An easy way to keep track of bills

We all have a lot of bills to keep track of, and it can get pretty frustrating to remember when they're all due how much is due. The rise of online billpaying and statements has made this easier, but it's still a hassle to go to each biller's website to keep track of everything.

About six months ago, I discovered billQ. It's an easy to use website where you list your bills, and it keeps track of them for you, showing you which bills are due when and how much is due. It even has widgets you can download that will automatically sync with the website, so you can enter new bills straight from your desktop.

I've been using billQ for quite a while now, and I haven't had any problems with the service. It makes managing all my bills a lot easier, and the best part is that it's completely free.

Be on the lookout!

When you're shopping for groceries, especially name brand products, make sure that the items haven't shrunk. That's right, shrunk. To deal with the struggling economy, many products are being downsized without warning, but the price is still the same. If you buy a product regularly, keep an eye on the size before you buy.

Ways to buy things without going into debt

Let's admit it, when we get the urge to buy something, we want to buy it now. The problem is, many of us don't have the money to buy whatever thing it is right now, so we charge it. This can lead to some serious debt problems, and must be kept in check. Here are some ideas for buying the things you want without going into debt:

1. Sell stuff
We've all got stuff sitting around our houses that we don't use or need anymore? Why not sell the stuff we don't want for what we do want. There are hundreds of ways to do this, have a garage sale, list stuff on Craigslist or Ebay, or classifieds. An easier option to sell electronics is to sell them to Gazelle. You tell them what you have, and they tell you how much they'll give you for it, plus they'll pay for all the shipping. You probably won't get as much as you would on Ebay, but Gazelle is quicker and more convenient.

2. Save up
This is in my opinion the best option to buy something without having to go into debt. If you keep track of your finances, it's easy to designate a little from each paycheck to go towards buying something. Also, if you cut out some unnecessary expenses for a while, you can accelerate your savings.

3. Look for deals
The less you have to pay, the less amount of time you have to save. For electronics, Amazon is always a good place to start, as well as Buy.com. If you keep a close watch on websites such as these, you can usually catch a sale on whatever it is you're trying to buy.

4. Learn to be content
One option that will probably make you a better person is to learn to be content with what you have. Think to yourself, "Do I really need this thing, or can I get by without it?" If you learn to be content, you can save a lot of money, however, it is also the least fun option to learn.

Whatever you do, please don't go into debt for something you don't absolutely have to have. It doesn't make sense to be paying 10 years for a computer that lasts three. Save up, look for deals, or get rid of some old junk.

Great new service

I just came across a great new service called pageonce. It's a website where you can enter your login information for almost any website, and check all your online accounts. Currently, I check my bank accounts, 401K, e-mail, credit cards, cable bill, and even my Myspace. There's tons of other things you can check, such as your ebay account, different e-mail accounts, there's too many to list here. Overall, it's a great way to keep a check on your online accounts without having to go to a hundred different websites.

Check it out here:
http://www.pageonce.com/

A sad story

The Consumerist tells the story of a woman who entered a marriage debt free, but is now drowning in debt.

Check out the original article here:

The Consumerist

My review of the new iPhone

So I finally took a trip to my local Apple store today and checked out the new iPhone (One interesting note, there was still a line of people out the door of people wanting to buy the iPhone, 11 days after it came out). Here's what I thought.

The 3G  makes it pretty speedy. I tested the phone with Wi-Fi turned off,  and couldn't tell much of a difference between 3G and Wi-Fi (One thing to keep in mind is you won't have 3G coverage everywhere, so check out a coverage map before you buy).

Other than the speed; and the lower price of course, there isn't much difference between the new iPhone and the old one. The GPS is improved, however it's not good enough to replace your current GPS unit (unless the rumored TomTom app shows up). You still can't get iTunes downloads over the network, you still have to be on Wi-Fi to do that, you still can't record video, things that a lot of people were hoping for.

The best thing about the new iPhone is the app store. I got a chance to check out a few games, and they are really fun, the graphics are great, and these are only early games, it can only get better from here. Plus, as time goes on, developers are going to come up with all kinds of genius apps that fully take advantage of the iPhone's abilities.

