December 2007

I know this is a little late, but I’d like to wish all of my readers and fellow bloggers a happy holiday season. I always look forward to the food and the fun. However, the holidays can also be a very stressful time of year.

Personally, I’ve been busy moving out of my apartment and preparing to move halfway across the country for my job that starts in a couple of weeks. On top of that, I decided to help my parents clean out their house as part of my Christmas present to them. You can find their names in the dictionary under packrat. Combine that with the fact that they haven’t moved in over 30 years, and you get a real life, claustrophobic nightmare.

A few days before Christmas, you could barely see the dining room floor, but with the a little help from some other family members, we were able to pull off a minor miracle. By Christmas day, the dining room was cleared out, and people could actually sit around the table and eat.

Alright, so maybe it wasn’t quite a miracle. I actually devoted two entire days to cleaning up the house, and I was pretty exhausted by the end. It was worth it though. My parents were very thankful for my gift to them, and all of our guests were impressed with how the house looked. It was definitely the best Christmas present I gave this holiday season.

To make things even better, my parents gave me something straight off of my list of 9 great gifts for a broke college student. #8 in case you’re wondering. Overall, this has been a great holiday season so far. Best wishes to everyone as the new year approaches!

With the holiday season in full swing, a lot of people have been blogging about gift cards, myself included. While I’ve stood firmly against gift cards as evidenced in my posts about 3 reasons why gift cards suck and 9 great gifts for a broke college student, others have their own unique take on the subject.

Get Rich Slowly - J.D. examined the pros and cons of gift cards, which generated a great discussion by his readers. In fact, he was able to write another post on gift card tips and tricks by simply collecting highlights from the comments on his first post.

Moolanomy - Pinyo shares the same disdain for gift cards that I have. He explores some interesting cultural differences and concludes that gift cards are evil. Be sure to check out his article before you end up giving the gift of consumerism.

MSN Money - Liz Pulliam Weston argues that gift cards are not gifts. She believes that gift cards are as impersonal as cash and says that the search for a gift is a gift itself.

Mighty Bargain Hunter - On the other hand, MBH feels that gift cards are gifts and shares a few reasons why.

What’s your take on gift cards? Are they good or evil?

Everybody loves music. Don’t you? I’ll give you $10 if you can find someone who can honestly say, “I hate music.” (Not really.)

There’s one small problem with music though. It can cost a lot of money — not something you’ll find college students with very often. I’d be extremely broke if I bought the CDs of every band that I enjoy listening to. It’s simply not feasible. That’s why there are things like radio.

Unfortunately, radio sucks. I want to listen to music, not advertisements, and I want a wider variety of music. One alternative is satellite radio, which is nice. A couple of my friends have it, and I’ve enjoyed listening to it while riding in their cars. The only problem is that you have to pay a fee for it. This may be fine for people with full time jobs, but for a college student who is slowly drowning in student loans, it’s like throwing another brick onto a sinking ship.

If only there were some way to combine the price of free radio with the benefits of satellite radio. Fortunately, there is! Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, here are three awesome sites where you can listen to great music for free:

Pandora Radio

http://www.pandora.com/

Type in the name of your favorite artist, song, or composer and Pandora will magically create a radio station featuring that music and more like it. Not only will you get to listen to your favorite music for free, you’ll also discover new music. The best part is that it’s commercial-free and doesn’t cost a dime. In fact, I’m listening to Pandora as I type this.

Last.fm

http://www.last.fm/

Last.fm is music with a social twist. Stats junkies will love Last.fm. Install a small program on your computer, and it’ll track the songs that you play and send the information to Last.fm (a process they call “scrobbling”). Based on this info, it will recommend music and connect you with “neighbors” who have similar musical tastes.

My favorite feature is “Neighborhood Radio” which will play songs that your neighbors have listened to. The biggest downside is that it takes a while to collect enough data for Last.fm to make good recommendations and connect you with appropriate neighbors.

SeeqPod

http://www.seeqpod.com/

SeeqPod is a music search and recommendation site that indexes content from around the Web and allows you to instantly play the songs you find when you search. It’s like Google for music. You can search for whatever music you want, put the songs in a list, and play them immediately. You can even save your playlist and embed it via a widget into your blog or website. Oh, and of course, it’s free.

A couple weeks ago I shared an easy way to make $24, but I recently realized that I forgot to mention something. There’s a simple way to make more money. The best part is that it requires practically no additional effort on your part. How do you do it? Just pass it on.

Thanks to CashCrate’s great referral program, you can turn the $24 into $32 with one easy step — tell a friend or family member.

Let’s see what happens if you simply get one friend to sign up with your referral link and complete the three offers I mentioned:

• $15 - Yahoo Success Center ($1.95 S&H)
• $5 - eFax
• $6 - Go Free Credit

After completing these three offers, your friend will have a $26 earnings balance. Thanks to CashCrate’s referral program, you get 20% of your referrals’ earnings (20% of $26 = $5.20). On top of that, you also receive a $3.00 bonus for each referral who meets the $10 minimum payout.

