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Cordless combo tool kits: Space savers for handy people
Combo tool kits keep handy people well-equipped, even when space is at a premium …
My wife is the handy one of us. It’s just one of the many ways I married up.
When it comes to building things from whatever’s lying around, or fixing things that have been well-loved, she makes it happen.
Powerful, reliable, easy-to-handle tools are to a handy person what an array of high-quality paintbrushes are to a painter. They make the final project better, and the process more enjoyable.
Combo tool kits save space
One of the side effects of having the right tools at hand is that they take up space. One tool doesn’t make or break things, but it doesn’t take long before the garage, shed, basement, pantry, etc., are chock full.
Which is why my wife was delighted when she got a cordless combo tool kit for Christmas last year.
Black Friday: One thing to remember
A bit strange that a guy with “bargain” in his site name doesn’t do Black Friday …
Wow, as I’m writing this, Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Where the heck did the year go?!
It’s traditionally been a time for braving roads and airports to reconnect with family and eat a bit more than we ought. (OK, a lot more.)
And the day after has traditionally been a time to brave the crowds of people at stores for The Official Start Of The Holiday Shopping Season — aka Black Friday since the 1930s.
Start more than a month in advance
As retailers now face competition from online sources, early Friday morning has morphed into Thursday night for some retailers hoping to get a jump on people’s disposable income.
Spend or sell these dollar bills?
In this post I answer a few reader questions on specific dollar bills with their errors and serial numbers …
First off: Thank you for reading! I’m glad you’re here!
With tens of thousands of blogs hitting the web every single day, I appreciate you visiting mine!
I’ve received a few reader questions on dollar bill errors and fancy serial numbers. They’ve asked me about the value of what they have.
I’m not at all qualified to say what these kinds of things are worth, but I can say what I’d try to do if the same bill showed up in my wallet.
Five things that make a bookkeeping system work
What makes a bookkeeping system work? It’s not what you think!
I’ve spent the past few days visiting family, including my aunt. (I’ve got but one aunt now, so she’s definitely my favorite!)
During my visit, she got out her ledger books of sorts so she could balance out her finances. She prefaced this by saying that other family members thought the whole system was more than a little strange.
A bookkeeping system as unique as the individual
I asked to look at what she had. She had her income and expenses spread over a couple dozen pages in a journal. Roughly each category had their own page in the journal. The amounts had several different colors, each with their own meaning. Some of the pages had yearly averages for the bills from the previous year or two. A checklist on one of the pages had letters where the check marks normally would have gone to indicate the type of expense.
How free apps get you (and what you can do about it)
Free apps usually aren’t really free, as my daughter found out tonight …
Our daughter got a first-hand lesson in how app studios make money.
We downloaded a puzzle app to our daughter’s iPad last night. It’s like a tangram puzzle but with everything made out of hexagons. (She’s a bit obsessed with hexagons now, and that’s all right, because it won’t be too long before she’ll be getting obsessed with guys. O_o )
“I don’t want to see ads!!”
She showed me the game tonight (she’d already gone through the first set of puzzles) and an interstitial ad popped up.
“GAH! I don’t want to see ads!!!” she exclaimed, as she dismissed the ad quickly and deliberately.
(Cue teachable-moment music.) I asked my wife, “How much is the paid version?”
“Two bucks,” she said.
20-year mortgage: Save interest and keep cash flow
If a 15-year mortgage is too aggressive and a 30-year mortgage isn’t aggressive enough, look into a 20-year mortgage to take advantage of the low mortgage rates …
Last month I looked into refinancing the mortgage on our primary residence. We had bought the house in 2010, and our then-great rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was a bit high by 2016 standards.
On our previous house, when rates dropped a few years into the mortgage I refinanced to a 15-year mortgage. The payment was only a bit higher ($150/month or so) and over the course of the mortgage it has saved us well into five figures in interest.
15-year mortgage might be too aggressive
With our current mortgage, the principal balance started nearly twice as high as on our first house, and the payment was about 80% higher than on our first house. When the lender quoted the payment for a 15-year mortgage, it was high enough that I hesitated pulling the trigger on it.
Studypool.com: Fast, reliable homework answers
There are lots of ways to side hustle some extra money. Answering homework questions is one way …
Knowledge is power. More practically, knowledge is marketable. If you have knowledge on a topic that someone wants badly enough, they’ll pay you for it.
Studypool.com is a website that advertises fast, reliable homework answers from tutors. They provide a means for people with homework questions to get answers from knowledgeable people.
In this website review I’ll be focusing on the experience from a tutoring perspective. I haven’t looked at it from the student perspective. I’ll discuss the sign-up process, bidding on questions as a tutor, answering questions, and overall impression.
Starbucks Rewards boost: More. Free. Coffee.
Starbucks Rewards = Free Drinks. Here’s how to get some more purchasing power …
A few months ago we got a Starbucks less than a mile from our house.
This is a huge temptation because both my wife and I have our favorite drinks there. I supplement the cravings with gift cards I get free at MyPoints but that’s only but once every several months. It would work out to less than one drink per month.
But … yeah, first-world problems.
Load up Starbucks Rewards with a discounted gift card
My wife has one of those personalized gold Starbucks cards that she earned back in 2012. She’s signed up for a Starbucks Rewards™ account so that she can earn stars for her purchases, which translate to free Starbucks. Her gold card is linked within her Starbucks Rewards account, which is how they credit her stars to her.
FEGLI Open Season: Life insurance for federal employees
FEGLI stands for Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance. It’s FEGLI open season this month (September 2016), for the first time in over a decade …
One of the benefits offered to federal employees is a term life insurance plan: the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance, or FEGLI for short (the government loves acronyms).
Employees pay for the majority of the life insurance through payroll deductions, and is opt-out for new employees. In other words, you get FEGLI unless you say you don’t want it.)
FEGLI Open Season: A relatively rare opportunity
It’s straightforward for an employee to reduce or eliminate FEGLI coverage. Just submit a form and done, any time.
Getting back in, or increasing coverage, isn’t quite so convenient. Doing so requires:
Fancy serial numbers: Dollar bills worth money
Dollar bills are worth, well, a dollar. Except when the serial number on the bill is fancy — that makes dollar bills worth money!
There are lots of opportunities to cash in on your cash.
Finding currency errors is one way. Another way (that might be easier) is by finding cool serial numbers — serial numbers that are special in some way. While many currency errors are found by Bureau of Engraving and Printing employees before they ever see the light of day, every bill should have a serial number.
Fancy serial numbers are (literally) a numbers game
What makes a serial number “fancy?” Being one-of-a-kind isn’t enough, obviously. All serial numbers are unique (or should be!)
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