My personal philosophy in life is that nothing is free. Good service always costs money. There is always a catch for something that is free. For example, I’ve always felt that the annual fee that I pay for my Amex charge card as I’ve always felt that they had better customer service and rewards “most of the time”.

It is with this background that I want to tell you about a few changes that Mrs Credit Card has made that actually increased our household expenses.

1. Firstly, we started taking and buying more organic food like milk, eggs, fruits and cheese. We realize that organic stuff cost more. In fact, in many cases, they cost almost half to twice as much. However, when they are on sale, they are only marginally more expensive.

2. We also install a water softener because Mrs Credit Card felt that the water was too hard and she wanted more “soap lather” when she was showering!

3. We also installed a water purifier under our sink and an extra outlet. This way, we can drink water straight from the kitchen tap when filtering it separately.

What did these changes do to our expenses? Well, as I mentioned earlier, organic food cost about 60% to double the price of conventional food. Our water bills also doubled! Having said that, both Mrs Credit Card and myself have no regrets to our decision. We feel we are eating better food and it is more convenient for us just to get clean water from our tap. Our earnings have also gone up the last couple of years and we feel this is a little “indulgence” (if this is even the proper term) is alright.

One of my biggest peeves is contractors, plumbers etc. Any one that has anything to do with your home repairs. They as a group are generally unreliable, never complete their work on time, do not show up when they said they will show up. Dealing with them is just a horrible experience.

Here is the most recent experience. We hired a plumber to fix a few things in our toilets (and yes, we are changing our toilet seats). He told us that he does work for Home Depot and was hence able to get us better prices on our parts! Mrs Credit Card gladly went along. He also charged us lower rates (or what we thought to be reasonable).

The plumber came a couple of times. But he did not finish his work. For the last three times he was supposed to make, he came up with all sorts of excuses. Firstly, his parent in law passed away, then he forgot about this daughters’ school concert. Just last week, he had his appendix taken out! When is our toilet seats going to be installed?

However, as I looked back at my other pleasant experiences with contractors, I found one thing in common. The really good guys taken the time to explain how they will repair your stuff and what was the problem. Their contract was at least 10 pages long specifying what they would exactly do. Lastly, but most importantly, they charged higher price that their competitors and they were not afraid of saying so. In fact, they were proud of that fact and guaranteed that the jobs would finish on time. My kitchen contractor got me to sign a contact about 50 pages - with every screw, nut and bolt in the contract! When fact, when it was finished, he actually went through everything to make sure that the parts were there! The company that repaired my basement leak was great as well. They came on the day they were supposed to come and did their jobs on time.

Yesterday, I had lunch with someone who worked for a roofing company. He told me that they charge more than most contractors, but they do great work (strictly adhere by the codes) and finish their jobs on time. He said he encountered so many people who had bad experiences with contractors and when asked why they chose them, they simply replied that they were the “cheapest”. My friend then said that he often told these people that they were bad buyers”. They wanted a certain quality of work done, certain professionalism, but were not willing to pay the amount that was required for such good services.

So are you a bad buyer? Are you being too frugal and too cheapskate? Is that a reason why you end up purchasing inferior products? Are your buying habits resulting in costs and hassles as a result of inferior products and?

I am not the most frugal person in the world. Mrs Credit Card is more frugal than I am. But recently during our vacation in Orlando, I realized that we are sometimes frugal on certain things but not on others. Which leads me to wonder if our frugal habits are worth keeping and whether or not they come to anything with regards to saving money for ourselves.

Here was how we saved money on our trip.

1. We used some frequent flier miles. We transferred our Membership Reward Points to Southwest airlines and got a couple of tickets free.

2. Mrs Credit Card did extensive research on the web before getting our hotel (Holiday Inn Sunspring). It probably wasn’t the cheapest but we felt it suited our needs.

3. She spent countless hours researching our going about DisneyWorld before she bought our passes.

4. We made sure we had a few bottled water and snacks in our backpacks when we were in Disney everyday so we did not have to pay ridiculous prices for food.

5. We educated our kids not to spend on frivolous spur of the moment “stuff” from the gift shops after every ride.

Despite all that, we did spend on a “couple of items” that you may not consider frugal.

Firstly, we had breakfast at the cafe in Magic Kingdom where the characters of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, came walking around and took pictures with our kids. Our little daughter (shall I call her Miss Credit Card) was probably the happiest person that day. Well, the cost of breakfast for five was a whopping $90! (which is a lot considering we get free buffet breakfast in our hotel!)

Next, we also went to lunch at a restaurant at Epcot where the princess characters (Cinderella etc) of Disney came out and took photos with each table. This time though, our little daughter was not too keen! Another expensive lunch, but certainly a change from the usual burgers and coke!

