Andy Hough

SmarterBucks Review – Not Recommended

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SmarterBucks is an online rewards program that I recently read about on a blog. The blogger stated that they were using SmarterBucks to help pay down their student loan. Since I have a ginormous student loan and am interested in any way to pay it down faster I decided to check the program out. Doing a quick Swagbucks search I found several reviews of the service and they were all positive so I went ahead and signed up for the program.

SmarterBucks Overview

SmarterBucks is similar to other online rewards programs such as Swagbucks and Upromise. The main distinction between SmarterBucks and other online rewards programs is that SmarterBucks is geared towards paying off your student loans. You are able to set up a student loan in your SmarterBucks account to be automatically paid each month that you have earned $10 or more in SmarterBucks. This allows your rewards to automatically go towards paying your student loan which is a simpler redemption process than most other online rewards programs.

How to Earn SmarterBucks

1. SmarterBucks Marketplace

The marketplace works like an online cash back shopping portal such as TopCashBack or Mr. Rebates and pays you up to 10% back on online purchases made through their marketplace. Some of the reviewers didn’t read their marketing copy very well and stated that the marketplace would pay back 10% or more which had me excited to see what stores were available.

The marketplace ended up being a major disappointment. Their cash back rates are not competitive with other cash back shopping portals. Although they state that they pay up to 10% cash back I couldn’t find any stores paying that much and it appears most of their stores only pay 1% cash back. There probably is some store in their marketplace that offers 10% cash back, but it most likely is overpriced and not a store I’d normally shop at. Here is a comparison of cash back earned at five major retailers with SmarterBucks, Mr. Rebates, and TopCashBack.

SmarterBucks TopCashBack Mr. Rebates
Sears 1.25% Varies 2% -7% 3.00%
Walmart 1.00% Varies 1%-4% 2.00%
Target 1.00% 1.00% 0.50%
Kmart 1.00% Varies 1%-7% 3.00%
Staples 1.00% 3.00% 2.00%

As you can see they generally offer less cash back than the other portals. Even looking at Target where SmarterBucks actually matched TopCashBack for the best rate it would be possible to do better elsewhere. Ebates currently offers 2% cash back at Target. Since their marketplace doesn’t offer competitive cash back rates I won’t be using it unless they start offering more cash back.

2. Surveys

They also offer the ability to do surveys to earn SmarterBucks. The first survey they offered to me paid .57 SmarterBucks for a 15 minute survey. That translates to an earnings rate of $2.28 an hour. That is obviously a terrible return for your time. When I did survey for PineCone Research I was paid $3 per survey and the surveys generally took 20 minutes to complete. SmarterBucks’ survey pay rate doesn’t appear to be very competitive with other survey companies. Surveys in general aren’t a good way to earn extra money so I wouldn’t bother with these.

3. Debit Card

Another way to earn SmarterBucks is with their debit card. The website states that you will earn 1% back in SmarterBucks with the Radius Bank debit card. The 1% cash back only applies to non-pin purchases though. That means you would need to run your purchase as credit rather than debit in order to earn the cash back. If you’re going to do a credit purchase you might as well use a rewards credit card. There are plenty of reward credit cards that offer 2% cash back. Some offer even higher cash back for purchases in certain categories.

The debit card is not for me since I can always do better with my reward credit cards. I could see this debit card being useful for someone who doesn’t have the self-discipline to be able to use a credit card. If you have to use a debit card then this card appears to be a good option.

4. Gifting

A unique feature of SmarterBucks is that you can have family and/or friends sign up to be a SmarterBucks gifter and their SmarterBucks earnings would then go towards paying your student loan. This is not an option I would use since it is basically asking your friends and family to pay your student loan for you and would be a bad deal for them since they wouldn’t get to keep the cash back they earned.

A better option is to have your friends and family sign up for Mr. Rebates or Swagbucks. This way you would earn cash back when they earn cash back but it would not reduce the cash back earning rate of your family and friends.

