In reply to Linsey Knerl, I'm working at a gas station this winter. One man comes in several times a month with gift cards that have small amounts on them, never more than $5. He uses them to buy the balance in gas... filling his small jerry cans for his power tools.
Thanks for posting this. I have recently used some of these methods to get free magazines and a couple I was unaware of. While I do most of my reading online, I still appreciate an actual hard copy magazine every once in a while.
You were disqualified for misconduct, period. It doesn't matter what the recording says or what they told you as the reason for termination. The only thing that matters is WHY you were terminated.
I've been a customer of Capital One for 8 years I haven't carried a balance for 3 years until this month. I called Capial one twice and wrote a letter. While they were blown away by my perfect credit history they said they had no flexibility in lowering my APR rate below 17% because of new legislation. As soon as I pay this off I will kiss Capital One goodbye.
Well I used to be one of those 'never modify a recipe' peeps simply because I didn't cook enough to gain experience and new ideas on how to modify, adapt and change recipes.
Many people do not get opportunities like myself to suddenly stay home for years with free lance work and housework.
I used to follow recipes to a tee if not something disastrous would happen - I had no understanding of the ingredients used nor the quantities and what herbs/spices/methods would go well with what.
After lots of trial and error during the first 2 months or so I started becoming more and more confident as I have a very fussy eater of a husband who dislikes meat (so I have to make a separate meat dish for myself and he might pick through that occasionally) and dislikes many types of vegetables.
Lots of wastages happened because I didn't change or adapt a recipe and hubby picked through what he liked and left the rest!
Now every recipe I can do a quick look through and actually just use it as an inspiration as opposed to a base.
Exmaple: I see an interesting lasagne recipe I might make an eggplant & zucchini bake with half the sides from shredded roast chicken I always make every week and keep on hand for dishes such as these or sandwiches, burritos, etc.
I think people who say they have no time are kidding themselves.
I used to work full time and then attend night classes till 10pm and still could come home to cook a good dinner for myself and hubby.
A great way would be to buy and freeze your own veggies in ziplock bags or air tight containers.
Chop onions, mince garlic, carrots, celery, etc etc during weekends and keep in fridge.
Its also good to plan your meals so you don't have to worry about what to cook and its quicker when you get home.
Of course hubby did do lots of cooking during that time too. :)
I can do this because I'm currently free lancing as well as a full time stay-home wife and secretary.
However, I start cooking at around 3pm to get food on the table by 5pm as Asian food is not as easy as marinating something and tossing it into an oven, plus I make at least 3 dishes with rice or bread.
Sometimes I make pasta and that's when I start cooking at much later.
So I've got to already wake up very early daily to finish up and clean up house and then get onto finishing work before 3pm.
So going to the nearby supermarkets is a bit hard as
1. It will usually be at a specific time as opposed to the ideal random drop-ins for discounts.
That claim about credit card users spending 50% more on fast food seems very dubious to me.
I would note that the article linked to on that actually says that people spend "up to 50% more" which is not the same as "spend approximately 50% more". The words "up to" matter a lot.
I agree that this approach doesn't always work for everyone, but it works well for me. There are a few stores within walking distance from my house, or between work and home, and it's trivial to stop in on my bike ride home to pick up a few fresh ingredients. (Actually, frequent shopping is a necessity for me to some degree — I can only carry a relatively small amount of groceries when walking or biking.)
I've found that I waste less food shopping this way, because I know that I only ever need to buy a few days worth of fresh ingredients at a time. In the event that I'm not able to take a trip to the store for a day or two longer than I'd like, I take it as a good opportunity to go through the pantry and see if there are any older items that I can use up.
Thanks for your comment. It's been about a year since we made this switch and we haven't had problems. My land line service was unreliable, unlike the cell service -- which may be the opposite for some.
Seriously? This shouldn't be a big problem. Just call the number on the back for the balance and mark the front with a permanent marker. Some cashiers do this for you when you get store credit for a return.
Or, just swipe your card at the self-checkout at Wal-Mart. It deducts the amount automatically, without needing you to know the exact balance. If you're in the regular line at Wal-Mart, have the cashier punch in the full amount and then swipe the card. So if you have a total for $30 and a card for $ unknown, have the cashier punch in $30.00 and it will automatically deduct what's on the card. You only need to know the exact amount if you want an exact amount taken off the card and not the whole amount in a split tender transaction, ie 4 guys with a total of $88 who want to split using debit cards, so punch in $22 & swipe 4X. This method works at the grocery stores too.