Then, during one of our free times, Mrs Credit Card went to the factory outlets and got herself two handbags (total cost hmmm..let’s just say high three figures!). According to her, it was a bargain.

So we were careful to save and made sure we got good bargains. But we also splurged on some little luxuries. Fortunately, we are not in a situation where we have to really watch every penny. But I bet many of us have this same issue. We spend a lot of time trying to get the best deal for certain things, but we also indulge ourselves in certain things. Maybe we cannot be always frugal in everything, but I guess it is much better to be frugal in some things than not at all.

Our family is right now in Orlando doing the whole Disney thing. Mrs Credit Card as usual organized the whole trip and she has been savvy in coming up with a few money saving tips for this vacation. Here are a few tips you might take away.

1. Do not use the Airport Parking - While it is the most convenient thing to park at the airport (particularly the carpark right beside your departure hall), we found out it was much cheaper to park at at car parks just outside the airport. There were lots of them around and after much research on the internet, we found one that cost just $8.99 a day (with two days free if you park more than 7 days). This is certainly cheaper than $17.00 a day at the airport.

2. Do not rent a car from the Airport - Our flight arrived at Orlando at night. Mrs Credit Card felt that we should rent a car the following day rather than from the airport. We also had to return the car a day before we left. The car rental company Herts picked us up from the hotel and took me to their place where I collected my car. Turns out that this saved us about $300 (from $700+ to $400+).

3. Bring your own water bottles and snacks to Disney - Once you are inside any theme park, food and drinks cost double. Yep, a bottle of water will set you back at least $2. We brought at least 5 bottled water in our backpacks along with some snacks. To get an idea of how much food and drinks really are, here is a classic example. Today, we paid $23 for McDonalds (5 of us). This evening, we spent $30 at Olive Gardens - much better food!

4 Tell the kids in advance that you will not be buying a thing from gift shops - Where do you end up after every ride? At a gift shop - where your kids will be clamouring for you to buy them stuff. Every morning, we tell the kids that we will not be buying anything. In fact, I explained to my eight year old that this is a marketing technique called upsell that companies usse to get to buy more goods. He understood what I was saying and even tried to explain it to his younger brother!

5. Spend lots of time researching hotel rates - There are so many hotels and rooms in and around Disney that you have to put in the time and effort to get the best deal (not just the cheapest, but one that suits your family and plans). Mrs Credit Card spent about a week researching before she came up with what she thought best suited us. Without doing the research, we would have paid so much more.

Well, hope you find these tips helpful.

First a confession - I’ve never been a techie sort of person. I have never had the latest phones or any hardware. For the longest time, I carried a very old fashion phone. Then a few weeks ago, my colleagues at work started to tell me how great having a blackberry phone was. They could “sync” their Microsoft Outlook with their blackberry and also their calendar. This made it great for work purposes.

However, just a couple of months ago, I had just exchanged my phone with Verizon Wireless to a better phone with a camera and this new VCAST things where you can download music. The only reason I did this was because I lost my cell phone on a plane. This was not the first time I had lost my phone.

So I decided to head to verizon and see if they could upgrade Mrs Credit Card’s phone and then swap numbers. First, we were told that I could “upgrade” my phone to a blackberry for $249.00. However, if I were to upgrade Mrs Credit Card’s phone to a blackberry, swap phone with her and have our cell phone numbers swapped, it would cost $299.00. Well, it is a “system thing” - said the salesperson. He then told Mrs Credit Card she could upgrade her phone and it would potentially cost less than $299 than if we had swapped phone numbers.

After much deliberation, Mrs Credit Card persuaded me not to get a new blackberry. These were her reasons :

1. I am constantly losing my phone! - she was right. I have lost more phones than I care to remember.

2. Because I seem to always lose my phone, she suggested I carry a dairy instead whenever I went out to meet clients. She even reminded me that I had ordered the American Express Blue Cash dairy!

3. It cost an extra $45 (I think) to be able to access the internet and have unlimited data transmission with Verizon (or as with all cell phone networks). I would save money simply by carrying a dairy.

In the end, we walked out of the Verizon Wireless store without getting the blackberry. I was not in a hurry and I thought I’d try out with the dairy first and see how it goes. If this works, I’d probably be saving quite a bit on my cell phone bills.

To all you blackberry folks, can you live without it? Will a simple diary do? Should I change my mind and get a blackberry? Please share your thoughts.

The New Apple iPhone is all the rage now. Well, I’ve found a way to save on your monthly Apple iPhone bills. Apple made an agreement with Cingular (now part of AT&T), hence every iPhone owner now has to use Cingular as their wireless carrier.

