Frugality

How I Got a $100 Gas Card for $76

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I was able to get a $100 gas card for $76 by stacking four discounts. This post will provide an illustration of how I got this deal. Although you probably won’t be able to do the same exact deal described in this post following the process outlined in this example will allow you to buy other gift cards at a significant discount.

The first thing I did was buy a discounted Ebay gift card at Office Max. Since I get 5% cash back at office supply stores using my Chase Ink card I consider this a $5 discount off $100. If you would like to apply for a Chase Ink card please consider using my Chase Ink Referral Link.  I’ll get points for referring you and you will get 60,000 Chase Ink points (worth $725 towards travel or $600 cash) after spending $5000 in three months after opening the card.If you don’t want to get the credit card it is also possible to buy Ebay gift cards for 5% off at Target when you use your Redcard. You will want to be careful if you choose that option since some people report getting their Redcard shut down for buying too many gift cards. A safer option is to buy an Ebay gift card directly from Ebay when they have them on sale. They seem to offer their cards at a discount every month or two

The next thing I did was visit eBay through a cash back shopping portal such as Splender or iConsumer. At the time I bought my gift card iConsumer was offering 3% cash back.  It is usually around 1% cash back. That isn’t much, but if you’re going to make the purchase anyway you might as well save a little money.

The third thing I did to save money was to buy the discounted Ebay gift card to buy a discounted gift card on eBay. At the time eBay was offering $100 gas cards for $92.

The fourth discount I received was from eBay Bucks. If you’re enrolled in eBay Bucks you get 2% back in eBay Bucks on most of the purchase you make on eBay. They occasionally have promotions offering an even greater percentage back. At the time I bought my gas card they had a promotion offering 10% back in eBay Bucks. That is as good as I’ve seen them offer for general purchases, although they sometimes offer even higher percentages back on specific categories.

Here is how the math works out. The $100 gas gift card  was on sale for $92 for a savings of $8. I used an Ebay gift card that I bought with my Chase Ink which I consider to be a 5% discount. Five percent off $92 is $4.60. The cash back shopping portal paid me 3% cash back which is $2.76. Ebay gave me 10% back in eBay Bucks.  Ten percent off $92 is $9.20.  So $92-$4.60-$2.76-$9.20= $75.44.  I went ahead and rounded up to $76 since some of the discounts or rewards earned from the purchase are not in the form of actual cash. Either way that is a pretty good discount on gas. Of course, I use a gas rewards card when I fill up to save even more money.

The deals aren’t always that great, but stacking the discounts and cash back it is possible to save a nice amount on lots of gift cards. In fact, I have bought gift cards off of eBay and turned around and Sell gift cards for cash at Raise.com  or Sell Your Gift Cards For Cash at Cardpool.com! I wouldn’t recommend that as a way to make money,  but it is a good way to help meet minimum spend to earn a credit card bonus.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of the discounts or cash back.

Going for a Hike

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CAM00151I will be heading out for a hike starting tomorrow. I’ll be hiking in Shenandoah National Park to make up some of the section of the Appalachian Trail that I missed when hiking in Shenandoah. It is a 13.5 hour drive to Virginia from here. A few years ago I could make that drive straight through. Nowadays, I don’t think it would be safe for me to drive that long in one day. I’ll be driving 7.5 hours tomorrow and doing the remaining six hours the next day.  I’m able to get a room for free with my Starwood points so there is no hotel expense to worry about.

Once I arrive at the trail I plan to hike out and back on the trail returning to my car at the end of the day.  Then I will sleep in my car or perhaps hike in to a shelter if there is one close to where I’m parked.  My daily hiking miles will be determined by the distance between parking areas and how far I feel I can comfortably hike. I’m out of shape right now so the daily hiking miles will be low to start out. Having the car will allow me to go to town if I need more food or just need a night off the trail. I think hiking with the car will allow me to ease back into hiking.  Once I’ve returned from the hike I’ll share how it went. I think it will be a fun and frugal trip.

Almost Free Vegas Vacation, Broken Laptop, and Other Stuff

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fremontstreetI haven’t been posting much lately. My excuse is that I’ve been working and my laptop died. My job finished Friday and I bought a new laptop yesterday so I don’t have those excuses anymore.

My excuse for not posting from October 31 – November 4th is that I’ll be in Las Vegas on vacation at that time and posting on the blog won’t be a priority for me. I do plan on taking my laptop so there is a slight possibility I’ll write a post during that time.

This will be our second vacation in Las Vegas this year. The last vacation was crazy cheap and this vacation will be even cheaper. It should be almost free. My GF is traveling to Las Vegas to attend a conference for her job which makes her hotel, airfare, and food free. I’ll be using some of the Southwest credit I received in August for volunteering to be bumped to get my Vegas airfare free. I’ll be staying with my GF in her hotel room. Luckily, her job is only booking one employee to a room, allowing me to share the room. My only cost for the vacation will be food and any gambling I do. The food shouldn’t be too big of an expense. In-n-Out burger is pretty cheap :). The gambling could get expensive if I allow myself to get carried away.  Although, I’ve lost the last couple of times I visited Vegas I didn’t lose too much.  The gambling loss was much less than what I would have paid for airfare if I didn’t have free credits. Anyway, I’ll budget the amount of gambling I do so my losses aren’t too big. If I get really lucky I could win enough to make the vacation profitable. That is unlikely, but it has happened before.

