free money

Here are two Sharebuilder promo codes, for a $50 bonus, that seemed to be active when I checked yesterday:

• ym50 (or try this link)

• share50

While I was browsing around the Sharebuilder website, during my attempts to find/verify promo codes, I also found other offers that may interest some of you. For example, here is an offer for a $49.95 “Premium Investor Start Kit“. What comes with the kit essentially makes it free:

The $50 account bonus will in itself pay for the cost of the product. That makes the rest of the goodies free.

There are other versions of the “Investor Starter Kit”, and all of them include an account bonus worth the cost of the product…so basically you can choose any of them and still get some free stuff.

I haven’t made up my mind about getting one of these kits, but the *premium* kit offer looks attractive to me. Some months ago, I mentioned that after successfully receiving multiple account bonuses, Sharebuilder became wiser and stopped me from opening more accounts with promo codes. So, before I jump in for any other product I need to do some homework….and check if I can use those promo codes in spite of my history with Sharebuilder.

If you have recently opened a Sharebuilder account with a promo code, I suggest you take it easy on these promo codes and offers for a while. Allow some space (may be a couple of weeks or more) before opening the next account with a promo code.

Here is a quick and efficient money making scheme that engaged my attention for quite some time during our last trip to Sea World:

Yes, it’s about those milk bottle pyramids, stacked in a 2-1 pattern (sometimes 3-2-1 pattern), that appear so easy to knock down with a ball. OK, they are not really milk bottles now a days but, some wooden or (sometimes aluminum) fabrications that look like milk bottles. This milk bottle pyramid activity seemed very popular…not just with the kids, but also with their oh-that-looks-easy dads (believe it or not…it’s more popular with the dads than with the kids).

I spent about 20~25 minutes watching the proceedings of a milk bottle pyramid booth (with multiple terminals). In that time, at least 20 people made attempts to knock those bottles off. Only a couple of them paid $3 (because most of them appeared to be throwing the ball thrice); the rest used up 5 bucks. Not ONE of them could knock the pyramid down. Technically, a few of them did knock the pyramid down, but read the text in the above image carefully…you have to knock the bottles *off the table*, just knocking down the pyramid gets you nothing. So basically, the carny (slang for a person who works with a carnival) must have made about $90+ while I was there!

This milk bottle pyramid scheme is not new; in fact, below is an image captured from How Carnival Racketeers Fleece the Public that attempts to explain the trick - published in August 1934 (via Modern Mechanix):

However, in the 20 minutes that I spent watching the proceedings at the milk bottle pyramid booth, I realized that there is much more to it than just weighted bottles. Below, is a schematic (with a brief explanation that follows) of the issues involved (in my opinion) in the milk bottle pyramid game.

• Weight of the ball. From what I observed, it didn’t seem like one of the bottles was heavier than the others. However, they all seemed a bit too heavy for the ball that was given to the participants. Because the ball was lighter, it didn’t transfer enough energy to the bottles to knock them “off the table”. Sure they tumbled at times, but it was more like “toppling over” than “knocking over”. Btw, some of the folks were throwing the ball with great arm movement…so they must be packing a lot of punch in it.
• Table construction. The ball and the bottles are just half the story; the features of the table seemed equally important. The table had a raised edge around the periphery. Since milk bottles are cylindrical in shape, it wouldn’t take much to roll them off the table after you topple them. The raised edge makes sure that this rolling does not happen.
• Dimensions of the bottle with respect to the table. The bottles were small enough to fit inside the raised edge of the table, if they were laid flat on the sides.
• Pyramid placement. The pyramid is placed neared to the person throwing the ball. This may seem like an advantage to the thrower, but in reality, I think it further prevents the bottles from falling off the table. If they were on the opposite side (farthest from the thrower), simply toppling them might nudge them over the table’s edge.
• Force and accuracy. People who were trying to throw the ball too fast and hard were missing the pyramid totally! Probably, too much force results in too little control over the direction of the throw.
  