Unlike other wireless carriers, you have to pay for the full price of an Apple iPhone. With other carriers, you will get a free cellphone if you sign up for say a two year contract. I have found a way for iPhone or wannabe iPhone owners to save some money. And you’ve guessed it - through credit cards!

You can save money on your iPhone and your monthly bills if you have the AT&T Universal Rewards Card. The card allows you to earn five reward points when you use your card for “eligible AT&T purchases”. This is defined as purchases made through AT&T customer service center (1-800-222-3111) or through att.com. hence, as long as you make your iPhone purchase and cingular wireless service directly from AT&T, you will earn five reward points for every dollar you spend on the card. AT&T’s card program is based on the ThankYou Redemption network program from Citibank. It also comes with a 0% balance transfer deal for 12 months (with no balance transfer fee for the introductory period).

If you wish to earn cash rebates instead, you can get the American Express SimplyCash^SM Business Card. This card pays 5% cash rebates on wireless bills, gasoline, office supplies. You also get discounts at American Express OPENSAVINGs merchant partners like Fedex, Delta Airlines and Courtyard by Marriott. (Though this is a small business credit card, you can always apply as a sole proprietor even if you do not have a business).

So there you have it, two credit cards that will save you money on your iPhone bills.

Mrs Credit Card is away with the kids at the moment and I am left to my own devices at home. One of the things that I have to do on my own now is my own laundry. Mrs Credit Card normally sends my working shirts to the laundry and does the washing and ironing for the rest of the clothes herself.

Before she left, I was left with a pile of clothes (some of my casual long sleeve shirts, a couple of pants and some polo shirts). This pile has been staring at me for the last week or so. I am too tired at night to iron this pile of clothes and I think I can better spend my time on things that are more important. Things like writing blog posts, preparing my work for the next day.

I tried to hire my baby sitters to iron my clothes. But none of them could iron! My neighbors then suggested that I send my washed clothes to the laundry and just pay for it. So that was what I did.

It turns out that it actually cost more than I thought. The buttoned casual shirts cost only about $1.50. However, the pants and polo shirts cost about $6.50. Total cost was about $50 though I got a 20% discount. When the lady behind the counter told me the price, I was taken aback. I realized that I could probably iron the two pants and the polo shirts.

What what stopped me from doing that was something that I have read a lot and reiterated by my successful friends. And that is to build wealth, you cannot do low level jobs (or as some call it, the $5 an hour job). Hence, I see spending two hours ironing clothes (that’s how long I would take) as a $5.hr job and decided not to waste my time on it.

And I probably spent about $25 more than necessary. But my thoughts are that if I want to be making an equivalent of $500 an hour, then I should spend the my time on projects and things that will help me accomplish.

Question : Would you have done the same thing? Or do you disagree with this? Is this being not frugal?

I have a confession to make. Mrs Credit Card is away for a couple of weeks and I am left to do the grocery shopping (no takeouts for me). But it is an interesting exercise to go through a grocery budget and deciding what to buy for the week. Here is what I did and the saving lessons I took from being the grocery shopper.

1. Clear Up Youe Closet - How much canned food do you have in your closet and fridge? I was surprised to find lots of stuff in my kitchen cabinets. I have been steadily clearing them and finishing as many canned food as possible. I think all of us tend to buy more stuff than necessary and keeping storing stuff. I probably saved quite a bit eating what we already have. Admittedly, I am better off eating fresh food, but i simply cannot stand any canned food idling around.

2. Making my grocery list - Being alone for a couple of weeks, I tried to be organised by just having a couple of types of meals in a week. I decided to have pasta on alternate days and basic potatoes and meat on alternate days. Salad is a staple every day as well as some fruits like pears and strawberries. This helped me keep my shopping list simple.

3. Use Your Grocery Card - Mrs Credit Card always reminded my to show my grocery card as I could get discounts. True enough, I did get a couple of discounts after the cashier swiped my card.

4. Use Your Coupons - I have to admit that I have slacked in this area. Mrs Credit Card has always cut coupons. She knows which coupons appears in which newspaper, which day of the week. I told myself that I was simply not going to waste my time cutting coupons. Hence, I probably missed the opportunity to save some money from coupons. On the other hand, what I intend to buy may not have coupons?

5. Stop Buying Junk Food - As Mrs Credit Card was not around, I stopped buying Oreos, Ritz or any other “stuff to snack on”. It prevents me from snacking and I cut down on junk food as well.

