Personal Finance

Here are a few more contact lists for manufacturers if you are seeking coupons. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Flash for getting the contacts together.

Nesltle

Purina

Nestle Waters

This is probably not something that applies to many here, but the IRS has sent out another press release (placed on our sister site), this time on Shareholder and Corporation Reporting and the changes made to make it easier. Basically, the IRS removed some outdated requirements to make it easier for corporations and shareholders to e-file their taxes.

...well, except fo me since I've been living in Japan. The IRS announced that they will stop charging the 3% excise tax on long distance phone bills beginning immediately and that you will be able to claim a refund for the taxes you paid on this from February 28, 2003 until now. They haven't spelled out exactly how to do this, but it looks like there will be a dual system: you can look it up yourself and use that number, or you can use an easy form they are developing that will make estimating your refund claim easy.

A thread has been started in the forums where you can aske questions and get more information.

When it comes to mail I receive, timeshares questions and how to get out of them still lead the list. It seems that a lot of people are having trouble with RCI and trading with different resorts for their timeshare week - so much so that a class action suit has been filed against RCI claiming that RCI takes the best weeks for themselves and resells them instead of letting people trade them. I placed up another post on Timeshare Trap about this.

For anyone who thinks that a timeshare is a good way to go, take my advice and pass - with all the mail and sad stories I get, you certainly do not want to be one of them.

I've argued in the past that I think that children's life insurance is something that the vast majority of people don't need and certainly one to place in the worst investment category. Every time I bring up this topic, there are always some that vehemently disagree with me on the topic.

If you still believe that you need children's life insurance even after my arguments, getting a policy for the child is still likely the wrong thing to do. Instead, a less expensive alternative is to purchase a child rider for your existing life insurance:

Most experts agree that purchasing a child rider for your existing life insurance is a much better solution (than buying children's life insurance). A rider is an extension that you can add to the other coverages listed in your policy. Purchasing a child rider is typically cheaper and will help cover funeral costs if the unexpected happens.

While I still think child life insurance is a poor use of money, if you do decide after doing the research to go that way, be sure to evaluate whether or not a child rider is a better alternative.

If you are going to invest, it's vitally important to assess the type of investor you are. The best place for you to invest depends a lot on a number of important factors that you should think through thoroughly before making any investment. Depending on your answers to these investment assessments, the best place for you to put your investment money could range widely. Some investment assessment basics to consider:

Your assets versus liabilities
Your personal goals
The amount of time that you've allotted for this investment
The type of diversification you desire


by understanding your answers to these questions, you can lay a solid foundation to begin picking the correct investments for you.

I've always been a game player when it comes to my saving. If I can turn the saving into some type of game or competition, I can keep with a lot better in the long run. It also turns the saving from being a chore into something that is enjoyable (at least for me).

Wixx has come up with an interesting Finder's Fee Game that I think I'll incorporate into our other games. my wife and I do well at these type of games - especially if the savings go toward something like a nice dinner out.

When it comes to debt reduction, there are a variety of things that you need to do to help reduce your spending so that you can find extra money to put toward your debt. Making the effort to incorporate No Spend Days into your month can be one way to help you in reducing your debt.

While it obviously has the effect of making sure that no money is leaving your wallet that day, it will also emphasize the areas where you might be spending money without ever realizing it.

While no spend days may seem like a fairly easy activity when discussed, they are much more of a challenge to implement in real life and will show you how easy it is to part with your money without even thinking about it.

As you get better at them and succeed more often, they can truly be a benefit to your budget, debt reduction and savings. It takes effort, but even if you don't succeed at first, the process in itself should be of great benefit to your and your finances.

When it comes to gardening, there really isn't a need to purchase a lot of expensive garden tools. While a variety of garden tools can be a convenience, you can usually get by with the following basic garden tools:

A Shovel
A Hose
A Hoe

Of course, these are the bare minimum. There are other tools that you can add, but these can get you started at very little cost.