Unless you need a camera and want to be able to access the internet from anywhere, I advise getting an iPod touch instead. You'll save a lot of money, you still have access to the app store and all those goodies, the iPod touch has e-mail access, it's just a better value in my opinion. However, both are excellent, and I will be saving up to get one myself.

Has anyone gotten their hands on an iPhone yet? What do you think so far?

Create a custom shirt and make money

If you've never been satisfied shopping in department stores for your clothes and want something truly unique to wear, check out Cafepress. This site lets you design your own shirts, hats, and many other different things, like coffee mugs. You can pick from designs they have on the website or you can upload your own design, so you are only limited by your creativity. It also doesn't cost very much.

One of the most interesting features is the ability to set up an online store and sell your creations. Cafepress gets the money for providing the shirts of course, but you can decide how much to mark up the items and you get paid the profit. Cafepress pays for the shipping, too; all you have to do is design and then get the word out about your creations. It could be a good way to make a little money on the side, if you put enough effort into it.

Keep track of your finances

When my wife and I first got married, it was hard for us to keep track of our spending. Neither one of us had lived by a budget before, and neither one of us really kept track of our spending, except to make sure that we didn't overdraft our bank accounts. Since then, we've learned how to make a budget, plus track our expenses to make sure that we're following that budget. Before we did, though, we found a great website that helped us keep track of where our money was going.

The site is mint.com, and it's absolutely free (I don't like to pay money to manage my money, unless I have to). On this site, you can see each transaction and place it into different categories, and then see how much you are spending in each category. It also has different charts and graphs to illustrate everything a little clearer. The best part is, if you have online banking, you can tell mint your username and password, and it will automatically track your transactions for you, provided you use your debit card or credit card (There's no way to manually add transactions at the moment). You can also set up a budget and mint will automatically keep track of how you're doing. A recently added feature is keeping track of investments. I use mint to keep track of my 401k.

Mint is not perfect, however. Sometimes transactions won't be listed from the right place; I buy gas at Sunoco, and it shows up as Sojo. Also, sometimes it has trouble connecting with your bank and updating your information and transactions. The best and most accurate way to keep track of your finances is by doing it yourself, but if you're not ready to do that or you don't know how, mint might be a good stepping stone for you.

Netflix on Xbox 360

Microsoft announced today that if you have Xbox Live and are a Netflix subscriber, you can now watch your Netflix "watch now" movies on your Xbox 360. If you already own a 360 or were looking at getting one, this is a good motivation, and a good alternative to the Roku Netflix Player.

A good financial course

If you haven't heard of it, you should check out the Financial Peace University course by Dave Ramsey. My wife and I took it before we got married, and it gave us some great pointers on how to do a budget, save for retirement, and get out of debt. The course does cost, but I believe it is money well spent.

More info here:

http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/home/

Yellow Tinted iPhone 3G

Some people are complaining that their new iPhone has a yellowish tint on the screen. Here's the original article:

http://www.appleinsider.comyellow_tinted_screens.html

Is anyone else experiencing this? Let me know

Thanks for the input

Thanks to everyone who commented on my post about someone donating an iPhone for a review. I was pretty sure no one would go the route of lending a stranger their iPhone (which I probably wouldn't do, either), but I thought I'd give it a shot and see if someone out there was a little on the crazy side. Also, thanks to the person who pointed out that I was getting the capitalization wrong on iPhone, I always thought it looked a little funny. Anyways, thanks for checking out my post.

Need IPhone 3G for review

I would love to do an IPhone 3G review, but first someone needs to send me one. I promise I'll send it back after I've spent adequate time with it to garner an accurate impression. Just throwing it out there. If you want to, contact me and I'll get my info to you. Also, if someone wants to give me money to put towards purchasing my own IPhone, my Paypal address is GUITARMANJT2000@gmail.com. Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from you.

5 easy ways to get a free IPhone 3G

Here are 5 easy ways to get the new IPhone for absolutely free!

1. Follow someone to the Apple store parking lot, kill them, and take theirs (Pleas don't actually do this, killing someone is frowned upon in our country).

