Money Blue Book

Well after a few years of having Costco membership, I’ve finally decided not to renew it anymore. The cost savings I got from buying in bulk simply wasn’t adding up to justify the membership fee. I love their cheap tasty pizzas but I’m fed up with having to drive such a long way to get to the nearest store and having to put up with the extremely long lines at the checkout counters. At Costco, I probably end up spending more money than I ordinarily would, buying products that I ordinarily wouldn’t buy, and wasting more time waiting in line than I would at a nearby grocery store, like Giant or Safeway. I think they are a great company, but they need to open up more stores and organize a quicker checkout system.

Buying in Bulk Is Only Worth It For Large Families Or Those Who Have A Need To Shop In Large Quantities

I currently do not have my own family so buying in massive bulk doesn’t make too much sense for me. If I was married with kids that might be a different story since the kids would probably help to consume everything.

Most of the items at Costco come in huge portion sizes and you often end up buying mega size items that you wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Have you seen the size of their cereal boxes? It’s huge! Yes, buying in bulk allows you to spend less money per serving but it’s only worth it if you are able to consume it within a reasonable time. Buying in such huge bulk for things like food locks you up for a while to that particular brand. I always feel like I must finish the product before I can move on to another brand. It’s just not for me anymore

Costco Branch Locations Are Limited and Too Far Away

Unlike regular grocery stores, Costco only has a few branches in my area of Washington D.C. Whenever I go, I have to plan my trip because it’s a decent distance away. With grocery stores, they are everywhere and whenever I need to buy anything I can get to one in a few minutes.

The Lines Are Way Too Long

Shopping at Costco works the same way as any other grocery store. The problem comes when it’s time to check out. Due to my work schedule, I can only visit during weekend peak times when Costco is most jammed pack with shoppers. I always encounter a chaotic traffic jam of oversized Costco shopping carts jousting for position at checkout. There is almost always a bottleneck that restricts the flow of cart traffic near the checkout counters that frustrates me. There is no express line so I’m always forced to wait and wait. Other grocery stores now offer self checkout scanning, a much more convenient and quicker option.

You never know what life will chuck your way, so you should always be prepared for anything. If you keep your finances and paperwork in order, you’ll be in better shape to handle anything unexpected.

A few nights ago I received a sudden flurry of phone calls and e-mails from family members with sad news. My ailing grandfather, who had been bedridden in the hospital for more than a year due to a stroke, suddenly took a turn for the worse and was nearing his end. As the oldest grandson, I had a familial duty to be there. But since my grandfather lived overseas, getting to him at a moment’s notice wasn’t going to be easy. Things started to get hectic immediately as I began to make plans to fly overseas to join my parents at my grandfather’s side as soon as possible. I wish I had anticipated earlier and made better preparation for the unexpected.

Here is how you can stay ready and avoid the chaos that follows an emergency situation:

Keep Important Documentation Up To Date And At the Ready

If you have family in another country, including Canada and Mexico, make sure your passport is valid and ready for travel at all times.

In my case, I had one major problem. My U.S. passport had only one more month before it expired. Since most countries require that your passport be valid at least 6 months beyond the date of your trip, I would not be able to travel internationally unless I got it renewed as soon as possible.

Luckily the U.S. Department of State, which processes all passport renewal applications, has a special expedited process for such emergency life and death matters. Normally the renewal process can take more than 10 weeks, but by paying an extra fee and providing documentation of the emergency, I could shorten the application process to just a few days. Potentially big problem solved.

Make Sure Your Bank Account Is Prepared To Handle Emergency Expenditures

It’s important to make sure you have emergency funds in case something unexpected happens, whether it involves losing your job or a family situation. Always make sure you have access to back up money.

Because I wasn’t prepared for the family emergency and was caught completely off guard, I did not have an adequate balance sitting in my checking or savings account to handle major emergency spending. I had big expenditures coming, including almost $200 for expedited passport processing and $1200 for a last minute international plane ticket.

Fortunately, I could access my investment brokerage and shuffle some needed cash back into my bank accounts.

Automate Your Monthly Expenses And Have Less Things To Worry About

During emergency situations, it’s hard to deal with the urgent situation while still balancing your monthly bill obligations. I find it much easier to set up automatic billing and debit payment for all of my regular recurring expenses such as electricity, gas, and credit card bills. When something unexpected happens, those are just a few less things to have to worry about. Since the vast majority of my bills are viewable online and registered for online or automatic payments, I can still conveniently make bill payments even if I’m not physically in the country.

I think I am secretly a big government, socialist type person (go communism…just kidding). I like freedom of choice but sometimes having too many options can get cumbersome and mind boggling. Frequently, it’s good to just have a handful of recommended choices.

When it comes to picking the best travel website to do your airfare or hotel research, there are so many to choose from it can be overwhelming. Many popular news sites like CNN have provided their own top travel website lists, but I think they list way too many. I love lists but I’m not a fan of long lists containing too many choices. Too many choices means I need to take extra time to sort the diamonds from the rough. Just give me the best choice I always say. So that’s what I’ll do.

