Rudder is a new personal finance service that differs from the dozens of other ones now available in two key ways: it presents a simplified overview of your available funds, which it calls “What’s Left,” and it delivers it (along with bill reminders and balance notifications) to your email inbox instead of requiring you to visit a website. Think of it as a highly customized “Very Short List” or “Daily Candy,” only the topic is always your current financial health.
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What To Do When A Store Sells You Box Of Crap And Won't Take It Back
By 9.4.08
We get a lot of complaints about people buying things from stores like Best Buy and Target and finding that once they get them home — there’s a bunch of bathroom tiles in the box instead of the item, or that the item is used, broken or smashed. When they try to return the thing, the store tells them that they’re out of luck. When you ask why they think they can get away with selling you a paperweight instead of an XBOX, they point to some bullsh*t policy and send you on your way. You don’t have to put up with this. In this post, we’ll tell you a) How to keep this from happening to you in the first place. b) How to equip yourself with tools that will help you in the event that this does happen to you. c) How to take advantage of these tools so that you never get stuck with someone’s old broken PS3.
Save Money By Starting A Fuel Oil Coop
By 8.27.08
To save money on heating costs this winter, consider joining or starting a fuel oil co-op. What’s that?
Use Snowball Method Spreadsheet To Pay Off Debts
By 8.26.08
Do you have so many credit cards that you could sew a pair of pants from them? Confused as how to get rid of them? Try this handy Excel spreadsheet to generate a custom strategy for becoming debt-free.
8 Tips That Will Keep Your Refrigerator Healthy And Your Bills Low
By 8.19.08
Consumer Reports has some tips for keeping your refrigerator happy and your utility bills low. Keeping the door shut as much as possible is apparently very important. As mom always said, “We’re not trying to refrigerate the entire State of Illinois, are we?”
Fonolo.com Slash And Burns Dread Phone Trees
By 7.31.08
Fonolo.com promises to be an industrial-powered buzzsaw for hacking down phone trees. They’ve spidered companies’ entire customer service phone trees and you just click on a chart online where you want to go. Fonolo calls the company for you, navigates to that point, and calls you on your phone when the call is ready. Boom, you’re transferred right in without waiting or wanting to kill yourself. It’s also free. Good news for Vincent Ferrari wannabes, a forthcoming feature will let you record calls and publish them online at the click of a button. Currently in closed beta, you can enter your email address on their front page and they’ll let you know when it’s ready. Screenshots inside…
Screw Basket-Weaving, I'm Going To Personal Finance Summer Camp
By 7.25.08
Here’s four summer camps where kids will learn something really useful: how to manage their money. What a cool idea. I wish I had gone to one in my youth.
7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy
By 7.22.08
Reader MG is a fan of the site and a public librarian and has written a list of 7 ways that your library can help you during a bad economy. Libraries are an excellent resource and they’re pretty easy to use. Don’t worry if you’re not a big reader, there’s lots more stuff to do at the library besides just checking out books.
7 Steps To Developing A Strong Network In Case You Get Fired
By 7.17.08
Financial blogger Brandt Smith at Get Rich Slowly suggests that your first step should be to contact your network, and he backs up his assertion with a real-life success story. He also shares seven keys to developing a strong network:
10 Credit Card Company Tricks To Beware
By 7.14.08
Are you smarter than a credit card company? They’ve got billions riding on their belief that you’re not. Check out these 10 methods, via the Americans for Fairness in Lending, credit card companies use to make extra money off you that you may not even be aware of, knowledge that could save you hundreds in extra fees.
10 Things You Might Not Know About Your Credit Card
By 7.10.08
You might think that everyone knows that you have to sign your credit card in order for it to be valid — after all — there’s a panel on the back that says “Not Valid Unless Signed,” but you’d be shocked at the number of angry emails we get from people who have tried to use an unsigned credit card with “SEE ID” or “CHECK ID” written on it and were turned away when they refused to sign their card.
Shame Yourself Into Spending Less With A Hello Kitty Debit Card
By 7.8.08
Reader MervinGleasner has Hello Kitty to thank for his unique method of curbing personal spending. In a comment on our “Succeed Through Self-Undermining!” post, he writes:
With The New iPhone On The Horizon, Now Is The Time To Threaten Your Cellphone Company
By 7.3.08
With the debut of that new super iPhone thing only a few short days away, now is the time to threaten your current cellphone company. What’s that? You have no intention of switching cellphone companies for the iPhone? Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon’s retention reps don’t know that. Do they?
Succeed Through Self-Undermining!
By 7.1.08
Our post on freezing your credit cards in a block of ice got me thinking. Anything that slows, stops, or impedes making transactions can be used as a technique for limiting your spending. Whatever it may be, cutting up your credit cards, locking up most of your money in an account it takes 3 days to transfer from, giving yourself an allowance, it will be a variation on a single principle: It’s easier to put a hard limit on the future then to make the right decision in the impulsive moment. Installing some kind of an automatic hiccup can help break you out of your desire-driven action and give you the breathing room to step back and make the right choice. So if you have trouble with overspending (or overeating or any kind of bad habit) and your sheer willpower is sometimes lacking, aka, you’re human, try brainstorming ways you can trip yourself up. The world is full of obstacles, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one.
Graph: Which Cellphone Company Has The Best Early Termination Fee Policy?
By 6.27.08
Discounting or pro-rating the early termination fees that cellphone companies love to tack on to their contracts is becoming more common, so we thought we’d make some graphs that show the strengths and weaknesses of the different policies. As you can see, T-Mobile 2-year ETF doesn’t make any discounts until fairly late in the contract period — and their ETF of $200 is higher than either of the other two companies that offer discounts. (Sprint does not pro-rate or discount its ETF.) T-Mobile’s ETF does, however, reach a point where their discounts are steeper than Verizon and AT&T’s pro-rating.
11 Cheap Generic Drug Programs That Will Save You Money
By 6.24.08
Here at the Consumerist we’d like you to save money. That’s why we’ve put together a handy list of those $4 generic drug programs that you’ve been hearing about. We hope this list will make it easier for you to locate the store that has the best deal on all your medications. If your local grocery store is doing a similar program and we missed it, please add a link to the comments. If you need help researching the medicines, we recommend Consumer Reports’ excellent site Best Buy Drugs. Enjoy!
Privacy: What It's Like To Fly With No ID Under The TSA's New Regulations
By 6.23.08
David becomes our first reader to fly under the TSA’s new ID policy. Formerly, if you refused or were unable to show ID you could still fly — but were required to undergo secondary screening by the TSA. Now they’ve altered their position slightly– fliers who willingly refuse to show ID are now barred from flying. The new rule went into effect over the weekend, and David says that in order to board the plane after forgetting his driver’s license he had to answer questions about his political party affiliation and previous addresses.
5 No BS Ways To Get A Credit Score For Free
By 6.20.08
Here are 5 ways to get your credit score for free. Note, all of them are the credit scores developed by the credit bureaus themselves, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, and are not your actual FICO scores. Only the FICO score is used by lenders to determine your credit worthiness. However, you can at least use these credit bureau scores to get a general sense of how good your credit is. [More]
