Free The Drones Personal Finance Blog » Money Saving Tips

Tips On Buying A Gym Membership

kneukm03 — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 06:01:41 +0000

There’s a good article in Smart Money that you might want to take a look at if you’re thinking of making a New Year’s resolution to lose a few pounds or get in better shape. It’s on the things a fitness club won’t tell you – the various downsides to buying a membership. They sell a big chunk of their memberships around this time of year, often for a year or more – and 30-40% of those people end up not coming, but still paying. Here’s a couple of tips in addition to the pitfalls the article mentions:

1) Start a work-out schedule at least a month before you’re going to go to the gym. Why do most people end up paying for a membership they don’t need? Because after a little while they lose the will to keep showing up, or their schedule gets more hectic, and they stop making that time to exercise. So don’t just jump into the gym – go take walks or jog for whatever workout schedule you plan to do at the gym. Do this for a month or two, and if you’ve managed to keep it up, your odds are a lot better that you’ll get your money’s worth out of the gym.

2) Try to find free or cheap access. Most schools and universities have at least the basic equipment, so if you’ve got any association with one see if you can use it. Also try your local YMCA – memberships there can often be cheaper.

3) Stick to a monthly membership at first. Three months at $75 is better than six months at $50 if you are only using three months anyway. This is another good way to make sure you’re not one of the suckers paying for months you don’t use.

4) Remember that it’s a negotiation. That means being willing to walk out if you can’t get a deal you like. Lowball them – and if they won’t take it, come back later with a little higher offer or go try someplace else until you figure out how much you can squeeze out of them.

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How To Buy A Christmas Tree

kneukm03 — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:53:41 +0000

It’s that season again, and for many people that means you’ve got to deal with the annual decorating chores (if you’re the type of person who leaves your lights up until February) or fun (if you collect ornaments like they’re stamps). Either way, a lot of you are going to be buying Christmas Trees. So here are some tips on the whole process:

1) Should I buy a real tree or a plastic one? From a cost perspective, fake is the way to go. Looking around online I found them ranging from $60 or so to around $500 (on Amazon), and my bet is your local stores will fall within the same range depending on size and quality. What about the real thing? This web site will sell you a real one for about $80 for a six foot tree. If you go out to the lots or tree farms where they sell them locally, you’ll likely see a range depending on size and quality. But the ultimate point is that you’ll be using the real one a single time – whereas you can store the plastic tree in the attic and bring it out again every Christmas. The advantages for a real tree, other than that: it smells real, it is real, and it looks better to most people. On the other hand, it will probably have bugs and other critters on it, it will shed more needles everywhere, and they often aren’t perfectly symetrical. I’d go with plastic, but there are some reasons you might not want to.

2) When should I buy? This is the big question. Cost-wise, obviously waiting is the best idea. You can get the real trees at a big discount if you wait. But on the other hand, you don’t get as much use out of them, because you can’t keep them up as long. If you’re going to buy a plastic one, you will get the best deal if you buy it AFTER Christmas. That might make you a Scrooge – but all the ornaments, trees, lights, and tinsel will be slashed in price the day after Christmas. That’s the best time to stock up on all your Christmas decorations. If you’re short on money, it might be best to do it then – and comfort the kids by keeping it up for a few more weeks after Christmas on purpose. Then you’ve got all the stuff that should last you for many more seasons to come.

3) Make sure your measurements are accurate. This is a BIG factor. If you don’t measure your living room before hand, or if you get it wrong, you could end up wasting all your money, especially on a real tree (where you probably can’t get a return). Know exactly how tall your ceiling is, but ALSO how wide an area you have. Give yourself some leeway, and don’t try to cram in a tree with only a few inches to spare.

4) Think about getting a smaller one. Again, this is a good way to save money. Your tree doesn’t have to be 7 feet tall. It’s just as fun to decorate a 3-4 foot tree in a corner of your house. That also means you need fewer ornaments, which is another way to save some money.

5) Where can I get real ones? First of all, you should see these at many grocery stores if you live out in the ‘burbs. They usually have real ones out front, even if there aren’t that many. You’ll also find them in vacant lots near major roads where the vendors rent the place seasonally. You can also find them pretty easily on the Internet by searching for “christmas tree farms” as well as your state or city. I also found this site that gives you a list if you click on your state.