Bottom line, after comparing ease of use and prices among the numerous travel websites, my overall favorite is SideStep. The site consistently gave me the most competitive search results. I use it in conjunction with my other two favorites, Expedia and Travelocity. These three sites will give you the best search and pricing results.

Compare Prices Using Sidestep With Expedia and Travelocity

SideStep is what they call a meta search engine because it aggregates and consolidates search results from a wide variety of travel sites. The service pulls airfare and hotel information from more than 150,000 hotels and 600 airlines to give you pricing information based on your search criteria. You can also search for car rentals and cruises as well using their service. When you have chosen your travel itinerary, note that you don’t buy or make your reservation directly with them. Instead, Sidestep forwards you to the airline or hotel’s website where you make your purchase directly at the source at the offered price. Sidestep is just the free search engine that matches you with the offers.

Sidestep does have a limitation. Although it’s search engine can search the majority of the travel related information available on the web, it can only search sites that it’s been given permission to scour. Currently, a few popular sites like Expedia and Travelocity have not given such permission, so you will have to search those sites manually.

Sidestep tends to find slightly cheaper and better deals, but the benefit of purchasing through Expedia and Travelocity is that if you visit those two sites via a shopping portal like Ebates you can get 1% cash back or more. You should be able to nail down the very best travel offers by using these three sites, but primarily with Sidestep.

Use the Sidestep Toolbar To Ensure You Get The Best Deals

Sidestep offers a very useful downloadable toolbar that sits silently on your browser. Whenever you visit a competing travel site, the toolbar will offer you the option of searching the Sidestep database to compare the competing website’s prices to Sidesteps’. This ensures that you always get the best deals. Currently it’s only available with Internet Explorer unfortunately. It would be nice if the toolbar was compatible with my preferred browser, Firefox.

I’m a frequent eBay buyer and former seller. I’ve learned a few tricks to get the best deals when buying through eBay auctions. Getting the best deal does take a little extra research but the savings are worth it!

1) Run eBay Searches Using Different Keyword Combinations

The example I’m going to use to demonstrate my eBay buying tricks will be from my experience in buying Smartrip metro cards. These are the magnetic debit cards that people living in the Washington D.C. area use to take the subway. The card can hold upwards to $300 at a time and like gift cards, there is an eBay market for people looking to buy them at a discount.

When running searches for the metro cards, I use a wide variety of keywords such as Smartrip, SmartCheck, D.C. Metro cards, D.C. subway cards, and Smart Trip. People frequently advertise their products on eBay using different names. Try punching in spelling errors like “dimond” rather than “diamond”. You won’t believe how many sellers frequently misspell their ads, thereby limiting the number of available buyers bidding on their auction. Less bidding competition gives the smart eBay buyer a greater chance of getting a great deal. It’s really not all that difficult to profit from ebay typo bargains.

You can also create a favorite saved batch search for several keywords. At the eBay search prompt, select “Advanced Search”, enter you keywords and remember to click on the box that indicates “Save This Search to eBay”. If you want to create a search that will automatically look for several keywords, just enclose them in parentheses and separate them with commas without the space in between. After clicking search, you will have the option of saving it.

2) Contact the Seller Directly To Make An Offer

This one is a bit more controversial, but I’m providing it just for alternative information. You may or may not get into some trouble with this one.

Rather than starting out by bidding for a product, I contact the seller directly and send him a suggestive proposal, hinting that I may be interested in offering a certain amount of money which will also include the cost of shipping. I also indicate that I can pay as soon as possible via Paypal since prompt payment is attractive to sellers.

I’ve gotten the best deals by contacting the seller directly. I used to frequently negotiate deals of paying $160 for a $300 Smartrip metro card and saved a lot of money by doing this.

For this method to work, it’s very important that you make sure the seller is trustworthy so check to see that the seller has ample reviews (the more the better but at least 50).

I note again that this method has been suggested to be a likely technical violation of eBay’s policies. I have yet to see them enforce this matter however and I’ve been doing this for over 8 years.

3) Scout Out How Much Other Winning Buyers Bid To Win the Item

The great thing about eBay is that there is a lot of auction history information for buyers and sellers to research. Oftentimes sellers will run more than one auction for the same type of item and might even have sold several units already. All of this historical information is available.

I like to search through my target seller and check out the reviews left by people who have bid and won similar items to see what the fair final bidding price would be. Sometimes I like to contact other buyers just to see if the product was as advertised.

4) Bid on eBay Auctions At the Very Last Second

If you are a seasoned eBay buyer, you know that the greatest bidding activity occurs in the last few minutes of any auction. If you are looking at an eBay auction that still has hours before expiration, you should know that you are not looking at anything close to it’s final fair market value. The closer to expiration the truer the market value. By waiting till the last moment you will ensure that you don’t get into a bidding battle with another determined bidder. Just remember to bid a fair value or you might get outbid by someone else’s higher proxy offer.