Small Business Saturday: $10 this year from Amex

You might be a wee bit disappointed, since LAST YEAR, Amex gave those who registered for the event a $25 statement credit. Still, for me, $10 is nothing to scoff at, since Mr FS and I take a daily walk that takes us right by a local grocery where we stock up on wine and gourmet products by Roland. For some reason, this small, independent grocery is the cheapest in town on those items.

Here's the LINK.

Which Credit Card Should I Get? Asks a Recent Graduate

Which credit card? Well, you can spend hours searching and weighing various options. You can chase down 0% financing and then transfer your money when the rate goes up. You will drive yourself crazy and may mess up.

OR you can follow my advice. If you are SURE you can pay off each month, you should get a free card with a rebate.

If you might EVER be late in payment or carry a balance, then you should get a card from your credit union. They offer consistently lower rates and are more apt to negotiate with a cardholder than the big scary companies with the arcane rules.

Not eligible for a credit union? Guess again. I became a member of the Postal Employees Credit Union by asking if non-workers could join.

Now you can spend your time appreciating the universe.

AMEX Small Business Saturday: $25 Credit

If you registered your card, today is the day to use it. We're off to buy some wine at the little store down the road.

Freebie for American Express Card Holders: Small Business Saturday

This seems to be too good to be true, but it IS true. American Express is running its second Small Business Saturday on 11/26. You have to register your card (with Amex); Amex sends you a confirmation, and then you spend $25 or more at a SMALL BUSINESS on 11/26 and receive a $25.00 statement credit.

Naturally, I'm going to spend my $25.00 at the little grocery and wine store that is a short walk away.

Hope this info is useful to someone.

Credit Card Relief: A Frugal Mantra

So many tempting offers are coming my way: on-line sales, catalogs from the few places where I've bought things over the last year, and so on.

The FRUGALISTA'S MANTRA

In SEVEN WEEKS IT WILL ALL BE ON SALE

THAT's around 50 DAYS

EVEN IF IT'S GONE, YOU PROBABLY WON'T WANT IT

OR THERE WILL BE SOMETHING ELSE

EVEN BETTER

OMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

How do you keep yourself from succumbing to temptation?

Where's My Emergency Fund? On my Credit Card!

No, don't worry. I'm not counting on credit cards to fund emergencies. But I was rather nervous about expenses for my long sojourn in France, which extended over two credit card bills. So--since my emergency fund isn't earning anything to speak of--I overpaid my credit cards, both of them.

As it happened, we spent a lot less than anticipated. So when I got my credit card bills, I found a big, fat credit. My emergency fund, however, is a bit on the meager side.

I'm not worried, since we are due for paychecks at the end of the month. If my emergency funds were earning the 5-10% I can remember from not all that along ago, I would think twice about overfunding. But the dangers of NOT paying a credit card bill are known to all: huge fees, interest payments on all your new charges, and so on.

Do you have any tricks like this for when you're on the move and might not be able to pay your bills?

Gift Cards with Credit Card Points: Worth It? Too Much Trouble?

I just discovered that Chase Freedom Card occasionally lets you swap points earned for discounted gift cards. Some come with a 10% discount, others with 20%.

As it happens, I have a bunch of points which I planned to swap for good old cash. I feel rather pressured by gift cards. 20% is a lot, though, especially if (and only if) you were going to buy an item anyway. Here is the info.

I have almost enough points to get something I want from Pier1: a rattan stand in which I want to put fruit and veggies. Lands End also has a 20% discount and I JUST spent about $40.00 there for some luggage. You can also use Lands End gift cards at Sears, if you want to get a washer there.

I don't know how often Chase offers things like that. I mostly use a Cash Back AmEx. But I spend a few hundred dollars a year at Lands End, so waiting for those discounted gift cards may be the better deal.

Or is it too much trouble to even think about? What would you do?

Credit Cards without Foreign Exchange Fees

From the New York Times: Credit Cards Without Foreign Exchange Fees.

I will have to do the math for my family, but Miss Em may spend part of the summer and then a semester abroad.

The 3% foreign transaction fee (pure profit for the card companies, according to the article) is offset somewhat by the cashback I get from American Express.


