Today is a great day for everyone. For me, I got a snow day. As I’m sure you’ve heard, we’ve been experience snowmageddon here in D.C., but I wasn’t able to participate in the joy because I’ve had work every day this week. Until now. So I’m going to catch up on some work, pay some bills, and get a little extra sleep.

For you, I have a great post. My favorite posts are ones where I teach a lesson by using a personal example. And that’s exactly what I have for you today.

A friend told me he was looking for a new camera, so we did a little investigating and found something reasonable. Our only requirements were that it was small, look sleek, and have a rechargeable battery. Several camera fit the bill, but the Canon SD 1200 was the best of the bunch. It was rated better than the other cameras, but that quality also came with a price: $180.

I use several different ways to find great deals. My first stop is Google shopping. I organize by price and see what the lowest going rate is. $160 for the camera. Slightly lower than Staples, but nothing to brag about.

My second stop is Slickdeals. These people don’t leave any rock unturned and have the best deal. Since these are users submitting deals, you know you’re getting the sneakiest, best deals around.

Using Slickdeals, I found the camera for $180 at Staples, but it came with a $50 VISA debit card. Realistically, the dropped the price to $130.

But these people weren’t done yet. They also mentioned a rebate for people who had previously bought and registered a camera with Canon. Since I had the Canon SD1000 I was eligible for $20 off. That bought the realistic price down to $110.

$70 off the sticker price was great, right? My friend was ready to make the transaction, but I told him patience was a virtue and that I’d look for one more thing.

With all the sneaky deals these people thought of, they did leave out one possibility: getting a coupon from the store. While I didn’t have any Staples coupons, I was able to find a $30 off $150 coupon that I could buy for $3.49. I wasn’t sure it would work out, but I bought it anyway because it’s a low risk, high reward type of transaction.

So this is how it worked out: From $180, the $30 off $150 coupon was applied first, bring the price down to $150. Then the $50 debit card brought it down to just $100. Finally, the $20 Canon rebate reduced the price to $80. Add in the $3.49 to bring the total price to $133.49 in return for the camera and a $50 VISA debit card, or a net $83.49.

My friend was ecstatic and I was very proud of myself for helping out. I’ve gotten great deals before, but a 53% discount for a total of $96.51 off was something even I’m amazed at.

What tools do you use to find great deals?

Please head over to Free Money Finance and vote for me in the current games of the March Money Madness contest. My post is “How to Save Money on Wireless Carriers”. Thanks!

Every morning, from as far back as I can remember until I left for college, my parents would have a cup of coffee in the morning. Occasionally they would have a cup in the evening as well, and I can only imagine how many cups they drank at work (My mother is a fourth-grade teacher, my father occasionally deals with insane criminals).

I hate the smell of coffee. I’ve never had a cup in my life. Out of the four sips I’ve ever taken, I’ve wanted to vomit after each one. I don’t support Starbucks. In fact, I boycott Starbucks as much as possible. It’s not hard considering that I don’t drink coffee, but it gave me a great excuse when my mother asked me to go out and get her a cup.

Dropping the Habit

I tried everything to get my parents to get rid of the awful stench at home. I told them it would ruin their teeth, I told them it was a gateway to opium, and I told them they wouldn’t be able to retire because of it.

Clearly none of my efforts worked, but recently my mother started drinking instant coffee exclusively and it made me think about that third excuse I gave them: how much drinking coffee really cost them.

Calculating it Out

My conservative estimate was two cups of coffee a day. Every single day. For 20 years. I’m sure they drank more than two cups sometimes, and I know they did it for more than 20 years. But we have to start somewhere, and I don’t want to be the guy who completely blows things out of proportion to try and prove a point. This is not a scientific study. Actually, I haven’t done the calculations yet, but here we go:

A few more assumptions:

• Each week consisted of 11 home-brewed cups and 3 cups at Starbucks (or Dunkin Donuts, or wherever).
• The average cost of a pound of coffee is $10 and provides 32 cups of coffee.
• The average cost of a cup of coffee is $2. My parents would laugh at people who got the “tall.”

So the average week was 22 cups of home-brewed coffee and 6 cups of store-bought coffee. That comes out to $6.87 for home brewed per week and $12 for store bought, for a total of $18.87.

My first thoughts are WOW, that’s a lot of money for 6 cups of coffee. The home-brewed stuff was a bargain!

Their coffee habit was costing them about over $75 a month, or about $985 per year, or $19,683 over 20 years. Damn.

But how much would it have been for the instant stuff? It costs about $7 for a can, which makes 21 cups. So $0.33 per cup. Slightly more than home brewed. Still, it comes out to $486 per year, or $9,733 over 20 years.

