Never Blacker November

I'm not a big "Black Friday" shopper, but I enjoy watching the news to see all of the craziness.

This year, Black Friday seemed to start more than a week early, based on all of the pre-Black Friday deals that I saw. On the news this morning a reporter commented on the lack of crowds at a local mall and how a large number of consumers are purchasing online. I think that is probably true, but I also think Black Friday is being watered down by "Grey Thursday", "Small Business Saturday", and "Cyber Monday". By the way, why isn't there a cleaver name for Sunday? Something like, "Super Black Sunday" or "Jet Black Sunday".

Anyways, as Black Friday spills over into the days around it, it seems likely that retailers will stretch this opportunity to sell over a longer and longer timeframe in the years to come. I could see the entire month of November becoming one big SALE. We could call it "Never Blacker November" and have discounts available the whole month. It's the perfect time to get deals for the upcoming Christmas holiday, purchase model year end vehicles, update your wardrobe for the New Year, etc.

I could also see some out of the box thinker taking it the other direction. Short "flash" sales that offer huge discounts but last just an hour, maybe even minutes. With smart phone technology, the time seems ripe for this type of thing. "Ultra Black Hour" could create a buying frenzy like non other.

Bought a 4x4

Just a quick post to say that we bought another vehicle. This vehicle, a 4x4, can be used as a daily driver if it takes awhile for my wife to get a job, or can be used as a fun weekend "toy". We got a great deal by paying cash, $12,250 to be exact.

My wife is on her final interview today with a great company. If she gets the job, she will have 5 weeks of home study before receiving her company car. So, the extra vehicle will come in very handy.

Free Money Each Month

My wife and I try to charge as many of our expenses as possible to our cash back reward credit cards. Not only do we get cash back, but charging expenses to our credit cards helps with our cash flow situation. Of course, we make sure we pay the credit cards off each month so that we don’t incur interest charges.

We each have our own cash back credit card that we use for business expenses as well as a joint cash back credit card that we use for household expenses. We earned a total of $646.36 in cash back rewards from these credit cards in 2009. That works out to an average of $53.86/month. This is truly free money since we pay off the credit cards each month. I love it!

Bought New Suitcases, And Got A Deal

I travel a lot for work and have been destroying our suitcases. Actually, I've destroyed a couple by overpacking, but the airlines have also contributed by knocking off wheels and generally beating them up. My wife treats her luggage gently, so I destroyed hers for her.

With our upcoming vacation to Hawaii next month, we realized that we're all out of functional luggage. We decided to see what offers are out there in this beat down economy.

We found 50% off deal on high quality Atlantic luggage at a local luggage store. We bought an Atlantic 25" Expandable Upright Spinner Suiter (normally $240) for my wife and Atlantic 29" Expandable Upright Spinner Suiter (normally $280) for me. In addition to the 50% off deal, my wife had the good idea to ask for an extra discount for purchasing two suitcases. The lady agreed and gave us an extra 10% off.

Vacation To Hawaii

My wife and I just booked flights to Hawaii in September using my Delta SkyMiles. This is my first trip to Hawaii (my wife's 2nd) and we're both looking forward to some time off.

It was 52,000 SkyMiles per ticket, plus $10 per ticket in taxes. If we would have had to pay for the tickets, they would have cost $610.64 each.

It's nice to score two free tickets from miles I earned on business travel. Using the 104,000 miles knocked my SkyMiles balance down to 29,233 miles. I will be adding more miles when I go on my next business trip in a couple of weeks.

New Furniture. . .In This Economy?

Yep. We've wanted a new couch for quite a while, but couldn't commit to spending the money in this economy. My wife's father just shut down one of his stores and is giving us a nice leather couch and love seat. He will be dropping them off with us today, so we sold our old sectional couch on craigslist yesterday for $150. We plan to give my father-in-law the $150 as a thank you for the delivery.

