Today’s interview is with a fellow Yakezie member and one of my favorite bloggers, Evan from My Journey to Millions. Once I got into the blogging scene, his was one of the first I read, and we’ve developed a nice friendship through the Yakezie that has been great for both of us.

What’s the most frustrating personal finance experience you’d had recently?

The most frustrating personal finance experience I have had recently is the general well being of my 401(k). I am young so I know I can’t touch it for a LONG while, but watching it stay the same despite throwing money at it…

If you could go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing (about personal finance or not), what would it be?

Oh man, I’d LOVE to talk to 20 year old Evan. I would tell him ‘come on buddy you have got to save your cash!’ 20 year old Evan was a fraternity punk who was fine with going out 4 to 5 nights a week. Even if I just inspired 20 year old Evan that it was ok to drink, but that if he just did it not at a bar for two of those nights, man, the money I would have saved!

What is one thing you splurge on?

What do I splurge on? This question literally made me laugh aloud. It is funny because my friends call me cheap all the time, but compared to other PF Bloggers I am a spending fool. While I consistently turn friends down for Peter Lugars, The Wife and I go out to dinner multiple times a week.

Recently you’ve tweeted about going to both Yankees and Mets games. I’m a diehard Yankee fan. So what’s your deal?

I am not sure why, but I am always shocked that people read my tweets. While I have gone to multiple Met games and a Yankee game recently, I actually don’t favor one over the other. I am not a baseball fan but who turns down a free/or near free sporting event. I am a HUGE football fan, and while I always watch and cheer for the Jets and Giants, I am a big Atlanta Falcon Fan.

What are your two favorite posts?

I have been writing for 2 years so it is nearly impossible to narrow it down. From this year, I’d have to go with Four Words in Personal Finance that Piss me Off…and The Wife Says them All the Time and Three Common Qualities of High Net Worth People. They were pretty popular so I must have been doing something right!

Thanks Evan!

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 in between.

As a zero-based budgeter, I am sometimes asked what we do with any windfalls that may pop up. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, but now we have a plan.

Mr. BFS and I sometimes have a few hundred dollars at the end of the month that is just leftover – extra cash after all our savings goals and expenses are covered. Most of this extra usually comes from the sports officiating Mr. BFS does after work but now a little of it is from my blog as well. :-)

Anyway, for almost a year we just socked the extra away into the emergency fund, but hubby once complained that his extra work didn’t seem to be bringing him any extra money (“fun” money specifically). I don’t have as many hobbies as Mr. BFS, so I had never really thought about it like that. After talking about it, we came up with a system that has worked really well for us so far.

We put 50% towards our emergency savings and/or mortgage depending on how much is in the emergency account. If we don’t have at least $10,000 in the emergency fund, we put it all towards that since $10,000 is the bare minimum for us to feel secure. If that is taken care of, we split the 50% between the emergency fund and the mortgage as we see fit. Another 25% goes to our vacation account and the last 25% is split between our two individual fun money accounts.

This has been working well, but we will now be getting four “extra” paychecks each year – we are both paid biweekly on the same day since he got his new job. We agree (in fact, hubby brought it up) that $2500 just seems like a ridiculous amount to add to fun money accounts, so we will probably be putting those four paychecks a year into a second Roth IRA.

As I was writing this up, I noticed that Daniel even has noted in that he was thinking of putting some “extra” money either in savings or towards a want, specifically an iPhone.

I also came across 4 Ways to Maximize Your Stop Loss Pay at No Debt Plan and thought Kevin had some good ideas too:

1) Put it Where Your Budget Needs It
2) Pay Down Debt
3) Save It – emergency fund or Roth IRA
4) Buy a CD and think about your options

What do/would you do with some monthly extra? Would that answer change if it was a few thousand dollars or more?

This month, I never got a credit card bill. I didn’t get my usual monthly email with my statement. There was no minimum payment due. Nothing.

I completely got out of paying my credit card bill for a month.

This isn’t a huge deal as I’m not investing that extra money over the next month and I surely won’t be risking it on a single stock (although that does sound kind of cool).

Still, if I could accidentally get off without making a credit card payment, I’m sure there are a ton of other people who need an extra month to get the money or who might want to risk the one-month investment.

So how did I do it?

After not receiving the bill, I called up my credit card company asking why I wasn’t sent a bill. They said that my billing cycle was changing and this is just a side effect. I completely forgot that I changed my due date from the 4th of the month to the 1st. It’s not a big change, but I like having all my bills due at the same time, so I requested it.

What I didn’t realize is that when I requested the change, they would skip the billing date on the 4th and make my next billing date on the following 1st.

Had I requested payments to be due by the 7th, they would have simply put off the bill for 3 days. But since I asked for it earlier in the month, it actually got put off for 28 days.

Readers, will anyone try this move to get an extra few weeks before having to pay the bill? Would you try it around Christmas time? Or do you enjoy the regular cycles and automatic payments?

I was finally able to activate my iPhone on Friday. I waited 2 weeks because the AT&T people said that since this is my brother’s upgrade (one of my other family members used mine a while back), activating the phone would deactivate his. Not a huge problem, but when he came back from camp on Thursday, I was all set.

We had extra sim cards for each of us, and we did a 3 way call with AT&T…but the system was down. After negotiating a $36 credit to our account for all the stress and frustration (1 hour of frustration + 12 more hours without my phone was totally worth it), I went to the AT&T store today.

