Published October 28th, 2009
in Shopping Promotion.
Credit card sign up bonuses are rare these days and this deal looks unusually hot, almost like the old times. The card is called Premier Rewards Gold Card and when you sign up you will receive 15,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $1,000 in your first 3 months of membership. You can convert these to 15,000 frequent flier miles or buy $150 in gift cards to stores like Old Navy, Home Depot or Barnes & Noble.
This card overall is pretty good for frequent travelers since it offers 3X points on airfare in addition to 2X points on gas and groceries and 1X points on everything else.
If you spend $30,000 per calendar year you will earns additional 15,000 bonus points (yes, another $150 gift card!) however by the time you get these points you will be hit by the $175 annual fee (which is waved in the first year) so the value of this additional reward is questionable.
How would I personally use this card? I would apply for it if I knew I had some major vacation coming in the next several months. For example, we are planning a trip to Ukraine next summer to visit our family and friends. This by itself is over $5000 in airfare or over 15,000 in rewards points. If I signed up and bought the tickets now I would both satisfy the $1000 in purchases requirement to get the bonus points and also would get the 3X rewards points on the airfare to Ukraine, a total of over 30,000 points or $300 in gift cards!
Published October 24th, 2009
in Money Saving Tips.
This holiday season is promising to be a very good one… to those of you who still have jobs that is. Yes, I know it sounds sad but still the facts are stubborn things. A wide range of consumer electronics products have hit record low prices according to this Wall Street Journal report. The article lists popular product categories such as HDTV’s , laptops, camcorders and DVD players - all showing significant price declines. The trend seems to be very widespread.
While prices on consumer electronics typically drop over time, the breadth of key price barriers that are being broken across so many segments is unusual. “The price declines we’re seeing this year are steeper than normal in many more different categories,” said Steve Koenig, an analyst at the Consumer Electronics Association, which calculated that consumer-electronics prices fell 7.7% overall in the first half of the year compared with a 1.9% price increase a year earlier.
Another interesting conclusion made by the author is that the “consumers shouldn’t expect gadget prices to fall much further over the holiday season” which I tend to agree with. As the economy slowly recovers the demand will pick back up and will drive the prices. Another factor to consider is the falling US dollar. Since most of these products are made overseas and imported into the country, weak dollar automatically means higher prices.
Earlier this month I made my investment picks for this year’s IRS contributions and I am heavily betting on inflation (here the distribution: 50% DBC, 30% FE, and 20% AAPL). As for this year’s shopping, all our budget went towards saving money for my daughter’s field trip to Cost Rica in the spring of 2010 so we will probably have to go away with a CRT TV in our living room for another year.
Published October 15th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is September 2009 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the previous revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to August results. This list currently has 34 sites - two more than in August. On average the coupon sites have gained (0.47%) in September.
The best performer is webbyplanet.com (19.59%), whose relative rank also moves up by 2, and the worst result comes from couponmountain.com (-28.61%) which kept its position unchanged. Enjoy the complete list below!
Published October 13th, 2009
in Money Saving Tips.
Oregon Live has an interesting story about Dennis Streed, a 83-year-old man who wanted to pay $77.99 a month for broadband, TV and phone service - just what the Verizon ad promised to him. So he crafted a contract that included provisions for “No hidden fees, and no additions, unless we ask for them.” and made a company rep sign it.
But when the first bill arrived May 22, it asked for $158.49. The monthly charge grew to $186.33 in June and $183.03 in July. With the second bill, in June, Streed began paying only the $77.99 he’d promised. By August, Verizon cut off his Internet and TV service.
When contacted by the newspaper a company salesman has explained the incident as a mistake. The interesting part however is whether the man will be able to legally enforce the company abide by this non-routine customer created contract. We should find it out soon because Streed who once taught consumer law, is filing a complaint with the attorney general in Portland, his home state.
Next time I sign a contract with a phone company - it will be on my terms! ;-)
Published October 11th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is September 2009 revision of the Popular Price Comparison web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to August results. The list has a total of 33 web sites which is the same number as the last month. There are 18 more sites in my database that don’t meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement.
The best performer this month is bestwebbuys.com (9.99%) followed by retrevo.com with a gain of (7.91%). The worst performer this month is mysimon.com with a loss of (-33.31%) followed by bottomdollar.com (-15.94%). Please enjoy the complete list below.
(*) Note: traffic stats for these sites is an aggregate of all traffic to the top domain (e.g. Yahoo.com or Google.com) and thus cannot be used to judge how popular this particular price comparison service is.
(**) Note: the web site is a portal with price comparison engine being one of the offered web services. Alexa rank cannot be used to judge how popular this price comparison engine is.
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