The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

Cheers to frugal living! Excellent set of tips on how to live within your means. We tend to forget that. :-)

Reference
102 Personal Finance Tips Your Professor Never Taught You, Your Credit Advisor blog

The secret of wealth (that so many people miss), is that in America almost anyone with a moderate level of discipline can become a millionaire. You must, however, be disciplined enough to save money year in and year out on a consistent basis. --Trippon in his book, How Millionaires Stay Rich Forever

I believe in the above quote. That's how I plan to accumulate a sizable amount of wealth (become a millionaire :-)).

Saving money every month is crucial. There is simply no other way (for most people). I do it every month, do you? Start small and build on it.

Gas prices are getting crazy. :-( Here in NJ, within the last two days, the gas prices went up by around 50 cents! They're over $3 in many places. It sucks!

But where can you find the cheapest gas? Internet to the rescue! Below you'll find links taken from The Big Picture blog that show you exactly that: the cheapest places to re-fuel.

• GasPriceWatch.com -- A database-driven site that allows users to search for the lowest prices across the country; depends on "spotters" to supply data.

• GasBuddy.com -- A nationwide site that aggregates data from 170 local gasoline-price Web sites operated by GasBuddy, such as losangelesgasprices.com or californiagasprices.com.

• FuelEconomy.com -- This site offers links for price information on a state-by-state basis, which drills down into lists of city links.

• FuelMeUp.com -- A consumer-based site that depends on drivers to submit data on where to find the cheapest gasoline around the country.

Click on the chart, below, to see the fuel prices all the way from 1980s.

Reference
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/08/tracking_fuel_c.html by The Big Picture blog

Wow! Presidential Online Bank has the best checking-account rates you'll find. 3.75%. It beats ING Direct (where I have an account), it beats all the other ones. If you want the highest interest-paying savings and checking, try Presidential. The only thing with Presidential is that you need to have high account balances ($5K for savings; $1.5K for checking -- double check).

MyMoneyBlog has a good review of the bank, Presidential Bank Premier Savings Account Review.

MagsForLess.com has some cheap magazines. Scanning the list I found couple I subscribe to for very low prices (I like them too):
- SmartMoney ($6)
- Men's Health ($5)
- PC Magazine ($12)
- The Week ($6 - I subscribed to it recently).

If you plan to by more than one, check out the discounts here. (You can also find cheap magazines by searching eBay. I got a subscription for Consumer Reports for $13.)

You heard about it, I'm sure. But you could never quality, right? Not anymore. IRS partners now offer FREE tax filing for ALL. That's cool. See the CNET article I read about this.

Here are the links to the FREE filings from major companies.
Intuit TurboTax
TaxAct
eSmartTax

See others here that offer free filings based on one or more conditions.

Do you ever plan to buy a house? Finance a car? If so, you better have a good credit or you might not get a good deal. It seems like credit reports are getting more important. I even heard that some car-insurance companies will be accepting customers based on a credit report. The list goes on and on. Simply put, you need to have a good credit report and you need to verify that fairly often -- once every year or so. That costs money, no? Sure it does, but things are changing.

There is a new law in place now. You can get a free report from each of the major companies (Equifax Inc., Experian and TransUnion) for free. Every year! That's some good news. You might just have to wait a little longer, though. See the breakdown of states and the eligibility, below. It looks like NJ will be eligible for free reports starting on Sept 1, 2005.

How do you get it? Visit AnnualCreditReport.com and get it from there.

With gas prices at all times high, you might want to consider a fuel-efficient car. How can you find one? Over the years, more car makers will make hybrid cars: regular engine plus an electric one to save on fuel. Usually, these cars give you 20-40% more fuel efficiency with the same type of power. In two months, Honda is coming out with a hybrid Accord. You'll get a V6 and you'll be able to make 600+ miles on one tank! That's good. Anyway, I found a site that let's you compare cars' fuel efficiency.

FuelEconomy.gov

Check it out and see how efficient is your car.

Have you been buying MP3s from iTunes for 99 cents? I haven't. Mainly for the reason that I don't like to be bound to a non-standard, non-portable format. Plus, the price. 99 cents per song might not seem like it's a lot, but it adds up. I believe we have a choice now. Finally!

49 cents per song? Sounds good? You bet. I know I'll be buying. :-) This is courtesy of Real.com. But I think the deal only runs through Labor Day, so hurry up. Real gives you a choice -- that's what I want. You can either download an iPod version of the song, or a standard WMA version that can be played on a variety of players (it's actually a standard done by Microsoft...).

So there you go. 49¢ per song. $4.99 per album. Real.com. Pretty good deal.

Update
After checking out a few downloads, my enthusiasm seems a little curbed. First of all, the site seems fairly slow compared to iTunes. Second, the downloads are encoded using Real's proprietary standard, .rax. I don't think you can convert it to MP3. If you can, the process is tedious and somewhere hidden. Third, the interface is clumsy, hard to use. Not very user friendly. :-( All in all, it's still my number one, mainly because of the price, but I am still on the lookout for a better one. Sorry Apple, I don't want to be bound to one format -- .aac does not cut it for me.

- Makes Phoning Through the Internet Convenient and Cheap

Yes, that's true, for $25/month you get unlimited local and regional calling; all of the features that you would have to pay extra; you get to keep your old number. And, supposedly, you get a very good quality out of it. So if you spend more than $30/month and have a broadband connection you should give it a try, or at least check it out.

Vonage.com - a New Jersey company

Wow! That's cool technology!

Yes, that's right, Froogle, not Google: a new site from Google (did I confuse you? :-)). I'm sure almost everyone uses Google and, now, a lot of us will (I expect) will be using Froogle.

Froogle: Find products for sale from across the web.

Do I need to explain more? Find sale items from different categories quickly on the web. That's pretty cool, I say. Good job Google, or, Froogle. So how do you say it now, "Froogle it?"

I've seen a commercial for Shopper.com, so I checked it out recently. How is it? I was surprised that it is a CNet.com product (that's good), which is my favorite review-before-buy place. That said, Shopper.com is a very good shopping tool: gives you product price comparison from different online stores (even calculates shipping and taxes for the stores) -- which can save you a lot of money; gives you links to reviews by CNet (this is what I think makes it great -- CNet has really good reviews, plus, you get user reviews); easy to navigate and find what you're looking for; and plenty more. What else can you expect?

CNet.com, and now, Shopper.com are my favorite online shopping tools. Use them and save plenty -- that's why I do most of my shopping online.

That's another very good site that lists Good Deals on the web. This one gives you a quite a few new deals every day. Not bad! (Thanks Tom.)

Check it out: DigitalDeals.net

I've come across several sites which list best-deals-on-the-web. I've actually bought a lot of stuff cheap that way: a computer, digital camera ... and lots of free stuff.

I think the following 2 are the best:

SlickDeals.net
DealsOfAmerica.com

Visit them often and save.
(If you know of any other, good ones, post it up!)