cashcrate

Monday, February 23, 2009

Get your overdraft fee back

Sometimes, you probably forget the balance of your checking account, and get more money out of it than its balance. You will be charged overdraft fee from 25$ to 35$,depending on the bank. A girl in my group just made this common mistake, and she was charged 25$ overdraft fee by Bank of America. She is upset about that.

However, don't worry, you can get this fee back. I remember when I opened my account with Bank of America, they gave out a card, which allows you to get your first time overdraft fee back by presenting this card to the bank associate. I told the girl about this, and she made a call to a nice BOA agent, after the girl explained the overdraft charge appearing on her account,the agent said " sure, we will refund that money to you immediately", without asking any questions. The call took her only a couple of minutes and saved her 25$. I guess she will be more cautious next time.

Similarly, I got my late fee, over limit fee of my credit cards etc. back before by calling the customer service. It was not that hard. But still you should be more careful next time as it is not 100% guaranteed to get your fees back. But my point is that you could always call to see if they will help you out, this could save you a lot!!

thinking about extra money??

People couldn’t easily give up the opportunity to get some extra money, especially for our graduate students who live on assistantships. We could all use a little extra money every once in awhile. One of the more popular Get Paid To sites is cashcrate.com. By filling out surveys and completing trial offers, you can earn some extra money in your spare time. I just started this month; I would keep you posted how it goes. I have already earned 27.40$, I guess this is very good for beginner, although old members got more than a couple of hundred dollars each month.

1. Create a separate email for the cashcrate exclusively. Some of the survey or offers do require you provide a valid email address. Set up a new Gmail account or myway.com email accounts, so the advertisement or marketing offers sent to your email from time to time, which will not flood your regular email box.

2. Use shopsafe, virtual credit card number provided by your credit card company. As far as I know, schwab give out as many as virtual credit card number as the customer’s request. You can define the spending limit (2.00$ or more) and expiration date (in 2months etc.) It can definitely facilitate you to take advantage of the free trail offer or 1$ trial offer without worrying to be charged full monthly fee later on if you forgot to cancel. Citi also provide similar virtual credit card number which can guarantee your safe shopping experience.

3. Use some form fill out software. This could make you finish the survey or online offers much quicker. One good example of this kind of software is Roboform, it is absolutely free, and you can download here. Instead of typing your contact info in over and over again, just type it in once and Roboform will automatically fill in the form fields with the click of a button. This is easy.

4. You can also take advantage of their offer sorting tools, by payout amount, whether a credit card needed or not etc. The 100% free offer, such as short survey, could be quick, but the payout is also not that much. I took some short surveys and did get the credits. Some of them require credit card, but actually it is very easy and give out credit more generously and quick. You could use either your virtual credit card number or shopsafe I mentioned above. The offer I took last week were Yahoo Success Center , I had to pay 2.95$ for shipping and handling(they will delivery electronically), however I got paid 15 bucks for this purchase. I have already earned 24.40$ total since I joined last week.

5. You can also earn cashback by using the link it provided to make purchase at other merchant. I have already used a fatwallet, ebates, which are good and easy.
The most impressive cashback provided by cashcrate is walmart.com, which is 5% cashback. That means if you click the "go shopping" link under your account at cashcrate, and click on walmart.com, and make a purchase in 24 hours, you will be rewarded 5% cashback on your purchase. The cashback will be deposited on your cashcrate.com.

I will keep your guys posted for my progress; you can also share your tips. Thanks.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

First post

I am a graduate student in Massachusetts. I would like to share some frugal tips I gathered from time to time. Hope these tips can help you live a good quality life with less money.