Frugality

Rebates Money – Forums for Hot Deals, Finance, and Cash Back Stores

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The following is a guest post from Hustler, who blogs on Hustlermoneyblog.com about bank deals, credit cards, and hot deals. He shares his story on starting a new site RebatesMoney.com to provide the best Forums for all Hot Deals, Finance, Careers, Business, and more.

Over the last 4 months, and working in conjunction with a team of specialists, We have created Rebates Money – a Forum for all Hot Deals, Cash Back Stores, Finance, and many more. It’s a new beginning, I hope, to create a place to share all top deals and help you build personal financial wealth in all aspects of your life. Working with some of the best people in the business, our motto is to put the members first and to build a vibrant community with an emphasis on personal finance. In the future, we will continue to install more features to build Rebates Money to meet all your financial needs.

There are many advantages in comparison with other Deal Forums:

1. Hot Deals + Cash Back Stores combo – Other forums will make money from your sales whenever you click through their links and buy something. At Rebates Money, we will find the best deals and tell you where to get maximum cash back using our Cash Back Stores function. At our Cash Back Stores section, simply put in your favorite place to shop online, and you will find the best cash back percentage from sites such as Mr. Rebates, Ebates, ShopDiscover, and others.
2. Finance, Careers, and Business – Not only can you find all the latest bank and credit card deals, you will be able to discuss all aspects of personal finance to help you increase/retain your wealth.

How would you like to win $100? In order to have a spirited forum, we need your help to be part of our growing financial community. Simply Sign Up for membership to Rebates Money to enter the $100 promotion.We will be holding the $100 Cash Bonus drawing on November 1st using a random number generator. I look forward to see TightFistedMiser’s readers over at Rebates Money and be part of our growing community.

How to Live Well Without a Car

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I picked up the book,How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breathe Easier, and Get More Mileage Out of Life at the library last week and found it to be an interesting read.   I didn’t really think there was enough information about living without a car to fill up a book but I was surprised.  The book had a lot of good information and none of it seemed like filler.   I suppose you could consider the insets where people share their stories of living without a car as filler but I found them entertaining. The author shares his story of going car-free and gives some information about how much having a car is likely costing you.  The average cost of car ownership is about $8000 a year.  Mine is much less than that but it is still a significant number.  The author also provides information about alternative methods of transportation such as scooters, motorcycles, public transportation, bicycles, and walking.  If you are considering giving up your car this book has lots of helpful information.

I have lived without a car myself several times in my life and I didn’t find it to be much of a hardship.  In fact it made life simpler.  And it also allowed me to save a lot of money.   If I had owned a car all of last year I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford my trip through Central America.   Not having a car allows you to live better on less money.

It would be difficult for me to go without a car now though.  My wife and I do have just one car between us which I suppose might qualify us as car-lite.   My wife is going to be working at home soon and I mostly work at home.  If I was sure of my future job status I probably could give up the car.   I doubt my wife and stepdaughter would be crazy about the idea.  If I ever do try to get rid of the car that will be another post.

Gambling and Frugality

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Gambling is not a frugal activity. Earlier this year my gambling was going pretty well but since then the tables have turned and I have been steadily losing money. I have noted that I am not disclosing my gambling wins and losses on this blog. I have not kept exact track of my gambling but I would guess that I have lost about $300-$400 gambling this year. That is not a big amount but with my small income it is too much. Also it seems a little silly to be trying to save a few dollars with coupons and then blow a $100 in the casino. I am frugal in all areas of my life except gambling. There is a disconnect between my beliefs and actions when it comes to gambling. Gambling was the major contributor to my filing bankruptcy 14 years ago. I am in control of my gambling now but I can still feel that urge to bet more and more. From now on I will be disclosing my gambling wins and losses. Also I will only bet when I think I have favorable odds and until I have a significant increase in income my gambling will be limited.

The Simple Way to Clip Coupons

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Many people do not want to mess with clipping coupons because they don’t believe the savings is worth the time it takes to cut out and organize the coupons. I tend to agree with them but I still use coupons because I use them in a way that takes little time to clip and organize yet provides big savings.

The resource I use to make clipping coupons easy is MoneySavingMom.com. If you go to her site you will see a widget with a list of stores in the right sidebar. If you click on your local store it will go to a post matching up coupons to the current sale at that particular grocery chain. To make things even easier the post will usually include links to printable coupons and e-coupons. This makes using coupons easy because you only “clip” the coupons that match a sale and you know you will use. I don’t usually bother with cutting coupons out of the paper anymore because it is easier to just use the printable and e-coupons.

There are several sites on the web where you can get printable coupons. I try to get mine through my MyPoints account since I receive a few points for using the coupons I print from there in addition to getting the coupon savings. A few sites to get coupons online are Coupons.com, Redplum.com, and Smartsource.com. You can get e-coupons at Cellfire.com and possibly at your local grocer’s website as well.

If you have a local grocery store that doubles coupons then you can get some really great deals. Last week I was able to get cereal, Chex Mix, and Hamburger Helper for 49 cents each. It is true that most coupons are for processed foods but since I would eat these foods whether I was using coupons or not it doesn’t have any effect on my diet. And these foods are probably still better than the fast food I eat most days. You can still use coupons to eat healthy you just won’t be using nearly as many coupons.

If you are interested in using coupons I suggest you check out the MoneySavingMom website and see how the deals work for you.

Total Cost of Car Ownership Update

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The last time I calculated the total cost of car ownership for my Camry I came up with a cost per mile of $0.84 if I counted the entire cost of my car as depreciation and $0.28 cost per mile if I used a more realistic figure for depreciation.  I’ve driven a lot of miles since then but with my car already being a high mileage car those miles should not cause much depreciation.  Therefore my new cost per mile figures are quite a bit lower.

As of today my car has cost me 35.6 cents per mile if I value my car at $0.  Using a more realistic figure for depreciation my cost per mile is 16.9 cents.  I doubt I will be able to get my total cost per mile much lower than that since fuel alone is almost ten cents per mile.  Also there will be maintenance and probably repair bills coming up.  Even if I don’t reduce my cost per mile it is still a lot lower than the IRS figure of 50 cents per mile.   It is clear to me that driving a used car is much more frugal option than buying new.  You would have to drive a new car an awful lot of miles to get the cost per mile down to what mine is.

Of course, one of the reasons that my cost of car ownership is so low is because I drive a lot of miles.   While this lowers my cost per mile it means more money coming out of my pocket.  For both financial and environmental reasons I would like to reduce my miles driven.   My wife and I are now sharing the car so it is getting even more use although the miles should go down now that I am starting a regular job.

One thing that I didn’t consider when considering my total cost of car ownership is the fact that my employers reimbursed me for many of the miles driven.   Also, the miles I have driven for mystery shopping are deductible.  If I were to factor that in my cost per mile would be even lower.  That is more math than I want to do though so I will just keep the figures as they are.