Conclusion

SmarterBucks is not a good deal for the vast majority of people. There are better options for earning cash back. The only instance in which I’d recommend it is using the debit card if you don’t/can’t use a credit card. I’m surprised at the positive reviews I’ve read of this service. My guess is that the reviewers were biased due to being affiliates for SmarterBucks. I have no problem with being an affiliate of a product you review. In fact, this post contains several referral links for cash back sites since the sites are relevant to the post and in my opinion a good deal for my readers. I do have a problem with people giving a product or service a positive review just because they can profit from it. Although I am a member of SmarterBucks I am not including a referral link for the service since I think it would be a bad deal for the vast majority of my readers.

Walking from the Vegas Strip to the Airport

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Scenery near Vegas airport.
Scenery near Vegas airport.

In order to keep my string of travel posts on Wednesday I’m writing about an aspect of a trip I took last year. I think it will be interesting to some people.

Last year while on a Vegas vacation I decided to walk from the Strip to the airport to catch my returning flight. Walking rather than taking a cab can save you a fair bit of money, especially since many cab drivers like to long-haul passengers by taking the tunnel to the airport. If you’re just interested in saving money though a better option would be to take the bus to the airport. The bus fare is only a few dollars. Your motivation for walking from the Vegas Strip to the airport should be for the enjoyment of the walk itself rather than saving money.

I was staying at the Excalibur hotel which is located at the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard (aka the Strip) which is one of the closest hotels on the Strip to the airport. A search on Google Maps showed that the walk was only 1.8 miles and would take about 35 minutes.  This gave me plenty of time since it was 11am and my flight didn’t leave until 2pm. My gambling budget had already been spent and I had some time to kill so a pleasant stroll to the airport seemed like a good use of my time.

The walk starts by crossing over the Strip and walking past the Tropicana, Hooters, and MGM. The hotels and all the people walking to and from them provide plenty of scenery to keep this part of the walk interesting. After passing the Hooters hotel there are a couple of budget hotels and then when you cross Koval you mostly have the airport on one side and desert on the other side. This part of the walk is less interesting and the scenery is marred by lots and lots of trash.

Although this was only a 35 minute walk I took a break in the middle of it. There is a shopping center about halfway between Koval and Paradise and I had lunch at the Subway there. This added a little distance to my walk since the shopping center was on the opposite side of the street and set back a couple hundred yards from the street. I had plenty of time and didn’t want to pay the inflated airport prices for food so I chose to have lunch then. There is also a convenience store at the corner of Paradise and Tropicana where I could have bought some snacks if I had them instead of or in addition to having a meal.

Once I resumed my walk after lunch it didn’t take long to reach Paradise and turn southbound on the walk. The sidewalk follows Paradise and the bustling traffic for a little bit and then veers off into a somewhat park-like setting. There were plants and sculptures to provide some pleasant scenery. This is where I took the picture of the cactus that is at the top of this post.

It wasn’t much longer until I was at the airport terminal. I did get to see one more interesting thing. A shuttle bus driver apparently decided to enter a parking area that wasn’t accessible by his shuttle bus. The shuttle driver and the passengers probably had a much less pleasant trip to the airport then I did.

They should have walked.
They should have walked.

The walk from the Strip to the airport is easy because it is very flat. I did this walk in November when it was about 65 degrees.  I also only had a small backpack for luggage. The walk would not be pleasant in the summer with the usual 100 degree temperatures or with a lot of luggage. My last trip to Vegas was in late March and even then it would have been almost too hot to walk. I was with my GF on that trip and I don’t think should would have been up for the idea of walking to the airport so we just took the bus on that trip. The next time you are in Vegas you might consider walking to the airport or from the airport to your hotel. It might be a pleasant addition to your trip.

 

Some Strategies for Paying Off My Student Loan

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studentloanpayoffPaying off my student loan is going to be a humongous task which will take several years. My goal is to have it paid off in less than ten years. I’d like to pay it off quicker than that, but even the ten-year goal is a stretch based on my current finances. My expenses are about as low as I can get them so most of my strategies for paying off my student loan sooner will be related to earning more income. Since it will take years to pay off my student loan some of these strategies will likely change over time while others will be abandoned entirely and new strategies adopted as they become available and/or I become aware of them.

My first strategy for paying off my student loan quicker is signing up to have my student loan payment automatically debited from my checking account. Doing this lowered my interest rate from 6.875% to 6.62%. That isn’t much of a decrease in the interest rate but when you are dealing with six figures of debt it does make a difference. It will be about a $25 month decrease in interest on my loan.