6) If you get a real one, go read the Christmas Tree Guide. This is something Reader’s Digest put out that is online here. It’s just the basic tips, along with some information on each type of tree – but I also liked the safety section. If you’re getting a tree for the first time, it’s something to read over – for example, you want to avoid putting it near a heat source (look around for heating ducts or vents) and you don’t want to burn the branches in your fireplace.

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Homemade Flea Traps

kneukm03 — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:36:13 +0000

Here’s a little tip that will save you some money if you’ve got pets. Anyone that does knows that getting a flea infestation can be a complete hassle, not to mention expensive – most of the pills and medicines run you anywhere from $50 to $100. There are, however, cheaper ways to deal with the problem. One kind of neat thing I’ve seen are what is called a flea trap – which is basically just a warm lightbulb attached to a glue trap. You can see ones for sale online here. They’re pretty cheap, but you can go even cheaper because the concept is so simple. The basic idea is that fleas are attracted to warmth – that’s how they find your pet so they can bite them. They’ll jump to anything that generates heat. So all you need is a lamp or other lightbulb that generates a noticeable amount of heat – set it up over a small, broad dish or pan filled with soapy water. The fleas think they’re jumping on your dog or cat – and they end up stuck in the water instead. It’s not perfect, but it’s nearly free.

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Cutting Down The Costs Of Having People Over For Dinner

kneukm03 — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 05:15:31 +0000

Over at the Frugal Law Student, there’s a post on a dinner party turning into an expensive (and time consuming) effort to make pizza. His idea for keeping it from getting so expensive is to shift to a pot-luck style dinner. I’d add that you can have people over without spending too much if you cook the right foods. Try a barbeque if you’ve got a grill – hot dogs and burgers are about as cheap as you can get. It also doesn’t take any time – and it’s easier to get a student friend to bring some drinks or some buns than to get them to make a side dish. You can also stick to soups, pasta, or other stuff that doesn’t take so long to cook – or if it does, can just simmer all day without you paying attention to it. Another option: rotate. If you’ve got a solid, core group of friends who are willing to host, then you’re going to save money compared to going out. That may or may not work depending on your social group, but it would at least give you a few evenings off for every one you have to work at. Anyone else have any other ideas?

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Black Friday – Getting The Best Shopping Deals

kneukm03 — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:41:56 +0000

For those of you who enjoy getting a jump on the Christmas shopping season, you may have heard of “Black Friday” – the day after Thanksgiving, and the first day of the Christmas shopping season. It’s also a day where stores offer huge discounts on a few items to draw customers in – and often don’t have enough in stock for everyone who wants one. Those who prepare get the best rewards – and over at Personal Finance Advice, the tricks of the trade are revealed. You’ll have to check the fine print, but using a couple of technicalities you can run rings around the other shoppers you’re competing with. And it turns out there are a lot of web sites keeping track of the deals so you don’t have to. Rather than look in the newspaper, you can get your information a lot faster and more efficiently online. Try Black Friday Ads, a site that collects all the different promotions in one place. There’s a set of forums dedicated to tipping each other off to the deals in advance here. And there’s another site with about 2500 different sales that you can see here. Do your homework and you should be able to be the one who goes out of the store with the best bargain. And remember that if you’re spending money on something you weren’t going to buy anyway – you haven’t saved money, you’ve wasted it.

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Have A Sprint Cell Phone? You Can Get Out Of Your Contract, Free

kneukm03 — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:48:02 +0000

That’s because of a loophole in the fine print of the contract – Sprint has just made a pricing change to its text messages, and any time prices change, you’ve got 30 days to request a termination without a termination fee. In this case, you’ve got until the end of October. It turns out all the major cell phone companies have these clauses, and they all periodically change prices – even though few people take advantage of it. Why would it be a good idea to cancel your cell phone service? Because then you can go sign up for another contract, get a free, brand new phone, and start the clock over a lot faster than the normal 2 year contract. That’s a lot of extra value for you, given that many of the phones you can get are worth $150-$200 – and while it’s a little bit of a hassle, if you’ve got an older phone it can be well worth it. You can even sell your old cell phone, netting yourself a little bit of money for doing it.