As an ex-cashier, I once had a lady who had about 10 visa gift cards with a few dollars on them each. I ran them all on the same transaction just fine without knowing the exact balances.
I use a price book and comparison shopping to figure out the cheapest possible prices on staples that don't go bad: dried beans, rice, flour, salt, spices, oil, vinegar etc. I stock up on those months ahead even once I find a good price. In France, milk is processed in such a way that you can stock it for 3 months! (kind of scary huh?)
Then I hit the farmer's market or green grocer twice a week and see what's in season/on sale. The same goes for meat. I take my fresh finds home and combine them with the staples to make a meal.
This is a great idea and one that I sort-of adapt. I go grocery shopping 2-3 times per week on foot. That being said, I usually do plan my meals and plan my grocery list. I'm vegetarian so I don't do the meat thing, and buying almost-gone-bad-meat doesn't appeal to me... sorry. ;)
That being said I do buy spotted bananas and other fruits if I plan to use them right away. What I like about shopping often is buying the produce that's local and in season. I go through a lot of produce every week, so that's really the only reason I like to shop often. My staples are nuts and seeds, and those can last a long time as well.
In the end, I think it really depends on your diet. You can buy whatever's on sale or fresh, or you can follow your menu for the week and experience great food with a few substitutions. :)
Being able to shop daily is definitely a privilege that many people don't have. It's not something that my husband and I have the time and energy for, despite the fact that we don't have any kids or other dependents. And I don't see how it would save us more than it would cost us in gas, let alone time.
However, I can see the benefits to shopping more often. I feel very lucky that I can shop once a week because eating fresh food is important to me. Meat isn't an issue as we're both vegan, but fresh veggies only last so long. It takes a little planning (though not necessarily full-out meal planning) to figure out what we can eat in time to avoid waste. I try to get some fresh things that will last longer than others and stagger it a bit. What we can't eat in time I try to preserve in some way, but we do pretty good. We compost what goes bad or just doesn't taste good, but most of that is stuff like the random orange that goes from perfect orange to green & white overnight.
@vga
It might be worth your time to look into method cooking, i.e. learn the *process* of a simple stir-fry or basic soup where you can substitute various veggies. There's a lot more freedom when you can get away from the recipes. It may take a while before you get up your cooking confidence, but when you realize how easy it is to substitute stuff then you can save a lot of money by being flexible. For example, I have a simple root mash recipe and it works well with a lot of different roots veggies. So, it's a great way to use up potatoes or carrots and maybe add in some seasonal stuff like turnips from the farmers' market. It's never the same, but that's what keeps it tasting fresh and new. And there's a lot of great tutorials online as well as recipes and substitute ideas for when you come home with some strange new veggie from the farmers' market and wonder, "What can I do with this?!" Goodness knows, I owe my own cooking skills to the internet and a lot of trial and error.
First, I certainly don't try to get everything for a meal on one of these daily shopping ventures—just the fresh ingredients. I depend on the fact that we always have staples at home: rice, flour, herbs, spices, vinegar, condiments, etc.
Second, it's entirely possible to combine this with weekly (or monthly) shopping for staples, so there's no need to abandon your warehouse store membership. I try to pick up one or two staple items every day—but that's just me trying to put off having to make a major shopping outing. Still, eventually I need more stuff than I can easily carry home on foot, so I make a trip in the car and stock up. (Kitty litter and beer are common triggers.)
Third, it really helps to develop the skills of ad hoc cooking. I guess I came to that early, simply because I was a picky eater: There were so many things that I wouldn't eat, I always had to change recipes around. The result was that I learned early that it's easy to mix and match pieces from different recipes. See the two articles I linked to in the main post: Frugalize Any Recipe and Teach Yourself to Cook.
I would find this method too inconvenient - we make maybe 2 or 3 trips each week because the grocery store is literally a 5 minute walk but going every day would be a major pain, even that close.
That said, we generally buy our veggies only a day or two in advance, purposely waiting to buy things that will go bad quickly, like greens.
Also, whatever is cheapest in the flier is probably what is fresh and in-season. That makes it easy to do meal-planning *and* have fresh, local produce. We buy our meats from a local butcher (this is a sustainability, local commerce, organic, non-CAFO thing and it does cost more) but before I definitely bought the marked-down stuff and froze what I couldn't use right away.
Although this technique sounds great, I found it didn't work as well in my household. For one thing, it tended to mean that we were shopping while hungry, and so we'd pick up things that we didn't otherwise need.
We do best, both in terms of reducing waste and expense, by making a menu plan and shopping for most of the items once a week. Probably twice a week, either my husband or I will walk to the store and pick up something we need fresh for our menu plan (fish is a perfect example).
