So I made the call and I told the lady who picked up the phone that I felt like I was paying too much for my internet bill. She looked at my account and determined that I have the best price for what I have, but if I wanted to drop down to almost dialup speeds, she could save me $25 a month. Well, I’m happy with the speed I’m on, so I don’t want to downgrade. At this point I told her that I would be calling up and setting up DSL the next morning, and that I would call them back tomorrow to cancel my service. This got her attention.. Sir, I can switch you from Road Runner to Earthlink and save you $15 a month for the first 6 months. All the equipment would stay the same, you still get billed from us, the only difference is that your email would be an earthlink email instead of a Road Runner eMail.. Who cares? I don’t use their eMail anyway. So I agreed to that.

A 10-12 minute phone call and I’m now saving $60 over the course of 6 months. Can’t really beat that deal. Next week I’m going to look into my telephone/television/wireless phone situation. They are all bundled together, so I don’t really know what type of a deal I maybe able to get. But we’ll see!

During the day when everyone is at work, your air conditioner is running, keeping the house cool for the bugs (and pets). Instead of leaving the A/C running, turn if off, or even turn it up a couple of degrees. You’d be surprised at how much you will save. While you are home, try turning up the temperate a couple of degrees so that the air conditioner isn’t working so hard and use a ceiling fan. Ceiling fans make it feel cooler while using much less energy than the A/C.

Do you still use regular incandescent light bulbs? Get rid of them. Switch to compact fluorescent bulbs. According to the Energy Star website, CF bulbs use about 75% less energy, and last up to 10 times longer. They also produce less heat than a regular bulb, so your A/C will be doing less work trying to combat the extra heat. Compact Fluorescent bulbs can save approximately $30 over the life of the bulb. And don’t forget to turn off the lights when you leave the room!

Warehouse stores carry grocery items, clothing, tools, generators, computers, outdoor furniture, electronics, and more. If you can think of it, there is a good chance they carry it.

For most items you will end up paying less for each item than you would in a retail store. When you go shopping at a warehouse store, you must compare the price between the warehouse store and a retail store. You need to check out what the price per ounce, price per pound, or price per item is. This is normally displayed on the tag with the price, but you might have to do the math yourself sometimes. If you determine that the price is cheaper at the warehouse store than it is at the retail store, you can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges (or any other item that you may want to compare). Your work is still not done as you still have a couple more things to take into account.

The first thing that you still have to take into account is sales. I rarely ever see a sale at a warehouse store, so you don’t have to worry about that, but retail stores very often have sales. These sales can sometimes beat the price of the wholesale stores. The sale that will normally beat the price of the warehouse store is a BOGO, especially if you have a coupon (or two). Below I have listed some examples of products that you may find at a warehouse store and at a retail store and compared the pricing.

Examples:

• Smucker’s Jam:
  • Sam’s Club: 8 cent per ounce for 2 jars of 34 oz
    • Pros: You don’t need to buy as many.
  • Publix: 7 cent per ounce BOGO with 2 coupons.
    • Cons: You need to purchase more to equal the same amount as a warehouse store.
  • Conclusion: There is a savings of 1 cent per ounce at the retail store.
• Idaho Mashed Potato Flakes:
  • Sam’s Club: 6.25 cent per ounce for a 5 pound bag
  • Publix: 16.6 cent per oz for 24 oz bag
  • Conclusion: Sam’s Club offers the same product saving for a dollar more at Sam’s you get 3.5 lbs – excellent deal
• Pampers Diapers:
  • Sam’s Club: 28-30 cents per diaper (depending on diaper size)
  • Publix: On sale with store and manufacturer coupon 17 cent per diaper
  • Conclusion: Remember that an infant can go through 8-12 diapers a day, and toddlers between 5-7 per day. So if you can buy the diapers from Publix while they are on sale with a coupon you can save about $40 a month for an infant and $20 a month for a toddler. Figure this out over a year and it is $480 for the first year with an infant, and then $240 a year each year after, so in the first three years of your little ones life, you have saved $960 on a product that you had to buy anyway.