2. Sell all of someone else's belongings.

3. Carry a small piece of glass with you. Convince someone that has an IPhone that the piece of glass is the next IPhone, and you got your hands on one early. Then trade with them. You can probably get them to throw in $20 too.

4. Learn the art of hypnotism.

5. Wear a Steve Jobs mask to an Apple store, and say you're just there picking up one for Woz. If the store employees are hesitant to give you one, politely remind them that you invented the IPhone, and if they don't give you one they will be fired faster than you can say 3G.

The Itunes app store is up!

Good news for all you Ipod touch/Iphone users, the Itunes app store is up and running. There are around 500 apps available at the moment, and many of them are free. The ones I'm most excited about are the google mobile app, Super Monkey Ball, the remote app, which turns your Ipod Touch/Iphone into a remote for itunes and Apple TV, and the different banking  and money apps, like the Bank of America app. 

I poked around the app store in Itunes today, and it the navigation seems to be fairly easy to use, it basically is the same as searching for downloads and widgets on apple.com. It remains to be seen how navigation is on the Ipod Touch/Iphone, seeing as how I don't have either. I promise as soon as I acquire one of said devices, I will be posting a full review on the app store. Until then, check it out on your Ipod Touch/Iphone, you lucky son of a gun.

The problem with subnotebooks

Don't get me wrong, I think that subnotebooks such as the Eee PC (And the dozens of other Eee PC clones) are a step in the right direction. They are low cost, easily portable computers. The problem is, they're not cheap enough to justify the weak specs, especially the higher end models. I'm all for paying $300 for a laptop, but I can't justify buying a laptop with a processor slower than 1Ghz and less than 1GB of ram. You cannot play modern games with those kinds of specs, you can barely watch videos. It also is harder to justify buying a subnotebook when I can pony up $200 more and get a full size laptop with at least a 2 Ghz processor and (at least) 1GB of ram. If I look hard enough, I can find one with 2 GBs of ram. And it has a full size screen and a keyboard I don't have to have kiddy hands to type with.

So why do people buy subnotebooks when they can get a much better computer for not much more. One thing is, they're popular right now. They're marketed as a cheap and portable way to get on the internet. And for that purpose alone, they are great. But I have a feeling most people want to do more than get on the internet on their laptop. They want to store media, play games, and have expandability for whatever the future holds. Sure, if you have enough money and you want something small you can carry with you to get on the internet with, grab a Eee PC while they're hot. However, if you have a gun to your head and are forced to choose between an Eee or a decent full size laptop, please choose the latter. You'll be much happier in the end.

The best way to save money on gas

This is probably our last option available to lower gas prices. These people are meeting at gas stations and praying that gas prices will lower. It's not as lighthearted as you'd think, either. Some people in their group believe that gas prices are a sign of the apocalypse. Who knows. If this works, why not try it for other things that are overpriced? People can go to the grocery store and pray for cheaper milk, the Apple store and get a discount on a IPhone, maybe even get a group together and wield their power on Starbucks' prices. Couldn't hurt.

Check out an article about the gas price prayer group here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/30/ST2008053003189.html

Xbox 360 price cut!

According to Crave, there is going to be a $50 price cut on the Xbox 360 premium system, which will bring the price down to $299, only $50 more than the Wii. The price drop is expected to take effect on 
July 13th. Gamers, rejoice!

How I'm paying off my school loans

My wife and I are in our last semester in school, so pretty soon we'll be getting a call from our lenders wanting all that money they gave us for our degree. All together, I've estimated we'll owe around $35,000, which isn't too bad, considering we attended a private college. Here are some of the things we're doing to help pay off our college loans quickly.

1. Paying off credit card debt
    We aren't in that much debt, but every little bit of debt counts, and it hurts my wallet to pay those pesky credit card bills every month. We're doing everything we can to pay off our credit cards (and cancel them) before we have to start paying our school loans back.

2. Joined Upromise
    Upromise is a rewards program where you can earn money to pay off your loans by buying products from their partners. The good news is that they have a LOT of partners, including Mcdonalds, Barnes and Noble, JCPenny, and many others. We do our grocery shopping at Publix, and we'll earn extra money by buying Upromise partner products there.

