my next car (which I hope to get next year.)

5. I generally don't buy expensive, unusual, or popular cars, and thus my cars are comparatively inexpensive to insure.

6. As part of the way I buy a car, I determine which options I want, what their costs are, and then I request a car that has them and nothing else. I really need very few extras on a car and I'm certainly not going to pay for something I don't want and won't use.

7. Of course. I skip the extra warranty, the special rust coating, etc.

8. In the past, we've always known someone who needed a car, and we've given our old car to them. Not sure what we'll do this next time around. I'm sure we'll be able to find a needy family.

9. I'll pass on the car maintenance. I'd probably mess up more than what it would cost me to have someone else do the work. Besides, since I buy new, get good, reliable vehicles, and get rid of them around 100k miles, there's not much maintenance work to be done.

10. Hard to, but if you can find a good mechanic you'll want to keep him for life. Then again, see my comment above. I don't have much use for a mechanic thankfully.

Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets to Free Sodas

The following is an excerpt from Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: 100 Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets and is reprinted with the permission of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. The book is a tongue-in-cheek (and a little rough in places) list of "100 dirty little money-grubbing secrets." You don't often see humor and personal finance mixed, so this book is a unique spin on whatever you've read in the past. Enjoy the excerpt! (BTW, this is tongue-in-cheek (said again). I am not, and neither is the author, advocating stealing.)

In the Old West, desperados would never go anywhere without their six-shooters. Nowadays wanton arms toting is somewhat frowned upon, but you can carry the idea into other aspects of life. My favorite application is the free fast-food drink refill—more on that in a minute.

Glory be to those out-in-the-open soda fountains, bastions of the thirsty homeless man, who will calmly enter any fast-food joint as if it was his mom’s house and fill his thermos with Mr. Pibb as the pimple-faced teen behind the cash register pretends not to notice.

When the drinks are unguarded, there’s no stopping you from loading up unabated. Things get a bit trickier, however, when the soda fountain is located behind the cash register.

While we can all dream of a bright future in which the archaic practice of well-defended sodas has been eliminated, we must protect ourselves with a six-shooter equivalent for the twenty-first century. I suggest you establish a cup-collection spree on your usual dining rounds and not stop until you’ve set yourself up with at least six cups that allow you access to the spectrum of whatever food you might come to be in the mood for. A well-rounded portfolio might include Subway, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell. Rinse them out after each use and store them in the backseat of your car.

Are you following me here? Should you ever become parched as you’re making your travels and happen upon one of the restaurants emblazoned with a logo that matches one of the cups in your arsenal, pull it out and storm through the double doors. Hand the cup to the cashier and explain how you’d like a refill. You might get a weird look, but you’ll get what you ask for.

In my experience, I’ve found that cups tend to endure eight to ten refills before becoming too weak and tattered to continue worthwhile service. Every now and then, however, I’m surprised by how long those cardboard suckers can last. I’ve got a Wendy’s cup sitting in my car that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been replaced since 2003. Maybe Wendy’s uses stronger cardboard than the other chains. Maybe I haven’t gone to Wendy’s as much as I have its burger rivals. Or maybe, just maybe, all the bacteria that have grown inside the cup has reinforced its walls. No matter—I don’t question the process, I just appreciate the results.

Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Healthcare Secrets

The following is an excerpt from Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: 100 Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets and is reprinted with the permission of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. The book is a tongue-in-cheek (and a little rough in places) list of "100 dirty little money-grubbing secrets." You don't often see humor and personal finance mixed, so this book is a unique spin on whatever you've read in the past. Enjoy the excerpt!

The shame of this great nation is that witchdoctors, soothsayers, and healers no longer patrol our roadsides. They’ve been forced away by the cold, antiseptic HMO/health insurance complex, which is basically a legalized mafia that shakes down customers for ridiculous sums of protection money. I have no problem with mafias in theory—they exist to fill needs not provided by law-abiding society—but I am angry with the way the healthcare system stifles creativity and simplicity in medicine in favor of impersonality and maintaining the bottom line. Not only does the healthcare machine prevent the discovery of easy, cheap cures, it tries to get people to forget the knowledge of past generations.

In short, the doctor doesn’t want you to know that duct tape takes away warts with just as much efficiency as an outpatient freeze-off procedure. Here are some more of my favorites.

• Coughs can be chased away with shots of hard liquor or, if you want to go a cheaper, less alcoholic route, by eating almonds, grapes, or onions.

• Garlic isn’t only good for staving off vampires. It also stops jock itch cold. Hey, you never catch Mario or Luigi scratching their private parts, do you?

• To soothe an earache, dab a cotton ball with olive oil, heat it up for a few seconds in a microwave, and then stick it in your ear. Also tasty with bread.

• Beat back nausea by downing a light, carbonated soft drink. The reason it works is the bubbles magically make your tummy feel better.

• Momma always used to clean your mouth out with soap when you swore, but if she weren’t so evil, she would have just made you eat up an onion. They make like Schwarzenegger with an AK-47 on all the killer germs in your foul trap. Eat one a day and your toothache should disappear.

• Apples not only keep the doctor away but they also battle light depression with as much gusto as any prescription drug. Not poison apples, though. Those make you fall into a coma until dwarves resuscitate you and help you overthrow the jealous evil queen who gave them to you.

• I don’t know why, but whenever I have a headache, and I eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch or its cheaper Malt-O-Meal cousin, Toasted Cinnamon Twists, it magically disappears. When I’m out of cereal, I just lay back and say a soothing word to myself over and over until the headache vanishes.

• If you want to get rid of your cold as quickly as possible, eat lemon slices. They’re gross, but not as nasty as a constant stream of snot flowing out of your nose.

• If your toenails are cracked and discolored by fungus, pee on them. If you have difficulty urinating on yourself, dump mouthwash on your feet. But do not, I repeat, do not mix things up and pee inside your mouthwash container.

• It’s tempting to cut corns off but doing so can lead to infection. A better way to erase them is to get a hold of some chalk, grind it up into a paste, and smear it around the bulges.

By the way, I pulled most of that stuff off the Internet in less than five minutes. Medical degree schmedical degree.

Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Haircutting Secrets

The following is an excerpt from Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: 100 Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets and is reprinted with the permission of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. The book is a tongue-in-cheek (and a little rough in places) list of "100 dirty little money-grubbing secrets." You don't often see humor and personal finance mixed, so this book is a unique spin on whatever you've read in the past. Enjoy the excerpt!

Worst: John Edwards paying $800 of his campaign money for a haircut.

Bad: My wife forking over $60 to get her hair “cut,” meaning left exactly the same length and combed a little bit differently with a bunch of sweet-smelling gunk stuck in it.

Better: Me paying $12 to the place inside Wal-Mart for a crappy, uneven mop massacre.

Best: Cutting out the middle man and doing it yourself, or having it done by a friend or loved one whom you’re reasonably sure won’t carve a smiley face into the back of your head.

