July 15, 2019

How to Survive Moving Day Without Breaking the Bank

Are you planning to move and need to do it on a tight budget? We all know that moving can be very expensive. Truck rentals, packing supplies, and advances on rent or a mortgage can put a real dent in any budget. Take away some of the unwanted stress by using these following tips to help you save money and survive moving day.

Sell What You Don’t Need

Most of us own things we don’t use anymore. While these items may still be useful, why haul them to your new home if you simply don’t need them? Instead, you can make some quick cash by selling items you rarely use. Have a garage sale and price your items to move. This extra cash can help pay for expenses associated with the move.

Get Free Boxes

There’s no reason for you to buy boxes when you can get them for free. Visit your local grocery or big box store to get free moving boxes. Most of the time, stores will have many boxes to give away, unless they’ve already been taken. Start collecting free boxes a month or two ahead of time to make sure you’re able to collect enough.

Host a Packing Party

A great way to make moving day more affordable, and somewhat fun, is to host a packing party. Invite some friends and family members over to help you pack. Serve snacks and open a bottle of wine to add some fun to your day of packing. This will save you time and money and will help to reduce the stress that comes with packing.

Choose your Moving Date Wisely

If possible, try to steer away from moving on popular moving dates. Moving in the fall, winter or early spring can save you big bucks, especially on the price of movers. Moving companies can charge twice as much on competitive dates!

Shop Around for Moving Companies

Instead of going with the first moving company you find, take your time to shop around. Try to find a moving company that is affordable, offering a low hourly rate and a low mileage rate. If you’re strapped for cash and need to hire help, you can finance your move with a fast online loan. A loan will help you afford the move without having to worry about where the money is going to come from.

Don’t Be Afraid to Negotiate

Shopping around for a moving company is a must, but did you know that you can also haggle their price? The rate that moving companies charge is not always set in stone. Don’t be afraid to negotiate with them!

If you’re contemplating a move in the near future, apply some of these helpful tips in order to save money. Although moving can be stressful, you can rest assured that your bank account will not take a major hit.

April 3, 2019

Swagbucks: April sign up bonus

If you sign up for Swagbucks using my link this month and earn 300 total SB before May 1st, 2019, you get a 300 SB bonus.

It’s worth it if you have a few minutes a day to earn some SBs. Your first gift card each month is discounted, too. I usually redeem my monthly $25 gift card for Target or Amazon and it costs 2200 SB instead of 2500 SB.

Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join Swagbucks and earn. I track my earnings here.

January 3, 2019

Swagbucks: SwagIQ

Monday through Thursday, Swagbucks broadcasts a live trivia game show where you test your knowledge to win cash prizes called SwagIQ. You’ll need to download the app to get started, and must be a member of SwagBucks if you want to earn (you do!). Sign up here if you aren’t already a Swagbucks member.

Tune-in at the appointed times by launching the SwagIQ app and log-in with your Swagbucks account credentials. The game show host will ask a series of multiple-choice trivia questions. You’ll have 10 seconds to answer each one.

Get the answer right and get SB (points you can use to get gift cards) and move on. Answer them all correctly and you can win a grand prize! If more than one player wins, the winners split the grand prize.

Get the answer wrong, you can still play along. Some questions have an SB award attached to them. If you answer those questions correctly, you get SB, even if you’re out of the running for the big money. And, if you’re in a groove but miss a question, you’ll have the option to rejoin a game by redeeming a few SB.

Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join Swagbucks and earn. I track my earnings here.

September 24, 2018

Side Money: Selling Old Media

Side Money and Decluttering: Selling with Second Spin

Photo by Sidney Pearce on Unsplash

Decluttering media and old tech!

My first round, I didn’t bother to comparison shop. I was in a hurry to make some kind of progress in shifting the glacier of boxes in my office so 3 books, 7 DVDs, and one broken 16 GB iPhone went straight off to Decluttr. They downrated the broken phone as though I had miscategorized it, even though I’d marked it with the lowest option they had given me on the selling screen, and we came away with $10.85.

Notes: Decluttr pays for shipping and doesn’t return unsold items. They won’t take items without barcodes, which annoyed me about two or three sets of CDs and DVDs that were in great shape but inexplicably had no barcodes. Your barcodes must be identical and the items must be in good shape. You need to enter a minimum of $5 worth of items to complete an order.

