The Great Debt Payoff

You'll recall my first experiment in selling books online. Well eventually I decided to abandon the experiment, but now that school will be starting again soon, I think I'll give it another whirl. After all, the books are just sitting here. I might as well try to ditch 'em for cash.

One of the reasons I decided to abandon the experiment when I did was because we were out of town for a good portion of July. It just wouldn't be a good thing if someone decided to buy one of my books and I wasn't here to send it. (Amazon requires you to send the book to the purchaser within 2 business days.)

A great feature of Amazon's bookselling process is that you can easily sign into your seller account and with one click, unlist your books. Then, if you ever decide to relist them, you can do so without having to go through the whole listing process from the beginning. Pretty slick. So, I relisted them. We'll see if I get any takers.

Speaking of Amazon...in case you haven't heard, they now sell groceries. What next?

Anyway, you can get $10 off your order if you spend $49 or more through August 21, 2006. Plus, if you spend $25, you'll qualify for FREE Super Saver Shipping.

I did a little browsing to see how the prices at Amazon Grocery compare to the stores in my area. Bottom line: I can get most of the items I would normally buy cheaper at Walmart. No surprise there I guess.

However, that still didn't stop me from placing an order at Amazon Grocery today. I only bought three items but still qualified for the $10 off.

(If you decide to shop Amazon Grocery, take note that you'll most likely be buying IN BULK. They say it's the way to keep the costs down.)

Anyway, here's what I bought today:

1. Pirate's Booty. This stuff rocks. If you're unfamiliar, think cheese puffs, but all natural. We used to get it in California quite often, but since we moved, haven't been able to find it as easily. It's certainly pricier than cheese puffs, but I'm willing to pay a bit more for the health factor.
   


2. Annie's Homegrown Shells & White Cheddar. Again, the health factor. This is all-natural and quite tasty too. I was in Walmart today and a box there cost $1.14 (not on sale). At Amazon Grocery, it works out to about $1.06 per box. The only issue is that I had to buy 24 boxes. For us this shouldn't be a problem, but for some, it might be waaaaay too much.


3. Rayovac D Batteries. I bought a 4-pack (same brand) at Walmart today and paid $3.87 (not on sale) which works out to $.97 per battery. Amazon Grocery's work out to be $.80 per battery. Again, I had to buy 24 batteries, but this isn't a problem for us since our 3-month old LIVES in the swing and we go through 4 D batteries every week or two.

Of course, then I got my $10 off plus my free shipping, so after all was said and done, I think I made out pretty well.

So, have you tried Amazon Grocery? If so, what products have you found to be a good deal? Which ones aren't?

First off, let me say that I have NOT tried this. I only came across this post at Money Dummy during one of my random rabbit trail surfing sessions.

I post about it here for two reasons. First, it appears this may be one way to make money online (although I will say again that I have not tried it myself).

Second, and most importantly, I'm curious if any of you, dear readers (all 3 of you), have tried it and will tell me your experience.

Here's the deal according to Money Dummy:

Companies will often pay other companies (known as affiliates) to get customers for them. These affiliates are smart enough to know that the best way to get someone to sign up for or try a product or service is to bribe them. Therefore, they turn around and offer consumers like you and I a certain amount of money (ranging from .50 to, in some cases, a couple of hundred dollars) to sign up for things ranging from e-mail lists to subscription skin-care services to online casinos. The hope is that you, as the consumer, will like the product (or forget to cancel your subscription), making it so that the company has gained a customer. Either way, you get paid for trying the product.

She then tells you how to do it step-by-step (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4)...or at least how she does it. From what I gather, it seems like the key is to stay organized and keep track of all the offers you sign up for.

Anyone want to weigh in?

I'm sure there are many of you out there who are crafty in one way or another. Me? Not so much...I'd much prefer to putz around on the computer because I don't like "stuff" and making things always require too much "stuff" in my world. My daughter on the other hand, is a crafting queen, always creating something. She's got bits of paper, homemade books, crowns, hats and all sorts of other things coming out of her ears. Because I have this habit of tossing anything that doesn't have distinct, practical and essential purpose, I'm always getting in trouble for throwing away her creations. But I digress...

