87, 89 and 91: Which fuel grade?

- Wanted my car to run longer, so even though my car manual suggested to use 87 grade fuel, I had used 89 for 3 years. On one fine day, decided to search more on the net and found that the best way to go forward is to use 87 grade instead as suggested. I have learned that using higher grade fuel is not going to benefit the engine because of the way it's designed. 

So which fuel grade do you use? Do you follow the car manual? Do you think higher grade fuel helps the engine? Do share your comments below.

Boost your online productivity

- Enough said about browser wars and enough jokes on IE. In this blog I will be talking about browser extensions I use and how they can help boost your productivity and potentially save some bucks.

For those who are new to browser extensions, they are neat little programs that can be added to your browsers and are designed to do some specific task. I mostly use Chrome browser and it's extensions can be downloaded from here. Following are the ones I am using currently.

• LastPass: Free to use on Desktop/Laptop but costs you $1/mo on mobiles. This utility frees you from the burden of remembering all your passwords. It also generates strong and unique passwords for you to use, so that you don't have to have one password for various logins.  You don't even have to type the passwords during login, LastPass does it for you automatically. I find this especially useful on mobile phones since I am a heavy mobile phone user for browsing. Why don't you try it out here?
• Cloudy Calculator: As the name suggests, this is a simple calculator add-on where in you can do your calculations and also see your calculations history.  I find this better than doing it in the browser omnibar
• Chrome Notepad: How many times have you scrambled for a paper to write down your friend's number or address? And how many times have you misplaced it? This is why I find this extension to be very useful, to jot down to refer later.
• PriceBlink: You are shopping for a smartphone on Amazon and what if you are told that the phone is cheaper by $50 on eBay? Wouldn't you buy from eBay? This is what PriceBlink does. It tells you promptly if the same product is being sold for cheaper somewhere else or if you have found the best price, so that you don't get into buyer's remorse later. 
• WebOfTrust: Remember those distracting ads on your favorite website for weight loss? Or the
  get rich quick secrets? Once you click those ads, they will not cut to the chase and instead throw crap at you. Worse, if you are having a bad day, your system might even be infected with malware/virus. Web of Trust (WOT) helps you in this regard by letting you know how trustworthy and safe the website is. You can even add your rating, comments for others to be safe.

  

  Check the reputation before you browse

• Adblock Plus: What if there is a way to block the above mentioned annoying ads altogether which you routinely see on your favorite websites? Adblock Plus is one such extension which blocks ads on most of the websites and keeps you focused and safe.
• Ebates and FatWallet: These extensions make it easy for you to earn cashback while shopping online. To learn more about these extensions, please refer to my earlier post  on how to earn cashback.
• Hover Zoom: This extension helps you zoom into the pictures without clicking on them. Very useful if you just want to briefly look at a picture without annoying new  browser windows.
• Camel Camel Camel: One of the best apps to shop at Amazon. This app tracks most of the product prices since their inception on Amazon. So the next time you shop at Amazon, you can easily find out if the current price is the lowest or highest and postpone your purchase. You can even set price drop alerts so that you can buy them for lower price. 

  

  CamelCamelCamel: Your ticket to save on Amazon

There are few other extensions like Flag for Chrome, which provides country or region name, Google PageRank, Alexa Rank for the current website and Honey which shows you coupons for the site you are currently shopping.  I do not use them often though.

So, which of the extensions do you use ? Do mention them in the comments below.

Save on your auto insurance and utilities

- Who does not want to save money on their utilities? 

I pay about $1K per year for auto insurance, but it used be higher. One obvious way to reduce is to avoid bad remarks on your driving history. Other option is to combine your auto with rental insurance. I use one other less known approach. Most of the auto insurance companies (well, at least two that I know of) give you the option to track your driving habits over a few months using a plugin device. Depending on the driving times, speed, number of hard brakes, they  classify you as a safe/careless driver and then give you a discount on the policy. The first time I tried, I got over 25% discount. But the sad part of the story is that they offer you this discount only once, meaning when you renew, they will not allow you to get further discount on top of the existing discount. 

So what I do is switch to a different provider for a few days even though the new quote is higher. I will then move back to the initial provider who provided the above discount and enroll in their discount program. This way when you start off the second time, your base rate will be near to the first time's discounted price. So, you can get deeper discount. Sometimes providers try to tell you that the longer you stay the "premium" member you are and hence cheaper the quote, but I found this benefit to be far worthless than the above approach. But you might want to check that too.

