Dollar Tamer Helping you tame your money

I came across this and figured I had to share it…  According to an AP Article, a woman in Chicago won a house for $1.75 on EBay.  The house was under foreclosure and has $850 of back taxes and yard costs, but it’s still a heck of a find.  Not sure how much profit she’ll be able to turn (it certainly doesn’t look like it’s in good shape), but I’m sure she’ll get something for it!

Digg it!      Stumble it!

Posted under Weird

The Senate passed the latest revision of the bailout bill 74-25.  It is now heading to the house where its fate is unknown.   A Yahoo article points out that the length of the bill has swelled from 3 pages to 451 pages, and it still could grow more in the House.  This is all due to adding provisions to the bill to give representatives an out to vote for the extremely unpopular bill.  I suppose it is important in an election year to be able to say “I was voting for tax breaks” instead of getting hammered for voting for a $700 billion bank rescue.

Some of the additions to the original bill are:

• Expanding the FDIC Coverage from $100,000 to $250,000 (I covered FDIC in a recent post).
• A one-year patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
• $100 billion in tax breaks for business and middle-class.
• $8 billion in disaster relief for Texas, Louisiana and the Midwest for Hurricane Ike.

So what does all this mean for the regular citizen?  What we are seeing is the government putting itself another $700 billion in debt by buying subprime mortgages.  A subprime loan is given to someone that is expected to have a very high rate of default (i.e. low income, high debts, history of default, etc).  To compensate for the risk, the loan is given a high interest rate which in turn makes it even more difficult for the person with the loan to pay it off.  This is a very risky investment for the lender.  What we see now is the result of the risk not paying off.  Now the Government wants to take over these poor investments using our tax dollars.

I can appreciate the fact that massive lending failures will cause all sorts of economic calamity, but what we’re looking at is making the public pay for the bad investments that the banks made.  There are all sorts of political fingerpointing going on (I do not want this to turn into a political blog), but the fact is that the end result is a bigger Government that will need more funding.  The money is going to have to come from somewhere to cover this.  Can you say more taxes?  The last thing this economy needs is additional taxation!

Dave Ramsey is talking about an alternative plan, that I must say looks very appealing.  The details are available here.  It is another option that should be considered (though I fear now it’s too late).

To put it into perspective, here’s a comic that Brokeass-Student found that’s a pretty good sum-up of the situation.

Digg it!      Stumble it!

Posted under News

I know this is probably obvious to anyone reading this site, but I came across this article at WAPT.com about coupons on the back of your receipts.  I noticed this trend some time ago, and every now and then there are some decent coupons back there.  A lot of stores are printing additional savings discounts on the bottom of the coupon as well now.

With the economic slowdown, people are finally starting to pay more attention to coupons and discounts.  You may not always find something useful on your receipt (if you don’t need it, don’t use it!), but it’s always worth a look.  I’m a big advocate of saving your receipts so that you can track your spending anyhow, but this gives you yet another reason not to just toss that receipt into the garbage or forget it in the bottom of the bag.

What’s the best gem you’ve found on your receipt?

Digg it!      Stumble it!

Posted under Deals, Spending

Let me tell you about my $60/hr part-time job…

The internet is full of useful information! I use it for what I consider one of my part-time jobs. There are oodles of sites that can help you save money by sharing ideas I’ve never thought of before and showing me where to get things I need for almost nothing or free. Recently I paid 50 cents for boxes of cereal, 67 cents for frozen dinners, 25 cents for a loaf of bread, 7 cents for toilet bowl cleaner.  I got mustard, hot sauce, gravy, soap, a haircut, restaurant meals (see our birthday post), toothbrushes, mouthwash, toothpaste, Band-Aids, and rice among many other things for free. Even better, sometimes the store pays me to take their products out of the store!

This is how I do this job, which has flexible hours and is very rewarding with a high rate of pay:

1. Get the Sunday paper, generally the one with the largest circulation will have the most coupons. I get two subscriptions now.  I used to get one but when I would see how great the coupon potential is, I always wanted to go get another paper.
2. Don’t clip any coupons. Just pull out the coupon inserts (there are usually about 2-4 of them) and write the date on the cover of each of them in black marker. I keep them in date order in a filing cabinet next to my computer.
3. I also pull out some of the ads for the stores. My favorites are CVS, Walgreens, Meijer, and Kroger. I also pull out the Target ad and the Michaels craft store ad. We very rarely go to these stores and buy something that we don’t need, but I work next to a Target and if I can get some free items, I will go pick them up. Michaels usually has a coupon for 40 or 50 % off an item and my daughter is very crafty and might buy herself some paint or something.
4. Monday night or Tuesday is when I usually start the serious work with lots of help from the internet! My first stop is The Grocery Game where I pay $15 every 8 weeks to get extremely valuable information. They offer a 4 week trial for $1 to check it out. You can subscribe to a number of different lists for grocery or drug stores. It costs more the more lists you get. I get the lists for Kroger and Meijer. The lists tells me exactly what is on sale, the regular price, the sale price, and the coupons that have been in the Sunday paper. I didn’t clip the coupons, but the list tells me exactly which coupon insert to look in for the coupon, for example, Smart Source on September 21. And I’ve labeled it so I can find it right away! The list tells me the savings percentage and also codes it in a way, helping me to get the best deal by putting all the FREE items in green and the really good deals in blue. Other sale items are in black, but it almost recommends to not buy it right now unless you need it because they know that it will go on sale for a better price soon. That list is amazing, it would probably take me at least 30 hours to go through all the ads and coupons to figure out those best deals. Other (free) places to check out the best deals for the week are www.couponmom.com, mommysnacks.blogspot.com, www.becentsable.net and my favorite, www.moneysavingmom.com. Some of these different lists for the same stores have a few different items, locations might vary a little and some people notice other deals, so I try to check several sites to get the most deals.
5. Using these lists on the internet, I write out my grocery list and make a pile of coupons, bundling them together before I head out to the store.

I typically go to two different grocery stores each once a week, and often CVS or Walgreens because they like to give things away too, as long as you know how to do it. My grocery stores double coupons up to fifty cents which really helps the savings add up. I spend an hour or two each week preparing my shopping lists while reading various money saving blogs and learning about other ways to tame our dollars. Payday for this “job” of mine comes quickly and I don’t have to pay taxes or social security on my earnings!

Featured on

Digg it!      Stumble it!

Posted under Deals, Spending

You’ve likely seen their ads on television.  They are an online bank, and have both checking and savings accounts.  We have been using their Orange savings account for some time now and love it.  It is extremely useful and the options they have work very well with long-term budgeting (I’ll be posting on how to use ING Orange Savings for this).

They have a 3% APY savings account.  If you use a referral and open with $250 or more, you get $25 instantly added to your account.  They also have a checking account that gives between 1.75% APY and 3.5% APY that also will give you the $25 bonus.

If you’re interested, I’d appreciate it if you used one of my referrals.  I get a $10 referral bonus and you get a $25 bonus on a high-interest account.  I’ll also be showing you how to use the ING account for some budgeting help!

Referrals are available here.

Digg it!      Stumble it!

Posted under Budgeting, Deals, Investing