Quicken Reveals - I: "No Eat-Out Month" Experiment

I was looking at my Quicken view of spendings and was amazed at my eat-out habits. Above is the screenshot of how my expenses looked like in the last six months of 2009. I am single and a BIG foodie but still I consider above figures as holes in my pocket!

Analysis

I spent $124 on eat-outs in May 09 making up 10% of my spendings. If sweet little February 09 is ignored then almost every month I am spending $109 on the average. Hey and just look at the goals I set, the red line in the graph marked as 'Budget', it's always way below the actual expenditure. My goal was $50 in May and I spent $124, 2.48 times more!

I Was Aware

I have been thinking that I am trying hard to get hold of my eat-out bills but Quicken reveals I am not, actually. I cook daily, take lunch-box to work and avoid eating outs as far as possible, but then one fine day comes and I meet with my good old friends and those meetings make it all possible.

What I'm Gonna Do

I have read people observe no-spend-day and believe me I literally spend only 2-3 days a week. I also agree with Ramit Sethi that one should take gradual steps towards their goals and this implies cutting down my eat-out bills gradually but this ain't gonna work for me. Whatever I decide, I will always spend more on food so why not set my spending limit to the least!

So this is what I am gonna do: I am pledging to eat nothing out this month. Already 5 days are gone and fortunately I haven't spend a buck on food out of home.

Will It Work

I am certain that my eat-out bills can absolutely not be $0 but yeah if I attempt to achieve that, it will be certainly less than $124 this time.

Is It Worth It

I am not expecting a jackpot, nor I will save a million doing this but I believe in spending on what I need and when it's needed. And that makes, at least a part of, the definition of 'Frugality'. Let's see how well can I keep upto my promise and how much can I save.

Do you notice any such 'holes' in your pocket? What's the reason? Are you doing anything about it? Do you have any suggestions for me? Comment please :)

PineCone Research Is Looking For Panelists

I wrote a post about Paid Surveys few days back and mentioned PineCone Research as one of the premium yet strict survey/research companies out there! While they do not explicitly publicize their need for panelists, I somehow found the current sign-up page.

Click here to fill-up the form and submit to see if you get approved. Act Fast!

Sorry guys sign-ups closed pretty early this time! Keep watching for next sign-ups.

A Free Donut @ Dunkin' Donuts Tomorrow

That's correct! They are giving away a free donut a person ;)

The first Friday of June month every year is celebrated as National Doughnut Day or National Donut Day in honor of Salvation Army since their efforts for fund-raising during the Great Depression of 1938.

That means tomorrow i.e. June 5th will be the National Donut Day of year 2009 and Dunkin' Donuts is celebrating the same by giving away a free donut with purchase of any beverage. Offer valid while supplies last, so remember to be the first in the lines tomorrow ;)

My Monetary Snapshot - May '09

So Let's Be Curious is more than a month old today :)

In the quest to keep myself committed to my financial responsibilities, here's what it looks like at the end of this month:

Emergency Funds (High Interest Savings): $6827
Checking Accounts (Non-Interest Earning): $1103
401K: $391.73
CD: $0
Interest + Other Earnings: $72
(amazed how come it's $72? ;) all added up by paid surveys and free money)

Car Loan Balance: $14,086
Credit Card Balance: $436

May 2009: Total Assets: $8321 Total Debt: $14,522

Got My Free Money ;)

About approximately a month ago I posted about keeping an eye around for the free money you can hoard. My credit union offered a scheme to its customers last month in which customers would get $50 Gift Card if they have a checking account with the credit union and part of their paycheck direct-deposited into it. I wasted no time, did what they required and called up few days back asking for my Gift Card (yeah you need to bug them sometimes, I don't care, it's $50 eventually ;) ). And today, sure enough, I got my beautiful $50 Gift Card :) bingooooooooooooo ...

What Am I Gonna Do With It?

I haven't thought about it yet, but for the most part Groceries! My Online Survey money and Online Savings Accounts interests already take-off some of my bills, if I keep getting such gifts a little more frequently, I 'd love it more! ;)

Have you recently got any such gift cards? If so, where did you participate or what did you have to do? Leave a comment here, sharing your story may get an opportunity for someone else.