Still, I've seen our grocery bills go down significantly by getting 90% of our shopping in one trip.
Yes, you can do this. The issue is that you'll have those gift cards floating around until you use them for your next Amazon purchase and you can only use ONE per transaction (plus you'll need to have enough Amazon gift certificates already stored in your account to cover the rest of the purchase because they won't take more than these two methods in one transaction.) Some people would like to "bank" all their unused pre-paid balances as Amazon gift codes, as you can store them up until you have a nice-sized balance to buy something larger in one purchase. Make sense?
Short answer = yes, you can use prepaid cards as a regular method of onpayment at Amazon, provided you can cover the rest in Amazon credits.
Yes, I think the billing programs for most businesses, whether medical or dental, run into the same types of billing/insurance issues and the problems really can't be blamed completely on the professionals. The types of software they use in the office makes a big difference in the amount billing mistakes that occur. Perhaps people should start talking to their dentists about switching, preferably to a web-based dental software. There are fewer billing and privacy issues with this type.
doesn't Amazon allow you to purchase from them via multiple payment options? i.e. you can put 15 dollars on your gift card balance and 5.36 on your visa prepaid balance? Seems that would save some time.
I prepared delicious bunch of dandelion greens for dinner last night, and my dandelion leaves don't resemble the picture at all. I'm certain the greens I picked were dandelions (they appear in the same place year in and year out). I've never been successful at pulling them out so I gave up and started eating them instead. Now I'm wondering about possible varities of dandelions and mature summer leaves vs. spring leaves as possible answers.
i also enjoy shopping this way. i kinda do a combo. on the weekend, i'll make a big trip to get things i know we'll need, such as granola bars, soy milk, etc, or bulky things like toilet paper. then during the week, i get inspired by recipes i find on blogs, and pop by the store on my way home to get the ingredients. i keep staples at home (beans, rice, canned tomatoes, frozen peas), and just go by the store to get the rest. it helps me stay interested and engaged by the cooking process.
In reply to Linsey Knerl, I'm working at a gas station this winter. One man comes in several times a month with gift cards that have small amounts on them, never more than $5. He uses them to buy the balance in gas... filling his small jerry cans for his power tools.
Hi all,
Can anyone help me find the unlocking code for my dvd JVC UX-AD8. Thank you!
There has got to be more to life then shootin pills! thanks for this article!
Thanks for posting this. I have recently used some of these methods to get free magazines and a couple I was unaware of. While I do most of my reading online, I still appreciate an actual hard copy magazine every once in a while.
Mike
You were disqualified for misconduct, period. It doesn't matter what the recording says or what they told you as the reason for termination. The only thing that matters is WHY you were terminated.
I've been a customer of Capital One for 8 years I haven't carried a balance for 3 years until this month. I called Capial one twice and wrote a letter. While they were blown away by my perfect credit history they said they had no flexibility in lowering my APR rate below 17% because of new legislation. As soon as I pay this off I will kiss Capital One goodbye.
I just found Outright and my taxes are done. Cash based only, but that's a good thing.
Well I used to be one of those 'never modify a recipe' peeps simply because I didn't cook enough to gain experience and new ideas on how to modify, adapt and change recipes.
Many people do not get opportunities like myself to suddenly stay home for years with free lance work and housework.
I used to follow recipes to a tee if not something disastrous would happen - I had no understanding of the ingredients used nor the quantities and what herbs/spices/methods would go well with what.
After lots of trial and error during the first 2 months or so I started becoming more and more confident as I have a very fussy eater of a husband who dislikes meat (so I have to make a separate meat dish for myself and he might pick through that occasionally) and dislikes many types of vegetables.
Lots of wastages happened because I didn't change or adapt a recipe and hubby picked through what he liked and left the rest!
Now every recipe I can do a quick look through and actually just use it as an inspiration as opposed to a base.
Exmaple: I see an interesting lasagne recipe I might make an eggplant & zucchini bake with half the sides from shredded roast chicken I always make every week and keep on hand for dishes such as these or sandwiches, burritos, etc.
I think people who say they have no time are kidding themselves.
I used to work full time and then attend night classes till 10pm and still could come home to cook a good dinner for myself and hubby.
A great way would be to buy and freeze your own veggies in ziplock bags or air tight containers.
Chop onions, mince garlic, carrots, celery, etc etc during weekends and keep in fridge.
Its also good to plan your meals so you don't have to worry about what to cook and its quicker when you get home.
