Early Adopter
Feb. 25th, 2008 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebWe tried to watch a Blue-Ray movie yesterday. Turns out that those put out by Lion's Gate have a known issue which keeps us from being able to play it with any of the stuff we have. There's some paid version of one of the things that's supposed to work, but we have only the free version.
That's yet another reason I'll never be an early adopter. The other obvious reasons are 1) I'm a cheapskate and 2) I don't like change. However, I also hang around cool people and I'm not an idiot so this trait of mine is not as extreme as it could be.
I do think there might be one area in which I do want to become more of an early adopter, and that's finance. For example, I wish I'd gotten an ING Direct online savings account a bit sooner. And the first I-bonds had really good interest rates (3% or more above inflation). I think new financial instruments have better deals to entice people to try something new. So the trick is to figure out which new things are as good as they look and which are rip-offs or untrustworthy.
Now that I read a bunch of personal finance blogs, I'm in a good position to find these things out the easy way. If I'm good, I'll let you in on all these things.
I don't know of anything that new right now, but I can recommend rewards credit cards (check out a good summary of the best current deals). If you don't buy a lot of stuff, it's not as exciting as if you do, but even I earned $125 in cash back last year. (Yea for putting charitable contributions on your credit card!) This only works if you pay off your whole card on time each month or the interest rates and/or fees will more than devour your rewards.
There's a whole other class of financial stuff I'm just starting to toy with that is attractive to coupon queens and people who put their names on thousands of mailing lists just in order to get free samples of things. So far I'm having a little luck with mypoints.com, which works so long as you don't get sucked into spending your money on the thousands of offers you see. Even I have been sucked in twice: buying a DVD I'd already planned to buy and buying an Entertainment Book, which we sometimes get.
The other similar thing I'm looking into is working the drug store ads. See, for example, CVS 101 for a tutorial on working CVS specials. I don't like enough of the stuff at CVS to have benefited much from this, but it's looks promising, and since Money Saving Mom does all the work, I do keep up with her blog in case one week the perfect things are on special.
Like this month there's a really good deal on Sambucol. Has anyone tried this? And this week there's a sale on the CVS brand of Airborn, too. I've heard some of you talking about Airborn, but what does it do for you?
Today I also asked my credit union about the penalty for early withdrawal from their CDs (actually "certificates"). That has changed since last time I got one--now the penalty is six months interest for CDs with a duration of over six months; in the past that big penalty was only for CDs with a duration of over one year. Shorter-duration CDs have a penalty of three months of interest. And if you haven't yet earned that much interest, you only have to pay all the interest you've earned so far. So, one-year CDs are not as attractive as they once were, although the web CDs do have a significantly higher interest rate than my online savings accounts. I'll have to think about what to do next.
Enough rambling. I'm fluffy-headed again. I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning because it seems like people shouldn't be sick for over two weeks from the flu. Maybe they'll know what's up and magically fix it and then my journal entries will magically become good.
Hey, it's good to think positively. Hush.
P.S. I keep typing "early adapter." Guess that's what it feels like.
That's yet another reason I'll never be an early adopter. The other obvious reasons are 1) I'm a cheapskate and 2) I don't like change. However, I also hang around cool people and I'm not an idiot so this trait of mine is not as extreme as it could be.
I do think there might be one area in which I do want to become more of an early adopter, and that's finance. For example, I wish I'd gotten an ING Direct online savings account a bit sooner. And the first I-bonds had really good interest rates (3% or more above inflation). I think new financial instruments have better deals to entice people to try something new. So the trick is to figure out which new things are as good as they look and which are rip-offs or untrustworthy.
Now that I read a bunch of personal finance blogs, I'm in a good position to find these things out the easy way. If I'm good, I'll let you in on all these things.
I don't know of anything that new right now, but I can recommend rewards credit cards (check out a good summary of the best current deals). If you don't buy a lot of stuff, it's not as exciting as if you do, but even I earned $125 in cash back last year. (Yea for putting charitable contributions on your credit card!) This only works if you pay off your whole card on time each month or the interest rates and/or fees will more than devour your rewards.
There's a whole other class of financial stuff I'm just starting to toy with that is attractive to coupon queens and people who put their names on thousands of mailing lists just in order to get free samples of things. So far I'm having a little luck with mypoints.com, which works so long as you don't get sucked into spending your money on the thousands of offers you see. Even I have been sucked in twice: buying a DVD I'd already planned to buy and buying an Entertainment Book, which we sometimes get.
The other similar thing I'm looking into is working the drug store ads. See, for example, CVS 101 for a tutorial on working CVS specials. I don't like enough of the stuff at CVS to have benefited much from this, but it's looks promising, and since Money Saving Mom does all the work, I do keep up with her blog in case one week the perfect things are on special.
Like this month there's a really good deal on Sambucol. Has anyone tried this? And this week there's a sale on the CVS brand of Airborn, too. I've heard some of you talking about Airborn, but what does it do for you?
Today I also asked my credit union about the penalty for early withdrawal from their CDs (actually "certificates"). That has changed since last time I got one--now the penalty is six months interest for CDs with a duration of over six months; in the past that big penalty was only for CDs with a duration of over one year. Shorter-duration CDs have a penalty of three months of interest. And if you haven't yet earned that much interest, you only have to pay all the interest you've earned so far. So, one-year CDs are not as attractive as they once were, although the web CDs do have a significantly higher interest rate than my online savings accounts. I'll have to think about what to do next.
Enough rambling. I'm fluffy-headed again. I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning because it seems like people shouldn't be sick for over two weeks from the flu. Maybe they'll know what's up and magically fix it and then my journal entries will magically become good.
Hey, it's good to think positively. Hush.
P.S. I keep typing "early adapter." Guess that's what it feels like.