Andy Hough

My latest money and health hack involves not buying a parking permit for school this semester. That saves me the $96 cost of the permit. I have classes starting at 8am Tuesday,Thursday, and Friday. If I arrive on campus by 7:30am I should be able to get a parking spot on the street. If not I can park at metered parking for $0.75 an hour. Having to feed a meter should provide me some motivation to get to school early.

Now for the health part of the hack. To be absolutely sure that I can get a parking spot on the street I plan to arrive to school before 7am. I am going to just get out of bed, get dressed and go. I’ll need to take my shower at the fitness center and since I’m already there I’ll get a workout in. This is somewhat like the plan I had earlier this year to go without hot water at home, forcing myself to shower at the fitness center. That plan was derailed by the closing of the locker rooms and showers for remodeling of the fitness center. Since the remodeling is all finished the plan should work this time.

There is one more way this plan should help my money and health. In the past I usually went out for a fast-food lunch when at school. I can’t do that now because I’d be extremely unlikely to be able to find another parking spot on the street when I returned. This means I’ll need to pack my own lunch which will be cheaper and healthier than a fast-food meal.

Using this hack will make it simpler for me to save money and improve my health. I’d love to hear any money and/or exercise hacks you guys have.

I’ve posted a review of A Million Bucks by 30 on my other blog Bank Bonuses. I’m also giving away a copy of the book. You can enter by leaving a comment on this post or the review post. The only stipulations are that you can only enter once and I’ll only ship the book in the U.S to keep my mailing costs down. The deadline for entering is 8am on Friday Aug. 15,2008.

I love movies and watch a lot of them. Here is how I manage to do it on the cheap.

For DVDs I mainly use Redbox which I have posted about before. Now it is an even better deal.  When you sign up for their SMS alert system they will send you a free promo code every Monday. This month they are also sending free promo codes on Wednesday. Since the codes are good for each credit card you have I sometimes rent two movies using different cards and then have one to watch on Monday and one to watch on Tuesday. As long as I remember to return them before 9pm the rentals are free. Luckily, I have a Redbox that is only a three-minute walk away. We also have a $5 Netflix subscription to allow us to watch movies that aren’t available on Redbox.  Our cost per movie for Netflix and Redbox together is well under a dollar and even under 50 cents if we watch more movies than usual.

The other new thing I discovered this year is seeing movies cheaply by taking advantage of store promotions.  I’ve been taking advantage of these all summer and I haven’t had to pay full price -full price means full matinee price,of course- for me and my GF’s movie tickets yet.  An example is on this Slickdeals thread.  If you buy 4 Axe body wash or spray at Walgreen’s you get 2 movie tickets free.  The cost would be a little less than $7 making your movie tickets less than $3.50 each.  And you get to use the product as well.  I wouldn’t normally use Axe but I will to take advantage of this deal. If you can get a deal like this for a product you already use then it is like getting the movie tickets for free. I just go to Slickdeals once a week or so and do a search on the word “movie” to see what promos are available. I shouldn’t have to pay full price for a movie ticket for a long time.