Interesting / Other archive at ProBargainHunter.com

Archive for the 'Interesting / Other' Category

Long Line at Citibank

Published July 17th, 2008 in Interesting / Other. 3 Comments

Stumbled upon a funny discussion late last night on FatWallet forums and can’t help post it here. Citibank is where I have my savings and so the title certainly caught my eye.

So I went to my local citibank branch to deposit my $100 pay check (thats righ baby, $100, read it and weep) and there was like 3 people in line in front of me to get to the teller. I promptly withdrawed all $400 of my money at Citibank as obviously they are about to go under. I am contemplating burying the money in my backyard and then creating a secret treasure map that I will keep underneath my pillow. Anyone have any suggestions on the best way to create a pirate like treasure map? What about where to buy high quality booby traps to guard said money (under $400 would be best)? I looked through hot deals but did not see any booby trap deals.

Without question this thread is sparked by the recent IndyMac failure and it would have been funny if the whole store wasn’t so sad.

Are your short term savings in FDIC insured accounts? How concerned are you about the financial situation in the US and possible future bank failures?

Source: Long Line at Citibank at FatWallet forums

News that caught my eye this week

Published July 14th, 2008 in Interesting / Other. 0 Comments

Submit Walgreens rebates online

Finally 21st century arrives at Walgreen’s. Kacie from Sense to Save describes how you can submit Walgreen’s rebates online.

I just tried it out, and it was pretty easy. Go to Walgreens.com, click the EasySaver catalog button and click “claim rebates.” You’ll have to register for an account, but it doesn’t take much time.

You’ll enter a unique code from your receipt to show that you’ve purchased an item that generates a rebate.

It saves a stamp and saves an envelope. Gotta love that!

Submit Walgreens rebates online at Sense to Save

Amazon now offers personal checks as a payment option

I can’t believe anyone is shopping online using personal checks. If you are Amazon however that ‘nothing’ can mean millions in revenue that you don’t want to miss on. Amazon is embracing BillMeLater to reach to the check-writing community. The company was founded in 2000 and already offers services over 900 online retailers.

Amazon Now Offers IOUs Through Bill Me Later at Mashable

How retailers tune up marketing campaigns in economic slowdown

This is an interesting roundup from The Walls Street Journal about how different retailers change their marketing efforts in the economic slowdown. Walmart increases spendings to reinforce its discount image and expands $4 generic-prescription-drug program, BestBuy pitches its customers $999 no-interest financing, Costco increases lower end jewelry offerings (priced between $100 and $500), and Lowe’s bombards customers with “project starter” coupons. There are more interesting examples describing how different companies survive the slowdown.

Retailers Recalibrate Pitch To Strapped Consumers at WSJ

Cheap way to practice foreign languages and learn cultures

It looks like Second Life is becoming enough main stream for some colleges to embrace the online community for educational purposes.

Around the world, universities, and even the US Department of State, are turning to online virtual worlds to create cultural exchanges. In these immersive, 3-D environments, users from around the globe can collaborate in ways that were previously impossible.

The online world is creating some interesting opportunities for companies to make money and for students to save on education. This proves what I always believed in - build a powerful platform and your users will find numerous creative ways how to use it.

Study abroad through Second Life at The Christian Science Monitor

Use iPhone to save on gas

Craig Rubens at Earch2Tech rounds up several applications for iPhone that will help you save on gas. The software is sold at iTunes store and goes from $1.99 to free. All these apps in essence offer a cool way to track your car fuel efficiency based on gas fill-ups and mileage data that you will need to enter by hand, nothing you could not do with a notepad and a calculator.

5 iPhone Apps to Help Save Gas at Earth2Tech

Do cars stop depreciating after 200K miles?

Published June 10th, 2008 in Interesting / Other. 13 Comments

As I examine my options about replacing my 10 year old Honda Accord with a more fuel efficient alternative, I stumbled upon an interesting fact. I was playing with Kelley Blue Book estimate of my car value by changing the number of odometer miles and observing the changes. What turned out is that after 200,000 miles the car value stops decreasing. Which implies that if I wanted to sell the car now, it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had driven it more than 20K miles a year.

