I received this letter today from my credit card company on how they have decided to lower my cash advance interest rate to 3.9%. Although, that still doesn’t seem very good though. This is one of those things where I don’t really pay much attention to as they can make the interest rate as high as they want considering I never use the service and pay my bills fully.

I was just thinking though on how I was trying to imagine myself using these cash advance services and how it seems like such a financially disastrous move to borrow money this way. Not only do you have to pay interest on it, but from what I am reading in this brochure there isn’t really a grace period and the interest is ongoing to the date of the transaction.

That’s like a quick path to debtville, so to speak. I’d rather adopt the” if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it” mentality if you are short on money for something.

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I was talking to some people today that were talking about the thought of how much they would pay for a subscription service of some sort where someone else will do things such as cooking dinner and washing the dishes for them as sometimes you just don’t want to have to deal with things like that.

One person said $30/month plus the cost of food and I thought that was kind of a little too low. That sounded more like a fee for a diet program of some sort. I actually know one guy that just absolutely hates cooking and pays a lady to come in and cook dinner for about $20 each time to do it for him. Kind of high expense when you think about it too.

What I always think about when it comes to convenience is that while I’ll probably definitely save a lot of time in situations like these, I always debate whether or not it would benefit me skill wise in the long run. For example, would it enable me to do things faster afterwards? Is it a skill I could use to make money afterwards? There are always things like that which make me consider how much I would be really losing in the overall picture.

Of course, you can’t know everything so many times it makes sense to just pay for convenience.

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Just a few days ago I started doing my monthly credit card charges to pay various vendors and as usual I try to take advantage of the monthly cut-off dates for transaction on my credit to keep more money for myself such as earning more interest in a savings account.

What I mean by this is that credit cards have a billing cycle where if certain transactions do not get posted on your credit card by a certain time period of the month then the charged amount will be posted on your next month’s bill instead. Therefore, you get to keep the money in your bank still and won’t have to worry about it for more than 30 days later.

As an example, for myself any transactions that do not get posted to my credit card by the 16th of any given month won’t appear on the upcoming bill but rather the next one. So let’s take a phone bill that I receive monthly usually around the first to second week of the month. Like most bills, it indicates that payments need to be received by a certain date like say the 28th of the month or else you will incur a late penalty.

Now, if I just paid the bill right away with my credit card upon receiving the bill like say on the 12th of the month then that means I would need to withdraw my own money to pay for it in the upcoming billing cycle. Instead, because there is a rather good grace period for the bill I wait until the 17th of the month to pay the bill with my credit card. Therefore, it satisfies the vendor as they got paid on time and I don’t really have to withdraw money to pay for it until more than 30 days later.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you try this technique then it would be wise to make sure you pay the bill with at least two to three days before the actual due date of it as many times there is a delay in receiving your payment. If your due date was the 28th and you submit your payment on the 27th with your credit card there is a good chance that the vendor won’t receive it on time and hence you will incur penalties. This technique has worked very well for me personally and is another example on how a credit card can be a great tool if used responsibly.

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Here where I live there is a public transportation called a Skytrain which is essentially a rapid transit system. A person was telling me before on how he decided to use public transportation to save money. It takes him about 10 minutes to walk to the station from his house each day which is a pain he mentions and whenever he can he tries to find someone who can drive him there instead.

While granted if your place of employment is extremely far away, then obviously you can’t just ignore using some type of transportation in the long run. But with samples like that though, it is kind of amazing on how vehicle dependent many become.

When I got my first job as a teenager I was always in that wanting to save money mentality. At the time to get to work it would take approximately five minutes with a car or about fifteen minutes with a bus. Instead, I decided to walk to work and back each time which took about thirty minutes. It helped keep me active while at the same time all that small amount of money I saved as a result really added up too.

I remember back then too whenever a manager/supervisor phoned me to ask if I could work as a result of someone not showing up I would say I would be there in about thirty minutes and not only did some of them think that was crazy for someone to walk that long, but they tried to convince me to use the transit instead. But even thinking of it from a financial point of view it wasn’t worth it as it was about $1.50 a ticket and considering the wage was about $7 an hour that meant losing about 20% of my earned money in comparing it from an hourly point of view.

As mentioned too, the savings really added up. I’ve carried on that mentality with me and I usually try to avoid using a vehicle of some sort whenever it makes sense. I still get the blank stares from some people at times as they wonder why I would want to walk say fifteen blocks when a vehicle could be used such as calling a taxi. To me, this is just one of those things that make sense to do.

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I was at a supermarket today and in the store they were advertising these coupons where if you spent over $250 you could save $30. Those little things sure do have an influence on people as it seemed like so many people were trying to stuff their carts to reach the appropriate amount.

I’m always a little more cautious about these types of promotions as it is easy to just buy anything without thinking if what you are purchasing is truly a great deal. Since I was with some family members we actually did end up using it as we simply combined our purchases. For myself, I have a general knowledge on what is a very low margin item in these types of businesses and so I knew that using the savings on these items would definitely make it a good deal.

For example, in supermarkets milk is usually a low margin item or if they have an electronics department then video games don’t often make a company a lot of money as well. With that, you know using coupon savings on those types of items would be a good deal. Although, I wouldn’t recommend buying like say $100 worth of milk just to reach the qualification mark unless anyone truly drinks that much.

So if you really need to spend more, I’d say try to educate yourself a little more about the products you buy. While some people may be too old for it now if they already have their careers set, even getting a simple job at various stores can really enlighten you to be more aware of the things that you purchase. There’s always good old fashion networking with people in the know too.

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