I Win, I Win, I Win ..... ;)

I had posted twice about BlogUpp!'s cool ways of free & no-hassle blog promotions. BlogUpp! had started a competition a month ago where readers were invited to suggest new features that might make the widget more useful. Today BlogUpp! declared three winners and YES, sure enough, I was among the three lucky ones :)

Now that I have been declared among the few victors, let me also briefly mention the prize-winning suggestion. "BlogUpp! currently displays number of impressions a participating blog received and hosted in its stats section. My suggestion was to somehow also include the information about which of the posts attracted most impressions so far." In addition to it I suggested five other idea too but those were, correctly, deemed either redundant, unfair or trivial.

I spent this past long Memorial-Day weekend with my close friends on our trip to Albany NY and Boston MA, and as auspicious it could be, I bagged this BlogUpp! contest win and a logo for Let's Be Curious plus some of my articles also appeared in blog carnivals. I have started to realize lately that this is one thing I enjoy most and feel inspired to do about when I am not at my work. Thanks for stopping by and it will definitely be a pleasure knowing from you about any smallest advise you might have about my blog. Hope to see you around ;)

Paid Surveys - Your Opinions Are Your Extra Money

No-No-No I am not revealing any secret to earn thousands of dollars or something, but a way to tote-up to your take home money. Saving more money is one of the great ways to fill-in your cash pools. But (if you know Ramit Sethi then you might have realized that) another way to do the same is by earning more.

In this post I will be focusing on one such method which I started following myself more than a month ago and has proven to go really well. A "Paid Survey", as you might have understood from the title itself, is one such scheme to add little every month to your cash-pools.

If you have not yet started playing high-risk games, then you might wanna take great pleasure in earning extra bucks and lighten you utility loads.

Yeah, I know these look like baby-steps but at least I am walking ;)

• What are Paid Surveys?

It's simple: A company that is interested in launching a new product/service/brand in market, would always like to first find their potential market capture. To find this information, the company will get in touch with a Marketing & Research firm that will do the survey for them. This Marketing & Research firm in-turn reaches out to potential consumers of the product, like us, and pays in return of their opinions.

Yes I said that, you express what you feel and they value your thoughts. Typically these surveys cover a wide-range of arenas for example:

1. whether people are interested in this kind of product
2. what other similar products are available in market
3. how frequently people buy such products
4. what would people be expecting from this new product
5. where do people look for more information about this product family
6. what cost might be most favorable for company
7. and the list goes on .................
   

Many a times my friends ask me why in the world I will invest my time to earn a few dollars and my answer has always been the same: if you can afford to surf the internet without any aim for several whole hours, it doesn't hurt to invest 15-20 minutes of your surfing time in a paid-survey. Whenever I see a check in my mail for the surveys I did, I can feel nothing but rewarded some extra bucks which I can use guilt-free.

• How actually it works?

When you join a paid survey you create your member account same way as you would with any other website. You enter your personal information, demographic information, etc. I would like to mention here that you MUST enter your mailing address and MUST enter is correctly as this is the address where your checks will be sent. Typically all of the paid survey websites will prompt you to first complete one or few initial profile surveys.

These initial surveys help the company to understand you as a person like:

1. do you own a car
2. do you own a pet
3. how frequently do you eat out
4. do you enjoy alcoholic drinks
5. how frequently do you watch movies in theatres
6. where do you purchase your grocerry
7. other aspects of lifestyle ......... you get the idea right!

These initial profile surveys are not paid. Once you complete this step, the Marketing & Research Firm starts sending out surveys to you. What surveys be sent to whom is largely decided by:

1. the profiles you completed
   
2. your participation in previous surveys sent to you (obviously, if it's not your first survey)

Sometimes your eligibility to participate in a survey is also decided by the first few questions you answer in a survey. Anytime a survey is available for you, you are sent an e-mail and given a limited period of time to complete that survey. Keep completing the surveys and you are on your way ...

• Some of the legitimate Paid Surveys

The list of survey websites I mention here is not exhaustive and you will get to know plethora of such surveys and if you have/had a green experience with any, please do me the first favor by dropping its name in the comments. Just to give you an approximate idea: when I searched the term 'Paid Surveys', Google returned more than 244,000 blog results and more than 8.7 million web pages in general search.