Is it just a bug in the KBB algorithm that calculates the value, or does the value really stops going down? I think what really happen is that at this age the car condition becomes the prevailing factor and the miles don’t mean that much any more since the modern engines are designed to go well past 200K miles and it is often rust or problems with interior (power windows not working?) that lower the car value, and these usually come with age, not miles.

This brings me to an interesting conclusion. If you own a car and put up around 20,000 miles on it, from the financial point of view there is no reason to try to save miles by renting a replacement for those long trips. You are not really gaining much except for the headache in having to deal with the rental. This of course is not the case if you don’t plan to hold on to the car for very long, or don’t put enough miles to reach the threshold.

Why solid state drives are so expensive?

Published May 29th, 2008 in Interesting / Other. 4 Comments

mtron ssd sata One of my dream geek projects (ssh, don’t tell my wife ) is to upgrade my laptop to an SSD storage. I do most of my freelance work on a laptop and I would love to see increased battery life and improved data failure tolerance such an upgrade promises. Besides, I hate it when the thing heats up so much that I have to place a book between my laptop and my lap to avoid getting burned.

The falling flash memory prices look really encouraging. Already today I can buy a 8GB SD card for $27 or a 16GB flash drive for $58 (after rebate). It would make one think that there should be good deals on solid state hard drives as well since they have lower size constrains than e.g. SD cards. In real life however the opposite is true. There are really no SSD bargains out there.

The prices on solid state disks have not come down, at least not nearly as much per GB as other flash media. I have looked around and while there are some high performance SSD’s for servers for sale, there are really not that many offerings in the general consumer market. It looks like solid state media hasn’t hit the market yet and low volumes keep prices high. Ultimately after digging through the price comparison sites for half an hour I have found just one product that didn’t have an insane price, this 32GB SATA compatible drive by Transcend for $165.

I could probably get 320GB for that price if I went with traditional storage type. The prices on regular hard drives have come down too and this is another reason why SSD’s don’t get broader acceptance despite the news like this. The higher HDD volume demands dictated by digital music and video adoption also keep SSD’s out of market.

Do you have a laptop? Have you considered an upgrade to a solid state drive? Please share your experience.

An unavoidable expense of $8500

Published May 18th, 2008 in Interesting / Other. 16 Comments

rusty pipe When I was leaving for work last Thursday I noticed a big pile of dirt on my neighbor’s front yard. A group of men were gathered around a hole in the ground. I approached to find out what was going on and the men pointed at a stretch of wrecked copper pipe. It looked like someone had bitten a chunk out of it. The pipe connects my neighbor’s house to the water main and had to be replaced.

I later spoke to my neighbor and he said his family noticed a pressure drop, spotted water coming out of the ground in the front yard, and called the service. $8500 is the repairs bill that they are now facing.

Our homes were built 5 years ago at the same time and have exactly the same design. My neighbor said I should start saving money. The service people suspect that the cause is either defective pipe material or poor job the builders have done with the piping, but in either case the owner is the one to take the hit since neither manufacturer nor the builder can be held liable.

I called my Allstate agent and she explained that the home insurance will not cover the cost since no damage is done to the house. This is really bad news for us, and all I can think of right now. My friend told me of a family he knew who had a similar problem with their house and within 2-3 years all homeowners on their side of the street had to eventually replace piping.

A desperate idea to move has visited me tonight; especially since we were planning to do so when kids grow a bit (public schools in this area are not very good), but then I thought that I would need to disclose any problems with the house to the buyer, and while this problem at this point is only hypothetical, it can easily scary away a potential buyer.

So it looks like a deadlock at this point and I can’t think of any way to avoid the upcoming financial disaster. What would you do in my case?

Photo courtesy of atlef at flickr

ProBargainHunter.com

Subscribe

Sponsors

Daily Deal

Top Bargains

Categories