The following is a post by staff writer Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. Her blog covers living expenses, saving for your future, and the fun stuff along the way.

Since my car has let me down majorly a couple of times in 5 years, I’m starting to think of my options. I won’t be rushing into a purchase since I hate car payments more than I despise my car, but here are the 5 main criteria on my mind:

1) Sales Price

I can never imagine myself buying a $30,000 vehicle. I know you should never say never, but the idea of spending that much literally gives me a small panic attack. Keeping that in mind, I will probably be looking for a brand new car that is $20,000 or less or a used car that is $10,000 or less. I am only willing to raise those limits for a hybrid like a Toyota Prius.

For anybody who may ask why I’d even consider buying a new car since they depreciate so quickly, I simply dislike absolutely ALL car problems. By buying new, I can hopefully get about 5-7 carefree years out of a car that only needs oil changes, tire rotations, and maybe one extra set of tires. I put a high value on my time and silly car errands tick me off.

That said, I would consider buying a certified used car. My husband’s 2007 Prius hasn’t given us any problems in 2 1/2 years, so Certified Pre-Owned Toyotas are pretty high on my list.

2) Gas Mileage

Other than price, gas mileage is the biggest deciding factor when I buy a car. Again, I hate car stuff and errands, so stopping for gas every 2-3 days would drive me insane. My Aveo only makes 27-30 miles per gallon, but I can still usually get by on one fill-up a week.

The Prius is actually towards the top of my list since I’d only need to fill up every 3 weeks thanks to a semi-short 25 mile round-trip commute and the awesome 500 miles to the tank efficiency. I lust after my husband’s almost every time I park next to it in our garage.

Hopefully cheaper electric cars will be in the market when I am, but if not; a hybrid or a super efficient sub-compact is probably in my future. I’m currently leaning towards the Toyota Prius (47-52 mpg), Toyota Yaris (30-35 mpg), or the Hyundai Accent (28-34 mpg). We’ll see what’s available when my Aveo drives its last mile with me…

3) Dependability/Durability

I need a car that will reliably get me from point A to point B every time for years and years. I do not enjoy big spending like car purchases and rather not think about it for AT LEAST 7 years – preferably 10 – but I set the bar lower for my own sanity’s sake. Taking this into account, Toyota, Acura, Honda, and the most recent Hyundai models come to mind. The friends and family we know that own those makes are extremely happy with their cars.

4) Interior Room

As a short 5’2″ lady, I don’t need much head room or leg room, but I would like my 5’11″ husband to fit comfortably as well. I also need enough room in the back for a medium sized dog cage since I take our pups to the majority of their vet visits.

I’m not asking for a stretch Hummer in this category, but it’s surprising how hard a rectangular cage is to fit into some cars. Hubby’s Prius definitely has enough room and it even fits surprisingly well into my Aveo. I’d have to take the cage with me to see if it would fit into any of the other cars I have in mind.

5) Overall Look

I don’t think I need something sleek and perfect with a convertible top, but I also refuse to drive something that makes me laugh (in a bad way). For example, please do not take offense if this is your car, but all of those square-looking things on wheels are not up my alley. I don’t want to drive a box. That’s my line. :-)

What do you keep in mind when you’re in the market for a new-to-you car? Do you have any ideas based on my criteria? Does anybody want to yell at me on behalf of their box-like car? ;-)

Heyo! While writing my Yakezie member post, I did a little digging (into my own site) and found out that today is my one year anniversary of blogging. And what better way to celebrate than to give money to my wonderful fans?

So to start off, I’m giving away $100 in cold hard cash (or paypal, which is like cash, but not quite as cold).

That’s a lot more than Lauren got for our one year anniversary (she got $10).

Also, because I have awesome blogger friends, we’ve got more even more prizes you can win!

Forest at Frugal Zeitgeist has offered to give away a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Who wouldn’t love that?

Jesse at Personal Finance Firewall has offered to give away a copy of Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich. This was the first personal finance book I ever read and if you don’t win, you need to buy a copy anyway.

Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff has offered to give away a copy of Your Money: The Missing Manual by J.D. Roth, who is one of the top personal finance bloggers over at Get Rich Slowly. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I win because I haven’t read it yet and want to get my hands on it!

Kevin over at Financially Poor has offered to give away two copies of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It by J. Steve Miller. This is a great book for recent graduates or college students looking to learn how to handle their money.

Thanks so much for their amazing generosity and for getting me all excited about this giveaway!

How Do You Enter?

There are 3 ways to enter, with a max of 3 entries per person:

1 entry for leaving a comment letting me know what you would like to see at Sweating The Big Stuff in the next year.

1 entry for following me on twitter and tweeting about this giveaway (use one of the buttons on the page).

1 entry for subscribing to my RSS or email feed and letting me know in the comments.

I’ll use random.org to choose a winner and announce it on Sunday, the 12th. Get your entries in soon and good luck!

This year for my birthday, I was given my brother’s AT&T upgrade to get an iPhone 4. That excited me for a lot of reasons. I got something new and shiny, the ability to video chat, and a far superior camera. It wasn’t something I would pay for myself, but with the upgrade, it was guilt-free.

Actually, it was also dollar free too.

Actually, I made money on the exchange.

What happened?

Well the iPhone itself was $200 with a $36 upgrade fee. I knew I could sell my current iPhone 3G S for around that much, and a quick search on craigslist showed that the lower limit I would get for it was around $250.