After all of this, it looks like $486 per year for coffee is rather insignificant. If you do anything for 20 years, the costs are going to look high, but I honestly expected the costs to be higher.

Early Retirement? Not Quite

My conclusion is that my parents’ drinking habit didn’t cost them an early retirement. My focus should have been on them brewing their own coffee instead of buying it 3 times a week, but the trade-off of having that stench in the house more often may have been too much for me.

The main takeaway is that people are getting ripped off every morning when they drink coffee. There is barely any difference between home-brewed and instant coffee (home-brewed is actually cheaper!), but there’s a HUGE difference between home-brewed and store-bought!

Brew it yourself! Why pay $2 per cup when you could pay $0.33? Is the convenience worth the 500% markup?

I recently read Vanguard’s article about debt and spending, and it was no surprise that it brings up the idea that people are not as rational as economists and authors think.

There’s a reason that so many Americans are in debt and the savings rate is so low.

There are several examples of people acting irrationally. The first example is of MIT students give the opportunity to buy Celtics tickets at auction. Half were told they must pay in cash while the other half could pay with a credit card. On average, the credit car bidders were willing to pay more than twice as much for the Celtics tickets than the cash bidders.

I’ve read about several people who decide to cut up all their credit cards and go with a cash only system, but I had no idea that this was such a big problem for everyone. I’d like to think that I’m immune to the problem, but this study shed some light on situation and is making me rethink whether I too spend significantly more when I use my credit card.

The second situation deals with a windfall. Harvard students who were given a $50 “tuition rebate” spend just $7 in the first week, while those who were given a “bonus” of $50 spent and average of $31 in the same time period.

I know exactly how I’ll spend my “bonus” windfall, and am planning on sticking my entire tax refund (~$400) into emergency savings. While I will only be spending 10% of my bonus on myself, I definitely see the rebate as getting money back because I overpaid rather than a bonus for something I did well, which deserves a reward.

The 3rd example of 68% of respondents being willing to drive 20 minutes to save $5 on a $15 calculator as opposed to 29% who would be willing to drive the same amount to save $5 on a $125 jacket makes no sense to me.

20 minutes is too much of a hassle to save $5 on a calculator. Once I’m in the store, I don’t feel like going so far out of my way for what I need. My solution to this question would be to stay home and find a better price on the Internet.

The last example is of Cornell students in 1985 who, whlie at the beach, were willing to pay an average of $2.65 for a beer when they think it comes from a fancy resort hotel, while only $1.50 if they think it comes from a run-down grocery store.

When I’m out with friends, I’m definitely willing to spend more because it’s part of the experience, while I’d never dream about spending $5 for a bottle of beer when in the comfort of my own kitchen.

We’ve learned some interesting lessons from this, and it’s clear that people aren’t rational with their money. Make conscious decisions about what you spend, the leave the credit card at home if you’re tempted to break it out, and most importantly, for cheap beer, go back to 1985.

This article referenced some of the top colleges in the country, so I’ll end with the only Ivy League joke I know:

A Harvard man and a Yale man are at the urinal. They finish and zip up. The Harvard man proceeds to the sink to wash his hands, while the Yale man immediately makes for the exit.

The Harvard man says, “At Hah-vahd they teach us to wash our hands after we urinate.”

The Yale man replies, “At Yale they teach us not to piss on our hands.”

Even Ivy Leaguers are irrational sometimes.

Wednesday marks 6 months at my job and makes me eligible for the second half of my signing bonus. It’s nice to know that I am now a full employee and eligible for all of the benefits as everyone else. I’m actually not sure which I’m more excited about. But what should I do with the extra money? It’s not much, but it is enough that I can spend it in a variety of ways and get a lot out of it.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

I can:

• Stick it all in my emergency savings and build up the $5,000 fund about 2 months sooner than expected.
• Buy a decent new HDTV for the apartment. Or clothing
• Pay down some of my debt.
• Invest it.

I am already on a regular investing plan and feel that bumping that up isn’t necessary. If I’m going to go that route, I might as well pay off some of my student loans. However, my student loans are at $23,000 and a small hit to that won’t make much difference in my life. Paying it off 5 months early doesn’t sound like much when that 5 months will happen many years from now.

I want to spend it in ways that I’ll notice, as a bonus to myself, but I don’t want to spend it all in one place and come away with nothing.

I’ve decided that I am going to use some of that money to buy some new clothes. I need a new pair of work pants and a few new shirts, which I will definitely enjoy wearing. I don’t need to dress too nicely, but I like the thought of looking clean and professional. 30% of the windfall will go towards clothing.

