I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘cool stuff’ Category

I am a tutor for Tutor.com, an online tutoring service that offers help for students in a variety of subjects including Algebra, Geometry, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Social Studies, Calculus, English, and more. The service is pretty neat in my opinion, students log on to an interactive classroom environment where they talk online to a tutor in the subject they chose for that session, and they talk via an instant message type window that has a whiteboard attached to it where you can work out examples in real time. Tutors in each subject are available 24/7 so the students can get help when it is convenient to them and use as few or as many minutes as they need.

One of the Tutor.com staff is a reader of this blog and contacted me to offer an exclusive trial to readers of PaidTwice - if you’d like to try out Tutor.com for yourself (or have your 6th to 12th grade child try it) instead of the normal 25 minute free trial, by using this link you can get 50 minutes free from Tutor.com. You can also use the promotional code PDTWICE to redeem your 50 free minutes. You don’t have to use your 50 minutes in one session - any unused minutes stay in your account for later use.

Generally, when I tutor, I have sessions ranging from a student who has already worked out a problem and just wants me to check it, to students who are completely lost on a particular problem and need me to help them understand it step by step. Tutor.com is not an answer service - we’re trained to help students through guided questions to understand concepts themselves so they can apply them to further problems down the line as well as solve their questions. I really enjoy tutoring and think that this service is an efficient way to do so - you use time in increments of minutes, so if it only takes 14 minutes to work through a problem, you still have the rest of your time bank to work on something else down the road.

Tutor.com also gave me a free trial to try the service from the perspective of a student, which I did this weekend. I found my tutor helpful and useful, and I was able to go through a complex chemistry problem with them by preparing much of it beforehand in only 22 minutes. That is another thing I like about the service - you can prepare what you already know beforehand as to not use up extra time in the session.

So if you are interested in trying the Tutor.com service - use my link and you’ll get twice the normal free trial minutes: 50 instead of 25. And if for any reason you’re not satisfied with your session, you can get a session credit to refund your minutes. Good luck and have fun!

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A week or two ago, I read a post on My Good Cents about ArtsCow.com offering 400 free photo prints (200 4×6s and 200 5×7s) to new customers.  I had never heard of ArtsCow so I checked it out, and signed up.  I did get credits for 400 free prints (50 a month of each for the next four months, basically).  And their normal prices for 4×6s and 5×7s are the cheapest I have seen anywhere.  However, the site had some red flags for me - particularly that much of the text was not grammatically correct and because of that to me, didn’t quite seem professional.  I investigated the website more, and found that if I placed an order, I could pay via paypal, so I felt like my financial information would be secure.  So I decided to redeem my first 50 free 4×6 prints and see what I thought.

I had to download a Microsoft extension to be able to upload more than one picture at a time, and even then, I found the upload tool rather primitive.  Once uploaded, I could select matte or glossy, which made me happy because I prefer matte prints.  The pictures were available in 4×6 not the more digital camera-friendly 4×5something that a lot of sites are giving as an option now, but that was okay.  They are free, after all.  I then ordered 50 prints and paid through paypal - the prints were free, but I paid $3.99 shipping.  (Shipping on 50 5×7s is $5.99 for me at least, by the way.)  $3.99 for 50 prints was only a little under $0.08 a print.

It took about a week or so for them to arrive, and I was pleasantly surprised, but also quite confused.  My order was fine - the pictures were printed on Fujifilm paper and the quality of printing seemed good.  The paper did feel a little bit thinner than a normal picture, I think.  I could be imagining that.  Since I am using them for scrapbooking that really doesn’t matter to me.  The weird thing, to me, is they were shipped from Hong Kong.  They even had a customs label on them.  How could the company be making any money if they are paying for shipping from Hong Kong?   I don’t get it.  I just… don’t get it.  So I looked up Hong Kong currency conversions, and as far as I can tell, they only paid $2.89 in US dollars to ship the pictures to me.  I think.  My brain cannot understand how this is possible, but, I guess it is.  I asked Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity what he thought about the shipping from Hong Kong thing, and he postulated that once they had enough business, they could mass ship from Hong Kong to the US and ship individually from here.

So, in short, I thought the pictures were good scrapbook quality, and I ordered my free 50 5×7 pictures for the month of May as well and am waiting for them to arrive.   That, as I said above, is $5.99 shipping, so unless you want 5×7s specifically, not as good a deal.  But I did have a number of pictures I wanted as 5×7s that I have been collecting up over the past year or so, so I was happy to redeem my credit.  I haven’t decided if I will redeem the other 5×7 credits as they come up, but I will be redeeming the rest of my 4×6 credits.

