I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘savings’ Category

I have a savings account with ING Direct. I faithfully deposit money into 3 of my 4 subaccounts every month. I have referred a number of people to them through the powers of the world wide web. And yet, no one bothered to tell me that they lowered their interest rate yesterday from 4.5% to 4.3% APY even though they did apparently tell some of their customers via email.

I found out basically by seeing other bloggers write about an email they received notifying them of the rate change and then logging in to my accounts and checking on them. Sure enough, my rate was lowered too (of course). I know this sounds silly, but I’m more upset that no one from ING Direct bothered to send me an email to let me know than I am about the lowered rate. Yes, I know, I don’t have massive deposits there, but our 4 subaccounts equal about $1800 which for us is a huge amount to have saved at one place.

Being treated like a nobody and disposable because I was a small-balance customer is one of the many reasons I left Wachovia’s investing division. I hope ING doesn’t see me that way. I can only assume that my small balance has something to do with being low on the list of people to let know about the rate change. But it matters to me too. Because when I am treated like I don’t matter, I feel like I don’t matter.

I may be looking around for a new “high-yield” online bank soon. Not just for a better rate.

I need to do this. I need to just suck it up and start getting the Sunday paper. I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t know why I haven’t.

I guess I just feel like I don’t want to spend the money to get the Sunday paper just to get coupons I might not use. But seriously…. people save so much money using those grocery sites that match coupons with sales at the grocery store. I can do that. I can use the internet. One of the stores on those websites is practically across the street from me. But it seems like I’ll end up spending even more money trying to take advantage of sales and my grocery budget will implode on me. But that’s mostly me making excuses… because doing this spending money to save money thing takes me totally out of my comfort zone.

I have this serious mental block against spending money to save money. It is illustrated in my analysis of The Dough Roller’s series this week about parallels between finances and chess. I was never a very good chess player, passable but not brilliant by any means, mostly because I cannot sacrifice my queen. I just… can’t. Giving up the queen makes me shudder inside, even if through that I can gain a serious advantage. It is illustrated in the comments when I try to play his chess challenges. I just can’t see past giving up the queen and ahead to what I might gain. I’m like that about spending money to save money. I can’t see past the spending money part to get to the saving money part.

I need to get past this mental lapse, this brain roadblock…. if only I knew how. I guess how is going to a store this Sunday and buying a Sunday paper….

We’ll see.

No Credit Needed is running a 33 day series on 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt. The first topic, posted today, is about eliminating fees. I thought I’d chime in with my advice about eliminating fees – know all the facts about your accounts so you don’t incur them. Especially if your bank or credit card or other account gets bought by a new lender/institution.

A few months back, I had a $3 charge on my savings account at the end of the month. I have a savings account at my local brick and mortar institution connected to my checking account at the same location that has a low minimum balance to avoid monthly fees. I knew my balance had been well above that the whole month, so I was confused and started delving deeper into my savings account agreement through the online documentation. When I had first opened the account 7 years ago, I had read all the accompanying documentation and was aware of what fees may be involved for certain actions. But about 2 years later, my bank was bought by another larger bank, and I got a new customer agreement that I barely skimmed other than to see what the minimum balance was and what fee was associated with being under it. Big mistake. Just because the minimum balance fee was the only one in my old agreement that I thought might apply to me at some point didn’t mean the new agreement might have different terms I needed to be cognizant of and adhere to.

Now, after incurring this $3 mystery fee, reading the online customer agreement, I found out that I was only allowed 3 free withdrawals from my savings per month, and every one after that incurred a $3 fee. I don’t often withdraw from that account more than once a month, so I hadn’t gone over the limit before, but this particular month I had been setting up my ING account and transferring money out of my savings to my checking for various subaccounts and had gone over the maximum free withdrawals by one. Oops!