Already, it was a great deal and I was ready to pull the trigger.

I ordered my phone, picked it up, called AT&T to activate it…and the service was down. I spent an hour talking to a customer service representative trying to fix the issue, and when he couldn’t, I asked if he could compensate me for the time and stress, so he offered $25. (had I not asked, I wouldn’t have gotten a penny!) Good but not great. I asked for the $36 upgrade fee reversed and he agreed quickly. For an extra day of waiting, I was rewarded with the equivalent of a free month of service. I wonder what would have happened had I asked for $50..

The Lows

Great, so all I had to do was sell my phone on craiglist. People pay a premium for a jailbroken iPhone, and I agreed to sell it for $300, so I jailbroke it for someone who ended up not being interested (was a weirdo who said that since he already came to me, I should accept $20 less than we agreed on. That bothered me, so I said see you later and went back inside. It wasted 15 seconds of my time and he was left iPhone-less, so who had the bargaining power??). I called one of the other buyers. He came to pick it up, and when I asked if he wanted it jailbroken he said no, so I tried to reverse the change quickly and clear all data.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work the way I expected and instead of clearing the data, it did a hard reset on the phone, meaning I had to do a full install of the latest software, which can’t be jailbroken. Of course, he was no longer interested, and I was sorely disappointed.

I was devastated. I upgraded the phone to the newest version of the software, prayed a little, bargained with the G-man a little, and checked to see how much I could get on craigslist. In my mind, I would take anything over $200.

The Highs

It turns out that I got several offers when I set the price at $250, and in the end, someone came and bought it for $270.

All was better. I only lost $10 from what I wanted to sell it for originally (plus a $20 donation to charity that I promised in my bargaining phase).

My eagerness to get that last $20 cost me about 2 hours of time and a ton of stress. Of course, it all turned out well in the end, as it usually does.

My lesson? Stop trying to squeeze every last penny! Take what you can get, be happy with what you have, and don’t worry about getting the very best price. Just get a really good one.

Readers, have you ever made a stupid mistake you thought ruined everything because you wanted to do too much?

The credit score is a consumer’s lifeblood. Consumers with good credit can easily obtain loans with fantastic interest rates. A bad score can cost thousands of dollars over the life of a loan. While weak credit cannot be fixed overnight, concerted effort over time can increase a poor score. Here are three great ways to build credit:

1) Use a prepaid visa card. These cards are pre-loaded with money and won’t work unless they carry a credit balance. They are as convenient and safe as credit cards without the late fees, interest payments, and other charges. Secured credit cards not only teach the consumer good financial habits, but can also build credit history. For those whose credit prevents them from obtaining a regular credit card, a prepaid visa is a great stepping stone to financial health.

2) Obtain a credit report and fix incorrect information. Even small reporting mistakes can mar an otherwise solid credit history. Everyone can obtain one free credit report from each credit agency each year. Consumers should check their credit reports for false or incorrect information. Disputing these mistakes with the credit could significantly bump up a credit score. One place where you can get a credit report is at annualcreditreport.com, which gives you options for all three bureaus.

3) Obtain the services of a credit counseling and monitoring agency. These organizations will work with consumers to create a budget and financial plan to nurse credit back to health. A credit monitoring agency will continually update the consumer on any changes to his or her credit report. Monitoring keeps the consumer on top of his/her report while also providing protection against identity theft.

The truth is that there is no quick fix, but a solid history of responsibility use can go a long way when you’re looking to use that credit.

Money 411 is a personal finance blog provided free from AccountNow prepaid credit cards. Money 411 offers information and advice on credit repair, saving money, banking alternatives and more. For read more articles from Money 411, visit AccountNow at www.accountnow.com.

Schools are starting all over this week, and I spent the weekend at Maryland. Kinda weird going back and seeing the new freshmen. They’re so easy to pick out for a number of reasons: They have no facial hair, they talk about the best way to get back to the dorms, and they wear lanyards with their student IDs around their necks. Welcome back everyone, don’t spend all your money on liquor in the first week, go Terps!

On to this week’s links:

In addition to being a staff writer here, Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff actually writes great articles at her site as well! This one is a response to a Financial Samurai post about someone who called him cheap about not wanting a $5 coffee.

Flexo from Consumerism Commentary writes about why he doesn’t chase the highest interest rate. Awhile ago I wrote about why throwing every penny into savings isn’t worth it. In that case, it was the stress. This is take on why you should stick with a bank you like and not worry about small changes in interest rates.

Remember when stores set minimum purchase amounts and it was illegal? Well now that the new laws have gone into effect, that’s not the case anymore. Might Bargain Hunter lets us know that the minimum must be less than $10 however, so when the lady at the dry cleaners told me they don’t accept credit cards on anything below $15, she should be careful (although she can refuse my credit card for the 6.87 on my bill.)

Evan at My Journey to Million thinks that money can buy happiness. I like this theory and I think I’m in a better mood when I have no money. But what I especially liked about the post is the twitter comment he received in response. I saw it when it was posted and didn’t know what it was in reference to, but I immediately was drawn to it. Check it out.

Finally, check out J’s post at Budgets are Sexy to see what people searched for in Google and landed on his site. Not exactly personal finance related, but it’s a good time. Here’s my favorite search term from this week that landed someone on Sweating The Big Stuff: “no eating challenge.” They got to a post about not eating out for a week, which is what I hope this person was actually looking for. Otherwise..uh oh.