• Chip on the shoulder complex. This term appears in the 1934 report (see the second image from the top) and might be a strong motivating factor for a lot of older people (kids’ dads) to try the milk bottle pyramid. “Chip on the shoulder” is defined as (source):”A belligerent attitude or grievance“. This coupled with overconfidence in throwing abilities provide plenty of good candidates for milking money.
• Bank on probability. More than a matter of skill, it seemed to me like it was a matter of probability with odds working heavily against the thrower. However, a walk around the park did prove that some folks (may be 3 or 4) managed to win prizes in such games (usually prizes are unique to certain booths…so it’s easy to figure out)…so it’s not like no one ever does it. Also, this is essential for the business, because you got to show people that they *could* win it too.

Plus, there are other things that you could do to mess with the thrower and earn more money. Things like increasing the distance between the thrower and the pyramid, making the surface of the table and the bottles a bit rougher (to increase friction), and perhaps some other innovative approaches (any suggestions?).

By the way, the activity must be providing very good return on investment (ROI), because there are hardly any capital costs (you don’t even need high school education) and operating costs. Your initial setup may cost a few hundred bucks for the bottles, table and the ball and some prizes for display, but once you start running the show, it’s almost an all-profit-no-loss venture.

So, want to be rich and successful quickly? This milk bottles-and-ball pyramid might just be your answer.

Image source: dccradio via Webshots

This is in context with a movie “Thanks Anyway” (not yet released) [via Guerrilla Innovation]

The free-of-charge service is generally not welcomed by those receiving it. Instead Matthias is - not surprisingly - met with hostility and bureaucratic suspiciousness.

Although the performance is focused on public systems, it exemplifies how we tend to react with mistrust when offered something for free by someone who has no other agenda than being friendly.

Are you in tune with this thought? do you mistrust someone who offers you stuff/service for free?

Personally, I have mistrusted a lot of *free offers* myself. Initially I didn’t believe that people could make *free* money out of credit card arbitrages…it took me quite a while to convince myself that arbitrage really works. I have refused a lot of free subscription offers from newspapers and magazines thinking that there must be some kind of a catch in those offers. When Arbitron sent me 10 crisp $1 bills…my first reaction was to check on the internet if it’s some sort of a scam!

Probably it’s the rogues like the commercial below that make me mistrust free stuff. You must have seen this on TV a thousand times:

[youtube]g3PdaYxSZeM[/youtube]

Click here if you are not able to play the YouTube video above. This links to another site that runs a Quicktime version of the same commercial

Towards the end, one lady says “They let you try it free? It must be good!”. Do you subscribe to such logic about free stuff? or do you subscribe to “free? there must be a catch”?

Here is a report on Federal Trade Commission’s website against the advertising claims made by the marketers of “Focus Factor”. I am including this link just in case someone really falls for the sales pitch from the guy. Don’t laugh…may be you could not digest the Focus Factor’s logic of “if it’s free, it must be good”, but the very fact that the Federal Trade Commission had to intervene in this matter is a testimony to the effect that many people must have been suckered into the getting the product. A Google search for “Focus Factor” will provide you with enough entertaining stories (mostly complaints) for a weekend.

Probably, the mistrust is because of those Amway guys who offer *free over-friendliness* to make you a part of their evil scheme. Or probably, it’s those dudes at the local pizza place who give a free pizza if you sign up for a credit card. Or probably, it’s those *free* $10 checks that Chase sends (and then charges $119.99 on your credit card). Or probably, it’s those free Xbox offers that make you sign up for a million trial offers and refer them to a dozen friends.

What’s your experience with free stuff?

With this post, I just want to put forward some plain facts about how our credit cards are doing some work for us. It goes without saying that gross generalizations in favor (or against) credit cards based on this information will not hold water.

I just checked my credit card rewards statement on Yodlee, and this is what I saw:

We have 4 Citibank cards between us (2 each) and all of them have been earning ThankYou reward points for us since we started using them. One of those Citi cards have been collecting ThankYou points since about three years ago and the other three earned us 10,000 bonus points each when we applied for them (for example, Citibank cards like this). Also, there have been on and off bonus points offers that have helped the points increase rapidly. At present, between both of us, we have about 60,000 points (it’s not 60,000 yet, but it will cross that mark after this month’s statements). That is worth $600 (depending on how we choose to use the reward points). Roughly, the conversion for Citi’s ThankYou points is like this:

• 3,000 points = $25
• 6,000 points = $50
• 10,000 points = $100 (best value)