This last point is important, lest you go through life with the nickname “Smiley,” like my college friend Smiley. The poor Canadian sap fell victim to the ruthless designs of my buddy Magill during sophomore year in the dorms. Smiley was looking to save a few bucks on a haircut just before a football game, and Magill allowed him to do exactly that, only with the unspoken corollary that Smiley, who would henceforth no longer be known as Dave, attends the game with a smiley face on the back of his head. He might still have the symbol to this day had a giggling group of freshman girls sitting behind us not pointed out the mishap to Smiley, who then made Magill shave his head completely.So long as Magill isn’t your impromptu barber, you should be safe. But only the most sure-handed, patient, Mr. Miyagi–like among us is capable of taking a razor to his own head without getting Wal-Mart-like results. It’s better to find someone else to run the clipper through your hair, probably changing up the guard for the top and bottom of your noggin. The cut that’s served me well for more than a decade is a No. 6 up high and a No. 1 down low. In order to steer clear of mushroom head, have your haircutting slave bridge the line between the two layers by running the clippers over a comb pressed against your noggin. For those with longer hair, I hear good things about the Flowbee. Okay, not really, but it’s got to work better than a bowl cut.

Oh to be alive in the 1970s, when long hair was deemed a fashionable quality. Those hippies from back in the day could get away without a haircut for months, and when they really needed one, they could hack it off themselves with scissors. In return for this luxury, they had to live with polyester pants and chest-hair-exposing leisure suits.

It makes me proud to cruise the streets and still catch glimpses of those brave, bold souls who rock hippie hair in modern times. It takes a true hippie soul to let his long, wavy hair speak for him and subvert the powers that be—fashion faux pas consequences be damned.

How to Save Money on Moving

The following is a guest post from Tim Johnson, Managing Editor at Relocation.com.

With some American cities starting to resemble a setting from a Dickens novel, more and more people are willing to pull up stakes and move to take a new job, or move to a place with better job opportunities.
 
I faced a similar decision 10 years ago. 

I was unemployed and living in Minnesota, when I got a job offer in New York City.

I had a keen desire to live in New York, but I didn’t have a lot of money. I wouldn’t be renting a truck or shipping my stuff via parcel post, or hiring a moving company.

So I pared down my already meager possessions to fit into two suitcases and a huge backpack, put the rest into storage, and took a bus to the airport.

When I landed in New York, I then took another bus, train and subway to my temporary digs on the Upper East Side. After two buses, a train, a subway, and several curious glances from fellow passengers -- my move was done. 

I learned a lot that day, and I draw on that experience when corresponding with people who are trying to save money on their own relocations.

Although in previous years I would hear from people who were moving to take advantage of a larger house or better school system, today I hear more from people who were in my situation a decade ago: they need to move to start a new job, or to move to an area where they might have better job prospects.

And, of course, like me, they have limited means.

Everyone has to do their own evaluation of whether the reward of moving (a new job, a better job), is worth the risk (spending money on a move and not getting a new job, or living in a new place that you hate).

If you do decide to move, you want to do it cheaply, but smartly. Here are some tips to cut moving costs, and some ways to finance a move if you’re short of cash.

• Pare down your belongings. A good rule of thumb is to get rid of anything that you haven’t used in a year. I don’t even know you, but I can bet you’ll never need or use the following things in your closet: your breadmaker, those college textbooks; that ThighMaster; or your high school letter jacket. Junk 'em.

• Look at alternative ways to move. If you don’t have a lot of stuff to move (and now you shouldn’t, after the tongue-lashing above), check out ‘self-service’ moving companies. You’re in charge of packing up and loading a moving van or a portable storage unit, and someone else will drive it to your new home. It can be a significant savings, and not having to drive is a relief.

• Many people move junky furniture. Consider getting rid of what you have now, and buying new when you get settled in at your new place. You won't have the expense or hassle of moving it, and you can buy stuff that's appropriate for your new place.

• Use short-term or long-term storage. When you get the cash flowing in your new job, pick up your belongings. Storage facilities will often give you a deal if you agree to stay a certain period of time, say a year. Or better yet, inquire about that space in your cousin’s basement – it’s free.

• Airplanes are fee-happy now with checked luggage. Compare the costs of checking luggage vs. shipping it. And if you're near a major train line, check freight costs for shipping.

If you’re really short of funds for your move, consider:

• Put your moving costs on a credit card. I can hear the personal finance purists fainting as I write this, and I would rarely, if ever, advocate the use of credit cards for something you might not be able to pay off immediately. However, if the only thing standing in your way of a new job opportunity is a fear of plastic, give it up. It’s a short-term loan that will be paid back once you have the cash flow.

• Borrow from family and friends. You’re not vacationing in the Bahamas – you’re moving for a new job. You might be surprised how willing people are to help, particularly in this economic climate. For a little extra cash, throw yourself a going-away party – people will definitely chip in to help you on your way.

• If you have an IRA, consider tapping it. More personal finance heresy, but a 10% penalty and more taxable income should not stand in the way of something you feel will truly benefit your life. And you can avoid the tax and penalty if you're able to roll over that cash into a new IRA within 60 days. This is a good option if you need to pony up for a deposit and first month's rent in your new home.

• Some states offer relocation funds for people who are moving for job opportunities. It’s often for people moving in-state, but check with the same office that offers your unemployment benefits.

• If you have a job offer, ask for an advance. But be VERY careful about this – this could be a red flag to an employer, so get a lay of the land before even broaching the issue.

• Remember, your moving expenses are probably tax deductible. That’s not great for your cash flow now, but it should make you feel less guilty about tapping an IRA or charging your moving costs, because you’ll recoup some of that cost eventually.

In many ways, now is a great time to get a start in a new location. The cost of housing has fallen most everywhere, making it easier to get on your feet in a new place. And if prospects are particularly grim where you live, there's little downside to trying out a new city where you've always wanted to live.  

Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets to Free Meals

The following is an excerpt from Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: 100 Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets and is reprinted with the permission of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. The book is a tongue-in-cheek (and a little rough in places) list of "100 dirty little money-grubbing secrets." You don't often see humor and personal finance mixed, so this book is a unique spin on whatever you've read in the past. Unfortunately, this spoof is a little too close to home for me. Enjoy the excerpt!

Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch has never frequented the grocery store sample booth circuit, especially at warehouse wholesale stores such as Costco or Sam’s Club, which boast the most bountiful setups. In forty-five minutes of sample stalking, you can round up a feast worthy of royalty.

On many a weekend day I avoid eating lunch in favor of vulturing my way up and down the aisles, swooping in to scavenge bits of free food from trays guarded by senile old codgers until I’ve had my fill. I used to be stealthy and crafty in the way I went about my sampling, grabbing a bagel bit here, hitting the next aisle over for a cup of trail mix before cycling backward for a shot of punch, then sneaking a second bagel bit. This was when I still tried to maintain a semblance of dignity. But no more. Now I’ll shamelessly scoop up entire handfuls of whatever I can, stuffing all that will fit into my mouth and the rest into my pockets. I’m happy to report that you can do so with impunity. The minimum-wage slaves who shell out the free eats couldn’t care less who gets the food, only that they get rid of it all as quickly as possible. And those workers who do get annoyed when I swipe half a tray’s worth of the Hormel chili they’ve spent fifteen minutes setting up almost never say anything when I make my heist because they’re too stunned at my move. And I silence those who do open their yaps by claiming I’m getting some extras for friends or family.

