Archive for May, 2009
Posted on May 30, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money When you go out on the town.
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 42 May 27, 2009
Saving Money when you go out on the town.
This issue brought to you by
++ News -
I heard a report yesterday that gas prices had nearly doubled over the last few months. The good news is that it is still less than the record prices from last year.
++ Savings Tip of the Week
If you’re thinking about buying a new home, maybe now is the time to buy. Hud recently announced that you can get an ‘advance’ on the 8k tax credit. You can find some details about that here.
Saving Money when you go out on the town.
1. Drinks are expensive - if possible limit your drinks at a club or restauraunt to one or two.
2. Check out your local paper (or local websites) for deals.
3. Call the places you’re thinking about going and ask for deals.
4. Go during happy hour.
5. Ask friends / neighbors for any good tips / deals they may have.
6. Instead of going out - why not have a party at home?
We hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Posted on May 26, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money on a Trip to an amusement park
This past week on Friday my daughter had a trip to Kings Island an amusement park near Cincinatti. Lisa and I went along to ‘chaperone’ some of them and to have some fun ourselves.
The biggest cost for our trip was the tickets. Tickets at the gate were almost $50.00. We bought our tickets online and that saved us about $20.00. If we had more time we could have bought tickets for 2 days for the price of 1 day (and if we lived closer we would have saved a ton buying a season ticket). Parking set us back $10 - we didn’t have much of a choice here. A good option if you’re staying a couple of days is to get a hotel with tram service to the park - two days would save you 20 bucks. Many hotels offer packages for room and a visit to the park. Again the best way to find out how much you can save is to comparison shop. Don’t forget to search online forums, talk to your friends as well.
The next biggest cost for our trip was food. Dinner for four people (burgers, fries, drinks) ran us about $50.00. It was hot during the day and drinks were pretty mandantory or we would have gotten very dehydrated. Most of the parks now restrict what you can bring into the park. So eat a good breakfast. Hydrate well before leaving and bring a cooler and have some drinks for when you leave the park.
We didn’t shop any for trinkets. We did take lots of pictures (which we can make into trinkets if we want). We did have a wonderful trip and my daughter had a great time.
Enjoy your Tuesday.
Posted on May 23, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money on Movies - OOG 41
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 41 May 23, 2009
Saving Money at the Movies
This issue brought to you by
++ News -
We hope you and your family have a wonderful Holiday weekend.
++ Savings Tip of the Week
Here are some money saving tips on grilling.
http://frugal.families.com/blog/frugal-barbecue-grill
Saving Money The Nitty Gritty - How to Save Money on Movies and Video
The average movie ticket price for 2008 was $7.18. So for a family of four the price (without popcorn) would run you $28.72.
The first thing you’ll need to figure out is how long can you wait to see hit movies.
We have talked some about how you can save some money when going to the theater .
We also talked about some ways to get tv for free - those links would also help you find movies for nothing.
DVD prices again have a broad range - again this is usually based on how long the dvd has been out. The longer it’s been out the cheaper it is. Taking a look at Amazon the price of a recent Blu-Ray movie is about $25.00.
“Normal” DVDs have a price of around $16.00.
It doesn’t matter to me exactly when I see a movie. With our cable service we subscribe to all the movie channels. That means I get to watch movies about 6 months or so after they’ve been in the theaters. But the thing to remember is that the movie is ‘new’ to me… so when it came out doesn’t really matter.
The key here is to make a budget and stick to it.
Posted on May 19, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money on Entertainment
We’ll be talking about saving money on Entertainment over the next few weeks. The first thing you should do is to do an audit. Starting today keep track of every dime that you spend on entertainment. This could be for movies / restauraunts / books / magazines / bar hopping / anything you do for entertainment.
You should be keeping track of how you’re spending any money that you spend, but if you’re not for the next couple of weeks you’ll want to do that.
This weekend we’ll talk about saving Money at the movies.
Till then I found this link that may have some ways of saving money that you haven’t thought about (in fact 25 ways.)
http://www.mytwodollars.com/2006/11/30/sometimes-the-simple-things-can-save-the-most-money/
Posted on May 16, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money on Car Maintenance OOG 40
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 40 May 16, 2009
Saving Money on Car Maintenance
This issue brought to you by
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Gas prices have been risen about 12% in the past few weeks. Details on that can be found here.
Saving Money The Nitty Gritty - How to Save Money on your Car Maintenance
If you’re trying to save money by not buying a new car and/or working on your gas mileage then you will definitely want to do some car maintenace.
You can either do the maintenance yourself or you can hire a mechanic to do it.
1. Doing it yourself.
If you’re mechanically inclined and have no problem with your car maintenance then I applaud you.
There are a few different ways you can learn how.
If you want to do something specific then do a search online.
You can also learn quite a bit from books, many local community colleges and tech schools have courses that you can take.
Hang around a garage, get with someone that knows what they are doing and you can get some hands on experience.
2. Hire someone to do it.
Get references from friends / family and your neighbors.
Call around to get prices on things that need to be done.
Ask how much parts are going to be if it’s a big job and ask can you buy the parts yourself (you may get off cheaper that way).
Next Issues and what’s up:
Entertainment -
An Overview
Doing the Audit
Entertainment alternatives
Posted on May 15, 2009 - by admin
Saving Money on a night out
Here is an interesting way to save on a night out on the town (on the food bill anyway).
