How I’m Currently Saving 20% on Gas

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fuelgauge 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.

Flippy Friday – John Cena WWE Deluxe Trainer

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Since at least one reader has expressed in learning more details about how I’m making money with Amazon FBA I have decided to start a feature where I share the details of an item I’ve sold on Amazon. I’m calling this feature Flippy Friday. There won’t be a post every Friday but I hope to have a post on most Fridays.

The first product sale I will share with you is the John Cena WWE deluxe trainer.  This is a toy that I bought back in April and sold in May. I found this product while looking for clearance items at Sears that I could sell for a profit on Amazon. I haven’t had much luck finding products at Sears to sell on Amazon. This product is one of the few items I’ve found to resell from Sears and it was one of my more profitable items. I bought the trainer for $14.97 and I was able to sell it for $54.25. It is rare that I find an item that I can sell for that much of a markup. After deducting the $14.32 in fulfillment fees from Amazon I made a profit of $24.96. Since I also had shipping fees my actual profit was a few dollars less.  I don’t keep track of my shipping fees by product, but if I shipped this item by itself it would have cost me about $4 or $5.  If I shipped it with other items then this item’s share of the  shipping cost would have probably been only about $2. Either way it was a pretty good profit. What makes this an even better deal is the fact that I purchased this item with Shop Your Way points which meant that I effectively paid $0 out of pocket. Although not many items at Sears are normally profitable Amazon flips when you factor in special deals that pay extra SYW points more items become profitable flips. I’ll write more about the SYW program in a later post if anyone is interested.

After making a nice profit and quick sell with this item I went back and bought two more of these trainers. Unfortunately, it appears that many other FBA sellers also bought this item on discount. The price plummeted from $54 to $20. I sold one at $20 which resulted in a $4.44 loss and I still have one more that hasn’t sold yet. This just goes to show that even if you have a product that was previously profitable there is no guarantee that it will remain that way and you have to accept the fact that you will have some losses. Buying a product that has an over 3x markup is a low risk purchase, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk.

If you have any questions about anything in this post or FBA in general please feel free to ask. Although I’m far from an expert on FBA I will share what I do know.

June Expenses – $1002.00

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

Household $407.57
Entertainment $38.16
Transportation $126.12
Food $107.79
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $0.00
Phone $36.78
Health $101.72
Total $1002.00

 

My June expenses were once again fairly low.  I missed my goal of $1000 or less in spending for the month by just two bucks.  My health expenses were lower than I thought since I had only a $4 prescription and a $14 lab fee to pay in addition to my monthly health insurance premium. This month’s expense will be a lot worse since I’m having my dental implant surgery which will cost about $2700. That is a pretty good deal for three implants, but I still hate to pay it.

My transportation expense was slightly inflated since I bought a $100 gas card for $90 which I didn’t completely use during the month. I bought another $100 gift card for $90 this month so the expense will be slightly inflated again.

We may book some airfare to Portland this month. Otherwise, all my expenses will probably be about the same this month as last month. The health category where I have to pay for my implant surgery being the notable exception.

June Income – $805.44

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Here is a breakdown of my income for June.

Online Income $219.67
Interest $0.91
Cash Back $10.41
Amazon FBA $53.65
Uber $153.8
Mystery Shop $15
Unemployment $202
Bank Bonus $150
Total $805.44

June was another terrible income month although it was at least better than May.  My various sources of income just don’t add up to a very significant amount.  They have a long way to go to provide replacement income for a job.

I did have three sources of income this month that I didn’t have last month. The first was a bank bonus of $150. That was pretty easy money. I need to find a new bank bonus to do now. The second was mystery shopping. This income is a month behind so this is from shops I did in May. I did a couple more in June so I’ll have mystery shopping income in July as well. The third source of income was unemployment. This is the first time I have ever filed for unemployment. The process wasn’t too difficult. The pay isn’t great though. I only received one week of unemployment since one week counted as a waiting week and the week after that I was employed again. The one week I did receive was a small check since it was based on my Missouri earnings last year and I made about 40% of my income in Kansas last year. My Uber earnings also reduced my check. I’m glad I don’t have to depend on an unemployment check to pay my bills.

The good news is that I did find employment and work the last two weeks of June. This is a document review job that I have done before. It is project based so my employment and hours fluctuate depending on whether there is a project available for me to work on. I only worked two days this week since my project came to an end. I’ll be starting a new project on Monday that will hopefully last until the third week of July when I’ll have to take some time off for my dental implant surgery. With the paycheck I received today and the one I’ll get next week my July earnings will already be more than my June earnings. I’m hoping I can add a lot more earnings before the month is over.

Student Loan Payoff Progress Report – June 2015

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studentloanpayoff I didn’t make any progress on paying off my student loan this month. Since I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a job and haven’t been making much money from my other endeavors I was only able to make the minimum monthly payment of $183.16. Since my loan accrues $21.26 in interest each day my loan balance has increased a few hundred dollars this month. That isn’t the direction I want my balance to go. I probably made a mistake by taking out the credit card balance transfer loans to pay down my student loan when I didn’t have a job. I felt certain I would have a job soon. Unfortunately, that feeling was wrong.

For now, I think I need to put my goal of paying off my student loan on hold. I need to concentrate on paying my monthly bills and putting any extra towards paying down the balance transfers on my credit cards. If I’m not able to pay them off before the 0% promotional rate ends then I’ll be stuck paying a ton of interest. That is why paying off the credit cards needs to be my priority now. Next month I will be getting three dental implants which will cost me $2700. The money I had set aside to pay for the implants has gone to pay for my medical bills from being hit by a car and another medical problem. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the driver’s insurance company is going to offer me a fair settlement so it could be quite a while before I’m reimbursed for those medical bills.

In order to make decent progress on paying off the student loans I need to find a job making $60,000 or more. Although I’m confident that I will eventually be able to find a job I seriously doubt that I’ll be able to find a job paying that much. That is waaaay more than I have ever earned before. A more likely scenario is a job that pays around $40,000 and I make the rest of the $60k from other sources such as blogging, Amazon FBA, and Uber. Until I’m able to significantly improve my financial situation I will need to keep the student loan payoff on hold and concentrate on paying off my credit cards.