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🚨 Think You’re Saving? These Hacks Might Be Costing You!

🚨 Think You’re Saving? These Hacks Might Be Costing You!

Plus, the scoop on Labor Day Deals!

Matt Granite
August 19, 2024

Since you are subscribed to this email (which I hugely appreciate), chances are you love saving money or scoring a deal.

This week’s email newsletter centers around some frugal approaches that don’t always pay off.

What’s included this week:

❌ Ways to Save Money That Don’t Work
📰 IN THE NEWS
🤫 An AMAZING Website For Fix-Its!
🏷️ Top 5 Deals of the Week
👀 NEWSLETTER EXCLUSIVE

❌ Ways to Save Money That Don’t Work

Buy Now, Pay Later Credit Card Programs: Unless you’re short on cash for an emergency appliance replacement, buy now pay later programs make it very easy to spend money that you don’t have with all sorts of added fees.

Here is an example of Chase’s “Buy Now, Pay Later” program

Splitting your purchases into instalments directly with a retailer through programs like Affirm or Klarna are the better way to go.

Keeping Your Car Too Long: Clinging to a vehicle for sentimental reasons is one thing but if your car is more than a decade old, you could be paying far more in maintenance and replacement parts over the years than you would be paying for a more recent vehicle under warranty.

Image credit: Reddit

Flying A Budget Airline: If you have a desire to travel with nothing other than what’s in your pocket and legroom is not a concern, a budget airline could benefit you for a commute or short-haul vacation.

For those traveling with a family or basic luggage and seat selection needs, once you add up all the fees of a budget carrier, you’re almost always better off with booking a full-service airline.

Opting Out Of An Extended Smartphone Warranty: The average person drops their smartphone at least four times per week according to a recent study.

Benefits of AppleCare+ Protection Plan at $7.99 per month

While the cost of an upfront warranty for your smartphone can be jarring, for most people that device protection plan (especially if it covers theft like AppleCare) is actually a worthwhile investment.

Buying Perishable Items In Bulk: It can be very tempting when confronted with a giant package of condiments or croissants but unless you are hosting many large get-togethers, I would reserve bulk buying for household staples with a longer shelf life.

Relying Upon A Rebate: Many retailers will gladly incorporate the cost of a rebate into their sale price but I find it’s always best to assume the rebate won’t come to the rescue, and you can always be pleasantly surprised if it does.

Rebate redemptions are frequently finicky, their deadlines or cutoffs don’t always coincide with your purchase dates and receipts can get lost in the mail.

Paying Your Mortgage Off Early: Before you pay your mortgage off early to avoid paying interest over the whole life of your loan, be sure that your lender does not charge a prepayment penalty.

Those fees could add up very quickly and you could end up losing money if your lender charges a substantial penalty.

Buying Cheap Paper Towels: I recently read that the store brand paper towels sold at popular pharmacy chain and dollar stores ranked worst in terms of performance.

You may find that you’ll have to use significantly more paper towel to get the quality you’d find from Bounty, Kirkland or Sparkle. Trying to save money on paper-towels doesn’t usually pay off.

📰 IN THE NEWS

I’m excited to introduce a new section in the newsletter where I'll share some of the most interesting and helpful articles I’ve read over the past week. I hope you find them as valuable as I did!

💵 “What to do with your money before the Feds cut interest rates” - READ HERE.

💵 “10 frugal tips from the 1950’s era that still work today! ” - READ HERE.

💵 “Why aren’t people feeling better about the economy” - READ HERE.

🤫 An AMAZING Website For Fix-Its!

(THIS IS NOT SPONSORED)

Do you have an older tablet stuck on the start screen? How about a faucet with a very slight leak? Fix-Ya is a free website where users can post questions and have repair suggestions provided for free.

While you may still need to call a professional to complete a repair, I rely upon FixYa to see if there are simple resolutions.

Here is an example of someone’s question and the types of responses received

I also find the website handy for those times were I no longer have the instructional manual to accompany an older appliance generating an error code.

You can find out more about FixYa by clicking here.