We have been earning rewards on our other cards too, namely, Amex (cash back), Chase, and Discover cards; but their value is hardly of any significance as compared to our Citi rewards, so I am not including them. Also, two of those Citi cards and some other cards are carrying 0% APR balances which were transferred to HSBC Direct and are earning 5.05% APY. I will not specify exactly how much these balance transfers were and how much they are making in interest, but let me just put it this way: including the worth of the points, and the interest earned on the credit card arbitrage, we will very easily earn more than $1500 this year just by using credit cards. The only active effort, on my part, is making the payments on time. We don’t go out of the way to earn reward points. We have a very simply scheme: for rent there is check, for laundry there is cash, and for everything else there is MasterCard (earlier, I needed cash for my barber…but by latest barber accepts credit cards).

That’s some passive income isn’t it?

Btw, this is peanuts when compared to some other personal finance bloggers I have seen. You can safely say that I am still a novice in this area.

We haven’t yet decided on how to efficiently use the reward points, but most probably, we would go for the Target gift card offer. That will give us a lot of flexibility with regards to how we wish to spend the gift cards; although I am not sure we will spend all 60,000 points on Target.

Has anyone tried “Your Wish Fulfilled” rewards option from ThankYou network? I will be glad to know how that works. I am guessing that, that option might allow us to order any gift card we want.

Fortunately, we don’t have any student loans to bother us, otherwise, the best option would have been this:

On a side note (just because I am anticipating some comments on this matter), more on philosophical lines, I would like to say that being debt free (or being in debt) has nothing to do with the use of credit cards or cash. It has everything to do with your temperament, attitude, and discipline. People have historically used both the systems to their advantage, so it all depends on how you look at it. Statements like “using credit cards will put you in debt” are as baseless as “cash will make you spend more”. Instead of blaming credit cards or cash for our reckless spending and debt, it will be much more fruitful to focus on some fundamental introspection into our spending habits and start changing things from there. Earlier, I have expressed my aversion towards cash and my $10 per month cash experiment; however, in that case too, the problem isn’t with the cash…it’s with me not handling my cash properly.

All the above links are for information only. I don’t include referral links in posts without specifying that they are *referral* links.

In the last seven months, this blog has come a long way from being a weak, disoriented start-up to attracting it’s first advertising deal and crossing the 50,000 visitors mark not too long ago. This journey would not have been possible without the support of some loyal fellow bloggers, avid readers, critics, and commentators. As a way of appreciating the continued support, I would like to give something back to my readers (you!). If you are a personal finance enthusiast, you will consider this giveaway as your *dividend* for investing your time and efforts in reading, commenting, and providing feedback on this blog, and for encouraging me to strive towards generating better content.

Ideally, I would have liked to give something to everybody who has provided a feedback on this blog; however, I am not yet in the Forbes list of billionaires, and will have to make do with distributing just $100 according to the following scheme:

• Four readers will get *anything* they wish for, up to a maximum of $25 each (shipping must be included).
• *Anything* means - any one thing that is preferably related to personal finance (for e.g. books, magazine subscriptions, piggy bank, money games, gift cards to book shops/online book stores, etc.)

The rules are like this:

• To be eligible, you need to leave a comment on this post in this manner: “I wish for _______”, (don’t put any links here and you cannot ask for cash) and below that you must answer these three questions:
  • In your opinion, what is the best action you have taken to ensure a better financial future for yourself or your family?
  • How do you intend to use the thing you have wished for?
  • What is your favorite post on this blog? (You don’t need to explain why, just give the title)

That’s it ! it’s that simple. Entries will be accepted till Thursday, 29th March.

I will number all the comments and randomly choose 4 winners from them by using something like this. After the 4 winners are selected, orders will be placed for their *wishes*. All other relevant details will be discussed only with the 4 winners.

There are different ways in which you can maximize what you can get from this giveaway. Think over it…do some research.

Got my second “big fat check” from Ebates.com yesterday. Not a big deal, but $60.76 is not a tiny amount either. It’s sort of good news and bad news. Good news is that I got free money. Bad news is that this is not exactly *free* money…I must have spent quite a bit on buying stuff online to get this kind of a cash back within the last 3~4 months.

