The Winners!
This has been a fantastic contest with over 120 responses!
In cases where great ideas were submitted by more than one person, I tried to choose the first person to post it.
It was difficult to choose the winners, but here is what we came up with:
Ernest S. one points for finding ways to maximize his reward card take by charging things that his company reimbursed him for! I have always been a big advocate of using your credit card for other people’s spending that they reimburse you for, be it at dinner or for company expenses. Creative use of reward cards is a big winner in my book!
susan g wins for early purchases of Christmas gifts and decorations. How early? December 26th of last year. The point is that when you pay your cards off in full every month, and don’ t pay interest, you can save money in ways like these. The difference is prices between the 24th and the 26th is far greater than what your money earns in the bank, yet far less than what you would pay in interest on your purchases over the course of the year. I try to my snow tires when they are hugely discounted in the spring, for example.
eric starker came up with the idea of using the Bing cash back rewards, which are as much as 20%. There is a lot of buzz about Bing rewards, if not the service itself. If Microsoft wants to pay you to use their search engine, why not? I don’t know all the rules, but the promotion is that when you find stuff on Bing and later purchase it, a lot of it is eligible for big discounts. A lot of people have been saving big money this way on EBay.
mike wins for using his credit card to gift cards at the grocery store, where he gets 5% cash back on all purchases. Of course, he could the gifts himself with the gift cards, but either way 5% is 5%. The point is, you can maximize your rewards by ing gift cards at categories of stores that offer higher reward percentages.
matt wins for selling stuff on EBay and Craigslist. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have too much stuff and not enough cash. I like to collect all of my stuff to EBay and take pictures and list it at once. If all goes well, I only have to make one or two trips to the post office to get rid off all of it.
Bre’ wins for mentioning many of my favorite savings tips. High value coupons, rebates, and my favorite, never carry a balance. I am a big fan of high value coupons. You won’t catch me clipping ten cents here or fifty cents there, but I will jump at two for one dinners at a good restaurant. Then, she even gives away free sample products as gifts. Good stuff!
Peter wins for having some great travel and EBay tips. He saved big time on his Disney World trip, and minimized souvenir purchases by pre-ing his kid’s stuff on EBay. One of my biggest pet peeves is ing overpriced souvenirs at tourist traps. I understand that kids will always love Disney, but ing your souvenirs there will never be a bargain.
MommyMel wins for using her Transit Flexible Spending Account through her employer. If you don’t know, they work just like health savings accounts. She seems to be using it both to save on taxes and as an informal savings account that she withdraws from during the holiday season.
GeorgeB wins for utilizing some of the frequent flier travel tricks that I am always uncovering. He figured out that you have to book anything near the holidays way in advance when using reward tickets.
pat wins for taking a holistic approach to online shopping. pat points out that free shipping isn’t always the best bargain, you have to take prices and taxes into account. The promo code trick seems to work on almost every web site. Finally, there is the ship to store option that most people don’t consider. When ing large or heavy items, store pickup is a great way to go.
Congratulations to the winners and thank you to American Express Charge Cards and Membership Rewards for helping us with this contest!
We will be getting in touch with the winners as soon as possible to arrange the shipment of your new Flip Video Cameras!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone who participated.