I also am interested in building up my emergency fund a little more. I would be very happy to know that every month, my funds can go towards other goals than simply protecting myself in case of an emergency. So I will be sticking the remaining 70% there and should be fully funded by April.

By using some of my windfall for clothing, I will be congratulating myself on a job well done while not going overboard and spending it all. I think it’s important to spend money on things that make us happy, and this gives me the clothes I want now and will likely reduce future clothing expenses in the coming months because I will already have what I’ve been looking for.

By putting the other 70% of my bonus in emergency savings, I’ll be that much closer to my goal and when I look at my accounts on Mint, I’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that the money is making a difference in my life.

If you had $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000 deposited in your bank account today, what would you do with it?

In 6th grade, I tried hard to impress my friends. I would often do silly things and go to great lengths to get their approval. One time, I got on a treadmill and set the speed to maximum, only to slip, fall, smack my face on the treadmill, fly backwards, and create a hole in the wall with my foot.

It was a crazy ordeal that sent me to the hospital and left me with dimples from the treadmill on my chin for a few days, and more importantly, a chipped tooth. I’m not talking about a small chip either. My tooth was chopped in half and I looked ridiculous for a little while, but after a few days I had the tooth fixed, the dimples disappeared, and I came out the other end ok.

Now, 11 years later, I’m still paying for that mistake. Two years ago, I chipped it while wrestling with a friend, three months ago, I chipped it on a pretzel, and finally, on Monday, while I was eating cereal, I chipped it again. It’s extremely frustrating each time, and more than anything, I’d like to find a permanent solution so eating an apple without worrying about the consequences could be a serious possibility.

Nobody wins when we try to impress our friends. Having an accident is a worst-case scenario, but when talking about money, there can be plenty of consequences, too.

If we try and keep up with our friends and spend money, we won’t come out ahead. In fact, in trying to keep up, we may end up falling behind. If we spend a lot of money on a fancy new car every two years, we’re spending money to impress other people. The same goes with a big house we may not need, a snazzy new watch, and clothes above what we need. By spending a lot of money on these things instead of contributing more to retirement or other savings goals, you’ll keep up with your friends now, and you may even impress them, but what will the consequences be 20, 30, or 40 years down the road? I now have to worry about when the next time my tooth will break instead of being able to enjoy pizza crust worry-free, all because of a silly mistake I made 11 years ago. What will your mistakes cost you?

Don’t fall behind so that your friends will like you more. If they need you to have a fancy car and an iPhone to like you, do you really want to be friends with them? You can live very happily if you go without the “stuff” and focus on the activities you like and the people you love.

A few months ago, Lauren was due for a new pair of sneakers, so she went on Zappos and picked out the pair she wanted. I took a look, and told her I would find her a better price. Instead, she got impulsive and bought the shoes without even letting me find a coupon. I was a little annoyed because I figured that she could have done better.

Generally, I’m a big supporter of waiting before making purchases. For electronics, waiting is almost always a good idea. Prices always decrease, and if you wait a few weeks, you can almost always find a sale on the item you want.

Turning back to our sneaker example, it turned out that Zappos did in fact have the best price on that specific shoe. Plus, their overnight shipping (she a VIP) meant she got the shoes 3 or 4 days before she would have otherwise gotten them. So, Lauren: You were right. This time. But this is the exception. Well, buying airline tickets is usually the exception. The best deals for that are usually found at least 3 weeks before the date of travel.

But I still think that generally, it’s best to be diligent with your purchases. Find a coupon, find free shipping, wait for a sale, and you’ll get the satisfaction of knowing you got a great price.

The other advantage of waiting is that if you wait 3 days and realize that you don’t really need that new video game, you won’t have that buyer’s remorse. You’ll be able to stick that credit card back into your pocket and save yourself from buying something you didn’t truly want.

Are there times when you waiting too long would actually cost you money?

This time of year, lots of people have gift cards for various stores. This can lead to losing the cards, not using them for a year, or using them, but buying something that exceeds the amount on the gift card.

Here are some easy ways to get the most out of your gift cards:

1. Keep Track Of Them

Keep them in a drawer, an envelope, or your wallet so they are all located in the same place. If you leave them all over the house, you are bound to lose track of your cards and let them go to waste.

2. Buy necessities

Don’t buy just anything with your gift cards. Instead, start with what you would already have bought. With a Target card, restock your shampoo or buy groceries. This essentially turns your gift cards into cash, which is what you honestly wanted anyway.