The sample cart lunch hour is no secret, so you’ve got to be bold and decisive as you make your rounds. Imagine one of those documentaries about the lion on the prowl, times it by twelve, and that’s the sort of competition you’re in for. Lines tend to congregate around the stands set up for the more popular items, but feel free to ignore them and just rush in to do what you must. Personally, I prefer avoiding real competition and preying on the weak. I’ll box out a gaggle of great-grandmas in order to snare a salmon-on-rye square-let. I’ll dart in front of a five-year-old to take the last slice of ice cream bar. Hey, the kid has to learn sometime that slowness is never rewarded. Only when a man who’s clearly bigger and tougher than I gets to a sample cart before I do will I impatiently wait in line for my turn. Luckily, few sample scavengers are bodybuilders.

Two schools of thought differ on whether to strike up a verbal interplay with your food donors or to take what’s yours without so much as eye contact. I can see benefits to both. It’s worth getting to know the kindly welfare granny who’s in charge of the DiGiorno half-slices. A little feigned interest in her bingo night and maybe some coy flirtation here and there and she’ll not only fill you in on when the next batch will be ready for you, she may even slip you a whole piece with a wink. On the other hand, there’s a hefty benefit in avoiding conversation in order to save time, as well as not allow feelings to jeopardize your maneuvers. Say you approach the DiGiorno granny, while out of the corner of your eye you see Caramel Apple Guy is setting up his wares. Due to your courtesy in chatting up your pizza-picking pal, you may be a step slow in beating out the snot-nosed brats for dessert. Choose your path wisely and be willing to live with your decisions.

Change Companies, Save Money

In the September issue of Consumer Reports, they list the following statistic:

53% -- Respondents in our survey who switched companies and got a cheaper rate [on homeowners insurance].

Does this shock anyone? This is why I regularly recommend shopping around for insurance -- be it car insurance, life insurance, or, in this case, homeowners insurance. You can literally save a bundle doing this. Case in point, here's a reader that saved $1,300 for two hours worth of work.

Seems like a good investment of time to me.

How to Save 20% on Your Heating and Cooling Costs

In their October issue, Consumer Reports quotes the following:

20% -- That's how much you can cut your heating and cooling bills per year simply by adjusting thermostat temperatures 5 to 10 degrees at night and when you're out.

This is why you'll almost always see "get a programmable thermostat" as a suggestion in any piece on how to save money heating and cooling. It's hard to beat a 20% savings!!!!

We do these as well as keep temperatures reasonable even when we are home. A summary:

• When we're gone on vacation, we set the temp really low in the winter and really high in the summer -- no need to heat/cool the house that much if we're not there (we have a "vacation" setting that makes doing this very easy).

• When we are there, our programmable thermostat is set to lower the temp at night significantly in the winter as well as raise the temp during the day in the summer. This keeps the system from running much less than if we set it for 72 degrees no matter what time of day it was.

• We keep the house at a temperature below "normal". In the summer, our thermostat is set for 76 degrees for most of the day while in the winter it's set for 68 degrees -- even when where at home. We use fans in the summer and put on extra clothes in the winter (if needed) to make it more comfortable.

I'm not sure how much money combining all of these tips has saved us, but if you use CR's estimates, it's a pretty good amount over the years.

How about you? Do you use a programmable thermostat?

Save Almost $1,200 a Year Using Store Brands

I've written a ton about how we all can save a bundle with store brands. Here are a few samples of my thoughts:

• Save 41% by Using Store Brands

• Consumers Start to See the Light on Store Brands

• Generic and Store Brand Products -- Much Cheaper and Just as Good (Or Even the Same Thing!) as National Brands

• Save Big Money by Using Generic/Store Brands -- Even I Didn't Know the Savings Were This Big!!!

• Health and Beauty Aids: Walmart versus Costco, Kirkland Brand versus Equate Brand -- Which is the Best Deal? 

Now add Consumer Reports to this list. In their October issue, they sing the praises of store brands saying "they often cost less but taste as good." And, CR makes the claim that a family of four can save $1,168 in food alone by using store brands versus national brands (not counting non-food store brand items that can save you money too).

Now someone's sure to comment that "some store brand items don't taste as good." I'll agree with that. I've tried several store brand items and then gone back to the national brand. I'm not suggesting you should eat something you don't like simply to save a buck. So here's what I'd recommend (and what I do, btw):

1. Try the store brand.

2. If you don't like it, return the unused portion to the store on your next trip. Almost every store brand comes with a "if you don't like it we'll refund your money" guarantee.

3. Convert the tasty items to future store brand purchases and keep buying the national brands for other items.

A few of the items we buy in store brands:

• Jelly
• Frozen strawberries
• Nuts

A few of the items we prefer in national brands:

• Instant oatmeal
• Parmesan cheese
• Steak sauce

Anyone else out there want to vouch for store brands? What product categories have you switched over to store brand purchases?

Entertainment Book Savings Update

As of my last update, my Entertainment Book had saved me $72.59. Here are the savings I've racked up since then using it:

• Free Auntie Anne's pretzel - saved $2
• B1G1F Papa John's pizza (saved $4 versus the special) -- have done this three times in the past three months - saved $12
• Grocery savings at our local store - saved $5

That brings my total savings to $91.59 after two months of use. Not bad at all.

Two of the offers above were "no brainer" offers (I detailed these in How to Save Money Using an Entertainment Book). The pretzel was totally free -- though you could NOT count that if you like since we wouldn't have purchased one. But the $5 off on groceries was certainly easy free money -- all we had to do was buy $50 worth of groceries and we're usually well over that.

The deals have certainly slowed down over the past few months as we used many of the best offers early on. That said, the book has really delivered for us -- almost $100 in savings for the year with four months left to go. There aren't many things that earn you back four times on your money (or more!), so buying and using an Entertainment Book ranks as a pretty good deal IMO.

Consider All Options When Trying to Save Money

Here's an interesting money-saving story that I thought you all would appreciate.

A few weeks ago we took a vacation to see the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village (jointly owned attractions that are next door to each other.) As you might imagine, there are various ways you can pay to see these attractions and we went through them all. Let's start with what the costs would have been for each of us to buy a one-day pass to each place:

• Henry Ford Museum: $56 total for our family (Adults $15, Youth $11)
• Greenfield Village: $82 total for our family (Adults $22, Youth $16)
• Parking: $5
• Grand total for our family: $143

Ok, so $143 seemed a bit steep to us, so we kept looking. Luckily, we saw that the two attractions had a combination deal, a special rate if you wanted to see both attractions (one each day.) The cost of this was $120. Ok, it was getting better.

But we also considered getting an annual membership. For our family, it would cost $125, only $5 more than the combination deal. Not only would a membership get us into each attraction (as many times as we want in a year, btw), but also had several other advantages. It seemed like this was a better option than the combination deal.

But this wasn't the best deal we found. Through August, the two organizations were offering an annual membership coupon. For $99, our family could become members for a year. Sold! So we are now members, had a great time visiting both places, and will likely be back a time or two before our membership runs out. Oh, and did I mention that memberships are tax-deductible? ;-)

Just a short story to remind everyone that we need to look at all the options available as we make purchases. We started by simply wanting to see a couple in-state attractions. We ended up becoming members of two fine museums with lots of extras benefits (and likely another vacation day or two visit) and saving money to boot!