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Exchange Homes For Your Next Vacation

kneukm03 — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:44:35 +0000

There’s a great idea going around that I heard about on our local radio station – people “trading homes” for their vacations, so that each person can vacation where the other person lives. It essentially lets you eliminate hotel costs on your vacation, saving a ton of money. There are a couple of web sites that act as listing services for people who want to do this, including HomeExchange, ExchangeHomes, and Intervac.

You go to one of these sites, sign up (and usually pay a membership fee), and then you can contact people about their houses all over the world. You can browse the listings for free to see if it’s got something you’re interested in, and they’ve got photos of most of the houses. The upside is that you can turn a $5,000 vacation into a $2,500 one pretty easily.

The downsides? For one, someone random you met off the Internet is going to stay in your house. You should do a little bit of checking up – and you might want to agree with the person you’re exchanging with to let one of your neighbors on each end have a key and check up on the house at set times. Also, they may not meet your standards of cleanliness, may live in an area where it’s difficult to get where you’re going, etc. – you’re not going to have anyone to help you out if something isn’t up to par, like you would in a hotel. Another problem is that if you live in a place that isn’t a popular vacation destination, you may be out of luck. Live in a nice apartment in New York, or in Orlando? People will probably be eager to trade with you. Live in Topeka, Kansas? You won’t have nearly as many choices.

At any rate, it can’t hurt to try given how much money you’d save on your vacation.

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Switching to Alternate Energy Providers

kneukm03 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 20:05:36 +0000

Here’s a good consumer alert that doesn’t apply to everyone, but is an option if you live in one of eighteen states: you don’t necessarily have to get power from that inefficient public utility. Monopolies, as anyone who has played a certain board game knows, tend to increase the price for consumers. A lot of states are starting to give consumers options, however. Instead of going with the standard utility, you can go with an alternate energy provider – and they usually charge about 15-20% less for your power.

Most people aren’t switching over, however. Mainly it’s because these companies aren’t marketing very effectively and because of unfounded fears about service quality. But as the article points out, you’re still dealing with the same electric company – you just buy the power elsewhere:

Most importantly, notes Jackson, many folks aren’t exactly sure what happens if they make the switch. They’re concerned that a private company may not be as responsive as their well-established public utility in emergencies, such as power outages. But that shouldn’t be the case. “What happens when you switch providers is your local utility still has to maintain the power lines that bring electricity to your home,” he says. In other words, you will still receive power — and in most cases, your bill — from the utility company you’ve always dealt with. But instead of buying that power from the utility, you are buying it from a competitor.

Every state has a web site for their public utility authority, and you can check out a list here. Which states have this as an option? I couldn’t find a comprehensive list after searching around for awhile, but the article claims it is 18 states, including “Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and most states in the Northeast.”

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Cheap Halloween Costume Ideas

kneukm03 — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:30:49 +0000

Money Under 30 has a great post on some cheap ideas for costumes for the upcoming Halloween season. If you’ve got kids who are going to need one, then it’s well worth a read – it gives you some easy ways to make costumes out of stuff around your house.

I’d add that if your budget isn’t too tight, you can often get away with building a costume around one or two cheap purchased things. Those latex monster masks are usually only a few bucks at Wal-Mart, and they’re the kind of thing boys will go nuts over. Get them the $4 mask, and have them wear black clothes from around the house, and you’ve got a cheap costume. It’s harder if your kids decide they want to be some popular character, but it can also be a chance to teach them various arts and crafts skills if you’re so inclined. Take them down to a Hobby Lobby and plan the costume with them under a certain budget – it’s a little less frugal, but it’s one of those things where if you make them do most of the work, your kids will probably get enough out of it for it to be worth it.

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Lost Your Car’s Gas Cap? Ask For One At Gas Stations

kneukm03 — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:33:42 +0000

Losing a gas cap is pretty easy. On many cars, the little plastic holders don’t fit well, and it’s easy to knock them off. It’s also easy to forget to close the thing back up, so you could drive off without paying attention only to realize you’ve left the flap open once the cap itself is long gone. I ran across a tip for getting these replaced for free – ask the clerk at the gas station next time you fill up if they’ve got any lying around. Many gas stations have a policy of holding onto them if they find them – because other people like you lose them on the lot, and they will keep them for awhile to see if anyone comes back and asks for them. So go in and see if they’ve got any old ones that no one has claimed – if they fit, you won’t have to waste money buying a new one.

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