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.

August 2015 Goals and Plans

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It has been a while since I’ve done a post reviewing my monthly and yearly goals. I made some goals for June and never got around to reviewing how I did on those goals. The fact that I pretty much forgot what those goals were gives you a pretty idea how I did.  I didn’t even bother making any goals for July since I knew I wouldn’t meet them. When I’m working full-time I don’t accomplish anything outside of the job. There has been a lack of progress on my yearly goals as well.

My yearly goals are are to keep my expenses under $1k a month, run a 5k in under 23:59, and be able to do one pull-up. If you don’t count medical expenses I’ve been doing pretty well at keeping my expenses under $1k a month. I’m doing okay on that goal.

I’m doing terrible on my other two goals. If I had to run a 5k today I would probably be slower than I would have been at the beginning of the year. I need to get into a routine or running regularly. It has been too hot to run outside. That isn’t much of an excuse though since we do have a treadmill in the basement. I do find running on the treadmill boring, but I need to do it anyway if I’m going to make any progress on my 5k goal. Although I doubt it is possible for me to make this goal by the end of the year I’d still consider this goal a partial success if I could considerably improve my 5k time. A new goal of running a 5k under 30 minutes is probably more realistic.

My arms might be slightly stronger, but I’m a long way from being able to do a pull-up.  I did buy some dumbbells back in June and have been using them semi-regularly. I need to buy some new weights since I’ve maxed out on the weights that came with the dumbbell set. I seriously doubt I’ll be able to do a pull-up by the end of the year. I’m not sure what I could set as a new goal in place of this goal.

I’m only setting one goal for this month since it is a big goal for me. This month I intend to give up drinking soda. I already tried to do this a couple of times last month, but gave up when the caffeine withdrawal headaches and other symptoms hit. I just started a new attempt at quitting soda this weekend and woke up with a terrible headache and body aches this morning. I drank some tea to get some caffeine which has lessened my aches although it hasn’t cured them. My plan for quitting this time is rather than quitting cold turkey I’ll cut down to one 12 oz soda a day for a week or two in order to hopefully reduce the withdrawal symptoms when I quit the soda completely. I’ve been having sleep, fatigue, and digestive problems which I’m thinking are probably caused at least in part from my large intake of soda.

I have a tentative plan to start a roughly one-month hike on the Appalachian Trail on August 25th. If my health and finances permit me to hike than I will hike. The hike should allow me to lose weight which will be helpful in making progress towards my 5k and pull-up goals. Being in the woods without regular access to convenience stores and fast-food should also make it easier to give up soda.

If you have any tips on how I could make better progress on my goals I’d love to hear them.

July Income – $2311.68

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Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

Online Income $71.80
Interest $1.13
Cash Back $11.10
Amazon FBA $156.53
Uber $0
Mystery Shop $13
Job $2058.12
Total $2311.68

July was a good income month. This was due to my document review job that I worked the end of June and the first two and half weeks of July.  I had to take some time off of that job for my dental implant surgery. This job is project based and I may return to it after my Portland trip and hiking trip if they have another project for me to work on.

I would prefer to make the majority of my income from my alternative income sources, but I haven’t been very successful at doing that yet. I didn’t have any Uber income last month since it didn’t make since to make low pay at Uber when I could work more hours at my document review job which pays roughly double what I make from Uber.

My Amazon FBA income is starting to pick up.  Although my profit wasn’t that high this was actually my highest income month from FBA. My profit was low because I bought a label printer, labels, a barcode scanner, and upgraded to a profession account. Although these expenses brought my profit down for July I believe they will result in higher profits in the coming months. I sold at least one item every day last week and I have a lot more inventory for sale than I’ve ever had before. This should result in August being a new high FBA income month. I have a long ways to go before this replaces my job income, but I do believe it is possible.

 

 

July Expenses – $3745.91

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

Household $410
Entertainment $0
Transportation $90
Food $105.94
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $61.40
Phone $36.79
Health $2857.92
Total $3745.91

 

My July expense were rather high. This was due for paying for my dental implant surgery which was an expected expense. Other than that my expenses were fairly typical and were just slightly over my $1000 a month target.

I will still have to have at least one more oral surgery since I need three implants and they only placed one. I’m hoping the other two will be placed at the same time. I have already paid for all three implants so I shouldn’t have any more dental expenses for a while. Unfortunately, I will have another medical expense in September or October. I was scheduled to have a biopsy in June, but the doctor wasn’t available on the scheduled date and canceled the appointment. I decided not to reschedule the biopsy, but I’ve since been persuaded that it would be wise to have it done and I’m thinking I’ll be able to schedule it for sometime in September.

Entertainment expenses came in at $0 which is the first time I think I’ve ever had that happen. We went to the movies a couple of times using free gift cards.  The main reason this category is $0 though is because the local casinos have been generous in supplying us with free slot play and free meal credit. This provided us with free entertainment and even made us a little money as well.  The casinos will eventually figure out that we’re only playing the free money and not using our own money. Until then we will get all we can out of their comps.

My health expense should return to normal this month. We are traveling to Portland for four days later this month and at the end of the month I will begin an extended hiking trip. The airfare for both of these trips has already been paid so these trips shouldn’t add too much expense to the travel category. Other than those exceptions my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.

Flippy Friday – Ipad Air 2 16gb

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apple ipad air 2Welcome to the latest edition of Flippy Friday where I share one of the items I recently flipped through the Amazon FBA program. This week’s item is  the Apple Ipad Air 2 16GB. Ipads are great products to flip because they sell quickly. I don’t normally like to spend this much money on one item to flip, but I make an exception for iPads since they are quick sellers.

This opportunity became available when Target had these iPads on sale for $399. These iPads were going for about $445 on Amazon. Although the Target price was $45 cheaper than Amazon once you added in sales tax and Amazon fees this would have been a small money loser.  Fortunately, Target also had a Cartwheel deal for 10% off iPads which could be applied to the sales price of the iPads. This brought the before tax price down to $359. Once tax was added I ended up paying $388.19 for my iPad.  It sold the day it arrived at Amazon for $449. After fees I made $32.88 on this flip. That isn’t too bad for less than an hours work.

I also bought a second iPad using discounted Target gift cards. The cards were 7.5% off which just about covered the sales tax. This resulted in an almost $60 profit on the second iPad.  I also received 2% cashback on my credit card that I used to purchase the discounted gift cards. Although I don’t break my shipping cost down per item I know that the credit card cashback was easily enough to cover my shipping cost.

Many FBA sellers don’t like to bother with items with this small of a profit margin. I think it is worthwhile selling a more expensive item even though the margin is smaller since it still results in nice dollar amount profit. It would have been possible to use the Cartwheel discount four times. After my iPads sold so quickly I was wishing I had purchased a couple more. For now, I don’t want to take the risk of spending too much money on one item. I can’t have my cash flow tied up for too long and there is always a possibility that the price will drop dramatically after I’ve purchased the items. I’m happy with the profit I made on these two iPads and wish I was able to find deals like this more often.