I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘savings’ Category

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.

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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

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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!

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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

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Today my spouse’s direct deposit of his paycheck cleared and I completed what we have been working towards for the past two months. I finished fully funding our $1000 emergency fund with a $100 transfer from checking to savings. I never knew saving could feel so good. For the first time in a very very long time, I don’t feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff waiting for a disaster to push me over.  For the past few years, we had been using the college fund we started for my son as our “backup” emergency fund and even though rarely did an occasion arise that it had to be dipped into, and the money was always replaced first priority and as soon as possible, having this be our backup plan just stunk.  I always felt like we were just *this close* to a major catastrophe. Now my son’s (and daughter’s) college savings accounts are in totally separate ING subaccounts not at all attached to our emergency fund, and our emergency fund all on its own stands at the magic $1000 number.

I could, yes, use this $1000 to reduce my credit card debt and then use my credit card in case an emergency. From a purely numbers perspective, that does make more sense, and I do love the numbers. But I just can’t do it. I can’t rely on a credit card as an emergency fund. It doesn’t sit right in my heart and it makes me even more anxious and nervous and on edge than relying on my son’s college fund did (and that made me miserable).

Right now I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of peace and just mellowness that has come over me. If I knew it was this simple to feel so much less anxious I might have tried it a long time ago. I feel like our financial life is becoming ordered and adult and everything is falling into place. And by extension, the rest of our life feels more settled too. A whole lot of things tie into money after all.

You can’t buy this kind of peace of mind.  Or wait, maybe you can.  For $1000. 

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