Queercents

It doesn’t take a blog post to know that most of us actually slip up on most if not all of our New Year’s Resolutions. This year I managed to find one that happens to be good for the pocket book and that I’ve managed to keep — so far.

Since November (I started a little early) I’ve managed to sell 31 books, CDs, or DVDs. The resolution was to reduce the clutter in my life. This photograph is of some of the books I decided clear away. After expenses I’ve put away about $300. It all reminds me of the thrift sales my grandma use to have each spring and fall.

List, sell, earn is Amazon.com’s clever-sounding three step process that got me started with them. After undergraduate school I sold a chunk of text books on Half.com now owned by Ebay. Read the rest of this entry »

“In the right seat, getting there can be half the fun.” – Executive Platinum Program Guide

I did it! I ended the year with 101,816 elite qualifying miles granting me Executive Platinum status on American Airlines for the flying year of 2008!

How did I do it? Do you remember the mileage run I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? Well, I didn’t actually do a mileage run for the pure sake of the miles. Instead I cancelled my award ticket (free and doesn’t count for miles) for our holiday trip to see my family in Ohio and rebooked it as a regular (albeit very expensive) coach ticket. Jeanine still flew for free but because one of us had a paid ticket, they went ahead and upgraded both of us to first class.

What did this ticket cost me? $850. Before everyone gasps and chastises me for blowing a boat-load of money… hear me out. If you divide $850 by 14 months (I’m guaranteed Executive Platinum status through the end of Feb 2009), this comes to $60.71 per month. Pennies in my opinion for this perk. Some of you spend more on lattes every month. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re less than a week away from the big retail day of reckoning known as Christmas here in the United States. This coming weekend is bound to be filled with door to door gridlock for people headed to malls, outlets, and other shopping meccas. I will be far away from the maddening crowds opting instead for a few quick errands on Friday and a weekend filled with connecting with friends and doing some last minute holiday touches.

Part of what fuels this last minute push in my opinion, besides the obvious procrastination factor, is the intense tie-in between gifts and expressing our love at this time of year. So many of us have family, friends, and partners we love dearly. And, because as humans we often feel woefully inadequate at expressing how we feel fully, we turn to outside expressions of that love. Now, that isn’t all bad of course, who doesn’t love gifts? But, I know for personal experience, last minute shopping and wayward spending can often be fueled by feeling like we don’t have “enough” or the “right thing” for that special person in our lives. Read the rest of this entry »

I went to an Ani DiFranco show last week, and she was just transcendent. I’ve rarely seen a performer gather the whole room into the palm of her hand so easily. Plus, she’s at a new happy place in her life, and all this joy and energy came through even the sad songs–when I find “You Had Time” uplifting, you know the artist is doing well.

But the best thing about the show was that, due to a complicated process of trading with friends of friends and zinging text messages all over the city, it was free down to the drink in my hand. Now that we’ve all blown our budgets on the biggest shopping day of the year, I wasn’t the only one in the blogosphere thinking about free stuff this week….

• Via Get Rich Slowly, a news article about MIT’s initiative to offer free written and video course material online, and other great free education resources. (Read it at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• Carrie finds free books, radio and magazines–the commenters on this post suggest even more resources, as well. (Read it at Wise Bread)
• Myschia insists you can have nice crap without spending a lot of money! In fact, a lot of these tips suggest you don’t spend any money at all. (Read it at Wise Bread)
• I admit, the price of line-drying your clothes is good (hey, it’s free)–but how much electricity do you have to save to make the penalty fines worth it? Of course, irritating your HOA is always worth it…. (Read it at Frugal for Life)

Of course, if you have to spend money sometimes, it had better be worth it. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps you were smart and started your holiday shopping early. The rest of us will be scrambling for gifts at the right price this season. But whether or not you’ll be gift shopping, do you know when to stop looking for the right price?

A recent hunt for a replacement pair of running shoes inspired the question. I tried three different stores, all very different types of business. The first was a local sporting goods business. There I found the perfect pair for my overpronating feet, but the $110 price tag (and annoying staff) turned me off from buying my much loved Asics Gel-1120 on the spot. The second shop was a discount shoe retailer across the street. Everything there looked like it was fresh out of the mid-90’s, not to mention that not one shoe looked capable of withstanding a stroll around the mall. Finally I trekked over to a big-box sports retailer hoping that’s where I’d find a good deal. Each shoe looked like space gear designed by Solid Gold dancers — just imagine shiny, bulky and impractically high-tech.

I walked away from my bargain hunting experience empty handed and with an hour and a half down the drain. Persistent (or stubborn) devil that I am, I tried my luck with online shopping. Glory be to the shopping gods, I found my Asics online for $27 less, and with free shipping. But my size wasn’t available: by then it was now two hours down the drain. Read the rest of this entry »

A.J. is a college grad who moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C. for his first real job. He loves writing, learning about personal finance, deal hunting, and sharing what he’s learned with others. A.J. publishes a blog called The Guppie Life for other gay, young urban professionals. “Guppie = gay yuppie. Get it? Clever,” he writes.

These are his words…

How I Got My Brand-New Grown Up Furniture for Under $1K

Making the transition from clueless twenty-something to responsible member of the workforce can be scary. At times, it can even be overwhelming. But it also means you get to buy new stuff, and that’s crazy-fun.

When I accepted my first post-college job, I had to move to a new town a few hours from home. I didn’t have any furniture, save for an Aero bed and a few plastic storage bins, and I definitely didn’t have much money saved up. While the Aero bed served its purpose, sleeping on the floor isn’t the classiest option, so I dedicated a weekend to furnishing my room. Read the rest of this entry »

Having a travel partner can be challenging. You want to tour the house where John and Paul wrote over a hundred songs together; he’d rather see the Beatles museum. You want a salad; he wants a hot dog from a vendor. There isn’t time for everything, and there certainly isn’t enough money for everything. The emotional and physical challenges are, however, in most cases, far outweighed by the financial benefits of traveling with another person.

I have a new traveling partner. Circumstance brings us together really. We both have similar destinations on our agenda; we both want to see as much of Europe on the smallest possible budget while we’re in school here. He’s an undergraduate, in his early twenties, and a Christian from Wisconsin. It might seem that we have very little in common, and at times, we do indeed seem to speak different languages. But, when we met and began talking at the university’s international orientation, we quickly connected; so we decided to give traveling together a whirl.

Our first day trip to Cambridge went exceptionally well, so this weekend we decided to go to Manchester and then on to Liverpool, both on the opposite coast from where our campus is located. We checked out bus and train tickets, and both were quite expensive as the cheap-booking dates had passed (we didn’t plan too far in advance for this one). He brought up the idea of renting a car. I might not have considered this on my own. I haven’t owned a car in three years and try to make mass transit use my first option, but, honestly, I’ve been craving some time behind the wheel. And I wanted to try the “wrong-side” driving thing. His inventiveness here has been one of several circumstances prompting me to accept the fact that two minds are often truly better than one. He did the detail checking, and the car was cheaper, by half, of a single round-trip bus ticket; also, a valid U.S. driver’s license is all one needs to rent a car in the U.K. I’m not exactly sure why, but no preemptive foreign driving lessons are required. Read the rest of this entry »

I love gift giving. From the gift selection, wrapping the package, to a card and the recipients smile, the whole process is a blast. For years I’ve given handmade gifts to friends and family. I enjoy taking time to be creative and making gift items with love. I often find myself searching the internet for inspiration. During one of those online sessions, I found a new website I simply adore…Etsy.com!

While perusing their site, finding items I so badly wanted to purchase, I was inspired with this plan. Read the rest of this entry »