Five Years of SMwA, And Some Annual Favorites
Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!
Five years ago, I started SMwA with Cut Your Cable Bill, which remains one of my favorite tips. My goal remains unchanged: to make readers lives a little bit better each week. To the ~700 people who receive SMwA each week (roughly unchanged from last year), thanks for subscribing, and please share it with your friends if you find it helpful!
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And now, my favorite posts from each year of SMwA:
2019
Cashback Shopping for Beginners was an introduction into the amazing world of cashback, which most major online stores offer. We do most of our shopping online, and since 2011 we’ve saved about $3500 on our purchases by first clicking through a cashback shopping website.
2020
Defensive Driving Discounts discusses one of my favorite ways to save money—taking a short defensive driving course for a massive savings on car insurance. We’ve saved well over $1000 through taking a short online defensive driving course every three years.
2021
Buying A New Car - Doing The Hybrid Math To Help Your Wallet And The Environment quantified our savings and the environmental benefit to switching from our old gasoline vehicle to a hybrid electric vehicle, which still uses gasoline but gets ~50% better gas mileage, saving us money and time. Since the post, the cost of gas has increased significantly, making the numbers even more favorable.
2022
Saving Money on Charitable Giving - A Brief Introduction to Donor-Advised Funds introduces donor-advised funds (DAFs), which are a great and often very tax-efficient way to support your favorite charities.
2023
Friends Don't Let Friends Earn Zero Interest (On Their Cash) reminds us that interest rates aren’t low anymore, and it’s not that hard to find a way to earn 5% or more on your cash.
2024
Unclaimed Property - The Greatest Father's Day Gift Of All is a tribute to one of my favorite tips: checking your state’s unclaimed property website (find it here) periodically. SMwA readers have found and reclaimed hundreds of dollars of unclaimed property to date—if you find any, I’d love to hear from you!
And now, Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:
Stolen iPhone. I Survived. (via The Browser) is a gripping story of the author’s stolen iPhone and the aftermath. How did he minimize the damage? He acted quickly, using his laptop to remotely erase the iPhone before the thieves could do anything, contacted his cellular provider (to deactivate his phone number) and bank (to block mobile banking) immediately, and contacted the police.
One useful tip I didn’t know about but just enabled—you can configure your phone so that message previews don’t show up on the lock screen, which is a useful security feature. This way, a thief can’t view text message PINs from your locked phone if they’re trying to steal your identity or access your bank account (e.g., if they also stole your wallet and are calling your bank using your card information).
Also:
Can You Have a Stylish Wedding for Under $5,000? These Couples Did.
They Spent $27 Million Building Their Dream House. Now It’s Hitting the Auction Block.
Live Free or Dial: New Hampshire Fights to Keep Its Lone Area Code
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.