Frugality

  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.

Last month I wrote a post on how I get quadruple savings on gas. Since then I remembered another method I sometimes use to save on gas. This method is actually simpler for me and results in savings of over 10% based on current gas prices.

This saving method is to spend $50 or more at Kmart. When you spend $50 or more at Kmart they will issue you a coupon for 30 cents off a gallon of gas that is good at participating BP, Shell, Speedway and Kmart Express locations. You need to be a Shop Your Way rewards member to receive the coupon. Only BP and Shell are in my area and I’ve only redeemed coupons at BP so I’m not sure how the process works at locations other than BP. At BP the coupon is good for a purchase of up to 20 gallons. Since my car’s tank won’t hold 20 gallons I don’t have to worry about going over this limit.

To redeem the coupon I’ve always gone inside the gas station and let the cashier add the discount to my gas purchase. Using the coupon is easy if the BP cashier knows how to redeem it. The cashiers often seem confused at how to redeem the coupon. Luckily, so far there has always been a more knowledgeable cashier available to figure the transaction out. The nice thing about this coupon is that your percentage savings grow bigger when the price of gas goes down. Currently our local gas price is $2.69 a gallon which is a savings of 11.15% per gallon. That is a pretty good percentage savings for only having to make one relatively small purchase.

Since I’ve been reselling stuff on Amazon I’ve been buying stuff to resell for the $50 purchase requirement. If you don’t have anything to buy at Kmart you could buy a $50 BP gas card there to meet the purchase requirement. It has been a while since I’ve met the purchase requirement by purchasing gift cards so I’m not certain that it still works, but it used to work. If anybody knows if gift cards still work to meet the purchase requirement please leave a comment.

I was able to combine the discounted BP gas card I got on eBay with this promotion to get an over 20% savings on gas. Now that I’ve used up that gas card I’ve figured out another way to get 20% savings on gas. This method will only work for those who were lucky enough to enroll in Discover Card’s double cashback promotion*.  Discover is currently offering 5% cashback on up to $1500 worth of purchases at home improvement stores. By buying a BP gas card at Lowes I’ll get a total of 10% cashback. I’ll get 5% now and another 5% in the 13th month of the promotion period. Combining this 10% cashback with the over 10% savings from the Kmart coupon I’m able to save over 20% on gas purchases. If you have a Kmart in your are you should give this deal a try.

* Discover is currently offering a $50 bonus when you sign up through a referral email. If you’re interested in signing up for the Discover card leave me a comment and I’ll send you a referral email. I’ll get $50 for referring you as well so any referrals are greatly appreciated.

You may have noticed that gas prices have been going up the past few weeks. The best way to prevent the rise in gas prices from impacting your budget is to drive less. If that is not an option for you then perhaps one or all of my ways to get quadruple savings on gas can help you reduce your gas expense.

The first way I save on gas is by buying a discounted gas card. Ebay recently had $100 BP gas cards on sale for $90 which was a great deal. You rarely see a 10% discount on gas cards. There was a purchase limit of three cards. I would have liked to have bought three, but I could only afford one since my cash flow is rather tight right now. Gas gift cards have been on sale for a discount several times in the past few months on eBay. If you don’t want to wait for the cards to be offered at a discount on eBay again you can go to GiftCardGranny.com and find the best current discount on gas cards. Gas cards are usually only offered at about a 2% discount so if you find a better deal you will want to take advantage of it.

The second way I save on gas is by using a rewards credit card to buy the discounted gas card. For the eBay purchase I used my Capital One Venture card which offers 2% cash back. Next month I will be able to get a better deal. My Discover card will be offering 5% cash back on home improvement stores. By buying BP gas cards at my local Lowe’s I’ll earn 5% cash back. Plus, I’ll earn an additional 5% cash back since I’m enrolled in Discover’s double cash back promotion. This will mean giving up the opportunity to save by buying a discounted gas card online but using the credit card in store will be a better deal unless there is a great 10% discount offered again.

The third way I save on gas is by going through an online portal to buy my discounted gas cards. Top Cashback and Mr. Rebates usually offer an additional 1% cash back on eBay purchases. They also offer cash back at Raise and some other online gift card sellers. If you are not yet a member of Top Cashback or Mr. Rebates please consider signing up through my referral links. Mr. Rebates will give you a $5 bonus for signing up.

The fourth way I save money on gas is by being a member of the BP Driver Rewards program. Other gas station chains offer similar programs. I use the BP Rewards program because it is the best deal in my area and the BP stations have competitive gas prices. Currently, the program offers 25 cents off per gallon when you spend $100 on fuel. The rewards are valid for up to 20 gallons of fuel which isn’t a problem for me since my tank doesn’t hold 20 gallons.

All of the savings add up to a nice discount. For my last gas card purchase I paid $90 for a $100 card. I earned 2% cash back on the $90 for another $1.80 in savings. I earned 1.1% cash back by going through the TopCashback portal for another 99 cents in savings. The result is that I ending up spending a net total of $87.21 for a $100 gift card. Since I bought a $100 gift card the percentage off math is pretty simple. 100 – 87.21 results in a 12.79% discount. On my last fill-up I received 7 cents off a gallon which was a 1.9% discount based on the gas price at that time. Adding the discounts together I received 14.69% off my gas. It isn’t always possible to receive that much of a discount. For the next few months I will be saving in excess of 10% on gas though and it should always be possible to save at least 5%. Over the course of a year these savings can add up to a fairly significant amount.

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.

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.