3. Buy On Sale

Use your card before the post-holiday sales disappear. Don’t wait until February when the prices will go back up. This year especially, stores won’t have as much excess merchandise because they began the season with smaller inventories.

3. Stay Under Your Budget

Some people say that leaving $2 on your card is just a waste of money. I say that making a $60 purchase with a $50 gift card is a waste of $10, so try to get the most out of your cards, but don’t spend extra money on the transaction if it means you have to pay for your own gift.

4. Trade, Sell, Or Regift Them

If you don’t need your gift cards, try regifting them. Maybe someone else can get the most out of it. If not, head over to thegiftcardtrader, cardhub.com, or plasticjungle.com and try to trade your card for one you actually want, or sell it at a discount and get cash in your pocket.

Today, I learned an important lesson about negotiating. A family member asked me to help her with her AT&T bill because she thought she was spending too much on her phone service, and after taking just a quick look, I realized that there were savings of $80+ just by cutting out unnecessary services. I’m not talking about optional services; it’s not my job to judge how people spend their money, if they think browsing the Internet on their phones is necessary, that’s their prerogative.

The $80 in savings was based on simply dropping services that were on the account but were never used. 3 of the accounts on the family plan were to enable international calling, even though nobody had been out of the country in the past 6 months. One account had unlimited Internet usage on it, although that person never used the service, and the family had 10,000 rollover minutes because their 3,000 minutes-per-month plan was simply too large.

By activating the free AT&T A-List feature (free calls to any 10 numbers on any network) and decreasing the monthly service to 2,100 minutes, they were able to save $30 each month. The international plans were dropped, saving another $15 per month (plus another $40 for charges from previous months that they were able to drop), and the Internet savings added another $10. All that adds up to $55, just by looking over the bill! I encourage you to look over your monthly bills every few months, there could be big savings just by dropping unused features!

I often hear that men are like children, but for a change, it’s time to turn things around. With a personal finance perspective, of course.

Right now, my girlfriend has one year of school left while I graduated this past May and have started working. I’m startled by the amount of money I’m able to save after saving for retirement, paying student loans, rent, etc. So what am I doing with my money? A little bit of everything. But I also know that I can pay for some memorable experiences with Lauren. Or I can buy her fantastic presents that she’ll love for a little bit.

Recently I got her earmuffs and a new camera after she left hers on an airplane. For me, it seems like since I can easily afford to pay for the things she needs, why shouldn’t I? Am I really able to say to myself that she should take care of it herself even though she’s still in school and is only racking up more debt? Of course it’s not my responsibility, but why not make her happy?

Well, if I continue down this path, I will be no better than the parent that spoils their child. And it could spell disaster later on.

I’ve been struggling with this question quite a bit. But I know that the more I spoil her, the more she will be entitled, and the less she’ll rely on herself. Then, instead of me being nice and buying her things, it will become a pattern, it will lose it’s specialness, and it will feel more like a burden than a gift.

Do you think I’ll be able to control my urge to spend? Or will I get smart and realize that the occasional gift will be more meaningful?

I’ve never been much of a shopper. I hate the idea of spending an entire day at the mall looking for one or two items. I don’t shop until I know exactly what I need. My underwear is disintegrating? OK, I’ll get exactly what I need, nothing more. I’m the king of not buying on impulse.

Last year, I wanted to get a book and a shirt. The book was Will Schwalbe’s “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.” The shirt was just a polo to replace an old one in my closet. I set out for the mall, which had a Barnes and Noble and an Old Navy next to each other. I set out and found the book, but it was $17. It’s a tiny book. A great book, but tiny. There was no way I was going to spend $17 on something I would read in 2 hours. So I went next door and found the polo shirts. O wait, I didn’t because they were all out of my size. I drove home, disappointed that my shopping trip had been a disaster.

I went online, and found the book on $8. And the polo shirt was easy to find for a great price. In the color and size that I wanted. Oh, and the Internet was not sold out of my size. So I had to wait a few extra days, but I learned an important lesson: It rarely pays to leave the house.

OK, so that’s not quite true. For clothing, it’s always nice to try something on before you buy it. But in this situation, I thought it was nice to know that I could always find stuff for cheaper online and never have to deal with the hassle of driving, parking, and navigating my way through a bunch of middle-aged moms. The advantage of getting my book and shirt that day was greatly outweighed by the extra cost I would have to pay to buy it from the store.

Before you run off to the mall, decide how important it is that you get that item immediately and whether maybe you’d be better off waiting a few extra days to save yourself both the money and the hassle of having get yourself to and from the store.