5. Use a cash back credit card - Whenever I go to the the supermarket, I always charge my expenses to my Blue Cash® from American Express as it pays 5% cash rebates on supermarket spending once your annual spending on your card exceeds $6,500. Many people still use cash to shop at the supermarket, but I use my credit card to get “cash rebates”.

Well, this sums up my experience the last two weeks doing grocery shopping for myself. It’s been a long while since I did that ages ago. I’m probably more savvy now. But if there was anything I could have done better, please leave a comment below.

I frequently get my stationary stuff from Staples. After my most recent visit three days ago, I was given a form to fill out that will enroll me in the Staples Reward program. Given that I review credit cards, I felt a little jaded and wanted to toss out the flyer. But I kept it and read it at home.

Staples Reward Formula - If you enroll in the reward program, you will earn 2% in cash rewards for up to $15 per quarter when you spend $200 or more at Staples within the calendar quarter. You will earn 2% rebates on all purchases except computers, gift cards, postage stamps, sales tax, state fees, Awards.com purchases and purchases made from outside companies through Staples.

Free Delivery - Members will get delivery free from any phone and online orders regardless of order size.

20% rebates on Copy & Print Center purchases - When you spend $50 or more a quarter at the Staples Copy & Print Center, you will earn 20% back in your reward check for up to $200.

Gold Membership Upgrades - If you spend $1,000 or more in one calendar year, you will be upgraded to Gold status where you can earn 5% rebates for up to $30 a quarter.

Link to Your Credit Card - Best of all, you can link your Staples Rewards membership to your credit card so you do not have to carry your Staples card all the time.

At this moment, I am revisting my cash back strategy. I am now considering getting the American Express SimplyCash^SM Business Card because I can earn 5% rebates on gasoline, stationary and wireless service. Since there is no tiers like my Blue Cash Card, I can earn these 5% rebates right away. Now if I were to link my Staples Rewards to the Simply Cash Card, I might earn higher rebates!

This is what I plan to do and I will report when it’s all set up. But if you shop frequently at Staples, getting a Staples Rewards membership probably makes sense.

Related Posts

Review of the Simply Cash Business Card

Growing up, I always wanted Birthday parties. Somehow, it made me feel so special. So, when my kids wanted them, I can’t help but would do it because it made me feel like a kid again. However, my kids’ birthdays are all around the same time and it really puts a toll on me physically and financially. I am pleased to share my tips on how to organise a frugal yet fun birthday party for your kids.

1. Party Planner & entertainer : Mom & Dad - Free

There are tons of websites offering party themes and game ideas for birthday parties of all ages. Organizing a theme and all the games may seem stressful the first time. But after organizing a couple of parties, it becomes much easier and almost second nature. In my opinion, there is really no need to hire entertainers, clowns, face painters etc (you can be the face painter!). For example, a group of three face painters will cost one hundred dollars an hour. Renting a moon bounce will set you back $290.

2. Venue : Home - free

Having a party at home may be a clean up hassle, but it is free. We once rented a party room at a toy store and it cost $180. We have been to parties in a go carting track, children’s petting zoo, bowling alley, MacDonald’s, Chuckee Cheese. They were all fun, but it can be just as fun at home. It all depends on the games you organize.

3. Invitation Cards

Mr Credit Card makes the invitation cards. He will copy pictures of the theme that our kids would like to have to their parties and paste them into Microsoft Word. We are able to customize our invitations this way. After a couple of attempts, it only takes about ten minutes.

4. Food

There are a couple of rules with regards to food. Firstly, it obviously has to be kid friendly. It has to be easy to prepare and not messy to eat. Below are some examples of the type of foods I get.

Hot dogs - (Buy 1 get 2 free Ball Park Beef Franks) and Genuard’s hot buns - pack of 8 for $0.99, Lay’s chips - buy 1 get 1 free, Capri Sun drinks - 5 for $8 , Domino’s pizza 555 deal. Fast fixing dinosaur chicken nuggets are a big hit too and costs only $4.99 a pack when it is on sale.

5. Party bags

Below is where I typically shop for party bags :

Dollar Store gift bags, $1 for 25 pieces. Dollar Store or 5 & Below Stores for toys & candies givewaways. Oriental Trading for bulk purchases - usually free or discounted shipping for purchases above $60.

6. Party Supplies

I normally get all my party supplies from Partyland. You can save up to 20% on all purchases with coupons. Finally, blow your own balloons! They last longer, cost nothing (though they do not float in the air).

Thank You Cards

Instead of a traditional thank you card, we take a group picture and make postcard size copies with a heading “Thank you for coming !” & send them to all who attended. Many parents feedback that they like the idea and their kids love the picture. If you have a polaroid camera, take pictures of your birthday kid with the present together with the friend who gave the gift.