We have determined in this article that if you are willing to do a little research before you go shopping, you can end up saving a large amount of money very easily. And the best part is that after you have done this for a while, you will have the hang of it, and know when to buy what where to get the best deal, and it won’t take you anymore time at all.

Most banks offer Money Market Savings (MMS) Accounts. These MMS Accounts typically have higher interest rates than regular savings accounts do, although sometimes you might have a few more restrictions on accessing your money. Sometimes accounts are limited to a certain number of transfers a month. From what I can tell this number is usually 6 a month, so just make sure that you plan well. My savings account with Bank of America has a 0.20% interest rate, and my MMS Account with Bank of America has a 0.35% interest rate. Sounds like a deal right?

Now, to take this a step farther, you can now get a MMS Account from an online only bank. Online only banks have higher interest rates due to the bank not having to pay for buildings and people to staff the buildings. We just signed up for a MMS Account with a 5.16% interest rate through GMAC Bank, which is 4.7% more than my money market that I had through Bank of America. So, we will figure that you put $5,000 into each of these money market accounts today, and didn’t touch it for ten years. With the MMS Account from Bank of America you would have $5,178. However, the account from GMAC Bank, you would have $8,276 at the end of the ten years. That is $3,098 more than the Bank of America account. Why would anyone in their right mind not chose this?

Bankaholic offers you the ability to compare interest rates from different banks to see what works best for you.

The main site that I use is PriceGrabber.com. PriceGrabber.com allows you to browse categories for items that you might want to purchase. Once you find an item that you like, it gives you the price for the item. If there are multiple sellers for the same item, it lists the lowest price, as well as all of the sellers who have the item. Each store tells you if it has the item in stock, and PriceGrabber.com even gives you a seller rating to protect yourself from making purchases at fraudulent stores. Enter your zip code, and PriceGrabber.com gives you tax and shipping costs, as well as the bottom line price for each store. It even highlights your best price for you! I don’t know if it does this for every store and every item, but I have found that sometimes PriceGrabber.com has sale prices and Mail-In Rebate prices to help you save even more money!

To find other sites that allow you to compare pricing, just click Google Search below!

When using this tool, keep in mind that driving a few minutes out of your way isn’t really a bad idea, but try to stay in the general area of where you are traveling to. Don’t drive 15 miles out of the way just to save a few pennies.

If you purchase 20 gallons of fuel per week every week you are buying 1,040 gallons of fuel. On this amount, every penny that you save per gallon equals $10.40 per year. While that isn’t much, if you pay 4 cents less every time you purchase fuel you are saving $41.60 per year. Which still isn’t much. But, figure you do this for 30 years, saving 1 cent every time will save $312 and saving 4 cents each time you fill up would save you $1,248.

We have proven that if you do a little research you can save a few bucks here and there, which eventually will add up. You could even take this a step farther if you wanted to. Each time you fill up, take the money that you saved and put it into a high interest savings or money market account, then at the end of 30 years, you will have all of the money that you saved, plus interest.

Search for gas prices by US Zip Code

When you purchase something, the retailer often advertises the after rebate price ($39.99 after $30.00 MIR). When you purchase the product, you will pay $69.99 + any applicable taxes. You then must submit the rebate forum in order to get your money. Normally there are very strict requirements on how to submit your rebate form. Some of these include that the rebate must be postmarked within 30 days of the original purchase date, you must include a copy of the original receipt, and you must include the original UPC barcode.

James K. Hickel has written an excellent article about MIRs called Confessions of a Mail In Rebate Junkie that you defiantly should read. I am just going to highlight a few of the points that I think are extremely important.