So yeah there are abundance of these and here are the few I am aware of:

1. PineCone Research
   • one of the premier ones and it banks my most legitimate vote
   • they are very selective and strict in memberships
   • I will post on Let's Be Curious as soon as I know they are accepting (Ms. Scott says not soon though)
     
   • a $3 check for every survey you complete
   • you get to try new product samples at home too ;)
     
2. OpinionOutpost
   • second preferrence on my list
   • quite regular surveys if you keep taking them
   • if you are interested, do me a second favor by sending in your e-mail so I may refer you :)
3. CashCrate
   • I'm not actively participating yet but numerous people are earning a lot here
   • you get to complete offers most of the time rather than surveys but it's pretty legit
   • do me a third favor by using my referral link if you are interested
     
4. EDU Research Group
   • another nice website to survey mostly about academia
   • you are paid here for completing your profile surveys
5. Ipsos i-Say
• another quite reputed one that I am not enough experienced with
  
6. SurveySavvy
   • people like it but I had a tough luck with it, give it a shot
7. Global Test Market
   • I am a member since 2007 but won't recommend this to anyone
   • you are paid when you accumulate 1000 points and each survey is typically 5-40 points (at best 25 surveys before getting my first check, no-way!)
8. You might want to read Johnathan's post on paid-surveys, he suggests three more legit surveys: LightSpeed Consumer Panel, GreenField Online and American Consumer Opinion.
   

• How are you paid?
  

Different research companies have different policies so you should refer to your membership account page for more specific details. Talking in general terms, two possible modes of payments are checks mailed to you and payments made directly to your PayPal account. I prefer to have my checks mailed to me but PayPal is equally safe too.

Another thing to be aware of is the payment threshold. Depending on which survey websites you use, all of them have different thresholds and you are paid only when you reach those pre-decided thresholds. For example, you may request check from Opinion Outpost once you reach $5 or above. EDU Reasearch Groups lets you make the same request once you have earned $25 or more. PineCone sends you $3 check for completing each survey.

• What to be aware of?

This is what I always keep in mind:

1. provide honest opinions, that's what you are paid for
   
2. keep checking your e-mail as you don't want to miss on a survey. Typically all surveys are guaranteed to provide meaningful results once a pre-determined numbers of participants have submitted their opinions. This is the reason why many surveys allow only a limited period of time to complete the survey. Demographics of survey-group are also always at play, for example: I wanted my company's new product to be surveyed by only 1000 participants of which only 50 might be males living in upstate NY; the guist is don't wait and complete a survey asap. Even if you are a male living in upstate NY, if 50 other male dwellers in your regions have already submitted now you won't qualify.
3. your first few surveys are considered to be fairly important as they give the research panel an idea as to how useful you are to them
4. provide correct mailing address, it will be used to send you your check
5. try to avoid providing telephone/cellphone numbers but some may need it
   
6. never ever give your Social Security Numbers, bank details, etc.
7. start a survey only if you can spend another 15-20 minutes
8. sometimes clicking so many times on every single page may be very irritating, be mindful
9. some surveys offer you several entries into some sweepstakes in return of your time, I prefer the ones that pay money upfront
   

• What I do with the money I earn?

I am only little over 1 month into paid-surveys and I am easily juicing-up approximately $20-$30 per month. As I start using surveys like CashCrate more, I expect this number to rise :) Currently, my Netflix bill ($8.99) and HSBC CreditKeeper Service bill (which I negotiated to $6.95) are completely paid by the survey checks. I am not a parent but may you could manage to use it for your child's allowances. If you are just starting with your emergency funds, here's your extra money. Or if nothing else, you can eat out once a month absolutely guilt-free.

Do you take paid surveys? If so, which ones and how much do you earn each month? Please leave your thoughts below.

I'm in a Blog Carnival: This post was among the ones exhibited in Carnival of CashFlow Consciousness at MoneyEnergy. I am excited about your presence on my blog today and I would be glad to know about your thoughts on this post and my blog, hope to see you around :)

ShoreBank Direct falls to 2.05%

So the streak continues. Here is another brave one going down by 0.40%. ShoreBank Direct was a very high yielding online savings account and it had maintained its amazing 2.45% rate for quite sometime (2.05% is also not that bad in today's time though). I was actually considering moving my HSBC funds to ShoreBank Direct but good that I saw this day. Now fingers crossed for Ally Bank.

This was my quickest post so far btw :P, I had been chasing ShoreBank Direct for long and thus couldn't stop myself from sputtering out the news :(

Deals - MARS Real Chocolate Relief Act ;)

A Chocolate lover? You may bask for a while enjoying (upto) four free chocolate bars from Mars. Visit the Relief Act page on a Friday before September 25, 2009 exactly at 9AM (Eastern) and earn a chance to get a free chocolate coupon mailed to you.

Just remember that: one (1) Coupon per email address per Friday and four (4) Coupons per household during the Offer Period. I got one for me this past Friday, now waiting for my free Gillette Fusion Razor and free Real Chocolate ;)

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