Swag

Photo by anarchosyn

In the interest of bringing you all things easy in savings, or in this case earnings, I present Swagbucks. What is Swagbucks? It's an online rewards program that gives you virtual credits for things like searching, surveys, shopping, watching videos/ads and more that can be redeemed for gift cards to a variety of businesses.

Now, if you're anything like me, you're thinking this must be some kind of gimmick. Which is exactly what I thought when Mrs. K told me about it. I've signed up for survey sites in the past only to end up wasting a few hours for a handful of pennies that I couldn't get out of my account. I can tell you from experience that Swagbucks is not like that.

I signed up for an account a little over two weeks ago and I already have $25 in Amazon gift cards. Pretty sweet for just doing my normal Internet searching, watching a couple ads, and maybe filling out a survey or two every day. I earn my swagbucks while watching TV. Instead of watching commercials, I use that time to grab a couple easy swagbucks.

You can be as active or passive in earning swagbucks as you want. The simplest thing is to just use the search engine and you will randomly get swagbucks when you search. If that's not enough for you then you can start watching some of the short videos. If you're looking for even more then you'll want to get into the survey taking. There is also a daily goal, say 50 swagbucks, that changes each day. If you reach the goal you get some bonus swagbucks. The best part about the goal is consecutive streak bonuses.  So if you continue to reach the daily goal for a week you get 25 swagbucks, two weeks 100 swag bucks, etc, etc.

I basically do what needs to be done in order to meet the daily goal and keep my consecutive streak going. Then I plan to use my earnings to fund the awesomeness of freshly ground whole bean coffee via Amazon. A nice, easy way to lower my monthly grocery bill.

If you feel like showing me some love, feel free to sign-up using one of the above links. I would then get a few swagbucks when you do for a little while. If you're having a bad day and don't feel in the love showing mood, that's fine too, we all have those days. Just google Swagbucks and sign up from there.

Are you already getting swagbucks? Are there any other good rewards programs that you're using?

Don't forget to vote on the weekly poll question.

Financial Fact Friday

Congratulations. Today you are witnessing the birth of a new series of posts. Like any birth there's probably going to be pain, screaming and someone might even pass out.

I actually just learned this first fact yesterday. Employee matching 401(k) contributions do not count towards your annual 401(k) contribution limits. Which is super fun because you can stuff even more money into your 401(k)! I feel like I probably should have known it before, since I have a personal finance blog and all. So if you already knew that, well done, well done indeed.

Here's another. I just read in Forbes magazine that Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin (three of Facebook's founders) lost $11 billion since the Facebook IPO, as of August 16th. If you don't know why they lost that money, or even if you do, watch the video below. Caution: there is a little salty language in a few spots.

Speaking of Forbes, one final fact. You know you're reading something out of your league when you come across an advertisement for chartered personal jet service and you drive a car without working air-conditioning, only one side-view mirror and a driver-side window that doesn't roll down. FACT!

What financial facts do you have to share this Friday?

Property Tax Assessment Day

Yesterday there was a strange man wandering through our home and, for once, it wasn't me. The real estate assessor had finally arrived. I say finally because we had received a letter in the mail three weeks ago that stated someone in a red car would be stopping by in a week to reassess our property for tax purposes. So we made the house look presentable and decided I would stop working in my pajamas until he arrived. After waiting patiently by the window for a week (after working from home for awhile people stopping by excites us, sort of like a dog), nobody showed. Another week went by, and I was ready to start working in my underpants, I mean pajamas, again. Good thing I held off one more day.

Once he finished I decided to go back and see how much the property taxes on our...property have changed over the years. Over the past five years, our fair market value has dropped 11% and our assessed value has increased 6.5%. That seems a little fishy. This year our assessment ratio, the ratio between the assessed versus market value, is 1.0217. Meaning we are paying property taxes on 2% more than our home is worth. Our mill rate, the amount taxed per dollar of assessed value, is .02159. So for every dollar our property is worth we are paying just over two pennies in property tax. This year our property taxes were about 2.17% of the market value of our property.

So do we want the assessed amount to go up or down? No, really, what do we want it to do? I kind of want it to go up so when it comes time to selling I can point at that number and say give me more money because it says so. However, then the property taxes will be higher for me and for a prospective buyer. Then the other part of me wants it to go down so that we have lower taxes to pay. But realist K knows that isn't going to happen. If our assessed value goes down I'm sure the mill rate will go up to make sure that the man gets his money.