My second round, flush with having successfully emptied out 5 boxes of packing boxes, I was able to take an extra 15 minutes to check other DVD sites to see if we could get better prices. This time, out of ten DVDs, Decluttr offered me $1.37 for 4 DVDs. Second Spin offered $5.40 for 8 DVDs. Since the point was to maximize both income and clearing out stuff, Second Spin was our friend this time. Or so I thought.

(more…)

June 26, 2017

Side Money Experiment: selling on Swappa

Selling old phones on SwappaAfter spending an astronomical amount on my phone replacement last year, and PiC’s third replacement trying to crap out, it was way past time to recoup any of our cost possible.

Note: this review is months after my actual sale experience so it’s a little dusty, but you’ll see the reason for that below!

I first signed up for Gazelle but they offered a whole $8 for one of our old phones which is absurd. The phone works well enough if you’re not a power user, which I am.

After poking around good ole Google for a while, Swappa looked promising, so I gave it a try with one of our Androids.

This process is a little bit less straightforward than selling on Poshmark, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Useful tips

  • The buyer pays for shipping – you have to build into your selling price.
  • The buyer pays the Swappa fee – you don’t need to build in your price.
  • Sellers are expected to ship within two business days of receiving payment.
  • Swappa’s return policy: Sellers define their own return policies on their listing pages.
    All seller return policies are based on the pre-condition that the device is received as advertised and in accordance with Swappa policies. No seller may deny a return / refund when a device is not as advertised.

To list and sell your phone

  1. Factory reset your phone. You could do this later, but it’s best to do it before you take the photos so buyers can see that it’s reset and turns on.
  2. Supply photos of your phone that show it can turn on, along with the sale code they provide you.
  3. Supply the ESN (which was incredibly hard to read on our phones because it was printed so tiny) so that the Swappa staff can verify that your phone is in good order.
  4. Write an accurate description of your phone and what it comes with. I’m still using my charging cord and wall plug for the Kindle, so I only listed the phone for sale with the protective screen cover and the phone case.
  5. Set your price. I used the current listing prices of the other equivalent phones as a baseline, plus a fee for shipping.

After several weeks of renewing my listing, I had a buyer!

I was notified first of the Paypal payment, then the instructions to ship arrived. I gave the phone one last going over to shine it up nicely, wrapped it securely, and took myself off to the post office where I decided to send it USPS flat rate for the tracking and the confirmation.

The buyer was a bit weird though.

I updated the sale when I shipped and provided the tracking number but there was no reply. Swappa sent him a comment asking him to confirm receipt and formally complete the sale – still no response. The buyer had a week to do so, but didn’t, and didn’t leave feedback either, so Swappa formally completed the sale for me.

A MONTH later, he emailed saying that the phone didn’t work, even though it was in working order when I shipped it.

Since it’d been 5 weeks since I sent him the phone and it was in good condition when it left my hands, as advertised, I offered some basic troubleshooting options and left it at that. He could have attempted to charge it back through Paypal, so I kept the money on the side to wait and see. It’s now been six months with no further communication so it might be safe to say that this one has been put to bed. I think.

Final verdict: My listing sold for $63 less the $7 paid for shipping flat rate with insurance. $56 blows the Gazelle offer out of the water, even with the minor inconveniences and irritations.

:: Do you sell your old tech or recycle it? Do you have a favorite site or store for resale or buying used?

March 29, 2017

How to Refinance Your Student Loans

This guest post is from Amanda Ellison, a financial advisor from San Diego specializing in working with Millennials.

Student loan debt is at an all-time high, and it continues to rise. In 2016, the average graduate had over $37,000 in debt, a six percent increase from 2105.  With a large number of college graduates facing mounting debt, it is little wonder that many are struggling to make their monthly student loan payments.

Much like a mortgage, student loans can be refinanced with a lower interest rate; in fact, student loan refinancing has become a hot topic among borrowers as a way to potentially lower payments and reduce interest rates.