I also want to refinance my loan. I applied to refinance my loan with Sofi. They have variable rates as low as 1.9% and fixed rates as low as 3.5% which would save me a lot of money. Despite my 798 credit score my loan application was swiftly rejected due to my income being so low relative to the amount of my debt. I can’t really blame them for rejecting my application. I’m considering reapplying to refinance just part of my loan later this year. I have found that there are a number of new refinancing companies with competitive rates and term lengths. Does anyone have any recommendations for a student loan refinancing companies? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

Another way to refinance part of my student loan is with my credit cards. One of my credit cards offered me a 0% interest rate for 18 months on a balance transfer with a 2% transaction fee. I signed up for the deal and am having my credit card company transfer part of my student loan to my credit card. The transfer is still processing so I’m not sure if it will work the way I planned. After this transfer is done I might do another balance transfer deal on another of my credit cards. I just have to make sure that I can pay the balance off before the 0% interest rate ends.

Reducing the cost of the loan is helpful but to make significant progress on paying it down I need to make more money. A lot more money. I should have a document review job starting next week and I’m hoping that there will be a steady amount of document review jobs the rest of the year. These jobs are currently my best source of guaranteed income so I’ll keep working them until I know for sure that I can make more money elsewhere. Whatever I make from the job above my basic expenses will go to paying down my loan.

One job won’t be enough to pay off the loan quickly though. That is why I signed up for Uber.  This weekend will be my first weekend driving for them. After the weekend I should have a good idea of how much I can make through Uber. If nothing else, it should provide me with a little extra income when I’m between jobs. My plan is to drive for them nights and weekends while working my regular job. I really like that I can drive for Uber whenever I have time and don’t have to commit to a schedule.

I’m still working my Amazon FBA business and I think I’m slowly learning and getting better at it. I’m hoping to make at least enough from FBA to pay my regular student loan payment.

Blog income has mostly dried up, but I’m hoping I can revive it somewhat.  I need to work on increasing my affiliate and referral income from my blogs. Posting regularly on my Bank Bonuses blog should help with that. I also plan to have one or two posts a month on this blog about products or services for which I have affiliate or referral links.  I only write about services/products that I actually use and think are a win/win so you don’t have to worry about this becoming a spammy blog.

This past week I’ve made some decent progress on my e-book. I’ve procrastinated writing this book for years, but I am finally going to get it finished. It should be done by the end of this month. Once that book is done I have a couple more ideas of books to write. If I am able to publish two or three books by the end of the year they will hopefully produce a nice bit of additional income.

Those are the strategies I currently am using/am planning to use to reduce the cost of my loan and make more money. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

April Expenses – $1212.29

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

Household $404.32
Entertainment $90
Transportation $310.62
Food $99.29
Student Loan $183.15
Travel $0.80
Phone $26.30
Health $97.81
Total $1212.29

 

My April expenses were not too bad considering I bought a car and took a vacation to Niagara Falls. If it weren’t for the six month insurance expense of $198.66 and the car registration expense of $60.50 I would have made my $1000 target.

The reported monthly total doesn’t reflect all of my personal expenses for this month. I left out the purchase price of my car since it would throw off my expense average. Also, since the car is an asset it doesn’t make sense to immediately count the entire cost as an expense. My friend JK at MyFrugalMiser has a good way of dealing with the car expense. He expenses the car depreciation monthly according to the amount of miles driven. Although this is a reasonable way of tracking the car depreciation expense I will not be doing this. Mainly, because I don’t want to bother tracking my mileage. Also, because a lot of miles will be business miles and it doesn’t seem accurate to count the depreciation as a personal expense when it is also part of the business mileage expense.

The monthly total also doesn’t reflect the extra $2383 I paid towards my student loan since including that amount in my monthly total would throw off my monthly expense average. Although, I won’t report the extra amount paid on my student loan in my monthly total I will always report it in my expense post and possibly elsewhere.

For some reason my monthly phone bill declined from the usual $26.81 to $26.30. That decline will be short-lived. I bought a new phone last month because my old one wouldn’t run the Uber app I needed to drive for Uber or the Amazon Seller app which is extremely helpful to have for my FBA business. Since I upgraded my phone I lost my grandfathered $25 a month rate on Virgin Mobile and will now have to pay a $35 a month rate. That is still a pretty good deal and I plan to write off the extra $10 a month as a business expense.

