Owner: Free By 50 URL:http://freeby50.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:36:41 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Personal finance blog focussed on frugal use of money and investing. The long term goal is to retire early and be Free By age 50. Site statistics:Click here
Avoid devices that are supposed to save gasoline 2008-07-16 15:24:01 The other day a relative of mine told me about a device he had heard of that was supposed to increase your cars fuel economy. Someone had told him that it more than doubled their cars MPG. There were even supposed to be tax incentives available from the IRS for purchasing this miraculous invention. The story sounded fishy to me so I looked into it. Sure enough its basically just a scam. Read more:Avoid
Specifics on some restaurant birthday freebies 2008-07-15 16:35:04 Previously I wrote about Saving at restaurant
s #2- birthday & email club discounts In that article I talked about joining clubs at restaurants that give you freebies for your birthday.McCormick and Schmick : Free dinner entrée up to $40. I got this one as part of their rewards club. It came in postal mail and I think they mailed it 1-2 weeks before my birthday and it was good for 6 months
Good Book : Investing for Dummies 2008-07-14 18:45:00 This is a review of Investing
for Dummies
by Eric Tyson. I have the 2nd edition copy dated 1999. They are now on the 4th edition and a 5th edition is due out soon.When I reviewed Small Business for Dummies I commented that I like the Dummies series. Reading a Dummies book doesn't mean you're literally a dummy but its just a conscious admission that you have more to learn on a topic.Investing
Reusable grocery bags are a good buy. 2008-07-11 15:23:01 I while ago our grocery stores started marketing and selling reusable cloth bags. They generally sell for about $1 each. They are large sturdy bags that easily replace the standard paper or plastic grocery bags. Plus our grocery store gives us 5¢ off for each bag we use. If you go to the grocery store about weekly you're saving about $2.50 a year for a $1 purchase. That's a 250% return Read more:Reusable
FICO score estimator 2008-07-10 13:10:05 The myFICO site has a page that will estimate your FICO score. Of course it doesn't replace getting your actual FICO score but if you don't have a specific need to know your FICO then using the estimator isn't a bad idea. I would assume that the estimator would probably place your score in the right ballpark given that you provide it correct information.
Renting solar panels? 2008-07-09 15:27:01 Previously I discussed the financial feasibility of installing solar panels to provide electricity to your home. From a comment by 99k on Free Money Finance article I heard about a company named Citizenrē They are a startup that plans to rent solar panels to homeowners at a fixed cost. You'd buy the electricity from them below your current electric rate and the cost would be fixed. They ha Read more:Renting
$25 at Restaurant.com for $5 unitl July 13th 2008-07-08 15:10:01 New offer at Restaurant.com. Now thru 7/13, Take 50% off $25 Gift Certificates. Pay $5 when you use the code DELICIOUS.
Money merge account - not a good idea. 2008-07-08 12:14:01 Recently a friend sent me an email about a "money merge
account" from a company named United First Financial. My friends email said the account would help you pay off your 30 year mortgage in 7-10 years simply by using a home equity line of credit (HELOC) and without changing your own spending habits. It seemed too good to be true and I think it is. At best its just a way to shuffle money aro Read more:Money
Not all prices are going up. 2008-07-07 16:37:00 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that May inflation is up +4.2% from last year. With the cost of gas going through the roof lately and the grocery bill rising as well it is easy to see first hand that many prices are going up. But while some prices are certainly going up a lot, not everything is increasing in price. The full CPI report with the increases for each category is post
ooma home phone service device 2008-07-06 17:57:01 I saw this device called an ooma hub advertised on Amazon recently. The company ooma makes a device called the ooma hub that works with your broadband internet to give you free home phone
service. It costs about $250 to buy the system. Thats a decent price compared to a monthly cost for phone service via the phone company or internet VOIP companies like Vonage.The ooma device supports free
Are wood pellet stoves financially practical? 2008-07-05 12:40:13 Both my uncle and one of my friends have wood pellet stoves to heat their homes. Wood pellet stoves are basically just wood stoves that burn small pellets made of wood. The pellets are sold in bags and you dump them into the stove which then burns the pellets as needed over time to provide heat for your home. Last winter my friend told me he uses about 1 bag of pellets a day and the bags ru
Is installing residential wind power financially practical? 2008-07-04 15:26:01 I personally think that wind power
is a great idea. It has a fixed cost, theres no dependence on a foregin producer and it is environmentally friendly. In recent years wind power has become pretty practical economically. Wind power installations are growing pretty fast nationally.Most wind power is in the form of giant windmills built by electric utilities. These are out in remote areas wit Read more:residential
Is solar power financially practical? 2008-07-03 17:01:31 I've looked at solar power
before to see if it might be practical to install solar panels at my own home and have it provide some of my homes electricity. There is a website Find Solar that has information on home solar installations. From that site they have a 'My Solar Estimator' calculator that will help you estimate the cost of a solar system including the tax benefits and rebates for you Read more:solar power
Service to Prepay for gasoline and save 2008-07-02 13:56:19 MSN has an article Service
Lets drivers lock in gasoline prices about a service called MyGallons.com.I took a look at the MyGallons.com website. It seems they basically just let you prepay for gasoline and then you use a special credit card to buy the gas later. The service costs $30 a year to sign up.If we assume that gasoline is going up then this is a pretty sweet deal. You could have sa
Save money on car rental changing rental location 2008-07-01 18:30:01 If you fly somewhere and need to rent a car you will typically rent the car at the airport. But the airport location may in some cases be significantly more expensive to rent a car. I've seen this discussed a couple places lately, for example Five Cent Nickel mentions it in their post The Hidden Costs of Renting a Car.I decided to do a quick check of some prices on Enterprise to see how pric
Motley Fool reporting that load funds underperform no-load funds 2008-06-30 15:37:59 The Motley