Ok, so Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana had $90,000 in his freezer - there is a perfectly acceptable explanation. My guess is that he is just a follower of my blog and was attempting to cut down on his utility bill by freezer blocking

We have a new article up about the dos and don'ts about requesting coupons directly from manufacturers with some great common sense strategies that you might not have considered.

For example, "do not request the manufacturer to send coupons because your local stores will not accept internet printables" and "do not request the manufacturer to send coupons because you cannot print their coupons through an internet printable provider, such as SmartSource or Boodle"

Since coupons direct from the manufacturer are usually much more valuable than coupons you can find in your Sunday paper, following the rules will go a long way in helping you get the most from this source.

A couple of more coupon contact lists added to the Grocery Coupon Guide site:

Mars

Brands: Mars, 3 Musketeers, Combos, Cookies And, Dove Chocolate, Ethel M Chocolates, Kudos, M&Ms, Milky Way, Skittles, Snickers, Starburst, Twix, Uncle Ben’s, Flavia, Cesar, Pedigree, Sheba, Whiskas

I didn't know they made pet food...

McKee Foods

Brands: Little Debbie, Sunbelt Snacks, Heartland, Blinkz


Of course, big thanks goes out to Flash for all this information. We still have quite a few to go, but the list should be quite comprehensive once we've finished which should mean you can contact your favorite brands directly for coupons and promos.

I placed up a new article at Frugal Gardening titled Budget Garden Basics. The article highlights 5 points:

Start Small
Learn Some Basics
Don’t Be Afraid To Use Unusual Materials
Use Nature In Nature
Find Materials In Budget Friendly Places

All make good sense and a nice reminder article that gardening doesn't have to be expensive.

The first wealth coins that I sent out as a fun little project arrived in LA and Minnesota. The one that went to LA was taken to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and had photos taken there - kind of a cool way to start the project. Another arrived in Minnesota and will be going to New York.

I can't wait to see where the other coins travel to in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks to the hard work of Flash, we have six more contact lists for getting coupons from major manufacturers live:

JOHNSON & JOHNSON

Brands: ACT Fluoride, Acuvue, Aveeno, Balmex, Band-Aid, Benecol, Carefree Liners, Clean and Clear, Cortaid, Imodium, Johnsons Baby, Johnsons Buddies, K-Y, Lactaid, Monistat, Motrin IB, Mylanta, Mylicon, Neutrogena, OB Tampons, Pepcid AC, Purpose Skin Care, Reach Access, Reach Fresh and Clean, Rembrandt, Roc Skin Care, Shower to Shower, Splenda, Stayfree, St. Joseph’s Aspirin, Tylenol, Viactiv

SMUCKERS

Brands: After the Fall Juices, Crisco, Cross and Blackwell, Dickinson’s, Hungry Jack, Jif, Laura Scudders, Martha White, PET Evaporated Milk, Pillsbury Baking, Knudsen Juices, Santa Cruz Organic, Smucker’s

HORMEL

Brands: Always Tender, Carapelli, Chichi’s Salsa, Diamond Crystal, DiLusso Deli, Farmer John, Lloyd’s BBQ, Jennie-O Turkey, Spam, Stagg Chili, World of Foods

HEINZ

Brands: Bagel Bites, TGIF, Wylers, SmartOnes, Catelli, Classico, Farley’s, Greenseas, Jack Daniel’s Sauce, Lea and Perrins, Ore-Ida

KIMBERLY-CLARK

Brands: Block-It, Cottonelle, Depend, GoodNites, Huggies, Kleenex, Kotex, Poise, Pull-Ups, Scott, Neat Sheet, Viva

COCA-COLA

Brands: Barq's, Coke, Diet Coke, Dannon, Dasani, Evian, Fanta, Full Throttle, Hi-C, Minute Maid, Nestea, Odwalla, Powerade, Simply Orange, Sprite, Swerve, TaB Energy

By far the most email I get from people is concerned with timeshares and how to get rid of them. I updated

Timeshare Trap with a new comment from a reader about pay to a sell a timeshare program that is a rip off - a company called Timeshare Relief (oxymoron) - they charge you thousands of dollars to get rid of your timeshare - that's right. You pay them to take your timeshare! People are so desperate to get out of their timeshare contracts that they are doing it too. Never pay upfront to get rid of your timeshare.

