Cash The Checks

On Thursday, June 26, 2008, bring a gas receipt to any Jack In The Box and they’ll give you 2 free tacos. No purchase is necessary. It seems like everyone is using the rising gas prices to create their own little promotional gimmick.

I’ve learned that there’s two ways of having more money, by earning it and by saving it.

Cutting down on unnecessary expenses, using coupons, buying things when there’s a special, a discount, a rebate, day after christmas sales. While these things don’t necessarily put more money into your pocket, they allow you to keep more money in your pocket. So in effect, these things directly lead to having more money at the end of the day.

You can always economize. Everything from fixing that leaky faucet, to changing your light bulbs to more efficient ones, to even picking up pennies you find on the floor, the possibilities are endless.

When I would get bills mailed to me, I would immediately pay them, as a fiscailly responsible individual. Lately though, I’ve been paying these bills only a day or two before they’re due. Here’s some of the advantages of doing that.

• You get to keep more of your own money for a longer period of time. How is this beneficial? You’ll earn more interest on that money. You’ll have more money to make investments on your business. The credit card company or DMV, etc, won’t have your money for nearly a month.
• You won’t be charged any finance/interest fees. Since you’re bill isn’t technically late, just barely on time, there aren’t any fees or disadvantages to doing this.
• With credit card bills, it will help your credit score or credit rating. When I checked my credit report last, about 5 months ago, I noticed that it showed my credit card “balance carried” amount every month. It would also show as $0. Even though I might have spent a good thousand dollars in a month, since I paid the bill immediately after it became available, it’d show as $0. So creditors would think I never spend a dime on a credit card and might not deem me as credit-worthy in their eyes.

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 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.

I’ve been looking for a good cash deposit box lately. I’ve gone to the usual stores like Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, etc, but I’m not seeing exactly what I’m looking for. They have these plastic looking things with more slots for change than for bills. I’ve also seen some heavy duty fire proof ones from Brinks Security.

It’s just that I’m not really looking for a cash register, I just want a box with some slots for bills, to facilitate keeping track of my savings. Of course something with a bit of security would be nice. Maybe something with a security code in it, something fireproof, something heavy, and small enough to fit in a wall or something.
Perhaps the problem is I’m not sure I myself know what I want. What I do know is that I’ll know it when I see it.

Isn’t the $10 the best looking bill out there? It’s new, the new $10 bills have a reddish tint to them. They’re pretty rare too. I see 1s, 5s, 20s and 100s all the time. But the 10s and 50s are becoming a rarity. It’s common to pay with a $20 bill and if the change is $11+ you’ll get two 5’s and a 1, not a 10 and a 1.

For the last 2 years I’ve saved each and every 10 dollar bill I’ve had the luck of coming across. It started as an idea to save money. I’ll save my 10 dollar bills and spend everything else. Now it’s a hobby more than a savings gimmick.

You don’t always need to have property or collateral to get mortgage. You can consider consolidation loan as all-in-one option covering all of your financial needs. If you have good credit history proven in an authentic credit report, you might also get a credit loan . It will prevent you from getting stuck in a revolving debt cycle caused by financial decisions like home mortgage refinancing . Now, online credit card payment processing offered by financial and insurance companies has enabled online payments for health insurance through credit card.