Category Archives: money

Generally tips on saving or some really great deal o-line.

My new Vibram shoes – 31 photos in 31 days – Day 1

So I’m going to try this, one photo a day for every day. It’s not to late to start! Well, it is too late, but you can still post your photos!

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31 Photos in 31 Days has begun for August 2011, so don’t forget to take 1 photo today, post it up on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blog or anywhere else you share your photos, and then post your link by clicking the ‘Click here to enter’ (on their page).

I was trying to come up with a theme, but I couldn’t come up with something. So I’ll do a photo each day and talk about it and theirfore I’ll be getting some blog posts done at the same time!!

This my newest pair of Vibram Five-Fingers Shoes
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So I got a new pair of Vibram Five Fingered Shoes, I got the ones like my first pair of Vibram Shoes called “Sprint”. I was googling all over trying to find a good price but I know there are a bunch of fakes out there. What I ended up getting was a pair from someone on eBay who had the wrong size. They look brand new, the soles felt a little thicker than my current pair (but my old pair is definitely broken in) but when looking up information on fake Vibram’s everything seems to pass. The color is off a little, just check out my big toe! But otherwise everything seems to be okay.

Except, my tan line at the top of my foot doesn’t line up at all. I’ve got a similar casual pair that is like the Sprint (but without the strap and it’s not made out of the same waterproof material) and the tan line doesn’t stand out like this. Anyone out there have a few different pairs of Vibram Sprints that don’t line up the same?

So until they really break in, I’m really not sure if I’ll purchase them again like this.

Apple has more cash than the US Government

According to CNN, Apple now has more cash on hand than the United State government. Wow!!!

“the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion.

Tech juggernaut Apple had a whopping $76.2 billion in cash…”

Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company Owen Linzmayer, Owen W. Linzmayer The thing to keep in mind is: isn’t most of the ca$h the government has already allocated for something? This money that Apple has isn’t even allocated to do anything (to our knowledge). Their stock has hit it’s highest numbers ever and they’re likely to release a new iPhone in a month or two when they usually release new iPods and new iPod touches.

The was a rumor the other day they might buy Barnes and Nobel for $1.5 billion, that’s pocket change when they’ve got $75 billion(!) in the bank. Imagine how cheap they could have got Borders if they had wanted it.

Onavo significantly cuts my iPhone data use down!

So I recently downloaded Onavo for my iPhone. It cuts down on your data usage by compressing cellular data on the fly. I guess it zips up the text and lowers the quality of images (I usually don’t notice, but sometimes I do) SprintPCS used to do this on their 1G(?) network and it was great.

onavo.jpgI’m getting over 50% overall compression. It’s free but it’s likely they’ll eventually start charging (so try it now, while it’s free!). But if you’re just squeaking by on a 250 MB plan, this could keep you from jumping up to the next plan at $10 more a month, I assumed it’d be less than $5 a month(?). Most apps it’s compresses 70-80%, others no compression and some others at 30-50%. It works on the iPad too. It’s compression on the downloading, not on the uploading. It says that it has no effect on tethering.

I love it! I actually think it speeds my data up (if it’s only pushing half of it around, but they aren’t marketing it that way). It doesn’t touch secure data and doesn’t appear to touch your mail unless you specifically enable it (and it has to be MS Exchange); it converts your e-mails to text, but I actually think that’s better on the smaller screen. I did just change my gMail config to use the MS Exchange protocol to test it out (Google does support this); I’m getting 50+% compression.

I have the data unlimited plan so this isn’t such an issue for me, but I might be tempted to pay for a international data plan next time I travel. Although, now that I look at the list, I don’t see Costa Rica in the list, I thought it was there before…

I’m grandfathered in on the unlimited plan with ATT, but I have friends considering the iPhone 5 (4s?) whom 250MB might not be enough, but 500MB could certainly be enough. Sometimes I think it might be eating my data more, but I’ve been forcing the phone to stay on 3G and not join any WiFi networks so that I can see the savings.

Free Junior Frostys at Wendy’s in Michigan!

Donate a $1 at Wendy’s and get a free Frosty Jr. with every purchase you make at Wendy’s for the rest of the year! Okay, so I guess this really isn’t free, but it’s such an awesome deal!

wendys-free-frosty-IMG_2179.jpgThey did this last year (but didn’t start until April) and it was the best deal ever! They give you the tag for your keychain and you’re good to go! Buy a double-stack burger for 99 cents and get a free Junior frosty (what a deal!).

Be sure to getyour keychain tag now, because once they’re gone, you can’t get them any more. I think they should charge $5.00 for them. The donated money goes to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

This is only at Michigan Wendy’s as far as I know (and this tag says only in Michigan). If your state offers a similar program, please leave a comment and let me know..

Wendy’s Coupons in Michigan

It seems about every two months that Wendy’s resets their on-line coupons (this batch is good until Feb. 20, 2011). It’s a $1 off combos, $1.99 kid meals and a few 2-for-1 deals (singles, chicken and twisted Frostys). There appears to be no printing limit, I just printed a stack and stuck them in the car. wendys-logo.pngI go 2+ times a week so this is a no brainer for me. I’ll have $14-$20 extra in my pocket by the time March rolls around.