For those looking for a way to get rid of there timeshare, donating it to charity might be one solution.

I have been asked by a couple of people to list what both Nate and I have been up to and I think that is a good idea. I'll try and write what I have been doing and what Nate has been doing too to keep everyone better informed of what is going on at all the sites:

Nate fixed comment emails - they should now allow you to go straight to the comment area on the post you made when someone makes a comment (this hadn't been working since we changed the blog URLs). This is definitely a happy fix for me

If you are good at saving money and do so with unique ideas (or know somebody that does), the Washington Post wants you for their Penny Pincher of the Year Award (cash prizes awarded). Seems like a great idea for many of you here - hope you take the time to enter.

Time to work a bit more on my challenge which I have greatly neglected with so much going on with the sites - eBay is having another $0.10 fixed and auction (your choice) price sale today (May, 9, 2006). I'll be trying to list 30+ items and some more for the challenge. We'll see how it goes. More information on the promotion

here

I had to smile when I saw this one because I used to do it - not necessarily for giving hope, but to bring a smile to their faces. It's funny watching people. Lots would simply walk by, but those who stop and pick up pennies almost always have a smile on their face like they have found a hidden treasure. Try it sometime!



From Post Secret

MSN Search is having a "search and win" promotion to try and win more people to over to their search engine. You simply search like you normally would and if you7re lucky, a "Use MSN Search...And Win!" link will appear among the regular links. You then click on that link and see if you have won an instant prize. Some of the prizes include:

A Toshiba flat screen TV
A Carnival cruise for 2
A Crate & Barrel gift card
A year subscription to NetFlix
AMC theater gift card
A REI gift card
A Nordstrom's gift card
A Baby Gap gift Card
A Starbucks gift card
An Amazon gift certificate
A Callaway golf club

A really nice part of the promotion is that in addition to prizes you can win for yourself, you can also win prizes for your favorite non profit charity:

A technology makeover for your favorite non-profit organization
A $10,000 cash award for your favorite non-profit organization
A $25,000 cash award for your favorite non-profit organization
A $50,000 cash award for your favorite non-profit organization

Just wanted to give a big apology to the few of you who had the spam bots get through our defenses - if you were one of them, you'll know because your mailbox probably has close to 100 emails of posts to your blog in it. I spent over 2 hours today deleting spam messages on blogs here (if you come across ones that I missed, send me an email so I can clear them out) and clearing out my mailbox (let's just say it wasn't a pretty site with hundreds upon hundreds of spam posts) While it wasn't good at all, the barriers that Nate did set up worked on more than 90% of them (we still got them all though).

Nate will be adding another (hopefully today) barrier to try and foil the ones that got through this time.

It's days like today that I have to remind myself that I really do love this job

Okay, I admit it. I have a curiosity of people's coin jars. I love it when I visit a house for the first time and they have their coin jar in full view. I find it interesting the way that people collect their coins. Even though almost everyone in the world does it, no two coin jars are quite the same.

Some people will put bills in with the coins while other wouldn't be caught dead doing so. Sometimes the coin jar becomes a mini pack-rat collection of small things with screws, thumb tacks, paper clips and rubber bands thrown into the mix. Other times the coin jars are so neat that the family has a different jar for each different type of coin: penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar and dollar. Some families have a community coin jar where everyone leaves their coins together, while other families have a coin jar for each individual.