So, right. You crafty types with lots of stuff. Imagine selling your wares online as easy as 1-2-3. Enter the catablog. What a great idea this is. You could potentially get your catablog up and running at no cost and the potential exposure of the internet is huge. You'd have to work to get noticed of course, but hey, even if no one ever finds your catablog, all you've lost is the time it took to get it set up.

If you don't have a blog, I'd suggest Blogger. It's not perfect, but it's free and it's remarkably simple to get started. Just sign up for an account, name your blog, choose a template and you're off and running.

Slap some pictures up there along with some good enticing product descriptions and you're good to go. I suppose you could go crazy with it and include all sorts of fun facts and stories related to the product you're selling. (Then again, you're creative so I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.)

Next you'll need a way for people to pay you and PayPal is a good for that. Again, it's not perfect, but it's free, it's reliable and lots and lots of people use it.

Then craft away.

The concept is really quite brilliant in my opinion. It almost makes me want to make a whole lotta stuff to sell. Almost.

Anyway, here's an article at ProBlogger called How to Sell Niche Products With Your Blog. It features a real-life story of a catablogger.

Well, as a blog about getting out of debt, the original intent was to figure out how to make extra money online. I'll eventually get to more of that, but I just keep coming across ways to make our existing money work better. Speaking of which...

We've been hardcore Quicken fans for many years now as a way to keep track of our finances. Well, no offense Quicken, but we're moving on to a new love.

We've incorporated the "envelope system" (see below for an explanation) in our budget and Quicken just doesn't do envelopes. So, I've been looking for something that will allow us to use envelopes and I think I found a winner.

I first found Mvelopes, which, after signing up for their free 30-day trial, I think is a pretty handy system. Problem is, it's online which results in a subscription fee of between $7.90 and $13.20 per month (depending on how many months you pay at a time). Paying a monthly fee for ever and ever...well, I'm just not feelin' it.

So, my search continued until I found Budget. (The link is for the Mac version. Here's the Windows version.) Anyway, it's pretty sweet. I'm diggin' the little envelopes.

You can try it for free and then after that, it's just under $30 (you pay just once). Not free, but better than a monthly subscription. In addition, they've got a 60-Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee. As I see it, you can hardly go wrong.

Anyway, it took me a few tries to set our envelopes up...not because it's all that difficult, but mainly because I'm far too anal about things like this. But that's just me.

[If you're unfamiliar with the envelope system, it's the tried and true way of getting your paycheck, cashing it, then splitting the cash between your various envelopes—like one envelope for "mortgage" one for "groceries" one for "clothing" etc. Once you spend the cash in an envelope, it's gone. If you need more, you'll have to steal it from another envelope. The system is a great way to make sure you live within your means. Budget allows you to keep track of your envelopes on the computer without having to physically cash the check.]

Well, here's one way to make money online. As the name suggests, PayPerPost pays you to blog. I haven't signed up myself, but the basic idea is this: Companies that want to advertise a product or service, will pay you to blog about said product or service. Check out the details here.

Also, Dave Taylor from Ask Dave Taylor has some good thought about it too.

Well, I knew it was coming and sure enough, my school loan interest rate increased from 5.05% to 7.15% as of July 1. I'm glad we transferred the bulk of our school loans (all of B's & 2/3 of mine) to our credit card last month. We took advantage of a 3.99% deal for the life of the loan and no balance transfer fee.

We would have transferred over all of our school loans to the 3.99% but the limit on our card wouldn't allow it. That's why we've got a pesky $2500 left on my school loan.

In addition to that credit card, we applied for Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Cards a few months back in order to take advantage of the $100 reward. (We each applied for one, so we got a total of $200 worth of rewards actually.) In addition to the rewards, part of the deal is that we have a 0% balance transfer deal for 12 months. So, we're going to transfer the balance of my student loan to one of our Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Cards. We'll pay the minimum balance for a year and then pay off the balance before the 0% rate deal expires and the rate jumps up astronomically!

