The Good and Bad of Mystery Shopping

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I did some mystery shops over the weekend that highlight some of the good things and bad things about mystery shopping. There were a couple of bad things about this mystery shop. First, I had a receipt rejected because it didn’t include the address of the convenience store. I can’t control whether a store puts their address on the receipt or not. Luckily, I had another receipt with the address printed and I was able to scan the address on to the other receipt.

The other problem was that a report checker invalidated one of my reports because she said I didn’t purchase gas. This wasn’t correct and I had submitted a receipt for the gas so I don’t know why the checker said I hadn’t. I resubmitted the receipt and the checker asked me to send it yet again because the edge of the receipt didn’t scan. This was a little ridiculous since everything on the receipt was still readable and the important information was intact. Since I wanted to get paid though I had to send the scan in yet again. I have heard that you will occasionally run into checkers that are a PITA and I guess this was my first experience with one.

There are some good things about mystery shopping. It is nice to get to get paid to buy gas although there is quite a bit of work besides just buying the gas. It is also nice that most of my mystery shopping income will be tax-free. Since I can legally write off my mileage at $0.50 per mile most of my income is eliminated. For example, one of the fast food shops I did this month was 16 miles round trip from my home giving me an expense of $8. Since my pay was only $7.50 I technically didn’t make any money doing this shop. This would be bad if I thought my true expenses were anywhere close to $0.50 but since I estimate my true expenses to be less than half that these shops are worthwhile.

Home Loans: How Much Your Property Will Really Cost

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When you are considering entering the property market, it is important that you take a wide angled view of your situation and your purchase, so you are not blindsided by the real costs of buying a home. It is easy to focus on saving for your deposit and searching the papers and internet for your dream home, however, in between your searches and your moving day actually arriving, there are a lot of other costs and fees to consider too.

Start Adding Up Your Costs

Every financial situation and house purchase is different, so here is a guide of the fees and costs you should expect in buying a home, and what they average at. However, to make your own calculations alongside our list you will need to clarify your variables, such as:

* House price.
* House value.
* Deposit amount.
* Loan term.
* Fixed or adjustable interest rate.
* Loan interest rate.

This is because many of the costs associated with buying a home and getting a home loan are dependent on the loan amount and your situation. For example lenders mortgage insurance is calculated as a percentage of your loan amount, and the interest rate you are charged can be calculated based on your financial situation all your credit rating. So, following are some figures to give you an example of the real costs involved in owning a property.

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Making a Living by Mystery Shopping Update

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My goal was to make $500 from mystery shopping this month. It looks like my total will probably be around $300 unless I get some really lucrative shops at the end of the month. There usually are shops with raised fees at the end of the month but I’ve not been quick enough to get the ones I want.

I probably would have made $500 but I did hardly any shops last week and I don’t have any scheduled for the rest of this week. I have decided I am only going to do shops if they are either especially lucrative or shops that I enjoy doing. It seems that a large percentage of the shops are petroleum shops and I don’t care for those. They take me too long and there is too much stuff to remember and too many pictures to take.

My conclusion after doing lots of shops this month is that it is possible to become a full time mystery shopper. It would require several things to be able to achieve this though. It would take some time to become more efficient at doing the shops so that you are returned a decent wage for your time. You also need to be highly organized to schedule the shops and report them in the most efficient manner. You would also likely need to persevere through some lower earning months because the mystery shopping companies do not show you all the opportunities when you first work for them. After you have worked for them for a while they will give you access to more and better shops. Although, I do believe it is possible to make a living as a mystery shopper it would be a lot of work. Since I don’t enjoy most of the mystery shopping jobs it wouldn’t be worthwhile for me. My plan for now is to continue making online income and look for a regular j-o-b, possibly in the legal industry.

****Don’t forget to enter my giveaway this week if you haven’t already.

Beware of Vampires

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I am talking about vampire power users. These are electronic devices that suck energy – and money from your wallet – even when they are not on. Vampire power is also known as standby power. According to the EPA standby power accounts for 5-10% of the residential power used in the United States. This could be even higher if you have lots of older, less-efficient, electronic devices.

It is pretty easy to determine which devices are using standby power. If the device has a remote than it needs to use standby power to be ready to respond to the remote. Devices that don’t have remotes but are ready to respond at the touch of a button are also using standby power. A microwave is a good example of this type of device. Also if the device has a clock than it is obviously using power. The other main type of device that uses vampire power is a plug-in adapter that converts AC to DC. Cell-phone chargers and laptop chargers are the primary examples of this type of device.

There are several ways to reduce your use of vampire power. You could just unplug your devices whenever you are not using them. For devices that you use frequently or have a hard to reach outlet though that could be a pain. In that case a power strip is handy because it will allow you to plug in several devices and shut power off to all of them with a flip of the switch. If you don’t want to turn off the power to all your devices you can get a power strip with individual switches. If you only need to turn one device on and off you can try this On/Off Adaptor Adapter with * LIGHTED * ON/OFF Switch!

Cutting your use of vampire power is an easy way to reduce your electricity expense and it keeps you from wasting electricity. Why pay for electricity that you aren’t even using? For more information on vampire power and saving money on electricity in general I recommend you check out Michael Bluejay’s saving electricity site.

Can Two Live As Cheaply As One?

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From my experience I would have to say no. Moving in with my fiancee isn’t going to save me any money. My half of the rent is only $25 less than what I was paying before and utilities will likely be quite a bit higher and erase that savings. I don’t think there will be any savings in any other areas but maybe there are some that haven’t come to mind. My monthly expenses will remain about the same.

The primary reason I won’t save any money is that our two bedroom apartment is about twice the cost of my studio apartment. The new apartment is a lot nicer but I’m not sure if it is really worth the extra money. I suppose this could be considered lifestyle inflation and I would guess lifestyle inflation is a major reason why many couples don’t realize much or any savings from combining their expenses. In our case we didn’t have a lot of time to find a new place so we couldn’t review all the lower cost options. Next time we will be able to get a better deal. I am not complaining, there are a lot of benefits from our combining our households but saving money isn’t one of them.