"Jar" is also used extremely loosely here. While a good many are made of glass, just as many are made of different material in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes the coin jar was a default - the only thing around to hold coins when the person decided they needed to start a coin jar while other times it has been carefully chosen by the person to match his or her tastes.

I've had a wide variety of coin jars over the years. I'm the type that ends up using whatever happens to be around when I need to put a pocket full of change down. Currently I use two drawers next to my desk as my "coin jar" These are supposed to hold paper, but I defaulted them to my coin jar due to convenience. My wife ends up getting a lot of packages from her hobby/business and most of them are pay on delivery. That means I need easy access to coins quickly when the doorbell rings and a package needs to be paid for and the two drawers have proven to be the most convenient place thus far. Truly, there should only be one drawer, but for some reason I didn't specify which particular one when I first decided to make them my new coin jar and so they ended up in one or the other drawer. Being too lazy to dump all the coins from one drawer to the other, both ended up being coin jars together.



I think that the coin jar tells a little bit about you. my double drawer coin jar is typical of me. As you probably have already guessed, my wife's coin jar is Hello Kitty. Hers is actually a tin can and fits perfectly on a shelf in the living room. Not only is it neatly placed, you can also see that it is rather neat on the inside as well with only a few coins. Unlike me, she is good at spending the coins when she has the opportunity and thus her coin jar never gets that full and the two highlight our differences in this area.



I've often used money jars to help me remember people. For some reason, they have always been distinctive to me even when they were quite similar to someone else's. There has been more than one time when I've been asked by a someone, "Do you remember so and so?" and my reply would be "Oh, you mean they guy that has in coins in German beer stein with the half naked lady on it." At that point I would usually get a blank stare like I was half crazy since nobody but me would have noticed -- until I finished "yes, I remember him..."

I can still remember the money jar that my dad had when I was growing up. All his coins went into a a Miami of Ohio Beer college beer mug that sat on his dresser and later got moved into the closet changing room. my best friend from elementary school to high school had his in huge water cooler bottle and I remember when he decided to turn all the coins in we couldn't even lift it up it was so heavy.

Have a coin jar? Take a photo of it, place it in your blog or site and leave a comment here. I'd love to see it - a description on why you chose it would be all the better. I'll link back to one and all and can't wait to see what else everyone stashes their coins in...

Coin Jars Around The Blogosphere

Barb's Coin Jar: Armywife's Journal
Jane Dough's Coin Jar: Boston Gal's Open Wallet
CollegeSaver's Coin Jar: Life of a Poor College Student
Princess Perky's Coin Jar: Princess Perky's Page
Dawn's Coin Jar: Frugal For Life
Contrary1's Coin Jar: Contrary1'$ Money Musings
RS's Coin Jar: Young Professionals Financial Blog
kashi's Change Jar: kashi's journal

Spring is in the air and the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom. That meant that we had to go out for cherry blossom viewing and none of this casually walking around viewing - my wife wanted to get dressed in her best spring kimono (with cherry blossom obi) to go out and view them. So today we took off at 4:00pm and did the rounds - here are a few photos from the trip:

Before we even left to get to the cherry blossoms, I had to take photos of the kimono:











We arrived to view the cherry blossoms with still a bit of daylight left outside:





but before long the sun started to go down:



Before it got completely dark I had to get at least one close-up



And as dusk turned to darkness, they turned lights onto the cherry trees







If it doesn't rain this week, we'll probably make one more trip to view the cherry blossoms (if it rains, then they all fall off). The cherry blossoms only last about a week, but Spring is now here.

Well, I couldn't pass up this opportunity. Bill Gates wrote an article appearing on Money.com titled How I Work: Bill Gates As you can imagine, Bill and I work a tad differently so I thought I would go through some of the differences:


Bill Gates' Desk
photo by Robyn Twomey from money.com

From the article, here is a nice photo of Bill Gates and his desk. this is what he has to say in relation to it and his office:

If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.