Reminder: Check Your Medical Bills for Accuracy

No wonder medical care is so expensive in the US -- billing extra and extravagantly seems to be the norm. That's why you ALWAYS need to check your medical bills as soon as you receive them and before you pay them. Here's another example of why from MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles:

Billing errors are common, experts say. Double-billing, typos, upselling, and outright fraud add up to big unexpected medical bills for consumers -- even those who think they are fully covered by insurance.  A complex web of bills, forms, and other paperwork mean a lot of Red Tape for health care, and often leads to overpayment by consumers. 

"Eight out of 10 bills we see have some error," she said.

“Insurance companies and medical provider billings seem to bill on the basis of ‘let's just see what we can get away with,’ knowing that many consumers are too timid to question them,” he said. Recently, when he questioned a bill, he was immediately offered a $200 discount as a “professional courtesy.”

I've written before about how to get an incorrect medical bill corrected, so check these out if you need specific ideas:

• How to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

• Another Way to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

• A Third Way to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

Lucky for me, my wife handles all of our medical bills -- and she watches them like a hawk. She's probably saved us at least several hundred dollars (if not a couple thousand) over the years simply by paying attention and asking for specifics if a charge seems incorrect or too large.

Always Do the Math

We recently joined a very nice local pool (near our home, at an area high school, Olympic-sized pool with a smaller, warm-water pool too, inside, etc.) We had been going there quite a bit over a two-week period (at $6.50 a pop for our family) and decided we'd take the plunge on a membership to save ourselves money. As we discussed the membership options (3 months, 6 months and 1 year), we discovered that their rates are not what most people would expect -- that the longer time periods always saved the member more money than the shorter periods. Here are their family, resident rates:

• Day pass (family of four) -- $6.50
• Three months -- $65
• Six months -- $132
• Year -- $250

I was initially looking at the comparison between six months and a year. Obviously, the annual fee saves money over two 6-month fees (saves $14), but was it enough for us to shell out $250 for something we didn't know we'd be using a few months from now?

Then my wife noticed that the three-month rate was actually better than the six-month fee (two 3-month memberships are $130, $2 cheaper than one 6-month membership.) And the 3-month rate was only $10 more than the annual fee (four 3-month memberships are $260.) So we went with the three-month membership. It was a better price than the 6-month option, only slightly worse than the annual fee, and gave us the flexibility we needed in case we didn't like the pool over time.

This experience reminded us that you always need to do the math to determine the best deal -- you can't assume anything (like that longer time periods are always better deals.)

BTW, we've now been going to the pool for three weeks and we would have spent just over $60 if we had been paying the daily pass rate -- so investing in the three-month membership has been (or will be soon) a good investment for us.

Cheap Home Security Options

Our neighborhood homeowner's association has a Yahoo group where neighbors post everything from party-at-the-park announcements to ideas on how to handle speeders in the neighborhood. A couple weeks ago, someone posted that there were a series of thefts in our area. These were mostly opportunistic thefts (people taking stuff out of unlocked cars and open garages) and none near our house, but it got me thinking that I need to consider some home security upgrades. So I started identifying the list of possible options.

Here's a list (it's a short version -- believe it or not -- the actual list is MUCH longer) I collected from Yahoo Answers, How Stuff Works, and Crime Doctor of the top ways to protect your home from a burglar (as well as miscellaneous tips). And yes, I know that some are repeated (just said in a different way), but I liked both ways they were noted and thus included them all. Here goes:

• Leaving your porch light on

• Having automatic timers on. your lights.

• Make sure your exterior doors are deadbolted and your windows locked.

• Apply security film to all your windows.

• Have a 6' fence (not chain link) around as much of the back half of your house/yard as possible.

• Buy a set of motion detector alarms for about $20, or even a whole system, and they work on their own with no monitoring. It's the loud noise that drives the bad guys away anyway.

• I was told a Beware of Dog sign will actually do more good than an ADT sign. You can pick one up at any discount store.

• Your house should appear occupied at all times. Use timers to switch lights and radios on and off when you're not at home.

• If the entrances to your home are dark, consider installing lighting with an infrared detector.

• Trees located near windows or shrubbery that might shield a burglar from view can be major flaws in your home-protection plan. Consider your landscaping plan in light of your protection needs.

• Dogs are good deterrents to burglars.

• The majority of home and apartment burglaries occur during the daytime when most people are away at work or school.

• Although home burglaries may seem random in occurrence, they actually involve a selection process. The burglar's selection process is simple. Choose an unoccupied home with the easiest access, the greatest amount of cover, and with the best escape routes.

• The first step is to harden the target or make your home more difficult to enter. Remember, the burglar will simply bypass your home if it requires too much effort or requires more skill and tools than they possess.

• Experienced burglars know that the garage door is usually the weakest point of entry followed by the back door.

• Windows are left unlocked and open at a much higher rate than doors. An open window, visible from the street or alley, may be the sole reason for your home to be selected by a burglar.

• Get to know your neighbors on each side of your home and the three directly across the street. Agree to watch out for each other's home.

• Allowing a neighbor to have a key solves the problem of hiding a key outside the door. Experienced burglars know to look for hidden keys in planter. While on vacation - pick up newspapers, and flyers. Offer to occasionally park your car in their driveway.

• Interior lighting is necessary to show signs of life and activity inside a residence at night. Light timers are inexpensive and can be found everywhere. They should be used on a daily basis, not just when you’re away.

• Another important area to be well-lighted is the perimeter of your home or apartment especially at the entryway. Exterior lighting on the front of a property should always be on a timer to establish a routine and appearance of occupancy at all times.

• Security lights with infra-red motion sensors are relatively inexpensive and can easily replace an exterior porch light or side door light on single family homes. The heat-motion sensor can be adjusted to detect body heat and can be programmed to reset after one minute. These security lights are highly recommended for single family homes.

• Alarm systems are effective deterrents with visible signage. Home and apartment burglars will usually bypass a property with visible alarm signs and will go to another property without such a sign.

Ok, so we can break these down into three groups IMO:

• Stuff we already do
• Stuff that would be useful but is too expensive
• Inexpensive options that will get us most of the way there (we're not trying to secure Fort Knox here)

Here's the stuff we already do:

• We check our doors every night before we go to bed to make sure they are locked.

• My wife and/or kids are home most of the day, so one of the biggest security protection practices possible kind of happens automatically at our house.

• We know our neighbors, watch out for each other's home, have keys for other's homes (and they have ours), pick up each other's paper, mail, and trash when the other is out of town, and even drive into their driveway to leave tracks in the snow when they are gone during the winter.

Things that would be nice but are a bit too expensive include:

• Getting a dog. Ha! ;-)
• Putting a fence around the whole back yard.
• Installing a security system.

Inexpensive options that I think we will use:

• Get some automatic lights installed around the outside of the house. Some in the front that are on timers set to turn on and off at various times with a few others (sides and back of the house) set up with motion detectors (especially by our two garage doors and the back door).