• Always read the offer carefully. There is almost always a catch that the company will use so they don’t have to give you the rebate. If you read the offer and it sounds like something you can’t do, then don’t do it. Make note of the dates which make the rebate valid, as well as when you must submit the rebate.
• FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!!! If it says to jump up and down three times on the rebate instructions then by all means do it or somehow they will find out. Make sure that you include everything that they want. If they want the UPC, give it to them, if they want you to highlight in purple highlighter the item on the receipt, even if you only bought one item, HIGHLIGHT it! Before you send it in, double, even triple check the information and make sure it is all accurate.
• Always keep a copy of EVERYTHING for your records! Before sending it in, make a copy (or scan) of all the items you are sending in. Copy the form that you have filled out, copy the receipt, copy the UPC. Copy everything. Now place all of this in a folder somewhere, and don’t touch it until you need to. If they need something else, or say that you didn’t include something you can go back to your folder and pull it out and say here it is. After you have cashed the rebate check, I see no need to keep this any longer.
• Keep a log of everything you send it. Record all the details that you can. If the paperwork says that it will take 8-12 weeks to process, then put in your log the day you sent it in, and then mark down when 8-12 weeks is so that you know when to start looking for it. If you haven’t heard anything after 12 weeks, begin to contact the company to see what is going on. There is a program that you can use that does some of the work of tracking your rebates for you. You can find the program here.

If you don’t receive your rebate in the time that you are supposed to, then you need to start contacting the company to find out what is going on. Again Mr. Hickel has some more information on how to go about doing that, and I will be writing up my own article on this as well, so keep a lookout for this to be coming soon!

The way that it works is you register for an account and add your child(ren)’s information. You also register your credit card information. The Upromise system does the rest. Every time that you purchase something from participating company, Upromise automatically adds the correct amount to your account. You can divide the money up over multiple children. Some of the companies that are partnered with Upromise are ExxonMobil, Citi®, Eddie Bauer, McDonald’s, and Tide®. According to the Upromise website they have more than 40,000 retail stores, 23,000 grocery & drug stores, 7,000 restaurants, and 500 online retailers. With so many participants, it isn’t hard to save quite a bit of money for your children’s future, and the best part of this is that it doesn’t cost you a single penny. That’s right; I said that this is FREE.

If you don’t have any kids, or your kids are past college, don’t worry, you can still use this service and give the money to someone else! You can give the money to your grandkids, cousins, etc. Or if you are really feeling generous, my son and daughter could use some extra college money too!

We currently use 2 different reward programs. We use the U.S. Airways Dividend Miles program and the Carnival Cruise Lines credit card. There are hundreds of other programs out there, some might be better than the ones that we have, but we use U.S. Airways for our air travel and Carnival Cruise Lines for our cruises, so these two programs work out best for us.

The types of programs out there include:

• Cash Back
• Miles Cards
• Points Cards
• Gas
• Hotel and Travel
• Home Improvement

There are cards available through all major credit card companies. One good option for a reward credit card is the flexible reward programs. These programs allow you to pick and choose what your rewards are. For instance, you can use the reward for airline tickets this time, but next time you might want cash back, or a hotel room. While these are great cards, we found that the interest rates can be a little higher than the cards which are only used for one purchase, and also that it can take more “points” to achieve your reward. With U.S. Airways, you can fly round trip for as little as 25,000 miles; however we found that some of the flexible cards it could take 30,000 or even 35,000 miles.

Now even with it taking more points to obtain the reward, it might be a better option for you. When looking at participating in one of these rewards programs you first must thing about what you want to get out of the card. If you only want to get airline miles, then you have no reason to sign up for a flexible rewards system because it will not benefit you.

Most cards seem to offer you bonus points, or miles, depending on what type of card it is for your first purchase. Other bonuses include extra miles for purchases from select retailers, and discounts on other items such as hotels and rental cars.

A good resource for finding a good credit card is CreditCards.com. They list current offers from most major credit cards, including special interest rates and promotions. They also have a credit card recommender, which allows you to tell them what you are looking for in a card and it will tell you what your best options are.

To learn more about the U.S. Airways Dividenend Miles program, go to the Dividend Miles website.