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Why we applied for another rewards credit card
In yesterday’s post on bargains and baselines, I talked about some of the reason we got an Amazon rewards card, even though we had another one.
This prompted a great question from The Wallet Doctor:
I like your strategy on the Amazon card versus your usually 1% cash back card. I’ve thought about going for deals like that, but I’m always a little nervous about having too many cards. Where do you think you need to draw the line on that sort of specialized strategy?
He’s right about not applying for credit cards indiscriminately. Applying for a bunch of credit cards usually isn’t the best for your credit score. The average age of your accounts goes down, and the amount of credit you have available (potentially to abuse) goes up.
Bargains and baselines
A colleague whom I respect a great deal talked with me at the end of last week. He has a way of breaking complex things down into very simple, but profound, terms.
He was explaining how a particular process works, and he appealed to my science background. He talked about the concepts of ground, and by extension, ground truth, and baselines.
How do you know how good that bargain is?
A baseline is simply a reference measurement for something you want to see how it changes.
How do you baseline something? Easy:
- Define what it is you’re measuring.
- Measure it.
- Write the value of the measurement down in as much detail as you need to track later.
Here’s an example: I’ll baseline my weight.
Discount cigarette stores … where’s the bargain?
Discount cigarette stores are one of the more popular types of businesses to come into our county these days. I think our county has at least five of them now, which for a county of less than 30,000 people seems a bit high.
Two friends of mine have already expressed that we have too many of them already. One posted on Facebook: “‘I sure wish [our county] would open another tobacco store!’ said no one ever.” Ha!
The overall social costs of more people being able to smoke for less money is one way to interpret that “this discount is no bargain.”
But just for fun, let’s look at it from some other angles:
A killer Amazon Subscribe and Save tactic
We really, really like us some Amazon. For convenience, time savings, speed — and most of all cost — Amazon has a ton to offer.
Some of the groceries we get are a bit pricey because common ingredients don’t agree with some family members. Often, Amazon comes through with the right products at a good price.
Even better: a few of the items we buy are made even cheaper with Subscribe and Save. We get a few percent off of some of our grocery items simply by agreeing to periodic, automatic purchase. That’s the “subscribe” part that scores us the “save.”
“You ruined my groove, man!”
Once in a while, though, the best-laid plans run afoul. Occasionally, our individual well-oiled Subscribe and Save machines backfire, and catch us unaware. Just to keep us from getting too complacent.
Far better to get some discount than none
A few weekends ago, we went to a community yard sale at the YMCA. One of the tables there had a number of children’s books from the 19th century that were in excellent shape.
Our nine-year-old daughter likes little things — little baskets and boxes with lots of little compartments, little figurines, etc. These books were little, and cute.
She found one that she liked — Shakespeare, of all things! — and the price was marked $5. The book was in superb shape, and it was an antique.
I told my daughter: “Ok, make her an offer.” I was really curious what she was going to offer.
She offered $3. The lady countered with $4, and my daughter accepted.
Don’t be greedy when asking for a discount!
I did an imaginary happy dance when she offered $3.
It was a good offer to make for a $5 item, especially one in good shape. It wasn’t so low that it was offensive.
Frozen assets: Do you wanna build a for-tune … ?
It was a bit bittersweet for us this weekend. Our daughter went to a friend’s birthday party sleepover, and for the first time she showed absolutely no reaction whatsoever to my wife leaving for the evening. She was just fine, thank you very much.
It was a Frozen party. With lots of Frozen decorations. Think: tons of cotton. And Frozen games, like Pin The Nose On The Olaf.
And even Frozen paper plates.
My wife commented that she was surprised that they got those, considering how ridiculously popular the movie continues to be. The party store had apparently gotten a shipment of Frozen party gear very recently, and they still had a bit when they arrived.
Rule number one of comparison shopping
Comparison shopping has gotten much easier to do with search engines and other price alert services. Retailers have to be more competitive now that pricing information is everywhere.
A friend I’ve had some online interactions with posted a picture of what he thought was a mistake on the unit pricing tag on a supermarket shelf.
He claimed something to the effect of: “It’s a 13-ounce box of Wheat Thins, but they calculated the unit price based on 15 ounces, so the unit price is lower than it should be.”
Then he made some snarky comments (in good fun) and continued on with life. The picture he uploaded is below.
As I was focusing on the price first, my first thought was that there was a grocery shrink ray that hit the box recently, and the store hadn’t caught the change yet. No such luck.
The real cost of Toastmasters
Last year I became a charter member of our county’s Toastmasters Club. Toastmasters is the international organization for public speaking and leadership.
I wrote about how Toastmasters is the biggest public speaking training bargain on the planet. Financially, it is a huge bargain. The international dues are $6 per month: one cheese pizza. Our club adds another $1/month for club expenses: one pepperoni pizza.
The system has been fine-tuned so much over the years, and runs so efficiently, that the financial barriers are almost non-existent.
But if it’s such a good deal, why are people leaving?
I’m an officer in our club. About a month ago we had a long-ish officers’ meeting about why the numbers in the club were dwindling. I don’t think any of us thought for very long that it was because the club dues were too high!
Unit Pricing 201 — now with higher math!
(That’s the course that follows Unit Pricing 101, of course!)
Unit pricing (for the uninitiated) is the calculation that grocery stores put on the shelf price tags that tell you how much an item costs per pound, per ounce, per 100 count, etc. It’s arrived at by dividing the price of the whole package by the amount of stuff in the package.
So, a pack of 200 red Solo Cups — because it’s time to party! — that costs $2.99 would have a unit pricing of 1.5 cents each.
If only it were always that easy!
Unfortunately, not only do the units not match how the product is used, but sometimes the units used between different brands or sizes of products is different.
We ran across one unit pricing calculation that was a bit of a pain, actually: cedar shavings. We wanted to get some to put underneath our daughter’s playhouse to try to cut down on the bugs in the area.
Cheap and free Microsoft Office products
Software as a product is a strangely complex beast. Freeware, commercial software, open-source, closed source, crippleware, nagware, bloatware, software as a service, tiered usage, service contracts, upgrades — software comes in all kinds of flavors and reasons for disdain.
And as someone who lived during the rise of Microsoft, we sure loved to hate Bill Gates and company, didn’t we? They tuned the idea of the software license agreement to a well-oiled, money-making machine. If buying a watermelon were like buying Microsoft software back then:
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