$5.20 + $3.00 bonus = $8.20

You’ll get an extra $8.20 for each person you refer. It’s doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the rest of the math.

$26 + $8.20 = $34.20 - $1.95 S&H = $32.25

As you can see, a referral is a simple way to boost your earnings from $24 to $32 with almost no extra effort. You just have to share CashCrate with a friend. Let’s see how quickly these referrals can add up:

2 referrals - $40.45
3 referrals - $48.65
4 referrals - $56.85
5 referrals - $65.05
6 referrals - $73.25

Not bad for less than an hour of your time, right? So get started now!

• Follow the tips in my post explaining how to make $24 with CashCrate.
• Follow the advice in this post and refer your friends.
• Get a check in the mail like the one below I received last week!

1. Gifts cards can only be used at one store.

A lot of people like giving gift cards as opposed to cash, because it’s more personal. Well, it may make the givers feel better about themselves, but it puts more pressure on the recipient. A gift card is basically cash with a ball and chain attached to it. Doesn’t sound so great anymore, does it?

The problem is that our needs and wants change throughout the year. Even if you get a gift card to someone’s favorite store, their priorities might be somewhere else at the moment. For example, I usually get at least one Best Buy gift card every year, and I enjoy getting new gadgets and toys. However, it’s not on the top of my list this year, because I’m getting ready to move halfway across the country for my new job. If I received cash, I would be able to use it to buy things I really need, like a bed or couches. With a Best Buy gift card, I’d just be tempted to spend money on something that I really don’t need right now, or I would put it away and potentially forget about it.

2. The store wins no matter what.

Does this situation sound familiar? You’ve got a $20 gift card, but what you want to get only costs $15. You don’t want to “waste” the remaining balance, but the only other thing you want brings your total up to $25. Great, this gift card just ended up costing you $5 out of your own pocket. What a wonderful gift!

There’s a reason stores promote gift cards. They win either way. If you leave a balance on the card, they already have the money, so it’s your loss, not theirs. If you don’t leave a balance, you usually end up going over and spending some of your own money that you wouldn’t have spent in the first place. Once again, your loss, not theirs. Win-win for the stores. Lose-lose for us.

3. You end up spending more at the store than you would without gift card.

Studies show that gift cards entice shoppers to spend more.

When people receive gift cards, they are likely to spend significantly more money, above and beyond the amount of funds on the card, as compared with those who receive the same amount as a cash gift.

However, people still prefer gift cards as opposed to cash, even if the cash gift is for a larger amount.

“People who I asked to report about an actual cash gift that they received reported gift amounts two times greater than the monetary amount reported by those who I asked about a gift card they received. However, cash gift recipients still rated their gift less positively and rated their use of the cash as less memorable compared with those who rated their gift card use.”

I find this fascinating and think that maybe this is part of the reason why our generation has so much debt. Psychologically speaking, gift cards make you feel better, but practically speaking, they make you spend more money. I’m going to call this The Paradox of the Gift Card.

The results of the research hold implications for people’s gift-purchasing decisions, White said. Gift cards may be more positively viewed and more memorably used on indulgent purchases than cash gifts.

She warned that if one’s intention in presenting a monetary gift to a friend or relative is to offer a bit of financial assistance, a gift card may paradoxically cause the recipient to actually end up spending more money instead of saving.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, I figured it’d be a good time to sit down and come up with my holiday wish list. Having been through this ritual twenty-something times throughout my life, I’ve learned that it’s best to make two lists — one for the things people can actually afford and one for things if money weren’t a factor.

I think making two lists is important, because one focuses on now while the other focuses on later. The list of affordable items is what I give to other people, while the list of expensive items is what I keep for myself. I view the list of things that I can’t afford right now as a future goal for myself. I’m saying that these are things that I will work towards being able to afford in the next year. I’m pretty sure you can figure out which list this is.

1. Xbox 360

I admit that I’m behind on my gaming systems, and I’d really like to upgrade to the next generation. At the moment, the Xbox 360 is appealing, because it has the most games out and a great online community. If you pay any attention to the news, you probably heard some buzz about Halo 3 back in September when it brought in $170 million in its first 24 hours. With that being said, I’m not a huge Halo 3 fan.

The real reason I want an Xbox 360 is…

2. Rock Band

This is the best party game since Guitar Hero. If I were a few years younger living back in the dorms again, this would be a must-have game. In case you haven’t heard about it, Rock Band is like Guitar Hero with the addition of vocals and drums. Up to four people can play at once (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) to give a performance of a lifetime. This is also great fun for musically inclined families.

3. Playstation 3

I also wouldn’t mind getting a Playstation 3. Although there aren’t many games out for it right now, the important games are available (Rock Band). With the PS3, you get the added bonus of a Blu-ray player without having to buy an extra attachment.

