Archive for October 2008
Suze Orman Parody from Saturday Night Live
10/22/2008 | 
Author There was a Suze Orman Parody from SNL a couple weeks ago. Personally I found it fairly funny. Now only if they would do an impression on Cramer.
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Business Week – The New Age of Frugality
The latest issue of Business Week magazine is titled “The New Age of Frugality“. It gave a specific example of a family who decided to live within their means instead of tapping their home equity loans. They are the lucky one as they were able to sell their house and pay off the home equity loan. Yet, even in their case, they realize the need to change how they spend going forward. It is definitely worth reading.
Some of the tips that were mentioned:
- Slash Electric bill
- Cold Water Wash
- Hang Dry clothes
- Visit Library
Tags: Ellen with her Hawaii Chair
One of my instructor showed this clip in class today. Simply hilarious.
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Frugality and Water Conservation
Due the the change in weather patterns in the last couple years, the place I called home (as well as many regions in U.S.) has experience a number of dry winters. As a result, the water supply level here has reached a very low level. Additional commercials have been created to promote the importance of water conservation. Think for a moment what our lives will be if we are unable to access water that is so crucial to our daily lives. This is a case where it is no longer about frugality but rather necessity and preserve a good living environment for the upcoming years.
Here are some tips for indivduals to save water (the last few applies especially those that lives in the East Bay region in San Francisco Bay area).
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Paid Surveys – SurveySavvy
During these tough economic times, everyone can use some extra cash. For people who spend a lot of time online, filling out surveys is the perfect opportunity. As most people would guess, there are a lot of survey sites that are not legitimate. They either sell your information to a third party or they spam you spam you or sell your information. However, One site that has proven to be very legitimate is SurveySavvy.
SurveySavvy is free for anyone to register (as all survey sites should be). After a person sign up, there is a personal profile page in which Survey Savvy will collect specific information regarding an individual. With this profile, SurveySavvy will determine which surveys are relevant for you.
Earn Free MyPoints Rewards for Everyday Internet Activities
MyPoints is one of the better free to join online rewards program that lets you earn points for daily internet activities like searching the web, shopping, taking surveys, and playing online games.
The accrued points can be redeemed for free gift cards, online certificates, gas rewards cards, travel, dining, and many more rewards.
From personal experience, the points it gives out is lower than some of the other reward sites. However, they offer free points for clicking on email letters they send out. Thus it is one of the few programs where you can earn a gift card without actually purchase anything.
Watch tv shows online with SurfTheChannel
Another way to be frugal is to spend less money on cable packages. With proliferation of videos on the internet, they are more and more sites offering complete shows online for free. SurfTheChannel is a site created to aggregate all the different episodes together in an easy to find place. Instead of actually hosting the videos, they simply point you to where the video is located. (e.g. youtube, hulas, etc). Personally I find it easy to watch the shows I like through surfthechannel as I no longer have to spend the time to search for shows I like on the internet.
Search and Win – Swag Bucks
SwagBucks is a website that offers its user rewards for different online activities. Currently it offers four different activities (search, shop, invite friends, and go green). Each one allows the user to earn a certain number of Swagbucks that can be redeemed for rewards at a later date. The website is very easy to use and it only requires the user register before the user can start earning Swagbucks.
- Search engine -> build on top of Google and Ask search engine, a user can randomly win Swagbucks base on the terms they search. Do note: only the first 25 search during the day is eligible to win Swagbucks randomly.
- Shop -> A user can earn 1 Swagbuck for every $5 spend on participating retail restore.
- Invite Friends -> Win one Swagbucks for each one win by your referee for a maximum 100 Swagbucks.
- Go Green -> Earn Swag Bucks for recycling your old cell phone. Swag Bucks is offered base on the phone model
Search and Win – Microsoft SearchPerks
Microsoft Search Perks
Microsoft announced a new program today dubbed Microsoft Live SearchPerks to give away prizes for using its search engine.
You earn a “ticket” for each search you perform using Microsoft search engine. Currently there is a cap of 25 ticket per day and an initial reward of 500 ticket for signing up. The program will be live officially April 15th 2009. The site only works in explorer version 6 or higher.
Doing a quick calculation shows there are 6.5 months left to April 15th, 2009. If a person max out everyday for the remaining days, he will get 6.5 * 30 * 25 = 4875 + 500 = 5375 tickets. (Which is good enough for either Gear of War or Blue Dragon for xbox 360. Quite a bit of time commitment for a $50 game. Not that great of a deal considering the amount of time and effort required. However, if they start giving out random “tickets” as part of the search, it will effectively increase its appeal.
