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*Rant Alert!

Last week, owing to several issues that I had been having with AT&T, I finally decided to bid adieu to their UVerse TV service. I had been with Time Warner for a long long time and I just loved their service. Then, AT&T came out with an enticing offer (rebates etc!); so I bit the bullet and ordered their UVerse service. I had heard really good reviews from my friends about their revolutionary new TV service which let you record four programmes at the same time among many other things (help us with laundry, dishes etc.). Even though I never had to record four shows at the same time, my biggest frustration came from their HD broadcast. It looked worse than SD. Time Warner’s HD was hands-down a thousand times better than ATT HD. HD was not the only thing that made me pull the plug on ATT though.

My second biggest gripe with ATT was their customer service. Even though they have hundreds of corporate stores across the country and a handful in Austin too, there is no help available whatsoever from any of their stores. The stores are only to signup new customers and from there on, you are pretty much on your own. It takes a good 20-30 mins to get through their 800 number and their ‘offices’ are open only during regular business hours. In other words, you cannot call their 800 number after 6 o clock? What is this, the 70s? When we signed up for the service at one of their stores, the sales guy had told us he would get us a rebate of $300. That was too good an offer to refuse, so we signed up. Three months went by and there was no sign of any rebate. After trying a zillion times to get through to their customer service, I finally received my rebates, for $150. And that, after almost about five months. Their excuse was they did not have my apt # in their database! I wonder how those bills would arrive month after month, promptly, at the right apt #? Hmm! Time Warner, on the other hand, has a local access number and worst case scenario, you can just go to their local office and get your grievance addressed.

Even after ending my relationship with Uverse, my problems did not stop. This happened when I had to return their equipment. They have an ‘arrangement’ with UPS where in you need to find a UPS store and drop in all the equipment there. I had no issues with that. It’s no different than go to a local ATT store right? In fact, the UPS guy was quite nice to us. However, what frustrated me was that ATT did NOT require me to return any cables or the remote control. The UPS guy outright refused to ship the cables and remote back to ATT. According to ATT, the cables and the remote control are ‘yours to keep’. I’m sure ATT is trying to reduce UPS costs but do they really think it costs them less to manufacture another remote than to just ship it back? So, essentially, every AT&T customer in America ends up with a few hundred feet of telephone cable and a remote control for a cable box for good! After this ‘incident’(for the lack of a better word), I do not think we will be doing any new business with AT&T. I have wireless service with them but I have to stick with it just because I love my iPhone too much. I’m just waiting for my contract to get over at this point.

The Time Warner service got installed last week and I’m really glad to see some good quality HD broadcast now. Not to mention, TW is charging me $80 a month against $110 that ATT used to charge us. Total savings for the next 6 months that I plan to keep TW, 6X$30 = $180.

Guys,
Long time no see on the money experiment eh? Well, the money experiment is still kicking and screaming just that I haven’t been able to post updates as much I’d have liked to. We have been really busy campaigning for LSP lately.

Last year, I had built a desktop for myself. I got some of the best components out there and assembled a high-end quad-core desktop for my home-office. I shall post some pix soon. It was based on Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman’s desktop rigs. It is an awesome setup! However, after just about a year, my 24 inch monitor gave up. It was out of warranty by one week and Westinghouse did not entertain my request for a courtesy service (a rant post is coming your way pretty soon). Another thing that had never worked from day one was the NVIDIA 8600GTS video card that I had so excitedly added to the mix. I tried everything I could possibly try to fix it but to no avail. So finally I decided I was going to get a new card. However, I wanted to make sure that it was the card and not the motherboard that was faulty.

I went to Frys and got a 9400GT (512MB @ 550MHz). The damn thing worked like a charm on the very first attempt. I was thoroughly impressed with its performance even though it has a lower clock speed than the 8600GTS (550 Vs 700). But again I’m not a gamer so you’re asking the wrong person when it comes to video cards! By the way, this post is about the moolah that I saved on this card rather than my geek skills’ show off I got the card for $86.59 with taxes etc. A couple of weeks later I stumbled upon the same 9400GT but with 1GB memory on Buy.com that was selling for $65.10 shipping included. I promptly ordered the card and it arrived within 2 days. Yesterday, I went back to Frys, returned the card and said thank you very much. Just now I found that the card I bought on Buy.com has a $15 cashback as well!.