3. Getting rid of unnecessary expenses
    We're trying to live on as little as we can right now, and not spending more than we have to. We're saving a lot of money by cooking at the house instead of eating out, and by renting movies instead of going to a theater and buying popcorn, drinks, etc.

4. Building up our savings
    I'm not exactly sure what our monthly payments on our loans are going to be. Some months we might not have made enough to make the full payment. That's why we're trying to build up our savings, so if we have to, we can dip into that to help ease the burden.

Does anybody have any other ideas for paying off their school loans? PLEASE let me know!

Watch movies for next to nothing

When Apple introduced movie rentals in Itunes, they also announced that there would be a different movie every week available to rent for only 99 cents. These aren't just obscure B movies either. Past movies have included Robocop, The Usual Suspects, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. While you have to do a lot of digging to find the 99 cent rentals on Itunes, http://www.99rental.com/ lists the different movies each week, and you can subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader.It's a pretty convenient and cheap way to get your movie fix.

Pay off your credit cards

Even though it's convenient, you should never, ever only pay the minimum payment on all of your credit cards. I did a little work with a calculator today, and if we payed just the minimum payment for one of our credit cards, it would take us 48 months (4 years!) to pay it off. By just paying ten dollars more a month, we can knock that one out in only 30 months, which would save us $324 dollars in a year! By paying twenty dollars more a month, we could pay it off in 22 months, saving us $444 dollars in a year.

This might be a little confusing to people who use the "debt snowball" method to get out of debt, because you pay the minimum payment on all your debts except the smallest one. The reason this is different is because you are paying more than the minimum payment (hopefully as much as you can) on one bill, which will accelerate the pace you pay off that bill, and then you will move on to the next one. The point is not to pay the minimum payment on ALL of your bills, otherwise you won't have them paid off until your great grandchildren do it for you.

Line for IPhone 3G

It looks like people are already lining up at an Apple store in New York for the new IPhone, even though the launch isn't until the  11th. I would be there myself, except I have to work, I don't have the money for an IPhone, and my wife won't let me. Oh well.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone! Celebrate your freedom from from Microsoft products. Use open source software!

New Xbox 360?

There's a rumor going around that Microsoft will let third parties make Xbox 360's. What does that mean? It means that a company like, say, Toshiba could make an Xbox 360? Why, you ask? I really don't have a clue. Maybe to get more units out, and I'm sure Microsoft would make money from licensing these consoles. One plus is that some company is bound to make a 360 really cheap, the only problem is that who knows what the quality would be. Come to think of it, though, the quality of Microsoft's 360 consoles hasn't been that great.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

Deep Discounts

I recently discovered the gold box deals on Amazon.com. They list deeply discount items that are usually discounted by hundreds of dollars. The deals are kind of random, but if you're saving up for a particular item, you may want to keep an eye on this site, you never know when the item you're saving up for might pop up at a great price.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=cs_top_nav_gb27

Hulu

If you haven't checked out Hulu yet, you should. It hosts free ad supported videos, the videos aren't jumpy, and the quality is good. The best part about it is the content. They have shows like "The Office" and "Arrested Development," and we're not talking about just one or two episodes, these are FULL SEASONS! Plus they have some older shows that I watched when I was a kid, like ALF.

They also have some movies, most of them are obscure older movies or movies that didn't do well in the box office, but they also have good ones, like "The Usual Suspects" "Men in Black." There really is something for everyone, and the best part is, it's all free, you just have to watch the commercials spread throughout the program, but it does it automatically, and none of them last for more than thirty seconds.

Check it out

http://www.hulu.com/

Getting rid of cable

This past week I did some research on the Netflix Roku player. It's a $99 box that links with your Netflix "watch now" account, allowing you to watch all that content online (The $99 is a one time charge, there's no monthly fee for the box). There is a fair amount of content right now, with some movies as well as TV shows (including The Office!). Plus, this past week Roku announced that the Roku player would be adding new content partners as well, such as Youtube and Hulu, which would be incredible.

My thinking on all this is; our cable costs around $90 a month, and we really only watch about twenty channels out of the 400 we pay for. For an unlimited Netflix "watch now" account, it's only $8.95 a month, and that includes getting actual DVDs every month. That's a savings of $80 a month! That's $960 a year! I could almost buy a macbook!