The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me...

The one low-tech piece of equipment still in my office is my whiteboard. I always have nice color pens, and it's great for brainstorming when I'm with other people, and even sometimes by myself.

The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices have the ability to capture an image and send it up to the computer, almost like a huge Tablet PC. I don't have that right now, but probably I'll get a digital whiteboard in the next year. Today, if there's something up there that's brilliant, I just get out my pen and my Tablet PC and recreate it.

As you can see, Bill Gates has a nice clean desk with hardly a piece of paper in site. Here, on the other hand, is my desk:



Not only does my desk have lots of paper, it has numerous low tech stuff too. Unlike Bill, I only have a single screen computer and since my desk (okay, I know, it isn't really a desk - it's an old dining table, but I call it my desk) is so small, I probably will never know about the truth of "once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity" because there is no room on my desk for a large display screen. That solves that

While Bill has all his emails on his left screen, I have all my emails in a gmail account. Bill probably wouldn't be very happy with me about that. Bill's center screen is what he is usually working on - my only screen is what I'm working on, so you can see there are some very close resemblances between the two of us. Bill's browser is on the right screen - mine is mixed up with whatever I'm working on.

Bill also has a whiteboard (not shown in his photo) and I have a corkboard (not shown in my photo - see even more similarities!). His whiteboard is "low tech" My corkboard is also "low tech" - he will be getting a high tech whiteboard in the near future with the ability to capture images and send it to his computer. I will likely keep my corkboard and it already has the ability to makes things stick to it if I stick a pin through it (I like this a lot). Since Bill doesn't have a high tech whiteboard at the moment, he takes out his pen and Tablet PC and creates his brilliant ideas. I take out my Hello Kitty pen and Hello Kitty note pad (courtesy of my entrepreneurial wife) and scribble down my random thoughts.

As you can see, Bill Gates' desk and My Desk have quite a bit in common. I'm sure that this has intrigued you enough that I should go through some of the other things on my desk in Stop Buying Crap What's In Your Wallet fashion.



To the right I have my low tech calculator and my Hello Kitty notepad with a piece of plain paper (this upsets my wife to no end since there is no cute character on it) below where I write my random thoughts. If you look closely to the left, you can see my "Change Drawer" - this is a more convenient place for me to keep my change than in a jar.



To the right of my computer screen is my mini shelf with the book "The Big Money" that just came in the mail that I'm supposed to review. Hanging on the side is my yellow good luck charm from the God of Wealth with lots of random papers that need to be sorted (they will remain that way until my wife yells at me to clean it up).



On the left side of the desk are a bunch of sake cups and medals that I took out last week to put on eBay and still haven't gotten around to doing so. I hope to get to them soon, but probably won't until eBay forces my hand by having another sale. I also have my tin can pen and pencil bucket from Tokyo Disneyland.

I'm sure there are things of interest I left out - feel free to ask in the comment section and I will elaborate on anything you see that I forgot to mention. Oh, and of course put up photos of your desk and let us all know what is on it (and if you get really ambitious, you can compare it to Bill Gates' desk too)

Other Desks Out There

Financial Freedumb's Desk
Princess Perky's Page's Desk
Retire Young & Wealthy's Desk
The Internet Cash Flow Guy's Desk

I love coming across people that look at a situation and come up with a way to make extra money from it. Here is an 18 year old that will probably make a few hundred dollars this spring vacation by helping out people with a common problem:

Eighteen-year-old Evan Kelso is offering to change every digital clock in a customer's home or car after all of Indiana goes to daylight saving time this weekend for the first time in more than 30 years. His fee: $10.

Kelso, a senior at Bishop Luers High School, said he came up with the idea as Indiana lawmakers sniped about time zones and daylight-saving time. He said he and his father are always trying to think up new ways to make a little extra cash...

Entire Article

He is certainly thinking and it goes to show that there are lots of situations you can take advantage of to make a little extra money.