Safe & Sound

We've wanted a safe for some time, but couldn't justify spending $300-$500 for a new one. So, I checked craigslist and found a number of home safes in the $150-$250 range. After some research, we decided on a Sentry Fire Safe that was listed for $200 (it costs $312 new). I was able to talk the guy down to $175.

We put our cash, passports, social security cards, marriage license, insurance paperwork, and our external hard drive (important digital files and photos). When we have kids in the house, we can also lock up our handgun in the safe.

Here are some of the features of the model (KSW3632) that we bought:

* LCD electronic lock with backlit keypad
* 4 live-locking bolts
* 2-hour fire protection
* Water-resistant
* Multi-Position drawer
* Multi-position tray
* Key rack and compartment for small items
* Door pocket
* May be bolted to floor

We Love Free Stuff

My wife’s old company gave “perk” points for special achievements and she received enough of them to order us blender/food processor and automatic can opener.

We received them a couple of days ago and they are pretty nice. We even sold our old blender for $20.00 yesterday on craigslist. Now if we can just sell our old, half functioning, can opener. . . $5.00 anyone?

Saved On Verizon

My wife is so great at saving us money. She saved us ~19%/month on our Verizon wireless bill by utilizing her company's corporate discount. While updating the account, she also determined that I was eligible for a free new phone this month (which I badly needed). She should start a blog called 1womansmoney. . . I'd subscribe.

Well Rewarded

We just reached our $300 cash back reward maximum for the year on Citi credit card. We did a good job of charging as many expenses as possible to this card to earn the 1-3% cash reward.

For the rest of the calendar year, we'll be switching to our American Express reward credit card, which we typically only use for Costco. Switching to this card for a couple of months will be a bit inconvenient, but I hate the thought of giving up free money.

One Advantage Of The Depressed Housing Market

Last year, we were able to get our property tax reduced $767.20 by simply filling out a one page Property Tax Assessment Appeals Application.This year, we had planned to complete another application because our property value decreased again.

To our surprise, the County Tax Assessor’s office automatically reduced our property taxes this year by $578.52. We didn't have to file any application. Our property taxes went from $2,916.80 (two payments of $1,458.40) to $2,338.28 (two payments of $1,169.14).

Man, I was impressed with the County Tax Assessor’s office when dealing with them last year, but now I am really impressed.

Great Deal On A Dinning Table

Once again, my wife hooks us up. We’ve wanted a new dinning table for awhile, but have been waiting until we could buy one that was nice enough to take with us when we get a house down the road. She found a beautiful wood table that regularly costs $500, on sale for only $250. The table includes a couple of leaves, so we can scale the size up when we get a house. The 4 wood chairs she picked out were normally $120 each, but they were marked down over half price.

Unfortunately, there was a mix-up at the store and they neglected to load one of the boxes for the table. After getting home, my wife discovered the error and called the store to ask that they deliver the box at no charge since it was their mistake. The store offered to discount the table further, if she would be willing to come back to pick up the box. She agreed and picked up the final box.

What started off as a table and chair set that cost $1,000+ (with tax), was discounted down to $324 (tax included). What a bargin!

Dinner And A Movie At Costco

Last month, my wife and I enjoyed our 2nd wedding anniversary. We decided to celebrate is special occasion by having dinner at the waterfront restaurant where we were married.

To save us some money, my wife bought a $100 gift card for the restaurant at Costco for $80. I had never even heard of this before. That’s a 20% savings! My wife is so smart. We also recently bought movie tickets at Costco and saved 20% once again.

So, if you have a Costco card and enjoy going out to eat or the movies, you might want to consider buying gift cards at Costco. Oh, and if you find the girl of your dreams, don’t let her get away.

Time Flies By

American Airlines informing me that my 11,316 American Airlines Aadvantage miles were in jeopardy of being lost since I have not flown with them within the past 18 months.

