Five Money-Saving Ideas For A Lazy Afternoon
Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!
The next time you have a free afternoon, consider one of these five ways to up your savings game in a few hours (or less) of work:
Go Through Your Recurring Subscriptions: Open your latest credit card statements, and review each monthly charge. Be ruthless—if it’s a streaming service you haven’t used in the past month, cancel it. It’ll be there when you come back. And check for discounted options if available, as discussed in The Annual Subscription Check-In and last week’s post. Finally, if you subscribe to any physical magazines, use the tips in Saving Money on Magazines to get the best subscription rate.
Declutter: 21 months ago, I wrote up my definitive guide to Saving Money by Decluttering. Last weekend, I put this advice into action with the help of my mother-in-law. In the mess of our garage, we found several light fixtures, including a few in their original boxes and packaging. After identifying them, we listed them for sale on eBay. In about three hours of work, we cleared about $300 in eBay sales and we can finally park our car in the garage.
Review Your Existing Credit Cards: If you have credit cards you don’t use much (and have plenty of available credit so you aren’t close to your limits), follow the instructions in this post, and ask to cancel the card if you don’t receive a special offer. Either you’ll get rid of cards you don’t need, or you might get some pretty compelling reward offers. In general though, I say keep it simple and use a 2% cash rewards card like Citi Double Cash.
Make Sure Your Cable/Internet Promo Is Up To Date: Although some companies (e.g., Verizon) have moved away from this, plenty of cable and internet providers still offer significant discounts if you request them. Save hundreds of dollars per year with these tips!
Set Up Amazon Smile: Give back a little (0.5% of your Amazon purchases) by setting up Amazon Smile, entering your favorite charity, and using smile.amazon.com to go to Amazon in the future. You can also set up your Amazon app by following these instructions.
And now…Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:
Should you eat the stickers on your fruits and vegetables? The NYTimes has the answer, which should settle any intrafamily debates on the issue.
On a more serious note, two thoughtful articles about the current debate on child care, coincidentally my family’s second-largest expense in 2019 and 2020. The first article (in Bloomberg Businessweek) broadly supports President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, which would provide free preschool for all and cap the cost of daycare at very low levels. The second piece, a NYT opinion piece, counters that more than two-thirds of families use “home-, church-, and family-based arrangements” and that it’s unfair to provide massive subsidies to those who use commercial daycares while not providing additional aid to those who don’t. There’s certainly a lot of logic to the idea that parents might be better off with a much-expanded child tax credit for kids under five, which they could then use as they see fit.
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it on social media! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.