Would you go to the trouble to get one of these cards?

Frugal Fieldwork: At Barnes and Noble

Our Frugal Friday entertainment began with a stop at an art opening. Our friend Peg had a show of pencil drawings of her trip to France at a coffee shop owned by another friend.

Then, since we had already made the arduous journey to the next town (no kidding! endless roadwork makes for an unpleasant drive), we headed to Banana Republic, where my mission was to use a $10.00 gift card that was about to expire. Mission accomplished, I went to Barnes and Noble, where Mr. FS was waiting for me. There we ran into two former students now all grown up, one of whom works as an instructor in my department.

I mentioned that Banana Republic had a 25% off special for those who used their credit card. They said they were planning to go there but did not have a credit card. I offered them the use of mine and they declined. When I suggested that they get a credit card if they wanted to buy something, they looked at me in horror: We can't get another credit card. It seemed that for them--as for others--possessing a credit card constitutes an irresistible temptation. That's why even among the frugal and newly frugal, there are two opposed credit card philosophies: Use them for everything and get the rewards vs. Cut them up and never use them again. I am lucky to be in the former category. And those in the latter category are lucky to know their weaknesses.

As we headed to our car, we ran into the husband of the artist whose show we had visited. He was going to Barnes and Noble to buy a book-on-tape for a 10 hour trip to a new vacation house in North Carolina. Again, I was struck by the differences. I would have gotten a tape at the library.

In fact, we have been listening to Dickens's Hard Times on our way to work. Truly a sentimental journey. And certainly a reminder to be thankful in the midst of hard times for so many.

Credit Card Perks

I'm writing on this topic because a commenter on a previous post marveled at my receiving $20.00 in gift cards from the LL Bean Visa.

I have plain vanilla rebate credit cards. The American Express has a sliding scale of rebates and gives me back a few hundred dollars a year and the Chase Freedom Card gives me 1% back. Then I have the LL Bean card, which I got to get free shipping and monogramming on the de rigeueur backpacks when my kids hit middle school.

I charge just about everything because I am lucky to have a built-in limit (built in, that is,to my brain or consciousness or something). So I never have a finance charge. I did a rough calculation and decided that airline miles linked credit cards were not better than what I already have. Plus, I figure that anything hawked with such enthusiasm by the purveyors (car leases, variable rate mortgages, variable annuities, whole life insurance) must be better for the purveyor than for the consumer.

As an amusing sidenote, a person I know slightly exclaimed that she and her husband had earned 2 tickets to Europe with a frequent flyer card in just one year. She was "playing middle-middle class," because she and her spouse had gone to Europe the previous year, also, she said, on frequent flyer credit card miles. When I said, "Wow! That's a lot of miles," she said, "I charge everything. Even groceries." Little did she know that she was revealing yearly spending on her card of perhaps $80,000.00, since you need about 40,000 for a plane ticket. A lot of groceries.

Anyway, I tend to ignore the various offers that arrive with my statements. So how did I acquire the $20.00? I bought my parents some luggage on sale. I got a few other things. I think LL purchases earn 3% back. Other purchases earn only 0.5%. I used the card a lot in Europe, since many places only take Visa, and that's my only Visa card. So somehow, I got $10.00!

Then, out of the blue, I got a $10.00 just because credit. I assume this was just because business this year, as my children would say, sucks. So it is to encourage spending. Hence, my $29.00 tote bag purchase.

If you don't have the card already, I think you get a $20.00 gift card just for applying. Then you get free shipping, returns, and monogramming. I seldom use the card, but even these little freebies are fun, pure lagniappe.

A few years ago, I earned a lot of credits and rebates when we were buying our Honda Civic. I put half on the American Express and half on the LL Bean Visa. We had saved up enough to pay cash since our previous car was 14 years old. But we figured, Why not get the rewards?

I was so scared that the bills would arrive late or that I would forget to pay, incurring a huge finance charge, that I sent the full payments to the companies that very day. And checked to make sure they got there.

So my story of credit cards involves paying them off in full and using them lackadaisically to get rewards now and then.

Do you make wise or clever use of credit card rewards? If so, how?