• Apply security film or something else that blocks the view from the door windows into our garage.

• Get a security system sign and/or small ones to put on the windows. I'd consider the "beware of dog" sign, but I don't want my home to look like the Vegas strip (too gaudy).

• Get some internal lights/timers.

• Consider planting some rose bushes around our front windows. I have them in front of one set of windows, so why not the other? They would certainly make for a prickly entry into our home. :-)

It's really a pretty simple list, but one I think will upgrade the security of our home dramatically. Anything I missed or should consider?

Do You Shop Less to Save Money?

One of CNN Money's tips for saving on food costs is to shop once a week (versus many times a week). Doing so can save you over $1,500 a year they say. The details:

Shop once a week. The more trips you make to the store, the likelier you are to buy on impulse because you see more tempting items. About two-thirds of purchases are unplanned; cut that in half to save $143 a month (if you spend $100 a week on groceries).

We used to follow this rule most weeks, but that was when the nearest decent store was a 15-minute drive away. Now that we have a nice new superstore five minutes away, we're there three or four times a week. It doesn't help that there are also restaurants and a gas station in the same complex, making it easier to stop and "just pick up something." We should probably try and get a handle on our number of trips since I'm sure it's costing us something (extra gas if nothing else.)

How about you? Anyone out there purposefully limit the number of trips you take to the grocery store because you want to save money? And does everyone by the fact that you can save so much using this tip? (It seems a bit high to me.)

An Interesting Way to Get Premium Cable for Free

Here's a story a neighbor shared with me about how he ended up with premium cable for the price of basic cable:

• Several years ago, he and some friends and family members wanted to watch the Michigan-Michigan State football game (the biggest game of the season in our state). Problem was, they wanted to watch it at my friend's house and he only had basic cable -- he didn't have the channel that had the game.

• His friend (or maybe brother, I forget) told him to order the premium cable (which would allow them to watch the game) and that he (the friend/brother) would pay for it for one month. Then my friend could cancel it after that.

• My friend ordered the service, the cable company came out and "turned it on", and the group watched the game on the big day (I'm not sure who won, but I'm guessing Michigan.) ;-)

• My friend called the cable company soon thereafter to cancel the service. The company said they would take care of it.

• At the start of the next month, my friend noticed that he was still getting premium cable (70 channels or so). He called the cable company, told them that he was still getting the channels, and that he wanted it cancelled. He was afraid they would keep charging him for the premium service even though he had asked for it to be disconnected. They told him they would take care of it and he wouldn't be charged.

• On his next bill, he was only charged for basic cable. Yet he was still getting premium cable. The same happened the next month. And the next month. And the next month.

• That was five years ago. He's still getting premium cable and paying for basic.

He suggested to me that this was a potential "money saving tip" (order basic cable, add premium to it later, cancel the basic, still get premium and pay only for basic), but didn't know if it was repeatable or simply a fluke in his case. His hypothesis is that it was more expensive for the cable company to have someone come out and turn off the cable than it was for them to simply let it remain as it was.

Anyone else had anything like this happen?

How Much People Spend on Weddings (And How to Save on Them)

US News talks about how people are dealing with spending on wedding gifts in a tough economy and shares this information on the average amounts spent:

According to WeddingChannel.com, friends spend an average of $116 per gift, and family members spend $211. (For bridal showers, friends spend an average of $61 and family members spend $98.) "The closer that you are to the couple, the more you'll spend," says Charli Penn, managing editor of WeddingChannel.com.

Note to readers: don't invite me to your wedding or you'll get well below the average value for your gift. :-)

Seriously, we do give more for family members than for acquaintances (of course, who doesn't?), but we're not in the $200+ range. Not even close -- unless the relative is a very close relative. In that case, we'd be very near the average.

US News also offers a couple ways to save on wedding gift costs such as:

• Give gift cards to the store where the couple is registered for the couple to put towards a bigger purchase.

• Purchase an item such as a wine bottle opener and pairing it with the couple's favorite bottle of wine. If you're giving a cake stand or mixing bowls, include a card with your favorite cake recipe.

Gift cards? Yikes! Personally, I prefer giving cash.

On the opposite end of the transaction, here are some ideas from me on how those getting married can save on wedding costs:

• Save on Your Wedding

• Saving on Wedding Tips from a Wedding Consultant, Part 1

• Saving on Wedding Tips from a Wedding Consultant, Part 2

• More Great Ways to Save on Wedding Costs

• Save Money on Wedding Expenses by NOT Telling Suppliers that Your Purchase is for a Wedding

• Two More Ways to Cut Wedding Costs

• How to Pay for a Wedding You Can't Afford

And if these don't suit you, here are some creative ways to save on a wedding.

How to Save 42% on Healthcare Costs

With our nation in the throes of a national healthcare debate, I thought I'd highlight this piece that gives the topic a personal finance twist. The NY Times says that obese people spend 42 percent more on healthcare than normal-weight Americans. The details:

Medical spending on obesity-related conditions is estimated to have reached $147 billion a year in 2008, according to the new study, published online on Monday in the journal Health Affairs. That figure represents almost 10 percent of all medical spending, the study found.

Obese Americans spend about $1,429 more on health care each year than the roughly $3,400 spent by normal-weight Americans.

Most of the excess spending is for prescription drugs needed to manage obesity-related conditions.

“Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they’re getting worse rapidly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said.

So, here's the money-saving tip for the day for those who are overweight:

Lose weight.

I know, it's not easy (what is that's worthwhile?), but if you do lose weight you'll feel better, likely live longer, enjoy your live more (probably -- most people that have lost tons of weight say they have more energy, can do things they've always wanted to do, etc.), plus save a ton of money. How much? It's not only the extra $1,429 you'll save on healthcare each year, but all the other savings too that can net you over half a million dollars during your lifetime.

Wow.

Cash for Clunkers Isn't a No-Brainer

Since the guest post on Cash for Clunkers, the program has run out of money and is on life support for the time being (will more money become available? when?) Anyway, several readers pointed out on that post that saving a few thousand dollars by trading in an old car wasn't really a great deal since you were likely trading a car that was paid off for a new car (including potential debt) that would be much more expensive. Good point! Check out this email I received from Insurance.com:

With many considering a new car purchase under the CARS program, it’s important to take insurance costs into consideration. For example, if you have a 1999 Ford Explorer 4WD to trade on a new car – and you're ready to give up driving an SUV – there are plenty of popular, fuel-efficient models to consider. With an average annual insurance bill of $1,390, based on Insurance.com RateWatch data, you'll want to carefully consider your choices. According to Insurance.com The 2009 Hyundai Sonata has an average auto insurance rate of $1,770, an increase of $380 year. At the other extreme, the 2009 Scion tC adds $1,460 a year to your insurance costs, and it's unlikely you can make that up in what you save on gas. Here are some more examples of how car insurance costs might hinder the savings from CARS (listings are: car model, annual insurance rate, and coverage increase):

• 2009 Toyota Corolla/LE/LXE, $1,997, + $607 year
• 2009 Kia Spectra, $2,120, + $730 year
• 2009 Honda Civic EX, $2,215, + $825 year
• 2009 Ford Focus, $2,248, + $858 year
• 2009 Chevy Cobalt, $2,285, + $895 year
• 2009 Scion tC, $2,850, + $1,460 year

Wow. If your insurance costs alone go up $900+ a year, it won't take long before a few thousand dollar "savings" is long gone. Then again, maintenance and gas costs should lower, right? :-)

My take is that if you were going to get a new car anyway (within a year or two), using the cash for clunkers program is probably a good idea. But if you have a vehicle that's paid off and has lots of life left, then it's probably not worth it.

