Entries Tagged 'General' ↓
June 9th, 2008 — General
Welcome to the 16th Carnival of Money Hacks (Money Hacks Carnival homepage). I wanted to do a clever theme for this week’s Carnival but I’ve been feeling a little under the weather this weekend. I think I ate something bad on Thursday and my body hasn’t been normal since, so I apologize. I did read through all the submissions (there were numerous multiple submissions, so I only chose one) and have select four Editor’s Choices that I feel were the cream of the crop.
Without further ado, here’s the Carnival:
Great Hacks/Editor’s Choice
Saving Money
Income
Investing
Other
Next week the Money Hacks Carnival heads on over to Mrs. Nespy’s Frugal World.
May 26th, 2008 — General
In recognition of Memorial Day, we will not be listing a money hack today. Please enjoy the beautiful weather and give thanks to the brave men and women who have protected our liberties and given us the opportunity to enjoy the freedoms we’ve come to cherish.
Please have a safe remainder of the weekend.
May 13th, 2008 — General
When you decide to work with a financial planner of any certification, it’s important to know how they are paid. When you understand how they are paid, you better understand their motivations for recommending particular products. The three most common payment structures are: fee-only, fee-based, and commission-based.
Fee-Only planners don’t get a commission, they are paid based on the advice they give and not the products they get you to buy.
Fee-based planners will receive commission on some of the financial products they sell but mostly they are paid out of the fee you pay for their advice.
Commission-based planners are paid entirely based on the products they get you to buy.
Obviously, the closer to the fee-only side of the spectrum you can get, the better. That’s not to say all commission-based planners are bad, but you can see how they may be biased.
May 6th, 2008 — General
Stamps.com has a promotional offer where you can get $25 in free postage, a free scale worth $50 (it’s a good scale, I still use it every day), $5 in supplies like labels and stickers, and a four week trial period. I’ve used Stamps.com in the past and they’ve always done a great job for me, never had an issue. In fact, one thing I learned was that if you print Priority Mail postage through Stamps.com or the online USPS interface, you had delivery confirmation absolutely free! I found the Stamps.com interface to be much easier to use than the USPS website for printing out postage.
Ultimately though, I found that I didn’t print enough postage for it to warrant the monthly fee of $15.99 so I canceled it; keeping the postage and scale. Now you must stay at least one month paid to keep the scale, but the postage is yours regardless. It’s an easy way to save $25 quickly.
Stamps.com is an approved licensed vendor of PC Postage for the USPS and has been around for many many years.
If the $25 offer isn’t what you’re looking for, or you don’t want the hassle of the scale, you can always take advantage of their free $5 in postage offer. It lets you try out everything about the service but without any of the headache.
April 25th, 2008 — General
Do you have a skill or service you can offer to people? If so, consider bartering rather than buying. Bartering is where you trade skills or services with someone else such that you “pay” for what you get with the skill or service you bring to the table. In our age of credit cards and cash and heavy consumerism, we’ve gotten used to the idea that we have to actually pay for everything, rather than thinking whether or not we can use the bartering system to our advantage.
This won’t work everywhere, obviously. You can trade web design work for a shirt at Banana Republic or a skirt at Ann Taylor, but you could offer up web design work for accounting services or a new roof on your house (web design for a roofing company?).
What are some of the benefits of bartering? Well, you aren’t taxed, for one. So you can get “paid” for your work without having to pay taxes and the other party can get “paid” for their work without having to pay taxes. So in effect, Uncle Sam is upset but neither of you are! With taxes as high as 50% (after you factor in federal, state, and FICA taxes), that’s a significant amount of savings there!
April 17th, 2008 — General
How long should you keep certain records? That depends on who you ask! If you may have potentially made a mistake on your tax return, you will want to keep the records for 6 years. If you file a fraudulent tax return, you’ll want to keep the records indefinitely. Banks recommend you keep records for six years, credit cards recommend a few months, ultimately the bottom line is that all these records need to be saved and need to be saved for a period longer than one month.
So rather than keeping them in paper form, where they can be lost, damaged, or destroyed, why not keep an encrypted electronic copy on your computer? Electronic records take up no space and are easily reproducible (you can make multiple copies and keep them in different places). Secondly, you can always encrypt and lock your files so that they can’t be accessed by third parties without your permission. It’s much harder to lock up paper documents and much more expensive.
So consider scanning in your paperwork so that you don’t have to keep pesky paper versions around!
April 11th, 2008 — General
The promotion has ended.
Do you like money? Sure, we all do! Well RevolutionMoneyExchange is running a promotion until May 15th where you can get $25 for opening an account through a referral. Through the service, which is a lot like PayPal, you can send, receive, and request money from other account holders. It seems like a pretty easy and quick way to make $25 and you can get your money out via an ACH for free.
Signup takes about five minutes.
April 9th, 2008 — General
Upromise, a college savings program that is linked to your credit cards, store loyalty cards, and other spending methods; has a new promotion where you can get $10 for creating a new account. The service is entirely free and it’s a great way to get started with a $10 promotion, usually the promotions are only a few dollars so this one is certainly noteworthy.
I currently link Upromise to my grocery store loyalty card and several credit cards, allowing me to earn money similar to cashback into a Upromise account. The idea is that you can then get the funds later for educational expenses but, unlikes say an IRA, you can withdraw it penalty free if you want to request a check.
April 7th, 2008 — General
If you have a PO Box, you have a corporate office address if you are willing to try this hack out. First, you will need the physical address of the post office in which you have a post office box. You can find that address here by using the post office locater and putting in your zip code. Each zip code usually only has one post office.
Then, simply put your PO Box number as your suite and you have a virtual office!
For example, if your PO Box zip code is 15236, then you would get the following post office:
Post Office - Pleasant Hills
500 Regis Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15236-9998
Now, strip off the Post Office and the +4 of the zip code and enter in your PO Box as the Suite:
Daily Money Hack Corporate Offices
500 Regis Ave.
Suite 100
Pittsburgh, PA 15236
There you have it, your own corporate offices. Locals may recognize the address but most people won’t notice, this may also get you around those pesky forms that say “No PO Boxes!”
Do not use this technique to get FedEx or UPS deliveries because it won’t work and will just result in headaches for you and them, they can’t delivery to your box even if the address is different.
March 26th, 2008 — General
Do you own your home and have some equity in it? If so, you might want to open a home equity line of credit with a lender just in case. This is a line of credit, not a loan, so it should cost you absolutely nothing to open (if your bank does, go elsewhere) and can give you a bit of peace of mind when it comes to the future. If your bank tries to sell you a loan, walk away because that’s not what you want.
Why? Banks have a habit of giving you money when you don’t need it because people who need money often have a great probability of having trouble paying it back. Right now, you probably don’t need the HELOC so the bank will most likely extend you the line against your home equity. It makes sense to apply now, rather than after something bad has happened and you’re under the dual stress of the bad event and figuring out how to come up with the month.
Why now? Also, HELOCs aren’t opened in a day and they take some time to be approved so doing it now, when you’re not under the gun, will be much better for your heart.
The HELOC should not replace your emergency fund as a means of handling short term, high dollar emergencies like a car breakdown.