Even though we took a three night vacation in Niagara Falls my travel expense for the month was only 80 cents. That is in part because some of the vacation expense was paid in the previous month and a lot of the travel was free or almost free. For the amount of the vacation expense I did have to pay during the month I was able to get reimbursed for most of it by my travel rewards credit card.

This month my expenses should be about the same other than the car expenses. I might also have increased medical expenses since I’m guessing some of my medical bills will become due. Other than that it should be another low expense month.

Niagara Falls Trip Report

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CAM00518After the end of tax season my GF and I took a weekend vacation to Niagara Falls. If you have been reading this blog for very long then you know we did not spend very much on this vacation. Our total spent for three nights hotel, two round-trip tickets from KC to Buffalo, three days car rental, and admission to several attractions came to just a little over $200. This post will explain how I managed to keep the cost of the vacation so low.

 

The airfare was basically free. I still had lots of Rapid Reward points left over from signing up for two Chase Southwest credit cards last year which allowed me to book my flight for free. I also earned a companion pass last year which allows my GF to fly for free with me as well.  This is pretty nice since we get double the value out of my points.  The only thing I had to pay for the two round-trip flights was the tax of $5.60 on each flight each way.

The hotel room was completely free. I received 25,000 Starwood points for signing up for the SPG American Express card and meeting the spending requirement earlier this year. Three nights at the hotel used up 10,000 of those points. We stayed three nights at the Four Points by Sheraton in Niagara Falls, NY.  The room was pretty nice by my standards. It was a little smaller than our room at Excalibur, but much newer and a little fancier than Excalibur. From reading reviews of the hotel I knew to request a river view room and I’m glad I did. We wouldn’t have gotten the river view otherwise and it was a great view. The hotel had free cookies by the front desk which were delicious and a nice perk for staying there. The hotel was about five miles from the Falls, which wasn’t a big deal since we had a rental car. If we ever go to the Falls again I’d probably get a hotel on the Canadian side though.

view from our room
View from our room

As you might have guessed, our main reason for visiting Niagara Falls was to see the Falls. The first day we went to Niagara Falls State Park and did some sightseeing there. A plus to being early in the season is that we didn’t have to pay for admission to the park or for parking. Also, it was not at all crowded. The minus is that some parts of the park were off-limits due to being covered in snow and ice so we couldn’t get quite as close to the Falls as we would have been able to later in the year. Also, the Cave of the Winds tour and Maid of the Mist boat ride were not yet operating. At the park we were able to view the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls from Goat Island and we also walked on the bridges to the Three Sisters islands and observed the rapids above the Falls.

The next day we headed to Canada to observe the Falls from the Canadian side and to visit some tourist attractions.  It was also the first time either one of us had been to Canada so we were excited to visit Canada for the first time also. The previous day I had bought us two Wonder Passes which included tickets to Niagara Fury, Journey Behind the Falls, the Butterfly Conservatory, and 24 hour passes for the WEGO bus system. The tickets were $19.95 Canadian each which I think is a great bargain. The visit to Journey Behind the Falls was worth that much all by itself. This was another plus to coming early in the season as Wonder Passes are only available in the off-season. The view of the Falls the previous day was awesome but seeing the Falls from the Canadian side is much more awesome. This post is already getting unwieldy so I won’t go into detail about everything we did. I will highly recommend going on the Journey Behind the Falls tour. You actually do journey behind the Falls. There are tunnels dug behind the Falls and you get to walk through the tunnels and observe the Falls from behind the Falls at a couple of different windows. There is also an observation deck where you can view the Falls outside at a pretty close range.

We both really enjoyed our visit to Niagara Falls and will probably go again sometime. On the next visit I would plan to stay on the Canadian side since the view is much better from there and most of the attractions I’d want to see are there also. A lot of the American side seems to be run-down and the roads are in terrible condition. The next trip we would also like to explore a little further into Canada. We didn’t feel like we experienced much Canadian culture in Niagara Falls since it was pretty similar to any other tourist town. Is there anything else you would like to know about our Niagara Falls vacation? If you’ve been to the Falls before do you have any suggestions on what we should do on our next trip?