I know some of you are probably wondering why we didn't transfer over more to the 0% instead of the 3.99%, right? Well, the main reason is that we needed to make sure whatever balance we put on the 0% was a balance we could absolutely pay off in 12 months in order to avoid having to pay an obscene amount of interest.

Well then, why didn't we just put everything on the 0% card, pay off what we could in 12 months and then transfer whatever was left to the 3.99%, right? Well, we can't do that because both cards are issued by Citibank and Citibank won't allow you to transfer balances from one of their cards to another. (That's why it's always a good idea to read the fine print.)

Now I realize all these credit card gymnastics reveals that we are not true Dave Ramsey-ites. We admit it. And I must say, keeping track of it all takes a whole lotta time and energy. But one of us (uh, that would be me) is highly anal and actually enjoys keeping tabs on the finances, so we generally do pretty well with making credit cards work in our favor.

Having said that, one thing Dave doesn't like about credit cards is that they make you spend more than you would if you use only cash. I definitely agree. But we're still paying cash for most of the stuff we buy and trying to use the credit cards only for the balance transfer deals...and to buy gas. I'm sorry, but I have three kids and there's no way I'm gonna unload 'em all, walk into the gas station to pay cash, put 'em all back in the car while I pump the gas, unload 'em all again to go get my change and then load 'em up again to leave. Especially not in the winter. That would drive me stark raving mad.

Anyway, here are my tips on using credit cards to your advantage:

1. Always, always read AND UNDERSTAND AND COMPREHEND the fine print and all the terms of the offer.


2. Look especially at the fees. If you plan on taking advantage of a balance transfer, look for a balance transfer fee. Does the card have an annual fee? If so, find another card. Make sure you understand all the ways the credit card company can gouge you.


3. If you use a card for a balance transfer, I'd suggest taking the card out of your wallet so you don't accidentally use it for a purchase. When it comes to balance transfers and special interest rate deals, most cards make you pay off the balance with the lowest interest rate first and then the next lowest, etc. So, for example, in our case, we've transferred about $14,000 of our student loans onto our credit card at a rate of 3.99% until it's paid off. Let's say I then buy groceries on that card which would qualify as a purchase. Well, the interest on purchases is, let's say, 15%. Since it's a higher interest rate than the 3.99%, it gets pushed to the back of the line; we'll have to pay off the lower interest rate first. That means, while we're busy paying off our $14,000 at 3.99%, that grocery purchase will just sit there, ACCRUING INTEREST AT 15%, for as long as it takes to pay off the $14,000...which will be years. So, as I said, leave the card at home, cut it up, whatever.


4. Be aware that some credit card offers are contingent upon the status of your credit. Some deals are only available to those with good credit. If you're credit isn't so hot, you may end up with a less appealing offer, so be sure you know what you're getting.


5. You should know that your credit score is often dinged when you apply for credit. Therefore, I wouldn't recommend applying for credit cards (or other "minor" credit, if you will) if you plan on making a major purchase (like a house) in the near future. When you apply for a mortgage, you'll want your credit as clean as possible since this will usually result in obtaining a lower interest rate. And a lower interest rate on a loan you'll be paying for 15 or 30 years is a much better idea in my opinion.


6. Be oh so careful to make sure you pay on time...and not just the credit card in question but ALL your lenders. Very often the credit card company with whom you've made a balance transfer will jack up your rate even if you're late in paying someone else. Crazy but true. So, be on time and allow yourself some cushion in case the mail is slow or in case you (or your payment) encounters some other unforeseen circumstance.

Did I forget anything?

This isn't exactly about making money on the web, but it sort of is...

I've had about 6000 airline frequent flyer miles sittin' around for the last several years. Because you can't do much with 6000 miles as far as free flights go (a reward flight takes at least 25,000), those miles were pretty much useless to me. You can redeem them for free magazine subscriptions which I've done a few times, but I've got all the magazines I want now.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I recently went to points.com where you can redeem your miles (and other club-type membership points) for cool things like gift certificates. So, I was able to get about $40 worth of Target gift cards in exchange for those miles that weren't doing anything for me anyway. Kinda feels like I just got some free money. Woo hoo!