1. Go to http://www.restaurant.com
2. Enter your zip code
You should now see a list of restaurants in your area. You can either buy a $10 gift certificate for $3.00 or a $25 certificate for $10. Print out the certificate and enjoy your discounted meal.
Note: Be careful to read the fine print when you’re choosing the place you want to eat at. There may be a minimum amount, there could be a tip automatically added, a restriction on when you can eat (or what you can eat). Just make sure to read it.
A good example would be this:
For “Clouds cooking” I can get a $25 certificate for $10 bucks.
I will need to spend $35 and dine in only. My $35 meal costs me $25… so I saved 10 bucks.
Enjoy your Friday!
Posted on May 12, 2009 - by admin
Are you sure about your insurance coverage
It’s been crazy around here the last couple of weeks.
Almost two weeks ago my sister was in a car accident and broke her hip. This past Friday another sister’s house was flooded (and she lives about a mile away from a creek).
If you don’t do anything else this week, maybe you should check out to make sure you have insurance coverage that works for you.
Health Insurance Checkup
Here is an excellent primer / guide to get you started.
http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/insuranceqa/
I would just like to add that many times you get what you pay for. Ask friends / relatives / neighbors if they have a particular policy that they would recommend (that pays for things you will need). In my sisters case they will not allow her to have any kind of physical therapy….
Homeowners insurance
1. Make sure you have flood insurance even if you live on the side of a cliff. Flash floods (which is what happened in my sister’s case) doesn’t have to have a stream, or river to impact you. Rates for flood insurance vary by where you live but the most expensive is around $2500 for a 125k home and 40k contents. Remember that your homeowners insurance WILL NOT cover you for a flood. Lots of details / tools / etc. can be found here.
http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/
2. Make sure that your policy covers what you actually have. If you bought it ten years ago, you have probably at least doubled the value of the contents of your house… check your policies to make sure that you have adequate coverage.
Make sure you know where your insurance policies are, review them and keep them in a safe place.
Posted on May 9, 2009 - by admin
Free Guide - Saving Money on Gas OOG
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 39 May 9, 2009
Saving Money on
This issue brought to you by
++ News -
This weeks tip is short and sweet. You can get a copy of our guide for saving money on gas / improving gas mileage by doing the following.
Go to this url - not that is a page that you would go to after buying the guide… so since you didn’t buy it, just follow the download instructions.
http://www.gasmileageguide.com/ft-fuel-order1.html
We’re keeping it short and sweet this week because our sister was in a car accident last week and broke her hip. She has a 4 month old and we’ve been helping to take care of him.
Last night we had tornado warnings most of the night, it has rained for a week (and I do really miss the sun :o))… but we are all safe / sound.
Please keep her (Dawn) in your thoughts and prayers.
Next Issues and what’s up:
Car -
Maintenace
Entertainment -
An Overview
Doing the Audit
Entertainment alternatives
Posted on May 8, 2009 - by admin
Your personalized DJ … for free.
I saw this tip in the latest issue of barrons. Pandora is an internet radio site that personlizes your playlists based on music that you ‘like’. I’ve been using it for a few days and I must say that it does an excellent job in figuring out your music tastes. As you listen for a bit you need to rate the songs (thumbs up or down), it then adjusts the playlist to how you rated the song. Excellent quality as well… and did I mention that it is free. Enjoy your Friday and Rock On!!
Here’s the site - http://www.pandora.com/
You could save some money by ditching the satellite radio if you only use it around your house and have a good set of speakers (or headphones) for your computer.
Posted on May 2, 2009 - by admin
Would you throw out the dish and cable for free TV - OOG
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 38 May 2, 2009
Saving Money on Your Cable Bill
This issue brought to you by
Saving Money The Nitty Gritty - Can you get rid of the tv cable and dish.
I know this week that we were supposed to continue to talk about saving money on cars but one of my friends announced recently on facebook that he is ditching his direct tv package.
I started thinking about this… after all if you spend $100 / month on your cable bill that could add up to $1200 for the year. So I did some research on it.
Before You Cut the Cord -
1. In order for you to cut the cord, make sure that you have a reliable internet connection. If you have cable internet (especially if you have a plan that saves money based on the number of services you have) find out how that canceling your tv would change your bill.
2. You will need to have some way of getting internet to your television. It would be no fun watching tv in your easy chair on your laptop. Below are a couple of articles on how you can do that.
http://www.seanpaune.com/2008/02/16/how-to-watch-internet-videos-on-your-tv/
3. You can find live feeds of just about everything - however local programming may be delayed (ie you would watch episodes when they are available on the internet - usually that is the next day. News you can usually get live from the stations website. Other local programming (daytime) you may have a hard time finding so if you have any shows you really enjoy, make sure you are able to get them before cutting the cord.
My suggestion would be that before you do it, you pretend that you don’t have cable for a week to see if you miss it or not.
Places to Find Programming - below are just some of the places to find things on the internet. Do your research and you can find just about anything.
Finding shows that you will like / enjoy.
Here is a list of lists - places you can find tv shows / movies etc.
http://www.cucirca.com/2007/02/21/13-places-to-watch-tv-online-for-free/
A show / movie search engine.
http://www.surfthechannel.com/
Have a wonderful weekend!
Next Issues and what’s up:
Car -
Gas
Maintenace
Entertainment -
An Overview
Doing the Audit
Entertainment alternatives
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