Cash The Checks

I went a little crazy with my betting this week. I placed 6 $20 wagers for a total of $120 on the line. My account is currently at only $15.57. This is the make-it or break-it week. If I’m going to make it to $500 by the end of the season, I’m going to need to win 5 out of 6 of these bets.

Are any of these bets a “lock” ? I’m extremely confident that the total score of the Cardinals Falcons game will be 40 or under. Why? A few years ago, the Falcons beat the Cardinals 6-3! And last week, the Falcons scored only 3 points against New Orleans on Monday night. After a hyped-up game and less time to practice, I don’t see the Falcons scoring more than 20 points this game. I nearly bet more than $20 on this one..

Lets see how I do this week, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

My NFL gambling goal this year is to turn $100 into $500 by the end of the NFL season. I’ll be placing bets at Sportsbook.com. Every week, on Saturday, I’ll be posting my NFL picks, what to wager and how much. In case you want to follow along and place the same bets, send me your name and email and you’ll get an email to sign up and create your account. You’ll also get a 10% signup bonus so if you deposit $500 you’ll have an extra $50 to play with.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s this 15k challenge going on. One guy with limited funds is going to try and make $15,000 in 30 days with a new project. You can follow the progress at: http://www.15kchallenge.com/blog/

Its’ marketing tactics are guerilla and viral marketing tactics, my favorite! The market targetted in this challenge is the crafts market. Seems like an untapped niche, just a hard one to get all riled up about. It has however inspired me enough to jot down some ideas for a scrapbooking tutorial site.. don’t go stealing my ideas now though.

Placed two small bets and lost both of them this week. My Sports Book account is now at $135.57. Still a long way from $500.

Filling out the application at HSBC was simple enough, just put in your information and you’re done. It isn’t that easy to open an account and begin earning interest though.

After joining, my application still wasn’t complete because I needed to prove that the address I entered was my real address. So I had to mail in some form of proof. Any utility bill would do, so I mailed in a copy of my DSL bill which showed my current address. This just cost me some printer ink, paper, an envelope, a $0.39 stamp and of course my time to get the paperwork and get it off to the post office. I also had to confirm my bank account information by verifying a small deposit HSBC made to my account.
Within just 2 days of mailing my information, I received a notification that they received it and my application was approved. I thought it was over but it was only the beginning. Next I needed a customer ID number, a username and a password, an ATM card and a pin number. All of which needed to be mailed to me, in SEPARATE mailings! As you can imagine this took quite a while. I did get one mailing per day on average though.

After getting my information, I finally was able to log in to my account at HSBC. I wanted to transfer some money into my HSBC account, this is what they call a “Bank To Bank Transfer”. I put in my bank information and I also needed to type in my ATM pin number. The problem was that I didn’t have one. So I called HSBC to ask them for one, and they said they’d mail it to me, big surprise. A day later I had the mailing and was able to complete my bank to bank transfer request. When that was done, I transferred some funds into my HSBC account from my checking account and the process was finally over.

This week is a real tough week. I only made a couple of $10 bets. I certainly won’t make it to $500 by betting this little. But it’s a start.

Ravens to beat the Browns by 8 points or more.

Bears to beat the Vikings by 3 points or more.

I finally decided to give HSBC a try because of their much higher APY rate. Currently it’s at 5.05% which is much higher than ING’s 4.35% APY. After the Feds raised interest rates, ING only went up slightly while HSBC raised their rates significantly. This one move was the biggest factor that led to me opening an HSBC account. In the next post I’ll detail the HSBC sign-up process and how it all turned out for me.

I placed 3 bets this week.

Chargers to beat the Titans by 12 or more. The Chargers won by 33. Wagered $20 and won $20.

Ravens to beat the Raiders by 14 or more. The Ravens won by 22. Wagered $20 and won $17.39.

Seahawks to beat the Cardinals by 8 or more. The Seahaws won by 11. Wagered $20 and won $18.18.

Total earned this week: $55.57.

Total in account: $155.57

I’m adding $100 to my Sportsbook.com account, and by the end of the NFL season, I predict I’ll finish with $500. Each week, I’ll be placing a few bets, probably $20 each. I’ll be posting my results here every single week. Let the challenge begin..

The NFL season has started and it’s time to start making some bets on Sportsbook.com. I decided not to make any bets on Week 1 and I’m glad I did. Lots of road teams won and there were plenty of upsets. Week 1’s are always so unpredictable. Week 2 should be tough also. Good teams that lost their first game don’t want to start off 0-2 because then it’s time to panic. Let’s see a few games I might be betting on this week.

New York Giants vs Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles are favored by 3. I might pick the Giants on this one. This team may end up in the Super Bowl and they can’t start off the season 0-2.

New Orleans Saints vs Green Bay Packers. The Saints are favored by 2.5. I got the Packers on this one. Even though the Saints won their first game, even though they have Reggie Bush at running back and Drew Brees at QB, the Packers completely annihilated the Saints last year. I believe it was a 40+ point victory. This game is going to be close and this is one of the only games the Packers have a shot at winning this year.

I received a Circuit City Rebate check recently, from a camera I had purchased. In previous years, rebates would either never arrive or would takes months. This one took about 1 and a half months. I was surprised at the quick transit time. I doubt less than half of rebates ever get fulfilled. You have to follow the rules extremely carefully. Here’s a few rebate rules I’ve seen.

You must have purchased the product within a certain set of dates. You need the UPC label, the receipt, and you need to fill out a form. The most annoying part is cutting out the upc label or trying to make a copy of it. The most difficult part is actually filling out the form. It’s usually very difficult to fill out the form because the lines are so close together and they rarely give you enough space to write.

They also state that if anything on your rebate mailing is wrong, you don’t get a rebate and they won’t even tell you if something’s wrong, they will simply discard your form. Rebates are a good way to save money but you must be willing to do a little work to get some money back.

The site to check your Capital One points is: https://www.capitalonepointsrewards.com

I was always looking for how many points I had on my capital one credit card account area, but could never find out how many points I had. It turns out that when you log-in to check your account, there’s a pop-up which has a link to your points account. I use FireFox so the pop-up was always blocked and I never got to see it.

You have to sign up for an all new rewards points account which is completely separate from your usual capital one account, which is a hassle. It’d be better if you could check all of your account information from one place, not two.

Looking for a better insurance option to protect you and your family? You need to choose what exactly you require from your insurance service before you get insurance quotes from the leading insurance companies. Your needs might range from health insurance to dental insurance and home insurance. Or you might just be looking for a solution to recover from a bad credit loan or mortgage. Once you have made that critical initial decision, you’ll look for best insurance provider in your locale. Obvious choice will be california insurance if you are from California and similarly for other states.