My friend Jon, at MyFrugalMiser will be flying in to Vegas on the day we’re flying out. We plan to meet at the airport for a short visit before we have to leave for KC. When I return from Vegas I should have some exciting (well, it is exciting to me at least) news to share. In the meantime, I plan on posting several times this week and reviving the blog a little.

A Fun and Profitable Vacation

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View from Cape Horn
View from Cape Horn
Last week my GF and I spent four days on vacation in the Portland, Oregon area. We were visiting friends of my GF that live there. We spent one day doing a tour of the waterfalls in the area and enjoying the scenery. There is spectacular scenery in this area. We ate that evening at the Portland Grill which features a fantastic view of the city. The next day we went to the famous Powell’s Books and went out for a great lunch at Killer Burger. We also spent a lot of time hanging out at our friend’s house and catching up with them. It was a short and fun vacation.

Multnomah Falls
Multnomah Falls

Making the vacation even better for a tight-fisted miser like me was the fact that the vacation was almost free. Our round-trip airfare on Southwest was free using Rapid Reward points. We only had to use points to purchase my airfare since we have a companion pass allowing my GF to fly free with me. The only cost for the airfare was the $5.60 security fee. We didn’t have any hotel cost since we stayed with our friends. They will be visiting us in September so we can return the favor. They were also nice enough to lend us a car so we didn’t have to spend any money on a rental car. Other than leaving $20 for gas in the car the use of the car was free. Our biggest expense was for restaurants. We went to happy hour at the Portland City Grill which kept the cost of the meal reasonable. Killer Burger is a fast casual restaurant so it was a reasonable cost as well. Our only other cost was for airport parking. I used a coupon giving us a free day of parking which made the total cost of parking $21. Our total out-of-pocket cost was just a little over $100. I think that is a great deal.

Bridge of the Gods
Bridge of the Gods

The trip became an even better deal on the way home. When we arrived for our flight home Southwest was asking for volunteers to be bumped from our flight. Since I was traveling on a ticket bought with points and my GF was flying free on the companion pass I wasn’t sure they would offer us much for being bumped. Before volunteering I asked the agent how much we would get for being bumped. When she told me we’d be compensated $500 for my ticket and $400 for my GF’s ticket I decided to take the offer and be bumped to the later flight. The later flight was only a couple of hours later but since it was a connecting flight rather than a non-stop flight like our original flight we ended up arriving in KC about 5 hours later than we originally would have. We didn’t have anything planned for that day so the delay wasn’t a big deal. I felt like receiving $900 in travel credit for a few hours delay was a great deal.

Overall, we spent a little over $100 on our vacation and made $900 in travel credit on the vacation. This vacation will pay for our next vacation. It was a fun and profitable vacation.

Savings Saturday – Two Ways to Save 30% on Movie Tickets

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vcheckout  If you have been reading this blog for a while you probably know that I love to go to the movies. My GF and I go to the movies most weekends which adds up to about thirty movie outings a year. Since this is a frequent expense I have found several ways to keep the cost of going to the movies relatively low.

One way I save on movie tickets is by attending the first showing of the day. The movie theater we usually attend only charges $5. 20 for a movie ticket for the first showtime of the day. A later matinée would cost $8.67 and an evening show would cost $10.29. Going to an evening showing rather than the first show of the day costs almost double the price of attending the first showing of the day. Attending the first show of the day is generally a more pleasant viewing experience since the theaters are less crowded giving you plenty of space and making it less likely that a fellow patron will distract you from the movie.

Another way to save on movie tickets is to buy discount gift cards. I was able to buy a $25 AMC gift card for 30% off this weekend at Raise.com.  That is a better discount than the usual 15-20% off, but better deals are such as the 30% gift card are sometimes available. At the time of this writing I still see a few vouchers left at 29.9% off. If they sell out  buying a card at the regular discount of 15-20% off is still a good deal. If you are not yet a member of Raise.com please consider joining using my referral link.  You will get $5 for joining and making a purchase and I’ll get $5 as well.

Visa Checkout is having a temporary promotion with Fandango offering $10 off when you buy three or more movie tickets through Visa Checkout on Fandango on the weekends. This deal lasts until September 6, 2015 while supplies last. Get full details on the promo at the Fandango/Visa Checkout web page.  I used this promo a couple of weeks ago to get three movie tickets for a total of $5.60. Even though we didn’t have a third person to give the extra ticket to with this promo it was cheaper to buy three tickets than two. Unfortunately, this is a one time use promo or I’d be taking advantage of this deal again this weekend.

Going to the movies can be pricy but by taking advantage of good deals and special promotions a movie outing can be cheap entertainment.