Does that sound right to you?

How to Save on Prescription Drug Costs

The following is a guest post from Health Harbor.

It is no secret that for decades, personal healthcare expenditures have increased at a rate greater than inflation.  This had led us to a breaking point today, resulting in the calls for health care reform.  Within the increase, however, are some interesting sub-trends.  We spend fewer days in the hospital.  We spend more on outpatient services.  And as a society, we spend way more on prescription drugs than we ever have before.

Some would see the increase in prescription drug spending as a good thing.  There is no doubt that drug therapy can often be the most cost-effective way of treating a condition and it should often be encouraged.  Treating high blood pressure with drugs, for example, has a lower price tag and will likely produce a higher quality of life than suffering its effects of a stroke or heart attack.  Faithfully following a prescription drug regimen can defer or eliminate the need for surgery or other invasive treatments.

What, then, do you need to know about prescription drug purchases, and how do you make sure those costs fit within your personal budget?  Here are a few relatively recent trends in the prescription drug world that can help you make your healthcare dollar go farther.

• $4 Generic Drug Trend.  Most savvy readers know that large retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Costco each unveiled a list of $4 prescriptions back in 2006, enabling consumers to get common generic drugs at deep discounts (some state regulations prohibit it, but most allow it).  What people may not know is that the trend has continued to expand, both in terms of the number of drugs offered on stores’ lists, as well as the number of chains participating.  Kroger, Safeway, Walgreen’s, Ralph’s, Food4Less, Food Lion, and others have joined the fray, making $4 prescriptions available in all but the most remote of rural areas.  While there is something to be said for the continuity of a one-pharmacy relationship, shopping around for discounted generics can save you money.

• Insurance Drug Tiering Trend.  For about a decade, insurances have increasingly “tiered” drugs into three or four tiers, beginning with generics, working up to preferred non-generics, non-preferred, and often a 4th tier.  The patient’s copay goes up exponentially with each tier, from an average of an $11 copay for a generic to $71 for a 4th-tier drug.  Since it is now more complicated than simply asking “generic or brand name”, it is up to the patient to understand how an insurance’s tiering works, and to have the discussion about drug tiers with one’s doctor.  He or she may have access to the insurance’s formulary and can help guide the prescription to a lower-cost alternative.

• Brand-Name Drug Patent Expirations.  Several costly, brand-name drug patients have expired in the past two years, creating a flood of new generics that didn’t exist before.  Popular drugs such as Fosamax, Advair, Topamax and others that accounted for more than $20 billion of consumer spending are now generics, part of a huge wave of patent expirations in 2008 and 2009.  If you were taking a brand-name drug before, check with your physician or pharmacist to see if there is a good generic alternative on the market.

With a little diligence and consumer research, you may be able to shave a few dollars off your prescription drug bill.

Why You Need to Shop Around for Car Insurance

Here's a very good argument for shopping around regularly for car insurance. It was left on my post titled Is This a Valid Saving Tip?:

I was loyal to an insurance company which had my auto and home for 9 years. When I shopped for a new company last year all competition prices were significantly less. After changing I saved about $1,100 a year.

It was amazing. Looking back it seemed clear what happened. Each year the company raised my rates a little bit. After 9 years those increases ended up being huge compared to the competition.

Looking back I will always shop around every few years.

This is exactly what I found to be the case in my early years as a driver (before I learned to shop around for car insurance.) The companies slowly turn up the prices, just a bit each year, so that after several years you're paying a ton more than you'd pay if you went elsewhere. But many (most?) people simply let it ride, sticking with their insurer because either the increases aren't that big (per year) or simply "that's who we've always used for insurance." It's fine if you want to do that, but it's likely that you're paying a big price to do so.

For another example of how this works, see my post titled A Real-Life Example of How to Save $1,300 in Less than Two Hours by Shopping Around for Car Insurance.

It Pays to Ask -- You Never Know If/When It Will Work

I'll write about our recent trip to Niagara Falls more sometime soon, but for now I want to relate a story that illustrates that you should always ask for a discount/lower price since you never know what will happen.

While visiting the Falls, my daughter wanted to play glow-in-the-dark mini golf. We walked down to the course from our hotel only to find that the cost was $9 per game per "adult." We also found out that an "adult" was anyone 11 or over. A "child" "only" paid $7.

So we went up to the counter and I said we had four adults since we were all over 11. My wife told the cashier that our daughter had turned 11 just a couple days earlier (which was true). I was thinking "Why even bring it up? There's no way they're going to give us the child's rate." Just then, the cashier said, "I'll give you the kid's rate for your daughter." Boy, was I surprised.

Now you could look at this as no big deal because we only saved $2. That's a fair conclusion. But the point I would like to make is that we all should be asking for discounts, better prices, lower fares, etc. as much as we can because you never know if/when someone will give it to you. Besides, the cost of asking is zero, so whatever savings you get is total profit.

Sure, a $2 savings is not a big deal. But look at it this way: $2 saved for 15 seconds of work is a savings of $480 per hour!!! Not bad, huh? Not bad at all!!!!!!

How about you? Any "I thought I wouldn't get a discount but asked for one anyway and got it" stories out there?

Two More Examples When Asking for a Discount Works

As most of you know, I'm a fan of asking for a discount (especially in certain cases when it's easy to do so). So I thought it appropriate to highlight two more examples of how asking for a discount can pay off.

The first example comes from a recent comment on my post titled Six Times It's Easy to Ask for a Discount where the reader said:

Works with my dentist. He would rather be paid cash then have to go thru billing. So he will take payments and charge me what he would charge an insurance company. They get less from insurance companies so why should I have to pay more? Sometimes he will take payments as long as they are doing the work, but want to be paid in full when they are done. So I spread the work out as long as I can as long as it's done and without any harm to me. He will do a cleaning for 150 and I can pay that off in 2 or 3 payments. LIKE THEY SAY, ASK, YOU WILL BE SURPRISED.

The second example is from a recent Smart Money article that says real estate broker commissions are negotiable. Their thoughts:

Brokers like to make it sound as if their fees are engraved in stone, but that’s rarely the case. During the housing bubble, for example, as the number of brokers sharply increased, so did the competition for listings—one broker says he lowered his fee by a full percentage point just to give himself an edge. But even in the wake of the recent crash, you have a good chance of negotiating a better deal—that same surplus of brokers is still out there competing for even fewer listings, giving you something of a leg up.

The broker we spoke with, who asked not to be named, says that sellers should always shop around for better terms and has some suggestions for the best conditions to induce brokers to lower their fees: “If somebody’s willing to commit to me for selling one place and buying another,” or “If you’re in a particularly desirable neighborhood with a house that will bring a lot of traffic” for an open house. And with a lot of smaller brokers, he says, “all you need to do is ask and they’ll lower the commission.”

