Free Cash!

Did you know that you could possibly be missing out on hundreds or even thousands of dollars of free money? I have been finding a lot of great sign-up bonuses and cash-back deals over the last few months and I thought I would share some of the offers that I have been able to get recently.

Chase Cash Plus Rewards Visa Signup Bonus - $100
Charles Schwab Visa Signup Bonus (Gift Card) - $100
Speedway Speedy Rewards Bonus (Gift Card) - $50
HSBC Online Savings Signup Bonus - $25
VirtualBank Signup Bonus - $20
Pinecone Research Rewards - $15
BigCrumbs Cash-Back Earnings - $7.82

That's a GRAND TOTAL of $297.82!

You might be thinking... how can I get in on these deals and earn my own free cash? Well, I am going to give you some tips for that as well. Here is a listing of all of the sites that I use to find these free cash offers. Enjoy!

• FatWallet Free Stuff Forum - best free stuff discussion forum
  
• FatWallet Finance Forum - credit card and banking deals discussion.
  
• SlickDeals Freebies Forum - free Stuff discussion
  
• evreward.com - find the best cash-back offers for your online purchases.
  
• BigCrumbs.com - one of the best cash-back sites.

Living Frugally

One of my all-time favorite sites is Fatwallet.com. They have great forums for sharing financial advice, finding free stuff, and finding hot deals.

Recently I discovered a very interesting topic in their finance forum regarding living frugally. Within this topic, there are hundreds of posts from people sharing their own ideas about how to save money. Check it out:
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/417537/

Some of my favorite ideas mentioned are:

"Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs whenever possible."
These bulbs use just 13 watts of energy and burn as bright as a 60 watt bulb! I recently purchased 6 of these and installed them in my most used rooms.

"Unplug all unecessary things when going away on vacation, especially computer, monitor, TV, etc, as they will still draw power when off."
I have most of my larger appliances plugged into surge protectors, so when I'm not using them I flip the switch to off on the surge protector to eliminate wasted current draw.

Go for the Tankless water heater. Can produce hot water for hours continuously on demand. There is no tank to keep warm all day long, saving lots on energy."
I live in an apartment so I have no choice here. But this is an excellent idea and one piece of advice that I will certainly use when I have my own home. I read an article a while back that said that the second most energy consuming appliance in a home is the hot water heater, behind heating/air conditioning.

And now, I'd like to add my own favorite tip:

"Use a portable electric heater!"
This is my favorite and most efficient way to save money on electricity. It saves me literally hundreds per year. I actually keep my central heat turned off completely. When I come home if it is really cold (below 55) I will turn on the central heat for about 15 minutes to get the house heated up quickly and then turn it back off. I will then use a portable electric heater to heat the room I am in. Pretty much every electric heater is 1500 watts on high power. This is less than 1/3 of the energy that a central heating unit would use. Plus, you can use the low setting and it will only draw about 700 watts. Even at night, I keep the central heat turned off and run an portable electric heater on low power. It stays very comfortable, especially with the bedroom door closed and our down-filled comforter. When we get out of bed it is slightly cool, but we just crank it up to high power and jump in the hot shower. Don't be afraid to try this. You will be surprised how comfortable it is and how much you will save!

Join My Investment Challenge!

Not long ago, I discovered MarketWatch's Virtual Stock Exchange. They have just launched a new beta version of the investing game called VSE beta which has a much sleeker, state-of-the art interface.

I have decided to begin my own challenge and compete with all of you finance bloggers! Anyone is welcome to join. The more participants the higher the level of competition.

Each player will begin with $100,000 of virtual cash and will build and manage his/her own portfolio of investments to attain the highest returns possible.

Here's how to join:

1. Open this link and read the competition summary:
   Bright Investment Challenge
   
2. Click on the 'Join Game' link.
   
3. If you are an exisiting Virtual Stock Exchange member, enter your Email address and Password in the login panel and get set to trade. If you are a new user, follow the link to register - its easy!
   
4. Follow the instructions and start trading!
   

I love freebies!

My wife and I just moved closer to work after she graduated college in January. Our new apartment is much larger, so we decided that we wanted to purchase a love seat to go with our sofa. After shopping around, we discovered that we could get a much nicer love seat and matching sofa for just $100 more than it would cost us to buy the matching love seat alone for our current sofa. Therefore, we decided we would purchase the new set and sell our current sofa.

Well... our dream sofa is one that is owned by my aunt and we have always raved over it everytime we visit. We have told them that we want it if they ever get rid of it. Guess what... they called last night saying they were going to give it to goodwill if we didn't want it! I was like...hmm... WE WANT IT!

So now I get to pocket the $700 we were going to spend on the new set (yeah it was a great deal), plus we have our current sofa sold for $300. That nets me a total of $1000 in savings.

And this sofa is amazing... it comes with a love seat, a chair and a half, and an ottomon. And it is super nice! Like I'm talking it had to cost upwards of $3,000 for the set. And we are getting it free!!! How great.

How long before I can afford to buy a house?

Average price of homes meeting our needs/wants: $170,000

This means we need a down payment of: $34,000

This is of course, assuming that we pay 20% down payment, which is what we want to do ideally. However, we also want to buy in the next 12 months. My goal with this blog is to analyze whether or not we will realistically be able to have $34,000 for a down payment in 12 months or less. We also want to keep at least $1,500 in our checking account as a nice cash buffer. We have lots of un-utilized credit as well as family members that will help us if we need emergency funds. I expect that we will build our emergency account back up fairly quickly after the purchase.

That brings my target savings to a grand total of: $35,500

If we pay 10% down... we need a down payment of: $17,000

When you include the emergency fund and the checking funding, that brings our target savings at 10% down to: $18,500

Pay off auto loan... or save toward down-payment on a house?

I was recently thinking about the auto loan that I currently have and whether I should pay it off. The interest is very low, at only 5.0%. I thought I was doing pretty good since I have most of my savings earning 4.8% through HSBC. Why not keep making the small monthly payment of $187 and use the remaining balance of $5616.05 toward the down-payment on the house we will soon buy?

The piece of the puzzle that I have been over looking is that I am paying taxes on the 4.8% interest that I am earning through HSBC. If I were to use a portion of that money to pay off my auto loan, wouldn't I be better off?

That is what I want to thoroughly examine here...

Emergency Fund

Building and maintaining a savings cushion is vital for your financial health. Most financial experts recommend having a minimum of three months' worth of living expenses set aside in case of an emergency.

A Month's worth of living expenses for me: $1,600

Emergency Fund Goal: $4,800

I plan to keep my emergency fund in the highest yielding money market savings account that is available. Currently that would be HSBC which is paying 4.8%

The most simple of goals... To Buy a TV!

My options are:

1. Keep current setup of 27" Flat Screen CRT in living room and 13" CRT in Bedroom until we purchase a house.
   
   
2. Purchase a new 27" Flat Screen CRT for Bedroom. Cost: $151
   
   
3. Purchase a larger Flat Panel LCD for living room, replace current entertainment center with a nice stand. Cost: $900+
   
   
4. Purchase a DLP Projector, screen, mount and get rid of current entertainment center. Cost: $800+
   

I believe since option 1 is so much more affordable, this is what I should choose until we purchase a home. Then, I can go all out with option 3, which is really what I want. However, I don't mind waiting, since 27" is plenty for me right now.