How do your property tax figures compare?

Man With A (Meal) Plan

How many times a week do you look at your wife, husband, kid, dog and ask, "What should we make for supper?" Only to be asked in return, "I don't know, what do you want?" or in the dog's case "woof?". Then after going back and forth a few times you decide, screw it let's go get take out. Well, if this happens to you a lot, I have a potential solution. If it doesn't, you're a better man/woman/dog than I am.

Meal Planning

I'm sure there are a lot of different methods out there for planning meals for the family. The family, heh, sounds like the mafia, mmmmm italian food... Anyway, so yeah, lots of different methods available, here's what we do.

First we wrote down a list of all the meals that we make. Then after a week or so of meal planning we lost the list. It's still MIA. So now we have an electronic version. It's still a work in progress, but it shouldn't get lost anytime soon.

Now that we have a list we sit down on a Saturday or Sunday with the kitchen calendar (that's a calendar in the kitchen, not a calendar with pictures of kitchens because that's disturbing) and place meals we want to eat for each day over the next week. We usually plan on supper being enough for a leftovers lunch. Since we work from home, it makes a quick, easy lunch.

Once we have the week filled up, we make our grocery list based of what is needed from the meals on the calendar and BAM, all the supper questions are answered for the week, plus you have a grocery list made.

To further motivate you to join the meal planning club, I give you a list of benefits you will or should receive from doing so.

Save Money

• You will go out to eat less often, assuming you aren't including fast food restaurants on your list of meals you make and then adding them to the meal plan calendar. Hint: don't do that.
• You will save money on groceries by knowing what you need to get for the coming week and not just randomly throwing things in the cart.
• You will save money on extra trips to the grocery store for missing ingredients.
• You will save money by making your own meals from scratch and not buying prepackaged items.

Save Time

• No more staring blankly at the wife/husband/kid/dog trying to decide what to make for supper.
• No more staring blankly in the fridge searching for what to make after the wife/husband/kid/dog was less than helpful.
• Less time spent grocery shopping because of your super awesome focused list of items.
• Less time spent making extra trips to the grocery for missing ingredients from unplanned meals.

Save You

• Cooking your own meals more frequently because of a meal plan should result in healthier food intake because you are eating out less and eating less prepackaged grossness.
• It's a lot less stressful coming home from work (or upstairs from work, in my case) and already knowing what needs to be done to make supper happen.

I'm sure there are many other reasons that I'm not smart or awake enough to think of right now, but do you really need anymore?

What's your go-to meal? We've been on a garden-fresh veggie pizza kick lately.

Apple Butter Recipe

I can't believe it's not...oh wait it is.

We used Labor Day weekend to get caught up on some of our canning. You'll be hearing more about it in the next week or so whether you like it or not. So let's make it easy on everyone and just like it.

Last night we wrapped up the canning weekend by making some apple butter. I wasn't aware that this deliciousness even existed until last year when Mrs. K's sister gave us some that they made. We ran out of it pretty quickly, so this year we decided to make a little for ourselves.

First step is to get some apples. You'd think this would have been the easy part, and it should have been. We were planning to pick apples from Mrs. K's grandmother's apple tree. Simple enough, right? Well, we were so busy canning that before we knew it, it was dark out. You've heard of midnight golf or midnight bowling? We did some midnight apple picking. It's actually pretty fun. I'd like to tell you what kind of apples we have, but I have no idea.

Once you have your apples you have to peel and core them. One of those fancy torture-looking handle things is probably good for this, but we used the old-fashioned peeler and knife. After coring and peeling just throw them in the crock pot on high. Mix your sugars and spices in a bowl and add them to the pot. Then after an hour turn the crock pot down to low and let it sit for nine hours. We stirred it occasionally. I took a hand mixer to it at the end of the nine hours and, after splattering myself and 1/4 of the kitchen, decided to switch to a whisk.

Then it's just your basic canning that's left. They only need to be processed for five minutes and BAM you have a semi-healthy suit (or dress) to put on your toast.

Here's the recipe...

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

30 small-medium apples - I'm going to say it was one full standard issue sized crock pot

Note: We haven't sampled our apple butter so until I give you the go-ahead, proceed at your own risk. It does smell fantastic though.

What did you do on your Labor Day weekend?