For those who are not aware about Ebates.com, it’s an online portal (similar to Fatwallet) that offers cash back on certain online purchases if you go through them. You can read more about Ebates in this post that I wrote long time back. I tend to maximize the cash backs/rebates by going through such portals (sometimes it’s Ebates and other times it’s Fatwallet). For example, I have a Circuit City store within a few blocks of my apartment; however, instead of going to the store to buy something, I usually buy it on their website by going through Ebates/Fatwallet. That way, I get the cash back (in addition to reward points on the credit card)…sometimes that comes to about 5%~10% in all. Not bad if you are looking for big ticket items like computers, digital cameras, or shopping for holidays…and such.Currently, Ebates is running a referral promotion:

If you are interested here is a referral link for you (valid till March 15th). If you sign up using this link, you get $10 and I get $10 too (drool…Homer Simpson style). However, before you sign up, make sure you read the fine print (click here to read it). It’s a good habit to always read the fine print before signing up through any referrals.

Btw, on a related issue, I don’t seem to get enough from my Upromise account (although I have all my cards registered with them). Over the 6 months, I have barely managed about $0.35. Does anyone have any Upromise *hacks*?

Some time back, we received a phone call from a representative of a company called “Arbitron” regarding a radio rating survey. Usually, we dismiss all such calls with a curt “sorry, not interested” reply and the story ends right there. However, this guy was a smooth talker and quickly mentioned that the company will send some small gifts if we could complete a survey and send it back to them. We agreed, after making that guy hold for about 3-4 minutes, and after me and my wife exchanged some quick thoughts over the matter.

A week later, we got a couple of fancy envelope-sized boxes with the survey material. We were expecting something like coupons to a coffee shop/retail store (earlier, the guy on the phone said “something like cafe coupons”) and we were also expecting that they will send the gifts after we completed the survey and mailed it back to them. To our amazement, each of the fancy boxes contained three crisp $1 bills. Felt good; may be because I have never received any cash through mail before (in fact, I wasn’t sure people could send cash through mail). Anyways, $6 was good.

The story didn’t end there. In the next few days, we received a couple of “reminders” from the company, with a dollar bill in each. This was followed a few days latter with a couple of thank you letters, again each with a dollar bill. All this even before we sent in the completed surveys. Felt like someone was bribing us

Btw, $10 in cash almost takes care of our entire month’s cash expense. Seems like Arbitron’s money will pay for our laundry this month.

Below is a quick review of some major players for cell phone deals in the market. When compared to brick-and-mortar retail shops, these online shops provide better phones for much lower prices and a large variety of choices when it comes to free phones. Most deals are not just “free”; they also make you some money through mail-in rebates. However, like for every other online transaction, one needs to read the fine print carefully. I have highlighted some important points that warrant consideration, towards the end of this post.Wirefly.com

This is owned and operated by Inphonic Inc. According to Wiki:
“The company’s central online storefront, Wirefly.com, has received a number of Internet awards, including Forbes magazine’s “Best of the Web” for 2004 and Keynote System’s “Best In Overall Customer Experience” in 2005.”

Apparently they know their business well. Like all other websites in this category, Wirefly.com offers large mail-in rebates with many nice phones. However, watch out for a $9 “processing fee” when you checkout. 2nd day shipping is free.

Letstalk.com

I like these guys the best. You can make your cell phone deals sweeter using a combination of Ebates.com and Letstalk.com. Ebates.com is offering a $30 discount if you go through them to Letstalk.com to sign a new contract. In addition, Letstalk.com usually offers great deals on cell phones when you sign a new contract with any of the listed service providers. It is not unusual to find some nice free phones with $100 mail-in rebate after activation. The website doesn’t charge any processing fees. Also offers 2nd day free shipping.

Cellularchoices.net

These guys act like agents (I think) for Letstalk.com and Wirefly.com. However, the deals found on Cellularchoices.net are not the same as those found on the two websites. Also, currently it’s running a $25 Mastercard gift card promotion till Jan 31st on all it’s phones. Surprisingly, even though it places the orders through the Wirefly.com (Inphonic Inc) infrastructure, it does not charge the $9 processing fee that Wirefly.com charges. Free 2nd day shipping.