This was true for us. We were able to get our agent to agree to a 1% fee if we bought our house through her. Doesn't hurt to ask, huh?

Do you have any success stories of asking for a discount? If so, please share them with us all in the comments below.

Thumbs Down for Costco on This One

One way to save money on subscriptions, members, etc. -- anything that has an annual or regular fee -- is to let the membership expire if you don't need it for some time, then renew it once you do. For instance, let's say you shop at a warehouse club once every other month because you buy in bulk and you buy a lot when you go. So if your membership expires on July 31, you make a shopping trip right before that, then let your membership expire. When you need to go again at the end of September, you renew your membership for another year and hence you didn't pay for two months when you didn't need it.

Or at least that's how it works in theory. Costco is on to this trick though. They used to back-date subscription renewals for five months (so if you let it expire on July 31 and you renewed on December 15, part of your fee went to pay for the July 31 to December 15 time period -- a time you weren't using their services. On top of that, your annual membership now only had seven months left on it.) What a rip-off!

I say "used to" because they got sued. Now they "only" back-date a membership for two months. So if you renew within two months of letting your membership expire, you pay for those months you didn't use. If you renew after two months, the entire amount paid goes to a new 12 months.

What a deal, huh? I say, "what a rip-off!" Why is there any back-dating at all? Why isn't it a get-what-you-pay-for system like everything else?

Personally, I love Costco. I love their samples, their gas prices, the amount you can save using their store brand, their service, and so much more. But this policy is anti-customer and against the general "members first" policies that seem to be the norm at Costco. I urge them to reconsider and eliminate any sort of back-dating at all.

FYI, this experience hasn't ruined my complete perception of Costco, but it's certainly done some damage.

An Easy Way to Save Money and Help the Environment

Found this money saving tip in the August issue of Consumer reports:

$265. That's how much the average four-person household could save on its annual water bill by replacing a 5-gallon-per-minute showerhead with a good 2-gpm model.

I have NO IDEA how many gallons per minute my showerhead delivers, but it has to be high. That thing blasts out the water like it's from a fire hose. And it's a bit old too, so I should look at replacing it.

Anyone done this? Notice a difference in your water bill?

Save 41% by Using Store Brands

I've detailed several times how we all can save a bundle of money by using store brands over the national brands. But I ran into an unusual reminder of this money saving tip the other day and simply had to share it with you.

My family and I were shopping in Costco, eating the samples freely, when we stumbled upon a pair of Costco shopping carts (which are big to begin with) brimmed over with products. Each cart had shrink wrap over it to hold the products in, but you could see through each of them. The first cart had a sign that said "name brands" and the second cart's sign read "Kirkland brand" (Costco's store brand). Between the carts were two giant receipts -- one by each cart. The name brand cart's receipt read $591.92 while the Kirkland brand's cart read $349.41. Between them was a sign that noted shoppers could have saved $242.61on buying the items listed simply by purchasing the Kirkland brand versus the name brands. It was a powerful visual reminder that we all can save a ton simply by buying the store brand.

We normally buy a lot of store brands anyway, but the display was impressive even to us. Who wouldn't want to save 41% on the same stuff simply by buying one (equivalent) brand over another? It seemed that doing anything else was simply throwing money away!

I know that that was just the point -- Costco wanted us all to buy their brands over the name brands. But I have to admit that the argument was very compelling, especially given the state of our economy. After all, if you "only" saved $100 per month buying store brand items, that's $1,200 a year. And who couldn't use an extra $1,200 a year these days?

Is This a Valid Saving Tip?

Family Handyman magazine says in its July/August issue that you can save $50 on your car insurance by shopping early. Not too early, mind you, but not too late either. Their thoughts:

Everyone should shop around for new insurance rates every three years. Insurance companies reward early shopping (30 days before renewal is perfect) by giving better rates. Last-minute shopping (less than 10 days before the policy expires) makes insurance companies think you're irresponsible, and that will be reflected in a higher quote.

My thoughts/questions on this suggestion:

1. Let's start with the fact that I LOVE the idea of shopping around for car insurance and I've featured the tip many times on this site. So I'm 100% with them on the idea of getting different estimates to compare rates.

2. But is there really a "good" time to do this and is 30 days that time? Is 10 days really bad? Of course you don't want to wait too long or else you may be forced to stay with your current provider just to maintain coverage, but does this savings for 30-day people versus 10-day people really exist? Anyone know for sure?

We usually start calling about three weeks before renewal time. Not sure if this is good, bad, or in the middle based on the suggestions above.

I'm confused...

10 Ways to Save Money and Still Keep Cool

Family Handyman magazine listed 10 ways to save money and still keep cool in its July/August issue, and I thought I'd tell where we stand on all their suggestions. Here goes:

1. Replace your old air conditioner. Think we may do this this year thanks to the available tax credits.

2. Switch to CFLs. We're in transition from regular bulbs to CFLs.

3. Install a programmable thermostat. We have one and use it all the time. We even use the "vacation setting" when we travel to save even more.

4. Clean or change AC filters monthly. I check ours monthly, but only change them when they are dirty enough.

5. Fix leaks in AC ducting. On my list BIG TIME! I know we're losing a lot of cool air along the way and I need to seal up the ducts I have access to.

6. Block out sun with window shades. We'll probably be getting new windows this year, thanks to the available tax credits.

7. Keep cool with shade. This is one big advantage of the trees getting bigger around our house -- they block a lot of the sun's rays.

8. Check your AC system’s efficiency. We have our unit checked annually since it's rather old.

9. Use fans and raise your thermostat. We have ceiling fans, persona fans in our bedrooms, and our big weapon, the attic (whole house) fan.

10. Tune and clean your AC regularly. Oops. didn't know this needed to be done. Is this part of our annual check-up? I need to find out.

Overall, not a bad score for us. But let's face it, I live in Michigan and cooling isn't the big expense here -- it's heating! ;-)

How do you score on these ten suggestions?

Ten Pricey Cities that Pay Off

I've gone on record saying that one great money-saving tip is to consider moving to a less expensive city (and I've documented that the reduction in costs more than outweighs the usual loss in salary). Most people hate this advice, but that doesn't stop me since I'm a glutton for punishment. ;-)

But today we're covering the other side of the issue and listing the ten cities, though they are expensive, that are "worth it" (at least according to this US News piece) because they offer "amenity value." The details:

Economists look at every asset as having an "amenity value," which measures the amount of satisfaction the asset brings to its owner. For example, your home has an asset value that is worth much more than the roof it puts over your head. The land where you live brings with it a certain quality of life: How nice is the weather where you live? How close are you to the coast? How many cultural and recreational opportunities are nearby? These quality-of-life factors contribute heavily to the amenity value of a city, and they help explain why housing costs are so high in some places.

Another big component of a city's amenity value—trade productivity—is essentially, how many goods does the city produce that other people value? The San Francisco area has Silicon Valley. New York has Wall Street. But productivity boosters can come in other forms, such as universities that produce an educated workforce, easy access to water or other transportation, or proximity to natural resources. How do these factors create amenities? Residents of highly trade-productive cities tend to enjoy higher wages. What's more, businesses flock to these cities to enjoy the advantages. As incomes and employment go up, so do housing costs.