We took a trip to the sea today. Over the years, we have developed a lot of games to liven up the trips which don't cost any money. I talked about how we always look for phone cards when we go out. Another form of free entertainment we enjoy whenever we go out is collecting stamps, but not the postal type. One of the great things about Japan is that almost anywhere you go, they have ink stamps that you can put into a book for free.

These stamps are located everywhere. At train stations, at highway stops, at museums, at virtually every tourist spot, at temples, at shrines just to name a few. One of my favorite books is the one we made climbing Mt. Fuji - there were a number of stamps at each rest station marking the height of each along the way and at the very top we got a huge one from the shrine that is located there. Basically there are stamps everywhere in Japan if you keep an eye out for them.


They even have sponsored stamp rallies. These are usually organized by tourist bureaus or cities. If you get stamps from all the designated places in the rally, you will get some type of prize. These are usually focused toward families with kids, but sometimes they have them specifically for adults. It is a great way to see a new area of Japan and you often find yourself in out of the way places you would have never gone otherwise.

We added 7 news stamps to our book today. Not only are they free entertainment for us finding them, but they also are great memory books as each time you look at them, you remember where you got them. With a little imagination and focusing on things that you like to do, it's not too difficult to find entertainment that doesn't cost a lot of money.

Nate added a place where you can now add photos to your blog. So here are some random ones off my computer just to play around with the system a little



These are our three cats keeping each other warm. The one to the right is chibi, the one in the middle is marla and the one to the right is Live-chan (when we found her 8 years ago, we weren't sure she'd live the week she was in such bad shape - thus the name)



Marla sleeping - crazy cat



That's Margo, my niece and the writer of

Financial Baby Steps - isn't she a cutie? Less than a year old and already a net worth of $3000+



Working on a bonsai tree display - we went there last weekend and they were pretty impressive. There were about 100 displays...



They were photographing a commercial of some type and the woman was wearing a beautiful kimono - the photo doesn't do it justice because I couldn't get close enough.

Those are some random photos to test the new system. Hope you like it.

Previous Total: $231.18

Current Total: $231.18

Inventory: 1 book, 5 photos

Time to get more items up on eBay - they are having another $0.10 fixed price sale on March 15. I'll be trying to list 30+ items and some more for the challenge. We'll see how it goes. More information on the promotion

here

While it's easy to complain about phone bills in the US, it's still a lot better situation than in many other countries (like Japan) and apparently Burmuda from

this tongue in cheek article. A few bits from it:

The cost of phone service is one of those items over which consumers have little control. With local calls at 25 cents a go, or an hour (whichever comes first), one could limit the number of calls one makes, but in a free, American-style society, using a phone has come to feel like a right. I do a lot of my work by phone, and so regard the phone bill as a cost of doing business, much as the heroin user probably regards the cost of his drugs as just one of those unavoidable day-to-day expenses. Heroin would probably be cheaper...

I was paying 75 cents a minute. Apparently, they had a 19-cents-a-minute rate, but to qualify, you had to (a) know about it and (b) apply for it. That is what's called sharp practice. If you went into a store and bought a candy bar, and the cashier asked you for $5, you might think that was a bit steep. If you mentioned that fact, and were told that really it was only $1, but you had to fill out a form in advance to qualify, you'd shop elsewhere wouldn'd you? Yes, but I assumed that all the other telephone service providers - don't get me started - used the same vile practice at the time...

Now, here is how to save money on your phone bill:

1. Don't date Americans or anyone else dumb enough not to live in Bermuda.

2. Especially don't date those Americans who will promise to marry you and then dump you by e-mail just before Christmas because you're an insensitive clod. This will however cut down on your engagement ring expenses.

3. Before making those pesky long distance calls, telephone your long distance service provider each and every time to ask if they're changed their rate. Your Telco bill will be astronomical, but you can't win them all...