Without even thinking, the guy was able to activate my phone without deactivating my brother’s. So they made me wait 2 weeks for nothing and the process was less than a hassle than they thought it would be. Very cool. Now it’s time to sell my iPhone 3G S for profit. Any takers?

While I haven’t been jailbreaking my iPhone and using FaceTime, here’s what I’ve been reading:

Since I’m in love with the topic and Neal over at Wealth Pilgrim keeps churning out excellent posts, here’s another one about how to get great financial planner jobs. He gives a backdoor into the profession. I like it because it’s much less of a risk than starting of on 100% commission.

Len Penzo writes about another of my favorite topics: how to get credit card interest charges waived. I always knew it worked, and had a vague idea why, but Len does a fantastic job of breaking it down into simple terms and showing why people with high credit scores are worth so much to credit card companies.

Over at Green Panda Tree House, MD writes about what to do upon graduating college. I read a ton of personal finance articles when I started working, but I wish I had this article back then. It’s exactly what graduating students need to do upon joining the work force.

Money Reasons writes about creating an entrepreneur snowball. I like the story of how he started an online business and has used it to fund other online businesses. It sounds like the guy who bought started with a paperclip and ended up with a house by trading stuff on craigslist.

The guest post is by Annie Wallace who blogs on viral marketing for moms as well as loves collecting DIY gadgets.

I know, this blog is rather about saving money than spending – but for the most part smart shopping is the most effective way to save! You can save a penny each day by not buying something and then lose three thousands in one minute once you are get scammed!

As with anything in life, online shopping has its advantages and disadvantages. You can shop from the comfort of your own home, search multiple stores all at once, compare prices and find discount vouchers for various products at the click of a button.

The main disadvantage is that if you’re not aware of the dangers, then you’re at risk of falling for a scam. There are plenty of scammers out there, so we’ve put together ten ways of avoiding them…

1. Avoid spam emails – Companies should only be emailing you with offers if you’ve subscribed to their newsletter, or have actively opted to receive them. If you get unsolicited mail then just delete it, as it could be a scammer posing as that company, just to get your bank details. If you do like the look of an offer, delete the email and visit the company’s website in your browser instead – that way you’ll find out if it’s for real.

2. Check for encryption – When it comes to entering your card details, address or anything sensitive about yourself, there’s one simple check you should make. The web address (URL) should begin with https://, as opposed to http://. The added ‘s’ means that it is secure, and encrypted by software that skews your details. This means it’s only available to your eyes, and the computer at the other end. If the site is not encrypted, then anyone can access the information.

3. Check for company information – all reputable companies will be proud to show what they’re all about, where they come from and how they can be contacted. At the bottom of the home page you should see links to pages like ‘About Us’ and ‘Privacy Policy’. They should also have a toll free customer service phone line, which shows they’re a grounded company, and not afraid to be contacted.

4. Check for approval certificates – These come from third party organizations, such as BBBOnline and TRUSTe and will be shown as a logo, or at the bottom of the homepage. Click the logo to visit their site, or google the name to see if it is an authentic certificate of safety and approval.

5. Look up the company – you can do this on websites that track well known (and lesser known) scammers, and report them worldwide. If you know of any phishing scams, or the like, you can contribute to these sites and stop others being caught out too. There are forums, websites and email newsletters available, and we recommend Scam.com for the latest news.

6. Listen to your instincts – once you’ve been shopping online for a while you’ll get to know what a reputable company’s website looks like. If something seems amiss, even if you can’t put your finger on it, then get out of there and do some background research. A decent company will hire a content writer that doesn’t make any spelling or grammatical mistakes, and they won’t need to have hundreds of adverts hanging around either.

7. Check shopping portals and communities – Take CouponSherpa for example: you can search the entire site for the shop name, and instantly find genuine consumer votes and ratings. If there’s nothing to be found, then you should be wary. This is a big site dedicated to online shopping, and it’s also moderated, so the information you find there is genuine.

8. Make use of your antivirus software – most antivirus software packages will offer safety for online shopping, and this is important. Pop ups on less-reputable sites could infect your computer, and without your knowing could view your credit details when you pay for an item..

If you’re in the market for new software and you’re a keen online shopper, go for one that offers the following:

• Assessment of a site’s reliability
• Alerts about possible privacy breaches
• Protection against spam and phishing scams
• Misleading advertising and offers

9. Be smart with your deals – finding a great money-off bargain is exciting, but don’t get carried away and click lots of links. You should firstly only use coupons that are from a reliable source (like a long running blog, or a solid reputable directory or a social voting site we mentioned above). If you collect coupons for a while, you will soon identify those reliable source; for me these long have been the following two: FreeShipping.org (my favorite deal! free shipping!) and Promo Codes (US-only). The best kinds of coupons are simply coupon codes, which you copy into a box at the checkout.

10. Last but not least, Google it – if you still can’t work out if a website or a coupon is ‘for real’ then just Google the name. Type keywords like ‘scam’ or ‘review’ after it to see if anything incriminating comes up. A reputable site should have honest reviews, indicating no problems with privacy.

If you’ve got any smart ways to ensure your safety when you’re shopping online then please let us know. Drop a comment in the box below!