Andy Hough

Some Thoughts on FINCON11

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I was fortunate to spend this weekend at the Financial Bloggers Conference in Chicago. I had a great time and got to meet lots of fellow bloggers. There are a couple of things I wish I had done differently though.

I arrived at the hotel on Friday a little after noon for a meeting with an advertiser. I spotted a few bloggers in the lobby already. Crystal of Budgeting in the Fun Stuff was easily identifiable since she had a BITFS tote bag so I went over and introduced myself and my wife. She then introduced me to Jesse of PF Firewall. Then the guy across from her and introduced himself as J.D. Roth. I was so surprised that I barely managed to introduce myself and forgot to introduce my wife. I wanted to talk to him but was afraid of saying something idiotic and looking stupid so I ended up saying nothing and looking stupid. I am an introvert and have trouble coming up with something to say on the spur of the moment. Before the next conference I have got to be prepared with something to say when a blogger I admire talks to me.

I did recover from that and managed to meet lots of other bloggers. From the Yakezie I met Len Penzo, Barbara Friedberg, Jason from Live Real Now, Suba from Wealth Informatics, Travis from Our Journey to Zero, Ashley from Money Talks, and more. There are too many to list them all.

I also managed to introduce myself to some of my favorite bloggers such as Pat Flynn, Adam Baker, and Donna Freedman. They were all very approachable and I hope I didn’t bore them too much. I didn’t have an agenda that I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to thank them for their helpful and enjoyable blogs. And lastly I was able to meet Phil Taylor of PT Money and thank him for organizing the event.

Here are a few links to more posts about the conference. Thanks to Lazy Man, who I also got to meet at the conference, for putting together the list. I’ve added a few more links to it.

Financially Consumed
Smart Passive Income
The Jenny Pincher
Get Rich Slowly
Cash Money Life
Consumerism Commentary
Wise Bread
Free From Broke
Live Real Now
Budgeting in the Fun Stuff
So Over Debt

How to Pay Cheap Rates, for Not-So-Cheap Coverage

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Cheap insurance can come with a cost. Even though you may not see the cost reflected in your premium, chances are it will catch up with you down the line when it comes time to file a claim. Sometimes having cheap insurance means being underinsured which exposes you to financial risk in the event of a claim. However, that doesn’t mean you have to pay an arm and a leg for insurance. Here are the top two ways to pay cheap insurance rates without getting cheap insurance coverage:

Take advantage of discounts:These days insurance providers are offering discounts for all types of things including deadbolts, security alarms, smoke detectors and more. Ask your insurance agent to qualify your for every discount they can and you could save 20-25% on your home owners insurance premiums.

Package your home and auto:Many insurance providers will reward policyholders who bundle their home and auto insurance policies with them. Homeowners have reported savings of up to 20% on their homeowners insurance by packaging their auto with the same company. Ask for a home-auto quote to see what you could save.

For more information on how to save wisely on home insurance, visit the Insurance Information Institute.

Investing with Credit Cards

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A few years ago you could easily make a few bucks by getting a 0% credit card deal and putting the money in the bank at 5% but those days are gone. You are lucky to get 1% on your money now. And the credit card companies seemed to catch on to this trick and now have uncapped transfer fees of 3% to 5% to get your 0% money. I recently received a deal for 0% money for one year with only a 2% fee and decided that was good enough for me to make some money. Please note that I’m not recommending that anyone else do this.

The cost of the credit was $160 for $8000. My plan is to use about $3000 of this money to take advantage of bank bonus offers. I’ve already made $115 from a local bank bonus offer. I’ve also received the $25 Betterment.com bonus. A US Bank $50 bonus should be arriving shortly and I’ll receive another $50 bonus in one year. A $100 Sharebuilder bonus and $25 Discover Bank bonus are in the process of being earned. I still have about $1000 left to take advantage of other bonus offers. The bonus offers by themselves will cover the cost of borrowing the money.

Another $3000 of this money went into the stock market. I’m not a market timer but with the stock market dropping so much Thursday it looked to me that I could get some dividend stocks cheap. I put about $3000 in three stocks today and the stocks are already up. My plan it to keep the stocks and pay off this portion of the money from my monthly cash flow. If that doesn’t work out I’ll just sell one of my losing stocks for tax loss harvesting.

I’d like to use the remaining $2000 to buy another website. That might be a little crazy since I’m having trouble keeping up with the blogs I already own. Websites can be one of the best investments. When I bought MyRetirementBlog.com I was nervous about the amount of money I spent on it but I made about 75% of the purchase price back in the first year. The earnings have gone up since then and I’ve probably made more than the purchase price this year alone. If I can’t find a reasonably priced site I’ll just pay down the credit card loan or look for other investment opportunities.

If you have a personal finance blog or related website for sale or know someone who does please contact me.

September 2011 Goals Progress

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For the month of September I set goals of writing 100 posts/pages, running/walking 100 miles, and investing 100% of my extra money. We are now halfway through the month of September and I have written 21 posts, walked 19 miles, and invested more than 100% of my extra money. Overall, I’m not doing very well on my goals. The savings goal was easy to meet, I just had to move some money from my bank account to my stock account. The other goals require a lot more work. I’m not anywhere close to halfway on those goals. I thought I would be able to put in some big days in the last half of the month but that will be extremely difficult. We got our first client for our offline business and will have to travel out of state a few days in the next couple of weeks. Plus we are going to my enrollment ceremony and the Financial Blogger’s Conference. There won’t be a lot of time left for writing and walking but I’m still going to work on them and get as close to my goals as possible.

Saving Money with Staple Ink Cartridge Recycling Rewards

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We have saved quite a bit of money this year by taking advantage of Staples’ ink cartridge recycling program. Staples allows you to recycle up to 10 ink cartridges a month and receive $2 in Staples Rewards for each cartridge recycled. This gives us $20 a month in Staples Rewards to spend. So far this year we have used them to get a printer,router, toilet paper,paper towels, and lots of office supplies. By combining the monthly rewards with coupons,rebates, and the 1 cent back to school items we have been able to really stretch our rewards.

To get started recycling ink cartridges at Staples you need to sign up for their Staples Rewards program. It is a simple form and should only take a few minutes to complete. You also need cartridges to recycle. If you don’t have enough cartridges of your own to recycle you can buy cartridges for about 25 cents each on Ebay or Craigslist. That still leaves you with a nice profit on each cartridge. After recycling your cartridges you will receive your rewards online the following month. You can either redeem the rewards online or print them out and use them in the store.

There is a limit of one Staples Rewards account per household plus there a few items for which the rewards are not valid. Office Depot and Office Max also have ink cartridge recycling programs. Office Depot limits your rewards to the amount of what you spend in their store limiting the usefulness of their program for me. They do allow 20 cartridges a month to be recycled for rewards though which might make their program worthwhile for others. I don’t have any experience with Office Max because they have more restrictions on their ink recycling program and they don’t have any stores in my area.

Recycling ink cartridges with the Staples Rewards ink cartridge recycling program is an easy way to save money on office supplies and household items.