Of course, to view all of this HD content it’d be nice to have a…

4. HDTV

It’s hard to go back to watching standard definition TV after seeing how clear the picture is on your friend’s high definition TV. Unfortunately, this is the most expensive item on my list. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to keep making friends with people who already have one.

5. iPhone

If you couldn’t tell from the rest of my list, I really like technology. I think it’s really cool when a new device is able to take things that have become part of daily lives — talking on the phone, listening to music, browsing the Internet — and make them fun. If you haven’t played around with an iPhone, I suggest that you take a trip to your nearest Apple Store and check one out.

What’s on your expensive wish list this holiday season?

This roundup is in celebration of finals being over! I apologize for the premature celebration if your school isn’t done with finals yet. What better way to celebrate than to catch up on things that aren’t printed in textbooks or scribbled in unreadable handwriting. Here are a few of the most interesting posts I’ve found over the past week.

• Did your parents help pay for college? Find out why Mighty Bargain Hunter doesn’t think parents should worry about paying for college.

• Do you have trouble keeping track of who owes you money or who you owe money? J.D. at Get Rich Slowly shares a tool that will help you track shared bills and expenses.

• Money Smart Life explains why Christmas credit is a big mistake.

• Stop by Green Panda Treehouse to read about another soon-to-be graduate and her personal goals after graduation.

• Trent at The Simple Dollar has been doing some soul searching and explores the meaning of it all.

• My Good Cents shares a simple way to save money on juice. Not sure if I’m a huge fan of the method described, but it definitely works.

I also participated in a couple carnivals this week, and it was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoy submitting my articles and reading all of the great content submitted by others. In fact, I even signed up to host my first one in a few months. That’s right, I’ll be hosting the Festival of Frugality on March 4, 2008. I’m really looking forward to it.

This past week Money Smart Life did great job of hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance and included my article on 6 Outrageous Fees (and How to Avoid Them). Thanks to the additional readers I got from participating in the carnival, there were some great comments left with even more great tips on how to avoid fees.

I’m also glad that people have been enjoying my article on the perfect gift to give when you’re broke. plonkee even selected it as one of “plonkee’s picks” in the 103rd Festival of Frugality. Sweet.

Thanks for stopping by, and y’all come back now, ya hear?

While checking my blog stats the other day, I noticed that some of my readers are still using Internet Explorer. That makes me sad. Did you know that every time someone uses Internet Explorer an angel loses its wings?

OK, just kidding. But seriously, you should consider switching to Firefox, and here’s why:

It’s free.
Absolutely, positively free. You only have to spend the time to download and install it. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla foundation, a non-profit foundation that was established to create innovative open-source software. Mozilla is completely funded by donations, so if you like it (which I bet you will), you can even contribute to the foundation if you choose.

It runs on all platforms.
Windows? Check. Macs? Check. Linux? Check.

It’s has a small footprint.
Unlike other browsers, Firefox isn’t bloated with unnecessary features. It takes up a small amount of disk space, so it’s quick and easy to install.

It’s expandable.
Another great feature of Firefox is that you can add almost any functionality via add-ons. There’s a very active community of Firefox developers that create awesome extensions that plug right into your browser. You can see your current weather forecast, control your media player, and block annoying ads to name a few. With help of Firefox’s extensions manager, it’s easy to install, enable, disable, and remove add-ons with a few clicks.

It’s easy to cover your tracks.
With the click of one button, you can can clear everything you want in order to cover your tracks — cookies, cache, download history, history. You can even tell it to do this every time you close your browser.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
In the past, Firefox has received numerous honors, including PC World’s Product of the Year, Softpedia’s User’s Choice, Forbes’ Best of the Web, CNET Editor’s Choice, and many more. If so many other people are using, why aren’t you?

It has tabs.
If you’re still using an older version of IE, you know how annoying it feels to have a million windows open at once. Well, Firefox’s tabbed interface lets you collapse all of those windows into a single screen and quickly switch between the different sites you have open. If one site is still loading, you can tab over to another site in the meantime. It’ll make your browsing experience more organized and efficient.

If all of this sounds good to you, then what are you waiting for? Get Firefox now by clicking on the link below:

I don’t know about you, but I love winning prizes. There’s a certain gratification that comes with winning something for free. That’s why this post is all about Blingo.

What’s Blingo?

It’s a Google-powered search engine with a twist. Each search you enter on Blingo is a chance to win prizes instantly.

How do I play?

It’s simple. You just enter your search in Blingo and click search. Just use it like you use Google, and each search (up to 25 per day) is a chance to win great prizes instantly.

What are the prizes?

The prizes range from small to large. Here are some of the prizes they’ve given away recently:

• Fandango Movie Ticket
• $5 Amazon.com Gift Certificate
• $500 Home Depot Gift Card

What’s the catch?

There isn’t one. It’s completely free, and they don’t send any spam. I guess the only catch I can think of is that I haven’t won anything yet. There are ways to increase your odds of winning though. If someone you invited wins a prize, you also get the prize. That’s why I’m asking for a little help from my friends.