The free 200 4×6 and 200 5×7 offer is still going on now -  and since I was satisfied with my experience I want to pass it on to all of you.  If you sign up, you will get credits for 50 4×6 prints and 50 5×7 prints for each of the next 4 months (May, June, July, and August).   To redeem, you just have to click on the link in your account page for the appropriate credit, and fulfill your order as normal.  I do get a referral credit for each person who orders something for free prints for me, 100 4×6 ones I think - but I have no idea if that counts if my referral just order the free prints since you are only paying for shipping.  That is fine though - just get free prints!  That is what I am getting. :)   Free prints for everyone!  This is a limited time offer - they are only doing the free prints until they give out a certain number of credits, so even if you aren’t sure you want to do it, you might want to create an account for to collect your free credits and then decide later.

You all know how I love free prints.  These aren’t quite free because you pay for shipping - but still less expensive than I can currently order pictures elsewhere.

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My inlaws visited us for a week recently, and while they were here, they shopped at our local Kroger quite a bit. My inlaws have lots of specific dietary needs and wants, and instead of sharing them with me so I could stock up on what they like, they chose to just go get stuff themselves when they were here. Which is nice of them - not necessary of course, for they were our guests, but it was what they wanted to do, so I gave them space in the pantry and fridge to store their stuff and let them do what they wanted.

When they left, besides getting to finish off their leftovers, my mother-in-law left for me a stack of the grocery coupons from Kroger that print out with your receipt. Not being one to turn down a coupon, I sorted through them, and found that most of them were for things we don’t buy or use. But one… one was exciting. Thrilling for me even. There was a coupon to go online and enter a code to get a $5 Starbucks gift card. My father-in-law had bought himself some Starbucks ground coffee (not realizing I had gotten special coffee just for him for his visit, which he ended up drinking instead) and that had generated a coupon for a Starbucks gift card.

So I ordered it. And it arrived yesterday afternoon (along with a $4 survey check and 50 of my 200 free 4×6 prints from ArtsCow, more on that next week with my complete review, but you can get them too) and I have been excited about it ever since. Today was a great day for the US Mail and me! A free trip to Starbucks to have a little coffee treat! There is a Starbucks in the Target just down the street from me, and I am going to jet on over this weekend on my way to taekwondo. I think I can still get a drink there for under $5, it has been so long I’m honestly not sure - but I am confident I can make it work.

And all because I looked through a pile of random coupons instead of throwing them away. Sometimes, the little things really do pay off. And a $5 gift card is a small thing to some - but has made me feel very cheery.

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One of my readers, A @ Too Much Time For Nothing, alerted me in a comment this morning that Walgreens has another free picture special today and today only.  Use the code 4MOM and get a free 8×10.  If you pick it up at the store, there is no shipping, so it really is free!  I did this a while back with a free 15 4×6 prints offer on taxday and it all went off without a hitch.  I’ve ordered my 8×10 and used the code - my invoice says my total due is $0.00 so I just have to go pick it up!  I so love free pictures.   Since I drive right by a Walgreens on my way to taekwondo, it doesn’t even cost me more than a cent or two of gas maybe to pull in and pick it up.

This is a timely order for me, because my inlaws just visited and my father-in-law took lots of pictures of me with the kids - since I am usually the person behind the camera I have hardly any pictures with me in them.  In honor of Mother’s Day, I ordered a picture of my son and I at taekwondo class.

So if you live near a Walgreens - take advantage of the free 8×10 offer today!  I just got an email my order is ready for pickup. 

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Saturday, at least.

I just logged into my bank account and was shocked to see my checking balance was a little over $5000.  My spouse got paid yesterday, and I’ve moved money to pay for the furnace to my checking, but those things don’t add up to $5000.  So I looked at the account detail, and there was a deposit for $1800 from the US Government.  The link I looked at from the IRS said I would get my early economic stimulus Monday, but it is here.  Ta da!

They called it a “tax refund” on the line item explanation.  Interesting.

I will enjoy having $5000 until my mortgage check is cashed (which should have happened already, and is what I was checking on actually) and then Thursday when I pay for the new furnace.  It’ll be a rough week for outflow.  Heh.  And then my checking account will be restored to its normal pittance.   I am looking forward to the new furnace though, since yesterday our current furnace got itself stuck on (without us even turning it on) and the whole house was about 85 when I got home.  Yay.  We have ghosts who are cold!

Must go back to our yard sale… I’ve made $4 so far.  But its only 9:30am.  :)   I’ll report on that later, hopefully with happy news!

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