Finding Freedom

To anyone who has a sweet tooth and is looking to save money, today is your lucky day.

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream parlors across the nation are giving away free ice cream cones today.

I don’t know if it’s every flavor that they are giving away, but if it is, I am looking forward to enjoying some Phish Food in a just a few minutes.  That’s mm-mm good.

The largest single amount I owe to any one creditor right now is (thankfully) currently a 0% balance transfer in the total amount of $7650 to Bank of America.  Unfortunately for me, the 0% runs out come June.

Fortunately, I am making enough money from my first job for both monthly expenses and making serious advances in the paying down of my other, smaller debts.  This means that I am able to set aside most of what I am making from my acting job this month to go towards that large debt that were soon come a-calling bearing interest.  I am taking that money, and sticking it into my ING account, so that it will earn just a little bit more interest in the meantime to aid the paying off efforts.  While it will probably not accrue a huge amount of interest between now and June, I can’t help but think that every little bit will help.

Although this is something that I have wanted to do and have thought financially prudent for a long time, I have finally started an emergency fund with ING Direct.  Their offer of a free $25 dollars with the startup of a new account was music to my ears.  My eventual goal is to get up to a thousand dollars in there.  I am currently an eighth of the way.

I want to briefly address why I didn’t go with another online bank, especially with the advertisements saying that HSBC is giving interest at 6% currently.  The truth is that I already have a small account open with HSBC, but the customer service has been deplorable ever since I signed up several months ago, so I simply have no desire to bank with them any more than I need to with my small account.  In fact, I will likely close that account shortly.

There are other options, of course, but friends of mine who have gone with ING Direct have had nothing but good things to say about it.  I can only say for myself that no negative experiences have come to light as of yet.

My phone plan recently expired, and, with one of the biggest draws that cell phone companies have to keep you in their clutches is slashing prices on phones if you sign up again, I purchased a new phone at a reduced price in addition to renewing my plan.  Although prices for other plans were comparable, I opted to remain with Cingular because my family is all on Cingular, and those free mobile to mobile minutes really add up.

I started looking at my options for a phone, and I eventually decided on a mid-priced phone with seventy bucks in rebates.  Of that seventy in rebates, twenty of those dollars came as an instant online rebate, but to receive the other fifty, I had to send in my receipt, proof of purchase, and rebate form to a specified address.  I thought that that seemed reasonable, and so I went ahead and purchased the phone.

However, as I was looking at the rebate form later, I read that the other fifty dollars would not come as a check; instead, Cingular had partnered with Visa, and they were going to send me a fifty dollar Visa gift card. 

Now, I suspect that some of you will argue that fifty bucks is fifty bucks, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disagree.  By giving me a gift card, unless I can rock some kind of cash advance on that puppy, they are effectively not giving me my fifty back.  While I could have just taken that money and stuck it into savings before, now I’ll be forced to spend it in the near future, as gift cards are notorious for having expiration dates.

In short, I’m not really happy about how things turned out.  Do rebates tend to work out this way?

I, like most people nowadays, have and use a cell phone. It is in fact, my primary phone because I got frustrated with how poorly Cox treated me as a land-line customer. I signed originally with Cingular because it is the company that my family uses, and, as such, I get free cell calls to them at any time.

Still, even with those free calls, my phone bill is just about sixty-three bucks a month, which is not quite outrageous, but it still seems a little steep.

Does anybody have any advice on saving money with cell phones (other than just not having one)? Are the other companies (T-Mobil, Verizon, etc) any better at keeping prices down? Are they any special tricks or secret hand-shakes that would help me to get a better rate?

Any advice is helpful as I will likely be re-signing soon.

Something that I recently discovered is that I can choose to split up my paycheck into three different accounts with the use of my direct deposit program through my work. This will be quite beneficial to me when I get my savings account opened online, because if I don’t see the money in my checking account, odds are that I will not spend it.

What can I say? Some of us need to be tricked into saving money.

Now then, the real trick will be to “forget” that I have this other account. Anyone know how I can pick up selective amnesia?