Given this, here are the top ten pricey but worth the price cities from US News (in alphabetical order -- they didn't rank them):

• Boston
• Honolulu
• Los Angeles
• Naples, Fla.
• New York
• Salinas, Calif.
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• San Luis Obispo, Calif.
• Santa Barbara, Calif.

A few comments from me on this info:

1. For those of you advocating living in an expensive city, this piece does a good job of detailing what many of you have already said.

2. Good weather seems to count for a lot in this analysis.

3. They often cite "higher incomes", but we've already shown that the costs of living in these cities is much more than the income increase versus other alternatives, so on purely economic terms there isn't a rationale for more expensive cities. What they're saying here is this equation makes these places worth the price: Higher incomes + amenity value > cost of living.  

4. To me, amenity value as they define it isn't worth much. As long as I have either access to the things a big city brings or something that's "good enough", I'm fine with it. We have Chicago three hours away and Detroit two hours away, plus we have decent enough museums, botanical gardens, etc. No, they're not the Met, but they are good enough for what we want. As such, the equation for me now shifts to this: Higher incomes < cost of living. Now you get a sense of why my point-of-view is what it is. That, and I'm cheap.

5. Different people value different things. For instance, I prefer wide open spaces such as green fields, gardens, etc. over concrete and metal, places where your neighbors aren't on top of you, areas where your kids can run the neighborhood without the fear that they'll get lost or kidnapped, spots where the pace of life is slower, etc. This moves my equation even more away from larger cities.

6. Just because you live in a less expensive city doesn't meant you HAVE to earn a lower salary. I'm sure I couldn't make much (if any) more than I make now even if I lived in New York City, San Francisco, or any other costly place. And I've done pretty well despite living in less expensive cities all my life.

7. One thing the analysis doesn't take into account is the value of having family nearby. This is one of the most-cited reasons for living in an expensive city by the commenters here. Having family around not only contributes to the quality of life, but can save you money as well (by providing daycare, for instance.)

8. Of course you can spend your money however you like, so don't take these thoughts as condemning anyone for their lifestyle decisions. I'm simply pointing out an alternative way of thinking about decisions we make that impact our finances in a big way.

How to Save $200 on Your Car Insurance

Family Handyman magazine suggests in their July/August issue that drivers 55 and over can save $200 a year on car insurance by completing a "senior driver training course." The details:

Most insurance companies offer a discount for each driver 55 and older who takes an authorized driver safety education program (some states mandate this discount.) The initial course is eight hours, and some companies (and states) allow you to take a four-hour online version ($20 per driver.) Classroom rates vary. You'll be a safer driver and can pocket the savings every year. For more information, contact your insurance agent, AARP, AAA or your local adult education center, or search the Internet for "senior driver education."

FYI, in the heading, they claim this tip will save you $200. Just want to mention that's where I got the number used above.

I did Google the words and surfed a bit, but lost interest soon since I'm not even close to getting this discount. I know most of you reading this aren't yet 55 (and are farther away from it than I am), but someone out there might know something about this. Maybe you have a parent or friend that's taken this class. If so, please give the rest of us your insights into the process and let us know if the savings are as good as they say.

Do You Fly or Drive on Summer Vacation?

Here's an interesting piece from MSN Money about the costs associated with flying versus driving on vacation. Which is "better"? The summary: driving is usually cheaper but flying will save you time.

We mostly drive. My family is an eight-hour drive one way and my wife's is seven hours the other way (and we usually visit each one once a year.) That seems ok for all of us and the kids don't get too crazy (my wife packs CD players and audiobooks for them). But if the trip is a very long one, we fly. For instance, we flew to Orlando (Disney) a couple years ago. Doing so saved us a couple days (and it wasn't that expensive since we flew out of a larger airport a couple hours from our house.) That said, we have friends that drive from Michigan to Florida. That's crazy to me.

Of course, there are other options like taking the bus or train. Bus? No thanks. Train? We're thinking about taking it to Chicago this fall. It will not only save us money (no parking/gas costs for a car and the train fares are cheap) despite the fact that we'll need to take s few cabs, but it also gets us out of the driving in downtown Chicago nightmare. Plus, we can all relax while traveling (including me). And it is only 30 minutes or so longer than driving.

How about you? Do you drive, fly or a combination of both? Why?

How to Ask for and Get a Discount at a Chain Store

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When I suggest that people should ask for a discount to save money, I often get a response like, "Sure, that works at mom and pop or local stores, but it won't work at big chains like Walmart and Kmart." Really? This piece from MSN says otherwise.

The article notes that stores are looking for sales however they can get them in this economy and most store managers have the ability to make price adjustments. So, what are the keys to getting a discount at a chain store? The keys are quite simple:

• Give them a reason to give you a discount.
• Ask for it (yep, you have to ask. This is often the hardest step for people.)

So, when do you deserve a discount? MSN says you should get one in the following circumstances:

• When you're buying a lot.
• When the product is on its way out.
• When you're dropping a small fortune.
• When you pay cash.

I have my own list of six times it's easy to ask for a discount. Some overlap with their suggestions, but not too much.

They also suggest that you do your homework so you know what the item goes for in other stores and that you remain flexible. Maybe the store can't discount an item, but they will throw in a free this or that that makes the purchase worth your while.

The piece ends with what they call eight phrases that win discounts as follows:

• Use "if . . . then" statements. For instance: "If I buy two of these Tiffany necklaces, then can you give me 25% off?" Or: "If I buy the entire rack of ground beef, then what's the best price you can give me?"

• Begin by saying what you do like about the store, service or product. It establishes you as a loyal customer and a decent human being.

• To begin negotiations, say, "I'd like to pay X" or "My budget is Y."

• Give them a reason to say yes, whether it's a scratch on an appliance or a model from last year.

• When the seller turns down your offer, ask, "Is there a price you'd accept?"

• "I want to stay a loyal customer. But I'll tell you the truth -- it is tough to pay the bills."

• "I'm not happy with the price I'm paying for this service."

• "What's the 'recession price' for this coat?"

You can also ask, "Is that the best you can do?"

So next time you're shopping and you see something you want, give them a reason (or two or three) to give you a discount and then ask for it! The worst thing they can do is say "no", but the best thing that can happen is that you could save a bundle. Seems like very little investment/cost for a possible savings...

Should You Let Your Car Idle or Turn It Off?

A couple weeks or so ago, our kids had a friend over to play. When his mom came to pick him up, she left her car running in our driveway. After we stood at the door chatting for 10 minutes or so, my wife said something like, "you don't have a diesel, you shouldn't leave your car running." The mom then said that she'd heard that it was better for the car/cheaper to leave it running than to turn it off and then back on after such a short period of time.

I actually thought it was the opposite -- that you could even shut your car off at stoplights and it would save you money -- but what do I know about cars? (I also thought it didn't matter if it was a diesel, that it should still be shut off, but again, what do I know?)

So since I was unsure, I thought I'd ask all of you out there. Anyone have any insight into this issue?