And the address hould be easy to remember it’s http://MichiganWendys.com/

Yes, the coupons specifically say they’re only good for Michigan.

The poor economy helps me with my Mortgage!

When I purchased my home I thought I’d stay in it around four or five years, give or take a year, next month will make eleven years! I’d never owned a home before, but interest rates were good, I had a condo that I liked and when the rent on my Southgate apartment jumped way up, it sealed this was the deal for me.

Mortgages For Dummies, 3rd Edition Eric Tyson, Ray Brown The rates on the 5-year Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) seemed pretty decent; I knew rates were down but I like to cover my bets, and any year after five years the mortgage could go up 2% a year. Silly me, I was worried that if the economy got better I’d have a higher mortgage rate; but I never thought I’d live here more than seven years (when it would have the opportunity to have jumped up 2% two times).

Well it’s that time of year again and my mortgage adjusted, it went down 1/8th of a percent. I’m now paying 3.125%, this is much less than my original 6.875%. While I understand the value of my home has probably dropped, at least I’m not paying a higher mortgage at the same time, the lower value means less property taxes.

Year Rate
1998 6.875%
1999 6.875%
2000 6.875%
2001 5.25% (paid $750 to lower rate*)
2002 4.25% (paid $750 to lower rate*)
2003 4.25%
2004 4.25%
2005 4.25%
2006 4.25%
2007 4.25%
2008 4.875% (first yearly adjust)
2009 3.25% (yearly adjust)
2010 3.125% (yearly adjust)

I was paying the higher rate in the beginning when I owed a lot more money, so the higher interest rate did affect me more, but at the time it was a low interest rate. I think the rates were around 7% at the time and I paid a few hundred dollars ($300-ish) to lower it 3/8ths of a percent, which was supposed to take three-and-a-half years to make that few hundred dollar fee back, but since I paid the $750 to lower the rate I lost out on that (I think it was three years to the day) but only the $30-$50 I hadn’t recovered; I still think that was a good decision, who could have predicted a crisis of 9/11 proportions would occur?

I’m living on the East side of Dearborn (Michigan, United States) and they’ve finally removed the old deserted Montgomery Wards building and finishing a new office building which might help (a tiny bit) in revitalizing this side of town…

I made pretty good money decisions on this for my first time. The one big mistake I made was at the time of purchase I did have the ability to put 20% down (I had put down 15%) and I wish I had done the 20%; yes I know that’s a lot to put down these days, but my mother always taught me to be a good saver and I knew I’d want to buy someday. Here’s why: The PMI insurance, this is the insurance that you pay for to guarantee that you won’t default (but only for the first 20%), was harder to drop than they made me believe: you had to pay for an inspection and if the value of the house had dropped it wouldn’t be 20% and it wouldn’t get waived so I was a little nervous and a little annoyed. But it was $35 a month that I was putting towards nothing (for me, at least) that could have been towards my house and I didn’t like seeing it on my statement. It was about $35 for every 5%, so if I’d put down 0%, it’d have been $140 a month (that’s $1440 each year!). But if something had happened at the time and I needed the money, that would have been gone from my reserves (but I’m still kicking myself for it).

So other than my PMI rant, the whole home owning process has gone really really well. I’m still happy with the home. It’s been very centrally located to the three different jobs (Allen Park, Redford, Hamtramck) I’ve had since I lived here.

*Surprisingly, when I paid the $750 for the ARM to adjust adjust the rate, it actually restarted the 5-years over! So when I ended up changing to the 4.25% rate, it held for the next 5 years.

Brownie Bites at Applebee’s

Just had the best dessert at Applebee’s for only one dollar! A tiny warm brownie with a small scoop of ice cream. It was delicious!!! And did I say it was only $1?

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Not the best photo, but the flash was too bright and it was kinda dim (this photo) without it, it was even better than it looked!

I guess they’ve only been doing this Brownie Bites deal until 4 PM, but they (at least the Allen Park Applebee’s) is extending it.

They had Long Island Iced Tea’s for $4 and I got a huge amount of shrimp and fries for $11 with it. Yum!

Everything was great there (thanks Tiffany!) except there were at least 5 feet of receipts printed off for my purchase (I paid with credit and finished off a gift card) which was a little insane….

News Reading with Doppler – FREE until July 20th, 2010

I like using a NewsReader on my iPhone (or iPod Touch) and one of my favorites is Doppler. It’s easy to use and it synchronizes with Google Reader so it makes off-line reading easy to do. So this means that when you read an article it marks it as read on Google so you don’t end up reading it again.

doppler.175x175-75.jpgIt caches all your RSS feeds for off-line reading so it’s pretty fast when you’re going through the news since it cached it in advance; but this means you do click to click on the link a minute before you’re ready to read since it doesn’t download in the background. I usually tap it before I leave the house since it’s faster on the WiFi, even if I don’t read it soon, it’s cached most of the recent articles so that when I do sync over 3G it’s already got most of the new news…

TIP: When configuring to sync with Google it lists all your individual feeds at the top of the list, but if you scroll to the bottom of the list you can choose your “folders” as defined in Google Ready

I’m mentioning this software today because it’s free for download until July 20th, 2010. It’s worth the money, but free is better, isn’t it?