Gas station gift card annoyance

I had a $25 gas gift card that I got from an online promotion. It is one of those gift cards that you cannot use to pay at the pump. So, I went to use it over the weekend. I went inside, paid the $25 and got a receipt showing that $25.00 was taken from the gift card. So, I go back out to the car to pump the gas.

The pump stops at $24.99! It just would not budge up to the $25.00. Now, I know that it is only a penny, but wtf? Clearly the guy inside can make some nice bank if he cheats everyone out of just a penny. And no one is going to go inside and complain about it. I didn't. It wasn't worth my time to stand in line over a penny. But it is still incredibly annoying.

I have another gas gift card to use. And you can bet that I won't be returning to that station!

When you don't get what you paid for

This past week I had two instances where the quality I rec'd was not what I had paid for. And that is really disappointing and annoying. First, I decided to try some Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It is way more expensive than my usual brand. However Sam's has a super size vat of it for cheap, so I thought I would get a small bottle at the local grocery store to try out. Blech! I much prefer the cheapo kind from Big Lots! And I totally feel like I did not get what I paid for.

Next, I ordered three bags of coffee from Joffrey's coffee. This is $12 a bag coffee. And either they did something different or had a fluke or just plain sent me the wrong coffee. Why? Because it tastes all wrong. And it is not even drinkable. And to add insult to injury, I had added three different sample sizes to my order at $0.01 each and none of them arrived with my order! Sure, it was only three cents but it is still annoying!

Tomorrow I am calling both Bertolli's and Joffrey's coffee to see what can be done about this.

Late carnival linkage

Thanks to Sound Money Matters for hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance this week and including me! If you have not had a look yet then you are missing out on some great articles. Here are a few highlights:

• Visualize Your Income Potential
• How to create passive income from writing
• FauxPlomas and the watering down of college degrees
• How to Make Your Child A Millionare!
• Nine Reasons Credit Cards Are Evil

Free Money - Make An Easy $10 With Ebates

Have you heard of Ebates? Not that long ago I read about it and signed up for it. It is a free site where basically you register with them and then if you have to buy something online you look for the store on their site and click through from there and you earn cash back! It's really simple and I have not have a problem getting credited for my purchases. And then they just cut you a check. 

Well, they have a promo going on right now where new members can get $10 FREE just by making a purchase by October 31, 2008. The catch is that you need a special referral link to get that $10. If you want an easy $10 with Ebates click --> here <-- That is my referral link that will hook you up with the free ten bucks. I'll also get a referral credit for it too. Just remember - you have to make a purchase by October 31, 2008 to get the free ten bucks!! (otherwise you will get the standard $5)

To give you an idea of the stores on Ebates and they money you can earn, here are some examples:

• Aeropostale - earn 2% cash back
• Apple iTunes - earn 3% cash back
• Apple Store - earn 1% cash back
• Audible.com - earn $5.00 cash back
• Barnes & Noble.com - earn 4% cash back
• Best Buy - earn 1% cash back
• Blockbuster Online - earn $12 cash back
• Borders - earn 4% cash back
• Dell - earn 2% cash back
• Drugstore.com - earn 6% cash back
• Netflix.com - earn $18 cash back
• Old Navy - earn 3% cash back
• Overstock.com - earn 4% cash back
• Target - earn 4% cash back 
• Wal-Mart - earn 1% cash back

There are also car rental companies, hotels, airlines and much, much more!

Don't burn through your emergency fund! How to find a job in this rough economy

Smart Money ran an article last week on the Five Best Cities for Job Hunting. The cities that were mentioned in the article are:

• Provo-Orem, Utah
• Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina
• Salt Lake City, Utah
• Austin-Round Rock, Texas
• Huntsville, Alabama

So, what are you to do if you are unemployed and not in one of those states? Well, hopefully you can file for unemployment benefits. You should do this as soon as possible as there is usually a waiting week where you will not get a payment. Of course, unemployment benefits are not paid out in the full amount of what you were earning. So, you can't rely too much on them. 

The first thing you need to do is to take some action. The longer you wait then that is longer that you have less income coming in. And that could lead to some dire financial consequences. And if you are fortunate enough to have an emergency fund, you do not want to exhaust that either as you will just have to rebuild it once you get employed. So, start looking for jobs and sending out resumes.

Remember that you are in no position to be picky. Basically you need a job and you need it to pay more than unemployment. So, you may not be able to hand pick a job that is exactly equal to what you were doing previously. You may have to take a pay cut and you may even have to take a job that you are overqualified for. 

It doesn't have to be permanent. You are allowed to take a job offer that pays your bills but is not your ideal job. The objective is to get a job that pays your bills. You can always keep looking for something better. And there is no need to feel guilty about taking a job that you don't plan on staying at. If you don't then someone else will. Of course, you don't want to let them know that in the interview.  :)

Think ahead to the worst case job scenario. I am currently unemployed in a state/city that is not on the list above. For me, the worst case is that I have to get two full-time retail jobs. That should enable me to make enough to just barely cover all of the bills if I am careful. Would that totally suck and be less than ideal? Yes! But I know that there are plenty of retail jobs - especially with the holidays coming up. And I would try to choose wisely - for instance going for a job at Target for the 10% employee discount I could use on things like toilet paper and shampoo. 

For more resources and tips:

• How to Best Cope With Being Laid Off
• Four Places to Seek Help From While Job Hunting
• Four Ways To Make The Most Of Unemployment
• Making the Sale in a Tough Economy
• 5 Steps to a Successful Cover Letter
• Sure glad I got that MBA - Megan McArdle’s Advice for the Unemployed
• Suddenly Unemployed: What Steps to Take Now
• The 10 Rules of Job Hunting
• Seven Tips for the Newly Unemployed
• 5 Strategies to Survive An Economic Slowdown

Another bank failure!