Of course hubby did do lots of cooking during that time too. :)
:: AsianGal
I can do this because I'm currently free lancing as well as a full time stay-home wife and secretary.
However, I start cooking at around 3pm to get food on the table by 5pm as Asian food is not as easy as marinating something and tossing it into an oven, plus I make at least 3 dishes with rice or bread.
Sometimes I make pasta and that's when I start cooking at much later.
So I've got to already wake up very early daily to finish up and clean up house and then get onto finishing work before 3pm.
So going to the nearby supermarkets is a bit hard as
1. It will usually be at a specific time as opposed to the ideal random drop-ins for discounts.
2. I plan my meals weekly.
Any suggestion on how to solve this?
:: AsianGal
That claim about credit card users spending 50% more on fast food seems very dubious to me.
I would note that the article linked to on that actually says that people spend "up to 50% more" which is not the same as "spend approximately 50% more". The words "up to" matter a lot.
I agree that this approach doesn't always work for everyone, but it works well for me. There are a few stores within walking distance from my house, or between work and home, and it's trivial to stop in on my bike ride home to pick up a few fresh ingredients. (Actually, frequent shopping is a necessity for me to some degree — I can only carry a relatively small amount of groceries when walking or biking.)
I've found that I waste less food shopping this way, because I know that I only ever need to buy a few days worth of fresh ingredients at a time. In the event that I'm not able to take a trip to the store for a day or two longer than I'd like, I take it as a good opportunity to go through the pantry and see if there are any older items that I can use up.
Thanks for your comment. It's been about a year since we made this switch and we haven't had problems. My land line service was unreliable, unlike the cell service -- which may be the opposite for some.
Seriously? This shouldn't be a big problem. Just call the number on the back for the balance and mark the front with a permanent marker. Some cashiers do this for you when you get store credit for a return.
Or, just swipe your card at the self-checkout at Wal-Mart. It deducts the amount automatically, without needing you to know the exact balance. If you're in the regular line at Wal-Mart, have the cashier punch in the full amount and then swipe the card. So if you have a total for $30 and a card for $ unknown, have the cashier punch in $30.00 and it will automatically deduct what's on the card. You only need to know the exact amount if you want an exact amount taken off the card and not the whole amount in a split tender transaction, ie 4 guys with a total of $88 who want to split using debit cards, so punch in $22 & swipe 4X. This method works at the grocery stores too.
As an ex-cashier, I once had a lady who had about 10 visa gift cards with a few dollars on them each. I ran them all on the same transaction just fine without knowing the exact balances.
This is one of the few non scam profucts out there it's a VIOP product just like Vonage or your cable company phone except cheaper.
I use a price book and comparison shopping to figure out the cheapest possible prices on staples that don't go bad: dried beans, rice, flour, salt, spices, oil, vinegar etc. I stock up on those months ahead even once I find a good price. In France, milk is processed in such a way that you can stock it for 3 months! (kind of scary huh?)
Then I hit the farmer's market or green grocer twice a week and see what's in season/on sale. The same goes for meat. I take my fresh finds home and combine them with the staples to make a meal.
This is a great idea and one that I sort-of adapt. I go grocery shopping 2-3 times per week on foot. That being said, I usually do plan my meals and plan my grocery list. I'm vegetarian so I don't do the meat thing, and buying almost-gone-bad-meat doesn't appeal to me... sorry. ;)
That being said I do buy spotted bananas and other fruits if I plan to use them right away. What I like about shopping often is buying the produce that's local and in season. I go through a lot of produce every week, so that's really the only reason I like to shop often. My staples are nuts and seeds, and those can last a long time as well.
In the end, I think it really depends on your diet. You can buy whatever's on sale or fresh, or you can follow your menu for the week and experience great food with a few substitutions. :)
Being able to shop daily is definitely a privilege that many people don't have. It's not something that my husband and I have the time and energy for, despite the fact that we don't have any kids or other dependents. And I don't see how it would save us more than it would cost us in gas, let alone time.
However, I can see the benefits to shopping more often. I feel very lucky that I can shop once a week because eating fresh food is important to me. Meat isn't an issue as we're both vegan, but fresh veggies only last so long. It takes a little planning (though not necessarily full-out meal planning) to figure out what we can eat in time to avoid waste. I try to get some fresh things that will last longer than others and stagger it a bit. What we can't eat in time I try to preserve in some way, but we do pretty good. We compost what goes bad or just doesn't taste good, but most of that is stuff like the random orange that goes from perfect orange to green & white overnight.