Another utility that I hate to pay too much is Internet connection. Sure, the more you bundle, the more you save. But I don't use cable, home phone. So not much options for me in those terms. What I do is switch internet providers once a year or so. Most of the times, when there is no monopoly, providers run special offers like $19.99/mo for the first 12 months and on contract. So, I hunt for such offers each year and signup. At the end of the contract, I call the customer loyalty department to cancel my service since they now jacked up the price. Often times, they provide you with an offer to retain you. Like I got $29.99/mo for another 12 months contract. Which is much better than $54.99 regular price. So, the next time your provider increases the price, call the customer  loyalty department

Regarding electricity bill reduction, I have one BKM. Sure, you can install solar or use less power but this is not possible for all. In my case, I signed up for Time-Of-Day plan, which essentially charges a premium for your usage from 3-6pm. So I try to avoid heavy usage in this period [sure, your wife does not care :) ] This saves a few $$.

So, what's your BKM? How do you save money on your utilities? Please share them in the comments.

Credit Score and free money

- As you know, you can request your free creditscore once an year from each of the three credit bureaus at www.annualcreditreport.com. But, most of us need to know our score more than once a year for, let's say your mortgage, credit card application etc. For these reasons, I suggest you two great websites: creditkarma.com and creditsesme.com. Both provide your creditscores more than once a month, so you get to know your score whenever you want for free. They also provide free alerts like bill dues, charges, deposits etc. I certainly recommend them if you have not yet used. This way you are not in the dark regarding your credit history.

I consider anything above 750 to be a good score, however there are about 34% population with score 750 and above. Now that you know your creditscore, why not use it for your good? If you have not opted out yourself from www.optoutprescreen.com, you should be receiving credit card offers in your mail. But don't just apply for each and every card for one you will be damaging your credit score and secondly, they might not deserve you. Most of the credit cards offer signup bonus when you open a new account. So keep checking your mailbox for such offers.

Look no further if you want huge signup bonus

If you have been discarding such mails, I suggest to look into Chase Freedom offer of $150 cashback after you spend $500 in the first three months. You can sign up here. If you have a score of about ~720, there are good chances to get approved. The best part with the Freedom card is 5% cashback on categories that change each quarter, so in no time you will start earning on your favorite purchases.This card does not carry any annual fee

Or, if you rather prefer 1.5% cashback on all purchases, you have Chase Freedom Unlimited. This card too offers $150 cashback after you spend $500 in the first three months. You can sign up here

If you want to go big, you can apply for American Express Premier Rewards Gold card. It will earn you 25,000 Membership Rewards® points after you use your new card to make $2,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of Card Membership. You can apply here

Signing up for creditkarma.com and creditsesme.com accounts gets you personalized offers like 0% apr, if you are planning to make big purchases.

Your personalized credit offers

You can make similar bonuses through bank accounts as well. For example, Chase often sends out $100-$200 bonus offer in mail if you open their checking or savings account. 

Earn while shopping!FREE $25

- How often have you read/seen/heard people couponing to the penny ?! Well, not that I suggest you do the same due to the effort involved. However, there is an alternative, not to save but to earn, while shopping. 

When I first heard about 'earn while shop', like most people, didn't bother due to the assumption that the earnings would be pennies. True, the earnings would not be much most of the times. But the pennies add upto dollars in no time, trust me. Anyway, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1000 words, here is a picture of my earnings:

Ebates Cashback in 2 years

Here you go, $700 in about 2 years! So, how does it work? Simple.You need to shop through the below mentioned cashback websites. Just search and click your shopping site(ex: Amazon) in your favorite cashback website (eg: Ebates) and then make your purchase.

There are numerous cashback websites. Some give you direct cash. Some reward you with points, which then can be redeemed for gift cards, cash. Most are free, some are paid.

Here are the ones I use, which pay cash and free to join:

• Ebates: My favorite, most reliable and 'generous'. Free to join and they even reward you with $10 gift card or $5 cash when you use them. Customer service is great too. 

  

  Free $10 gift card when you join & use ebates

• TopCashBack: Free to join but not so good to track the cashback activity. I had to contact customer care to get the missing cashback. New users get $5 Amazon gift card bonus
• BeFrugal: Get $10 when you join and use the site. Free to join as well. 

So, you will get FREE $25 if you join the above mentioned websites and shop!

Another reason I use so many websites is that the cashback amount varies across them. So I look through all of them to see which one's offering the best cashback, especially when making a big purchase, and then shop through that site. 

Do leave a comment below if you got any question or like to share your experience.

What in the world is a BKM?

Is my solution the best out there?

- I am starting this blog to let the world know (and remind myself) some of my best known methods (BKMs) ranging from travel to shopping to computers troubleshooting and everything in between. 

Since no human is omniscient, I will be posting my unresolved problems/issues here so that others can share their BKMs as well. 

Here's to the many BKMs to come