Fool reports in the article Don't Touch These With a Ten Foot Pole that :"It turns out that load funds consistently underperform no-load funds, even when you back out fees."Loaded funds are mutual funds that have a commission to buy them up front. So you have to pay a percent of the investment to the broker just to get into the fund. Because there is such a commission they are start
GPS navigation for your car saves time and money. 2008-06-29 15:41:26 Recently I spent a week in Hawaii on the big island with my new wife on our honeymoon. We had a great time. Somewhat surprisingly one of the things that really helped make the trip more enjoyable was my TomTom GPS
navigation unit. I bought a basic TomTom One unit around Thanksgiving last year on sale for $150. We used it a lot in Hawaii to get around and it really made things easier for u
Return of premium term life insurance - Is it a good deal? 2008-06-28 16:14:01 Return of Premium term life insurance
is a form of term life insurance
that promises to pay you back the premiums at the end of the term. This sounds almost too good to be true as if you're getting the insurance for free. Say you sign up for a 20 year return of premium term policy and pay $50 a month for the policy the whole 20 years. Then at the end of 20 years (assuming you didn't die) you' Read more:Return
Term versus permanent life insurance : Which is best? 2008-06-27 16:24:01 First of all what are term life and permanent
life? Simply speaking term life insurance
is insurance that covers a set period of time between typically 1 and 30 years. Permanent life insurance is structured to cover your entire life. A big difference between the two is that permanent life insurance such as whole life or universal life have a cash investment mechanism by which you save money Read more:versus
How much life insurance do you need? 2008-06-26 15:32:02 You should try to get enough life insurance
to provide for your spouse and dependents financial needs if you are gone. You don't want them to be lacking financially but you also don't want to over spend on insurance coverage that isn't really needed. So how do you figure how much insurance you'll need? Start by looking at your annual income and your debts and assets and consider any one time Read more:life insurance
What is a Living Trust and do I need one? 2008-06-25 17:22:01 If you watch Suze Orman at all you may have heard her recommend that people have a Living
Trust. I'm not familiar with a Living Trust other than from hearing Suze talk about it. Suze says its good to help avoid probate. So what exactly is a living Trust and whats probate for that matter?Living Trusts are a legal entity to put your assets in a trust while you are alive. It acts like a will
Tax credits for hybrid autos 2008-06-24 18:27:57 You may know that you can get a tax credit from the IRS if you buy a new hybrid vehicle. But you might not know that the credits available are limited per make of vehicle. When the allotted credits are used then further purchases will not be eligible for a credit.To check if a hybrid is still eligible for a credit and what the amount is, Fueleconomy.gov site has a table of current tax credits f
Good Book : Small Business for Dummies 2008-06-23 18:34:01 This is a review of the book "SmallBusiness
for Dummies
" by Eric Tyson and Jim Schell. I have the 2nd edition from 2003.I personally like the "Dummies" series of books. They provide no nonsense guides for a variety of topics and put it into terms that everyone can understand. They generally provide good comprehensive overviews of topics. Some might be a little put off by the "Dummies" titl Read more:Small Business
Financial changes after Marriage 2008-06-22 16:30:01 I've recently gotten married. Yay! Now that we're married there is a bit of paper work to do to update names and such.Below is an After the Honeymoon checklist from CountryWeddings.com that I found which will help aid in the processName Change & Other Tasks Change bank account names Read more:changes
, Financial
Idling your car costs about 2¢ per minute 2008-06-21 18:58:01 I found this article by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers that said :Idling a V6 engine without AC on used 0.5 gallons of gas in 90 minutes. So if I do the math for $4 gas costs then that's:$4 per gallon * 0.5 gallons / 90 minutes = $0.0222 / minuteIt costs 2¢ to idle your car for a minute.Your exact cost will vary and depend on the efficiency of the car. V8's will use more and 4 cy
How smoking could end up costing you a million dollars 2008-08-02 15:44:00 The typical cigarette smoker consumes one pack a day of cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes retails for around $3 give or take in most states. The exact cost will vary greatly from state to state due to different tax rates on cigarettes. But if we take $3 a pack as an average value then a typical smoker is spending $3 x 365 or $1,095 annually on smoking.If you were to start smoking now at age 18 Read more:dollars
, million
Is Amazon Prime worth $80? 2008-08-01 15:15:00 I've been a subscriber to Amazon
Prime for about 7 months now. I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. Items I buy are usually an occasional DVD, book or video game. They have good prices and selection and I've had good experiences with them in general. I originally subscribed to Amazon Prime when I was buying an HD-DVD player. If I recall right I helped avoid a shipping charge at the time by sig
US manufacturing jobs leveling off 2008-07-31 15:38:01 The USA has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs over the past few decades and for a while the number of jobs was dropping drastically. But it now looks like in the past few years that the losses are leveling off.Here are the total # of manufacturing jobs in the us (in thousands): 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 17,225 17,045 16,947 16,190 15,056 14,3
Recent increases in electiricty, natural gas and heating oil costs 2008-07-30 15:00:00 We all know that oil prices have skyrocketed over the past couple years. Gasoline prices have gone up drastically as well. So it should be no surprise that home heating oil has also jumped in price substantially.Natural gas prices are also on the rise. Across the nation natural gas is going up. The utility here is asking for a whopping 40% increase in their rates for natural gas.So what h Read more:Recent
Rex Agreement = Bad idea 2008-07-29 17:57:01 I just saw a TV commercial for something called a Rex Agreement
. Its a financial agreement where you get some equity out of your home in exchange for agreeing to give the company rights to a part of your homes future appreciation.Basically it works like this: You get money up front. In exchange for that the Rex company gets 50% of the appreciation in your home after its sold in the future.
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