Refinancing student loans is a form of consolidation for borrowers with private student loans.  It works by replacing multiple student loans — which can be private loans, federal loans, or both — with one new private loan.  The primary benefit of refinancing your student loans is that you may be able to obtain a lower interest rate, and save money over the life of your loan. In some cases, student loan refinancing can result in lower monthly payments.  You may also be able to extend or shorten the repayment time period, but as a general rule, you should pick the shortest possible time that you can to repay your loan. It may also be beneficial to make a single monthly payment rather than multiple payments each month to various loan servicing companies.

In December 2016, the Federal Reserve announced a rate increase for the interest rate. This will likely have an impact on the interest rate for student loans, which are tied to rates that tend to follow the Fed.  This increase — and several additional proposed increases over the course of 2017 — may be another reason to refinance your student loans. This is particularly true if you have a variable rate private student loan.  A variable rate student loan has the potential to rise as the interest rate rises.  A refinanced loan with a lower fixed interest rate may give you stability and ultimately lower your monthly payments and the total cost of your student loans.

Before making the decision to refinance your student loans, you first need to understand what kind of loans you have and what their terms are. If you do not have a copy of your loan documents, you can view them via the government’s online database for federal loans, the Federal Student Aid portal or the National Student Loan Data System.  For private student loans, you can obtain a copy of your credit report to determine if you have any private student loans.  You can then contact your loan servicing company to obtain a copy of the loan terms and conditions.

If you have federal student loans, carefully consider whether you want to refinance these loans along with your private loans.  Federal student loans have certain protections that private student loans do not, such as loan forgiveness and income-based repayment plans. You should also look at your current interest rate on your private student loans.  If the interest rate on your current loans is low and fixed, refinancing your student loans may not save you money.  There are a number of online refinance calculators that will allow you to input information from your current loans to determine if you will save money by refinancing your private student loans.

If you decide to refinance your student loans, you can compare lenders through a number of online marketplaces, such as LendEDU, Student Loan Hero, and Credible.  Each site will offer rates from a number of different banks, student loan companies and other lenders, along with information about each lender.  You can then determine which rate and lender would be the best choice for your student loans.  The rate that you ultimately receive will be based on a number of factors, including your credit score, job history, educational background, and income.  As a general rule, your credit score must be no lower than the mid-600’s in order to qualify for a student loan refinance. Rates for student loan refinancing range from as low as 2 percent to as high as 9 percent.

Refinancing student loans does not cost money, and there are typically not any fees associated with refinancing private student loans.  Be wary of calls, emails or letters that you may receive offering deals on refinancing or consolidating your student loans.  These are often scams, or they may charge you money for something that you can do yourself for free or for very low cost.

Once you have been approved for a student loan refinancing, your new loan servicing company will pay off all of your old loans.  You will then start to receive statements from the new lender each month.  If you have automatic payments set up, remember to change the payments to reflect the lender, and work towards paying off your student loans with one easy monthly payment.

Refinancing student loans isn’t the best choice for everyone, but if your student loans have a high interest rate, a variable interest rate, or if you have many different student loans, it may be a good choice for you.  With some advance planning and preparation, the process of applying for refinancing is relatively simple, allowing you to make a substantial step towards paying down your debt in a few simple steps.

October 24, 2016

Side money experiment: mTurk

Background: 2 years ago November, J. Money and I had a quick chat that spawned this post on earning side money and then I started tracking our earnings publicly because it’s always more fun that way. PiC is our resident Craigslister and I’m the resident Try Anything Once-er.

As previously mentioned in the May and June monthly reports, I gave mTurk a little test run.

My time was particularly tight in those months so it wasn’t a smart time to be trying new things but I wanted to dip my toes in and give it a wiggle. I think because it was so time-crunchy, my brain really needed to know that it wouldn’t last and the way to give myself hope for that is to do something new that feels purposeful and makes a bit of money.

After a couple months, spending nibbles of time when I was taking a mental break from work, I haven’t cracked any secret codes. Tasks are most available during business hours, and you do better when you spend time on skill-based tasks, I think. The tasks I’ve been qualified for are things like surveys which don’t earn much.

Total earned: $50.95

Whether it’s bad timing or lack of effort, mTurk isn’t for me right now. I’ll put this experiment on hold until I have a bit more time to play with it.

:: Have you tried mTurk or anything like it? Would you use your spare 5-15 minutes a day on something like this?

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