Cheapest Gas

With todays high gas prices, everyone is looking to spend less at the pump. GasBuddy.com offers the ability to search for the cheapest gas in your area.

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

Mail-In Rebates

Mail-In Rebates (MIRs) offer tons of savings, however, it does take a little more work than some of the other ways to save money, but often the rewards are larger.

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!

Upromise

Upromise is a system that allows you to save money for your children’s college education.

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!

Credit Card Reward Programs

There are too many credit card reward programs out there for me to tell you about all of them, so I will focus on the ones that we use, and give you a brief over view of some of the other ones that are out there.

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.

InboxDollars.com

This isn’t a way to save money so much so, but it is a way to make a few extra bucks. With InboxDollars.com you get $5 just for signing up and $5 for every person you refer.

The main idea behind the website is that you get paid to read eMail. Every eMail that you read you get paid between 1 and 10 cents. There are also surveys that you can take which earn you up to $4 per survey. Another way of making money with InboxDollars.com is to sign up for trial offers through their website. You can earn up to $50 per offer. You can really make some good money by participating with InboxDollars.com. I have received checks totaling more than $100 from them! Not too bad for just taking a couple of minutes here and there.

Since we offer The Ultimate Guide on How to Save Money! completely free, all we ask is that when signing up for InboxDollars.com that you use us as your referrer to help us offset the cost of this website. To do this, simply click here to sign up. Our referrer ID is hopefs

Local News Papers

Local news papers, at least in our area are a great source for coupons. There are normally coupons on an extremely wide variety of items ranging from groceries to electronics.

Most of the coupons come in the Sunday paper, however your local paper may send out coupons on a different day. Please make sure you investigate what day coupons come out in your area.

For information on how to save the most money with the coupons that you get from the paper, please read the secion on CouponMom.com