It's a tough sell to my wife right now, because the shows she watches now aren't available on Netflix or Hulu, and it could be a while before they add them, if they ever do. I am a firm believer that either cable companies will start offering channels al a carte or more and more ad supported content will be moved online. This makes for an exciting future, but I'm still paying that cable bill in the present.

Has anyone gone the cable less route? Do you love it? Hate it? Miss some of the content that you used to enjoy? Let me know.

Getting out of debt

My wife and I currently have around $1800 of credit card debt. Doesn't sound like much, except that we only make around $1200 a month, and nearly all of this goes to monthly expenses.

So how are we going to get out of debt. We're trying what is called the debt snowball. If you've never heard of this, trust me, it's awesome; if you have heard of this, I highly encourage you to use this system.

Basically it works like this. You write down all of your debts, from the smallest amount owed to the largest amount. You pay the minimum amount on everything but the smallest bill you have, while putting a good amount a month towards that bill. Once that one is paid off, you take what you were paying on that small bill and combine it with the minimum payment on the next to smallest bill. This is what you will now pay monthly towards that bill. This process continues until you have worked your way up to the bill with the highest amount, and by then you are putting a good chunk of change towards paying that one off, and it should go rather quickly.

By seeing the bills actually being paid off, you feel like you're actually making progress with paying your bills, instead of feeling overwhelmed each month when those bills come calling.

My wife and I are currently doing this on our credit card bills, but a recent bonus at my job may allow us to pay off one and completely focus on just the one credit card bill. We will get a chance to use the snowball method when we have to start paying our student loans back, though.

Thoughts on IPhone

The IPhone is the new laptop. Think about it. Why is the Asus Eee PC so popular? It's because it's an easy to use, VERY tiny way to get on the internet, plus do some basic computing, such as word processingone. What is the IPhone? An easy to use, EXTREMELY tiny way to get on the internet, plus word processing (if you can get used to typing on the thing). Why do people most people lug their laptops around with them? To get on the internet, doing some word processing, and maybe watch some videos and listen to some music. Hello, the IPhone does all that!

So why isn't everyone getting rid of their laptops and getting an IPhone? Storage is a big reason. The IPhone has limited capacity, with the highest available only 16 GB currently. Many laptop owners today are used to having at least 100 GB of storage, save those Eee owners I mentioned earlier. But this is all changing. As online storage becomes more capacious and faster, we will start to see more mobile users relying on online storage rather that a local hard drive. Eventually, online storage will be just as fast as using a local hard drive, and then IPhones can really start getting tiny.

Another problem is size. While the IPhone is an ideal size for portability, it makes typing on it hard to do right now. An easy solution to this would be to create some sort of type as you speak software for the IPhone, but the technology isn't there right now, and it wouldn't always be appropriate (You wouldn't want to be speaking a paper in a public library. Librarians can be pretty tough).

So there you have it. The IPhone is the new laptop; not yet, but we're getting there.

Money Online

I found a pretty cool place where you can earn a little money by looking at ads for 30 seconds. Seriously, you just click on an ad, wait for 30 seconds, and that's it. Granted you only get one cent for every ad you look at, and there are a limited number of ads you can do a day, but for around twenty minutes of work you could earn a little, and I do stress little, extra money on the side.

You don't even have to actually look at them, you can open them up in a new tab and just close it after 30 seconds!

An Introduction

This is my first blog, ironically it will probably be my last blog. I thought this would be a good way to share some of my ideas about finances and glee about tech related things (plus, hopefully make some money). Before I go any further, I must admit that I'm an apple fan. I wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fanboy, but I definitely am a fan. I never took a sacred vow to only use mac stuff, it's just my preference.

I am also newly married, and one thing my new bride and I are learning is finances. We've read a few books, and taken Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University Course (which I highly recommend), and we're starting to use a budget (also highly recommended), and are trying to get out of debt. I would love to share our experiences with my readers, and also gather other ideas from readers.

So that's about it. Hopefully this thing will go pretty well.

Thanks!