@vga
It might be worth your time to look into method cooking, i.e. learn the *process* of a simple stir-fry or basic soup where you can substitute various veggies. There's a lot more freedom when you can get away from the recipes. It may take a while before you get up your cooking confidence, but when you realize how easy it is to substitute stuff then you can save a lot of money by being flexible. For example, I have a simple root mash recipe and it works well with a lot of different roots veggies. So, it's a great way to use up potatoes or carrots and maybe add in some seasonal stuff like turnips from the farmers' market. It's never the same, but that's what keeps it tasting fresh and new. And there's a lot of great tutorials online as well as recipes and substitute ideas for when you come home with some strange new veggie from the farmers' market and wonder, "What can I do with this?!" Goodness knows, I owe my own cooking skills to the internet and a lot of trial and error.
A few points:
First, I certainly don't try to get everything for a meal on one of these daily shopping ventures—just the fresh ingredients. I depend on the fact that we always have staples at home: rice, flour, herbs, spices, vinegar, condiments, etc.
Second, it's entirely possible to combine this with weekly (or monthly) shopping for staples, so there's no need to abandon your warehouse store membership. I try to pick up one or two staple items every day—but that's just me trying to put off having to make a major shopping outing. Still, eventually I need more stuff than I can easily carry home on foot, so I make a trip in the car and stock up. (Kitty litter and beer are common triggers.)
Third, it really helps to develop the skills of ad hoc cooking. I guess I came to that early, simply because I was a picky eater: There were so many things that I wouldn't eat, I always had to change recipes around. The result was that I learned early that it's easy to mix and match pieces from different recipes. See the two articles I linked to in the main post: Frugalize Any Recipe and Teach Yourself to Cook.
Thanks again for all the great comments!
I would find this method too inconvenient - we make maybe 2 or 3 trips each week because the grocery store is literally a 5 minute walk but going every day would be a major pain, even that close.
That said, we generally buy our veggies only a day or two in advance, purposely waiting to buy things that will go bad quickly, like greens.
Also, whatever is cheapest in the flier is probably what is fresh and in-season. That makes it easy to do meal-planning *and* have fresh, local produce. We buy our meats from a local butcher (this is a sustainability, local commerce, organic, non-CAFO thing and it does cost more) but before I definitely bought the marked-down stuff and froze what I couldn't use right away.
Although this technique sounds great, I found it didn't work as well in my household. For one thing, it tended to mean that we were shopping while hungry, and so we'd pick up things that we didn't otherwise need.
We do best, both in terms of reducing waste and expense, by making a menu plan and shopping for most of the items once a week. Probably twice a week, either my husband or I will walk to the store and pick up something we need fresh for our menu plan (fish is a perfect example).
Still, I've seen our grocery bills go down significantly by getting 90% of our shopping in one trip.
Yes, you can do this. The issue is that you'll have those gift cards floating around until you use them for your next Amazon purchase and you can only use ONE per transaction (plus you'll need to have enough Amazon gift certificates already stored in your account to cover the rest of the purchase because they won't take more than these two methods in one transaction.) Some people would like to "bank" all their unused pre-paid balances as Amazon gift codes, as you can store them up until you have a nice-sized balance to buy something larger in one purchase. Make sense?
Short answer = yes, you can use prepaid cards as a regular method of onpayment at Amazon, provided you can cover the rest in Amazon credits.
Linsey Knerl
Yes, I think the billing programs for most businesses, whether medical or dental, run into the same types of billing/insurance issues and the problems really can't be blamed completely on the professionals. The types of software they use in the office makes a big difference in the amount billing mistakes that occur. Perhaps people should start talking to their dentists about switching, preferably to a web-based dental software. There are fewer billing and privacy issues with this type.
doesn't Amazon allow you to purchase from them via multiple payment options? i.e. you can put 15 dollars on your gift card balance and 5.36 on your visa prepaid balance? Seems that would save some time.
I prepared delicious bunch of dandelion greens for dinner last night, and my dandelion leaves don't resemble the picture at all. I'm certain the greens I picked were dandelions (they appear in the same place year in and year out). I've never been successful at pulling them out so I gave up and started eating them instead. Now I'm wondering about possible varities of dandelions and mature summer leaves vs. spring leaves as possible answers.
i also enjoy shopping this way. i kinda do a combo. on the weekend, i'll make a big trip to get things i know we'll need, such as granola bars, soy milk, etc, or bulky things like toilet paper. then during the week, i get inspired by recipes i find on blogs, and pop by the store on my way home to get the ingredients. i keep staples at home (beans, rice, canned tomatoes, frozen peas), and just go by the store to get the rest. it helps me stay interested and engaged by the cooking process.