This marks the 12th bank failure this year. Apparently on Friday Ameribank, Inc. was shut down.  This bank was in West Virginia. It actually had five branches located in West Virginia and three branches located in Ohio.

I was with NetBank when it was shutdown. Not being able to get to your money over the weekend was a bit annoying.

Funny saying

I came across this funny saying on a site about Southern sayings.

"The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket."

(Note: I'm from the South and have never heard most of the things on that page.)

Disgusting practices by the food industry

I came across a story on the WSJ website that is just disgusting called Food Makers Scrimp on Ingredients In an Effort to Fatten Their Profits. The article discusses how the food industry is adding cheaper ingredients to foods and raising the prices for consumers, all in the name of rising commodity prices. For instance, it said that Hershey is replacing some cocoa butter in its chocolates with partial vegetable oil. And towards the end of the article it talks about companies using dairy substitutes. So, pretty soon that cheese you are eating for calcium might not have as much in it as it used to! 

It is an interesting story. Click on the link above for the read.

Least affordable housing markets

I also had a look at the least affordable housing markets when I was looking at the most affordable housing markets in the US. The list was not very surprising. Here is the list in order of least affordable.

1. New York/ White Plains/ Wayne, NJ/NY
2. San Francisco/ San Mateo/ Redwood City, CA
3. Los Angeles/ Long Beach/ Glendale, CA
4. Miami/ Miami Beach/ Kendall, FL
5. Nassau/ Suffolk, NY
6. Santa Ana/ Anaheim/ Irvine, CA
7. Newark/ Union, NJ/PA
8. San Jose/ Sunnyvale/ Santa Clara, CA
9. Oxnard/ Ventura/ Thousand Oaks, CA
10. Seattle/ Bellevue/ Everrett, WA

Now, I am a little surprised that the San Diego, CA area is not on this list. And what about Boston, MA? Or even those expensive zip codes in Connecticut?

Most affordable housing markets

I recently an article on Business Week's website that listed the 10 most affordable housing markets in the US. Even though I am in no place to buy a home, I had a look at the list to see what places were on it. I was kind of surprised by what I saw. Have a look at the list below and see if you have the same thoughts as me. The list is numbered in order of most affordable.

1. Indianapolis/ Carmel, Indiana
2. Youngstown/ Warren/ Boardman, Ohio
3. Detroit/ Dearborn, Michigan
4. Warren/ Troy/ Farmington Hills, Michigan
5. Grand Rapids/ Wyoming, Michigan
6. Toledo, Ohio
7. Dayton, Ohio
8. Akron, Ohio
9. Syracuse, New York
10. Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Now, have a look at that for a moment. Notice anything those places have in common? A hideous local economy! No wonder houses are affordably priced - good luck finding a job to pay for it though! And until recently I lived in Ohio and I know how bad the job market is there.

Wow, what a week so far for financial news

It has been an interesting week thus far for financial news. First we had the Lehman Bros. thing. Then yesterday morning I saw the headline that the Fed might cut rates again. I rejoiced at that due to my credit card debt but I cringed when I thought of my poor little ING savings. Then I saw the headline that the Fed had pumped $70 BILLION into the nation's financial system. Yikes!! No, seriously, yikes! Then the news was of the worst day in Wall Street since 2001. I didn't dare look at my IRA accounts. I shudder to think of what happened to them. But then the stocks ended high due to the Fed NOT cutting the rate. Wow. Oh and then last night I read that AIG was getting pumped with cash by the government too. And all of this had happened by Tuesday! What scary financial times we are in.

Retirement planning based on location affordability?

I think a lot of people dream of retiring some place exotic. You know, maybe like the South of France. Or some place in the Caribbean. But the fact is, for a lot of people, they have to settle for retirement right here in the USA. It seems like a lot of people head south to Florida or head west to places like Arizona. With that in mind, you might be surprised to find that Forbes recently ranked Columbus, Ohio at the top of the list of America's Most Affordable Places to Retire. Shocking, no?

Have a look at the top 10 right here.

1. Columbus, Ohio
2. Dallas, Texas
3. Minneapolis, Minnesota
4. Houston, Texas
5. Salt Lake City, Utah
6. Indianapolis, Indiana
7. Denver, Colorado
8. St. Louis, Missouri
9. Atlanta, Georgia
10. Nashville, Tennessee

Note how none of those cities are in Florida or Arizona! I guess that makes me wonder - when you get ready to retire do you make the decision of where to retire a purely emotional decision or a purely financial decision?

I mean, if you have spent your time up until retirement making smart financial decisions, do you just throw caution to the wind and make an emotional based decision for once? Or do you make practicality a force of habit and make the decision based on financials?

I guess I have about 35 or so years to think it over though.

For the Forbes story, click here.

Get your free Transunion credit monitoring

A few months ago there was news of a class action settlement with Transunion. To qualify you basically just have to have had a credit card at some point since 1987. This 'settlement' is supposed to be compensation for them selling your private data to businesses. As a result you can get up to nine months of credit monitor service at no cost. The catch here is that you need register by September 24th! So visit https://www.listclassaction.com/ to sign up now.

You really can negotiate things

Recently I was traveling and had to stay in a hotel. I did not get to my destination until around 2am. I did not have reservations. The first hotel wanted to charge over $100 (a Hampton Inn) and would not budge. I did not see the logic here as it was unlikely they would sell the room as it was 2am. And I was not about to pay full price considering that checkout was 11am. So, on to the next hotel! The Best Western next door quoted a similar price. Then the negotiation began. I was able to name my price. I picked $70. Guess what? I got the room for $70!