Frugal Habits: Get the most for your money!

Provident Smart Checking promises a 5.01% APR interest rate (up to $25,000) on their free checking account!

This seems like a great rate, and you have to meet 3 simple requirements to get it.

1. Make 10 POS transactions with your Visa Debit card per statement period.  These are the signature based transactions
2. Receive one Direct Deposit or one automatic ACH debit per statement period.
3. Receive online statements.

If you don't meet the requirements, you still earn a 0.25% APR interest rate.  If you have a balance of more than $25,000 you earn 2% APR


Now, I have never used this product. I don't know if there is a catch.  I would sign up, but I don't get direct deposit.  Has anyone used this? Is it too good to be true?  Please don't take this post as a reccomendation to sign up, and read all the associated literature!

Frugal Shopping: "New" to Me!

I thought this post might be a good time to bring up a favorite past-time shared by my parents and myself: giving a new home to previously loved treasures! We find them everywhere, from the street to tag-sales, flea-markets, and auctions. Originally, my mom started going to auctions because she is an art collector, but then my dad and I got on-board, especially with tag-sale-ing.

I've learned a lot about problem-solving from watching how my parents make use of their finds. For instance, after I graduated from college, my mother wanted to put on a graduation party for me, but we couldn't find the extra boxes of drinking glasses that had been put aside in a "safe place." So what to do? Well, the party was on Sunday, so on Saturday my mother went out tag-sale-ing. Lo and behold, she returns an hour later with about 1 1/2 dozen glasses that she bought for $0.10 each! What a success!

Of course there have been some other great finds throughout the years. When I was on the golf team in high school, a full set of golf clubs in a carrying bag was picked up for free by the side of the road. Various kitchen accessories have been found for under $1 or free from many places. My college coffee-maker for instance--left out by the road after someone's tag-sale...this college necessity was all mine for nothing!

After reading this, I hope the message you all get isn't to go dumpster diving (although I do have a cousin who used to do this--they actually do arrest you if you get caught!), but to explore other avenues of acquiring the things that you need. Yes, some things you may want to purchase from a store; like I have never bought previously worn shoes, eww! But sometimes, you get lucky, whether you're hunting for something specific or not. Just because someone else used it before you doesn't mean that its useless! Take a minute to take a drive, go tag-sale-ing on a Saturday morning, or join an online website like Freecycle.com. It will always be worth your time!

Cheers,
Alison

Frugal Shopping: The Farmers Market and Recent Freebies

Today I went to Haymarket. For those of you not from Boston, it is an insane Farmer's market that runs Friday and Saturday, all year round, rain or shine. My haul today was along the lines of the following:

3 leeks for $1 - I love leeks. I made an Asparagus leek risotto before, and I think it would work without the asparagus. I've also checked out A Year of Crockpotting, and it looks like its not hard to do in the crockpot which would be great!
2 Asian pears for $1.50
10 heads of garlic for $1
2 blocks of cheese for $5
1 Chayote for $1 - I'd never heard of Chayote before, I think I'm going to try something along these lines. Apparently I should have let the guy talk me into 2 for $1.50, but I'll make a judgment about that after I've tried it.

Recent Freebies!
Airborne
Purex
Seattle's Best Coffee
Pantene Color Expressions - My mother uses this regularly. She has brown hair, but uses the blond expressions products, and her grey hair comes in blond!
Almond Accents - though I imagine the first 100 are long gone, as this was posted on Bargainist, there is also a coupon here.
Stayfree

This site has a resource to make sure your printable coupons are legit(thank you SlickDeals)! Both SlickDeals and FatWallet have active forums where you can find the most up to date freebies or hot deals (see the Freebies section in the right column). You can also get the forum as an RSS feed(see my blogroll in the right column). I wouldn't subscribe to my whole blogroll, it is ginormous, but it may be worth working off of!

That's all for now. We will be silent tomorrow, in mourning of my taking the GRE... I've certainly made up for it today! Hopefully on Sunday I will post about my Chayote or Risotto recipes!

~Katharine

Frugal Idea: Complain!

No Credit Needed just posted about his lack of internet at home.  This reminded me about what happened to me last week.  In an example of supremely bad timing, my internet went down for 3 days due to 'weather-related issues' when Alison and her houseguest... were MY houseguests.  When it went back up, I called the customer service line, and politely asked for a percentage of my monthly bill to be credited, as they were not providing me with the service I was paying for.  In about 15 minutes I got a $6 credit on my cable bill!  That's about $24/hour.  Not bad for something I can do while I am browsing the internet.  Though I will have to be sure to double check my bill when it comes to make sure I have received the credit.  If I don't I may look up some internet cafe rates for Boston and show them how much it could have cost me to go without internet for 3 days.

Moral of the story?  Complain, but do it politely!  If the cashier messes up(honestly Alison, complain a little more!), complain in line at the checkout.  If your utilities company messes up, call a customer service rep and complain!  Check your receipts, check your bills, don't let anyone cheat you out of your hard earned money.

Another thing to keep in mind is that everyone has different thresholds for complaining.  Alison's Walmart incident didn't cross her threshold, but my internet-outage sure did!  What is your threshold?