Frugal Living
Trading or selling your unused gift cards
12/27/2010 | 
Author 
Now Christmas is over and you unwrapped all your gifts it is time to figure out which gifts are for keep and which are for return. Chances are you received a number of gift cards as presents. While I don’t mind receiving gift cards but when I receive a card for a store that I don’t shop at I usually sell my card at Plastic Jungle. While there are a lot of gift card sites out there, my favorite is Plastic Jungle which has a A rating from Better Business Bureau.
Here is how it works:
You go to Plastic Jungle website and indicate the card you want to sell and the value that is on the card. Plastic Jungle will give you an offer for your card in either cash or Amazon gift card). Once you accept it, they will provide you with a prepaid shipping label. Print out the shipping label and drop it of in the mail and you are done.
As for me, I received a $100 Apple store gift card this Christmas that I decided to sell through Plastic Jungle. While I enjoy buying Apple products, I find the merchandise a little more pricey in the Apple store. Trading through Plastic Jungle, I received $92.40 in terms of Amazon gift card. Since Apple products are usually more than $10 cheaper on Amazon, the money I lost by selling the card to Plastic Jungle is easily made up with the cheaper price of Amazon. Furthermore, now I have Amazon credit, I can purchase other brand electronics if I change my mind!
If you received unwanted gift card this Christmas, be sure to check out Plastic Jungle!
Posted in 
How to find discount smog check
Recently I received my car registration notice for next year. Along with the car registration, I also need to take my car in for a smog check. As a California resident, the smog check is required for cars that are over five years old. Being a frugal person, I want to make sure I get the cheapest deal for my smog check.
Here are the steps I took:
1. Wait for different smog check coupons in coupon booklets such as ValuePack before going to a smog check.
1. Check the user review sites: (e.g. Yelp) regarding the place you decided to go to. You want to make sure they don’t lure you in with a cheap price only to fail your car and charge you for repair work. Although you can get your car repaired anywhere you want, most people will let the same mechanic that performed the smog check fix their car.
In the end, I was able to find a smog check center 5 minutes away from my house that charged $25 for service and $13 for DMV license fee for a total of $38. It is the cheapest deal I could find. Let me in the comments section if you were able to get your car smog checked for a cheaper price!
Alice.com one year anniversary
For one day only Alice.com is offering you a chance to spin the wheel and get up to 75% off your next order. For those of you who don’t know what Alice.com is, you can read my review here. I logged into my account and sure enough I got 1 spin that translate to a discount on the next purchase. Unfortunately I only received 10%. Hope you have better luck!
Barter in a Recession
With the economy in shamble, it seems like no one has any extra money for anything outside the basic necessities these days. Regular household maintenance is getting placed on hold or people elected to DIY (Do It Yourself). Although there is nothing wrong with DIY, the fact is some people are simply better at doing some things than others. Everyone has one or two skills where they excel at. As a result, bartering is gradually gaining momentum. What is barter? Barter is a type of trade in which goods and/or services are exchanged instead of actual money. Bartering is especially popular for places where currency is unstable and during tough economic times.
The first step to bartering is to figure out what you are good at and how much your skills are worth. You don’t want make sure the trade is fair and it is not a one-sided trade. The best people to exchange goods/and or services are your family and friends. Check with them to see whether any of them is looking for work done that corresponds to your own skill sets.
These days, you can also list your skills for trade online. Here are a couple sites that is gaining popularity.
Craigslist
Trade A Favor
Joe Barter
SwapThing
On the last note, IRS requires you to keep track of all the transactions in case they ask you to report it. However, not everything needs to
documented/submitted. This applies mostly to exchanges that would have replaced your regular income. E.g. if you work as a carpenter as your full time job, and you decided to exchange carpenter work for an old car, then the old car will have to reported to IRS since it replaces your regular income. When in doubt, check your tax advisor to determine whether a trade should be reported or not. Better yet, barter with your tax advisor this tax season!
Tags: End Of Year Tax Saving Tips
As the year 2008 comes to an end, it is once again time to optimize for next year’s tax return. Here is an article I saw on dumblittleman that gives 9 year end tax tips.
Personally I do the following:
- clean out unwanted clothes for donation. One thing to note, however, is that the rules for tax write off have changed. Previously one can donate up to $250 worth of clothing and file on their tax returns without receipt. However, the rules have been changed that you must have a receipt to write off any donated clothes.
- Contribute to 401k, Roth IRA and IRA. Even though each one is different they can each work toward saving taxes. 401k is offered by an employer and the contribution is taxed differed until money is withdrawn. IRA is similar to 401k with two exceptions: everyone can contribute to IRA and tax benefit of an IRA decreases when your income increases. Personally I like Roth IRA the most. It allows you to contribute after tax dollars but the earnings will not be taxed when you start withdrawing from the accounts. (though it won’t save you taxes currently).
- Selling losing stocks to offset capital gains. In a normal year everyone will have winning stocks and losing stocks in their porfolio if they diversified correctly. 2008 is one of the worse years in stock market history, but you will still need to sell your stocks in order to write off. Personally I will write off $3000 worth of losses to met the limit allowed by the tax code.
- If you are planning on giving your love ones some money over the holiday, please note the limit for gift is currently $12,000 per year. Anything above $12,000 will be deducted from your life time limit of 1,000,000.
Save money with RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot(RME) is an Australian based coupon site that launched late 2006. It contains coupon codes to all the popular stores such as Amazon, JCPenny, Enterprise and much more. According to the website it now contains discount code for 20,000 online stores.
Personally I used this site a lot for my shopping/coupon needs and I have saved quite a bit. However, its coupon codes are hard to browse through at times. The site will be able to provide a much better service if they have a way to oraginze the codes in a more coherent way.
RME does have one aspect that makes it quite unique. For their generic discussion forum, they are allowing a user to enter a Google Adsense ID in which 50% of the time the user’s Adsense will be used instead of the RME’s Adsense ID. Using this way, they can now offer a way for non technical people to generate small amount of cash through Adsense and encourage participation.
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
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).
Read the rest of this entry »