Amazon.comIt used to offer some very good cell-phone deals about a few years ago, but now-a-days I don’t find anything worth mentioning here. However, like other websites, there are a lot of free phone choices available….phones that you wouldn’t get through retail outlets. Shipping is free here too.There is a jungle of websites that offer similar deals ….but if you look closely, they are just different portals (or agents) of one (or more) parent source company (companies).:) Here are some examples:

Cellularchoices.net orders are fulfilled by Letstalk.com or Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

Easycellphones.com orders are fulfilled by Letstalk.com;

Younevercall.com orders are fulfilled by Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

Freecellularphonedeals.net orders are fulfilled by Wirefly.com/Inphonic;

There are some things you should remember before you get into this:

1. There is mail-in rebate involved.
2. Usually with these deals, activation fee is charged (approx. $30~$35), so some part of your free money is lost. Make sure you account for that.
3. Read your terms and conditions carefully if you want your rebate. For example, here is an excerpt from the “Rebates Terms and Conditions” on On Letstalk.com:
   

   NOTE: Your rebate submission must be postmarked between Dec 1, 2006 and Feb 1, 2007 or we will be unable to process your rebate request.

   …and an excerpt from Amazon.com:

   Your price paid includes an equipment discount of $250 that has been provided to you by Amazon.com for activating a new line of service with T-Mobile and maintaining this new line of service with the selected rate plan in good standing for a minimum of 181 consecutive days. If these conditions are not met, you herein agree to a $250 reimbursement to be paid to Amazon.com.

4. Also, you might have to wait for quite some time for the rebates to get in your bank. ALL websites will have clauses like these:
   Letstalk.com

   Your rebate submission will be processed and any check mailed by the later of 150 days after your order activation / ship date OR ten weeks after receipt of a properly completed rebate form.

5. Usually for maximum mail-in rebates, 2-year contracts are common. The rebates are lesser for 1-year contracts. At times, it helps to call them and persuade them to give you maximum mail-in rebates on 1-year contracts…if you are lucky they might just agree.
6. During checkout, watch out for those default “Yes” to options like “Add a charger for $19.99″. You need to switch them to “No” before you confirm the transaction. Not many of those listed above will do that, but watch out just in case.
7. Read #1 again.

My personal experience

I recently ordered phones through Letstalk.com and it worked well for me. I usually don’t go for mail-in rebates (why?), but this deal was one of the few exceptions that I allow every once in a while. We went with a T-mobile family plan (two phones) and the total distribution was like this: Mail-in Rebate(+$200); Ebates discount (+$30); Activation fee(-$70); Total 200+30-70=+$160. Not bad :).

I should also mention here that I also had a very good experience with Letstalk.com as far as their customer service is concerned. Initially, I got two Motorola phones (I think they were both V195 models) and both had trashy reception. Sent those back and got two Samsung phones in return. All this was made really easy by Letstalk.com. They were not like those PITA-customer-service guys I usually encounter….and no sir, this is not pay-per-post ..or any such thing.

Man this Ebates thing is for real :). I had signed up for a Sharebuilder account about 3 months ago through Ebates and it had promised me $20 at the time. Honestly, I was not really expecting to see anything from Ebates…well just because I had never heard of the name before that. Yesterday, I was surprised to see a “Big Fat Check” from Ebates in the mail…..ok it wasn’t really big or fat or anything, but hey $20 is $20….even sweeter because I didn’t have to do anything for it and also got a $50 Sharebuilder bonus in the process.

Now, that I have “verified” that this stuff works, I don’t have any qualms about recommending it. In fact, you can get yourself a head start of $5 (and I will get a $5 bonus too) if you click on this referral link and sign up:

Update: There is a $10 referral bonus offer (you get $10 and I get $10) valid till March 15th, 2007:

This is the referral link for getting $10 bonus (till March 15th) 

This is the regular referral link ($5 bonus) - does not expire.

For those who don’t know what Ebates.com is: It’s a program similar to something like Upromise.com, you buy stuff from major retailers by going through their website , and in return they give you some cashback, or bonus or discount coupons. Always read the fine print before signing up for anything. To make it a bit easier, I am copy-pasting an important excerpt from Ebates’ terms and conditions:

Every three months Ebates sends to its members the Cash Back that they have earned, provided that the member has earned at least $5.01 in Cash Back Rewards. If the member has earned less than $5.01 Cash Back, Ebates will carry the member’s money over to the next check.