Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Useful websites

Do you run your credit report every year? You should to make sure there is nothing incorrect on it and that you have not had identity theft. You can get a free report from all free agencies, and there is only one website that is recommended by the government to get all three. It is www.annualcreditreport.com You can of course go to each of the three agencies individually to get them, but this one website makes it a little bit easier.

Do you get all kinds of pre-approved credit cards in your mail, and are tired of all of that junk? Those pre-approvals also show up on your credit. You can put a stop to those inquiries on your credit and in effect put a stop to those offers in the mail by going to .... https://www.optoutprescreen.com

Hope that help someone!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Oprah today -- did you see it?

My friend was on Oprah today. She was on at the very beginning, her name is Trisha. She skyped in to the show. It was the Peter Walsh episode on de-cluttering. I was so excited, I got teary eyed!

More savings tip - the reward card

So one of my friends said they were going to try the cash method, however they normally used their credit card like a check card so that they get the rewards points. Here is a thought on that, if you are saving 10-15% by using cash then you are more than re-cooping the 1-3% that you get on rewards points. Even if you are only spending 3% less, which I guarantee will happen, then you are making up those rewards points... try it.

Something else I was pleased with and wanted to share. Bret and I have been eating at home much more often lately. We decided that we would go out to eat when there are good specials at restaurants, that often happens on Tuesday's for whatever reason. Sometimes they have kids eat free nights or might just have another kind of special. Logans has a two can dine for $13.99. It is a special menu, so you have to ask for it if it is not on your table. It has many of the popular menu items on it, including sirloin and you get two sides with your meal. They also have $2.99 kids meals. This is on Mondays AND Tuesdays. So the last time we went several weeks ago, they gave us one of those survey's attached to our check. I called and got a $3 off code. So we went back to Logans to use it on the 2 for night, and we each got a meal and the total, tip included, was $18. I thought that was a deal. From now on we are going to choose the places that we have coupons for.

We have also been eating our leftovers more often. Our refrigerator is normally full of left-overs, so when the weekend rolls around we have been eating left-overs for lunch each day. It also saves the stress, because I am out of meals to cook and we don't want to decide on were to go to eat.

I hope these savings tips help. It has certainly been helping us.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Cash

Kyndal and I went out tonight to get a bite to eat while Daddy was at the Men's Meeting. We walked up to order and was asked if we were paying with Cash..... well of course we always try to pay for things with cash. So apparently tonight if we didn't have cash we wouldn't have eaten there because their computer system is down. Hear this ...... Cash always works.

AND..... it Saves you Money


"When you pay cash, you can "feel" the money leaving you. This is not true with credit cards. Flipping a credit card up on a counter registers nothing emotionally. If you use credit cards instead of cash you will spend 12-18% more. This is money you could have saved." - Dave

We have used Dave Ramsey's principle on cash for several years now..... pay with cash and you will spend less. I do believe this. Bret also informed me this week that statistics are showing that people are even spending more when they have the "blink" cards were they don't even have to swipe but just wave them in front of the cc machine. Hum ... this savings might be worth some experimenting of your own :)