I have been flying almost exclusively with Delta and racked up a number of Delta SkyMiles. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to loose my American Airlines Aadvantage miles because there is a chance I may fly with them in the future.

I checked their website and determined that if I use my miles to redeem something, I get another 18 months before the miles expire. Unfortunately, I did not have enough miles for a free flight, but they have special offers online that you can trade your miles for. I used 1,700 of my miles to order a 1-year subscription to Time Magazine.

Not a bad deal. If I never fly with American Airlines again, I have enough points to keep a free Time Magazine subscription going for another 5 years or so.

Business Trip Miles

I just returned from a business trip to the East Coast, earning me another 9,941 Delta SkyMiles. Since I am Gold Medallion level, Delta doubles my miles each flight, making these longer trips a nice way to gain SkyMiles.

My total Delta SkyMiles balance is now 72,139 - just about time to start thinking about when we are going to use these for a vacation.

Cashing In On Vacation Time

To help us continue our accelerated 2nd mortgage payments progress, I cashed out 6 days of my company vacation time for $1,239.53.

Since I have been with my company seven years, I receive 19 paid days off a year. This is more time that I really need. Being able to cash out some of my vacation time is a nice perk.

My 4.5% raise last month brought my salary to $69,030/annually. By cashing in the 6 days of vacation I essentially gave myself an additional ~1.8% raise for the year, bringing my income to $70,269.53 this year.

Spending Money To Save Money

Our savings account just took a big hit. The 16 months of prepaid gym membership that my awesome wife bought me expires this month. Thankfully, we were able to score the same great deal that she originally negotiated: 16 months for $828, plus a free set of boxing gloves ($50 value).

The membership is normally $65/month, but our special deal ends up only costing $51.75/month. That equates to ~20% discount! The gym is only a couple of blocks from our condo, allowing me to easily shoot of for a class or to lift weights after work.

At my heaviest, I weights 205lbs, but have been able to gradually whittle it down to 185lbs. So, not only do I really enjoy the training, but it is also slowly helping me shed some weight.

Well Rewarded

I love cash back rewards credit cards! My wife and I both have cash back rewards cards that we use for business expenses (reimbursed by our companies) as well as a separate cash back rewards card we use for our household expenses. We are able to charge 30% of our total monthly household expenses to the cash back reward card each month.

If you don't currently have a rewards credit card, and you are able to properly manage your credit card debt, I recommend looking into it. My wife was the mastermind behind getting us signed up for the cash back rewards cards and it’s really paid off. We have averaged $59/month in rewards from our various cash back rewards credit cards over the past 10 months. Annually, that would be more than $700, and over 20 years it would exceed $14,000. That’s free money! In addition, charging expenses to a credit card helps with our monthly cash flow.

After having been in a great deal of credit card debt previously and paid untold amounts of interest to the credit card companies, it’s nice to get a little payback. . . literally.

A great resource for comparing various cash back credit cards can be found at creditcards.com. It's important to note that the balance needs to be paid off each month so that you don't incur interest, otherwise cash back rewards don't mean jack.

Beat The HEAT

The heat lately has been oppressive. Since our condo is so close to the ocean, it does not have central air conditioning. During this recent heat wave, my wife and I have found it difficult to sleep at night. To make matters worse, our condo is only open on one side, so there is no opportunity for cross ventilation. The best we can do it put a fan in front of an open window.

We've lived in our condo for ~2 years and have finally decided to throw in the towel and purchase a Soleus Air 9000 BTU Evaporative Portable Air Conditioner. A few of our neighbors have similar units and they do a great job cooling our little condos for ~$50/month. My wife found this unit online for $295.20, it regularly sells for $369.00. Since it’s portable, we can take it with us when we move to another place at a later date.

It would be great to be able to put this money into our investments, but it sure is going to be nice to be comfortable at the push of a button.

Bought A New Mattress

We were able to sell our mattress today and got $100! Thanks to my husband we can save more of my commission check now.

Posted by: The Wife