Since my brick and mortar savings bank account earns paltry interest (about 0.25% at last reckoning), that $3 had just wiped out any interest we had earned maybe… ever. We use the account for short term savings (like annual bills etc) so the interest rate didn’t bother me vs availability of funds. But… oops! If I had just been aware of the withdrawal limit (and I take full responsibility for not being aware) I could have structured my withdrawals more efficiently and never paid that $3 fee.

Be aware of *all* possible fees! You can save money easily by just not spending it in the first place. I’ve made a promise to myself to never pay another unnecessary fee.

~J

I don’t do a lot of coupon-clipping. I don’t even get a Sunday paper with the inserts to get coupons. I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 on coupon using I am about a 3. I am not saying that it is not worth it to clip coupons weekly – in fact, I am a big proponent of many small savings adding up to a big savings. I’m just not to that point with coupons yet. But there are a few things that I almost always, if not always use coupons for. These are my “big ticket” items, the single things that on their own cost me the most. For me, the most important of those is diapers, because they are expensive and there are coupons out there that can save large amounts of money at a time (or on multiple items at once). So when I want coupons, I turn to eBay.

eBay can be a great source for multiple and/or high-value coupons if you know what to look for. The “cost” of the auction is for compensating the clipper for their time clipping, for one can’t sell a coupon. But we have to decide what their time clipping was worth and what we are willing to pay. Here are some tips I use in finding the best clipper for my money:

Be as specific in your search as possible.

Don’t be worried that you’ll miss some by being specific. You can always run multiple searches, tweaking your keywords, until you see the results you want. And you can click-up a category once you have results if you think you need a broader base to search. But too broad and there are so many results that the perfect coupon could be completely lost in the shuffle. Especially since many titles you find, you’ll have to click and read the description before being able to discount them as not the one you were looking for.

Shipping should always be the cost of a first class stamp (or less!)

Some people charge $2-3 for shipping! How heavy are those coupons? You might be willing to pay a little more than $0.41 shipping for the right coupon if you can’t find a more fair shipping cost on the same coupon elsewhere, but make sure that is factored into what you are paying for the coupon. Don’t end up paying more than what you’ll save!

Don’t pay for what you don’t want

Many many times, a bunch of coupons are sold together in a bundle. When deciding what you are willing to bid for a coupon, base you bid *just* on what you actually want from the bundle, not the entire bunch. Bidding on coupons you don’t want is worse than clipping them, it doesn’t just cost you time, but money as well. It doesn’t matter if you could save $10 on a baby bouncer if you don’t want a baby bouncer, and if that is included with another coupon you do want, base your bid solely on the coupons you want.

Look out for internet-printed coupons you could find on your own

A big red flag for this is many many multiples of the same coupon in a single batch. If the coupon seems like it was printed from the internet, do a little searching on the internet yourself and see if you can find it. A few google searches will usually do. You don’t want to spend an hour searching for something you could buy for $1 necessarily, but you don’t want to pay $1 for something you could have found in two minutes and printed yourself.

Pay attention to expiration dates

Very often, coupons up on eBay may be expiring soon. If you aren’t going to be able to use it before the expiration date, it is not going to help you. This is especially true when there are 20+ of the same coupon in a batch. Are you going to commit to buying 20 gallons of orange juice in the next two weeks? Probably not.

I hope some of these tips help you find a great bargain! There are many other places you can find coupons online, eBay is just my preference right now. If you have to be a consumer, be a savvy one!

I have a lot of little bookmarks marching across the toolbar on my browser. One of them is for ING Direct. I do, of course, need to log in once a month or so to do my monthly transfers to savings (no, I don’t have it automated and I like it that way) and I like to check when I get a referral to see which account it went to.

But sometimes, I log in just to check on my money. Not because I think it went somewhere, but just to say hi. And see my little interest counter and see how much it has grown since the last time I looked.

Is that odd? Am I the only one who wonders if my money would be lonely if I didn’t say hi once in a while? Besides, the web page always looks so happy to see me. Even if it is orange.

~J