Total savings : $21.49 + $15 = $36.49. Sweet!

The above graph pretty much tells the story but since I have the bragging rights for my Money Experiment, I’m going to use them anyways If you have been following my Money Experiment, you might already know that I have been using several different techniques to come up with ways to save more and spend less money. In one of my articles, I had spoken about our exponentially increasing dining bills lately. The chart above is a standing testimony to our mammoth dining expenditure in the past 3 months or so. So, in January we decided it was time to take matter into our own hands and come up with a plan. The above chart shows how much we ended up spending on dining by the end of Jan.

We decided we were going to use cash instead of plastic for all our Dining expenses and allocated $200 at the start of the month. We told ourselves; that is all you are going to get for the rest of the month for eating out. If we ran over the budget, there was no other option than to eat at home. We weren’t too optimistic in the beginning and thought we will use up the cash in the first week or two itself and the plan would fall flat on its face. Then, as we started thinking more and more about it, it didn’t feel all that impossible. $200 a month meant $50 every week. We had decided we wouldn’t be eating out on weekdays, so that meant $50 every weekend. Somehow we had to make do with fifty bucks for the whole weekend. We had two options, eat at a cheap restaurant on both Saturday and Sunday nights or eat at a pricier one only on Saturdays. Then Khushi gave me a better idea, why not eat at a cheap place for 3 weeks (both days) and a little upscale one on the last Saturday of the month? That sounded like a brilliant idea. I also picked up a Restaurant.com gift certificate for $25 which kinda bumped up the budget a little. Not much, just a little.

To be honest, initially, there was a strong urge to give up. We were used to going out on all three days of the weekend. Not to mention the random trips on weekdays whenever we were bored or sore from a workout. After the first week, though, we started getting used to it. In fact, it was really exciting to wait all week for that one special Saturday night dinner. In the process, I picked up my long-lost hobby of cooking. The last time I had cooked was when I was in college. It was pretty enthralling to get back to cooking good food while also impressing your wife at the same time She never knew I could cook. Hehehe. Last week, we finally pulled our numbers out and we were really really surprised to see what we had spent on dining over the past four weeks. The total was $162. Yes, we had infact exceeded our expectations by 38 bucks. It did take a lot of discipline but at the same time, it was a mighty good experience, which I’d love to go through month after month . As a side effect, we have gotten a little leaner and our BMIs have come down considerably. Try it out yourself, you will have a great time.

In my first writeup on the money experiment, I had talked about two things that had made deep cuts into my financial life. One was buying way more stuff than was needed a.k.a overextending that I have already talked about here. The other one was buying stuff by paying more. Honestly, this was one of the most overlooked areas of my finances. For the most part, I’m an avid researcher when it comes to buying my stuff but never was price a part of the research. In fact, I used to ridicule coupon-hunters and rebate-chasers. Only after the experiment did I realize how much money could I have saved over the years had I been a little smart with my shopping sprees. Almost 40pc of the $1018 that I have scraped from the experiment has come from coupons and rebates. $400 in 50 days, that’s a whopping $3000 for the entire year! You might not believe me, but just keep a tab of how much money you saved by using your coupons and you will be amazed at the final number.

These days, before I shop, I use sites like www.deals2buy.com, www.slickdeals.net and www.cheapstingybargains.com. Now I know most of you already know about most ‘deal’ sites. What I also know is that you have been using those sites for the wrong purpose. Yes, you have been buying stuff just because they are on a deal or selling for cheap. That is not our mantra. Before you forget, let me reiterate our mantra. It is “do we need it?” The idea is to buy stuff, stuff you have been wanting to buy or you can put to good use, for cheap. Not buying any stuff that is cheap.

There are a few good sites dealing with coupons and cashbacks that can save you some dough. I particularly like www.retailmenot.com and www.ebates.com. I also use www.workingadvantage.com, an employer-subscribed deal site; talk to your HR department if they would be willing to enroll. And don’t forget the good old newspaper coupons. Or the ones that show up in your mail every day. We’ve saved quite a bit on Dash’s supplies using those Petsmart and Petco coupons. And last but not the least, the grocery store coupons that are printed on the back of the receipts. I just love them. I cut a coupon from my grocery receipts every month and use it towards my haircut. $5 coupons for a good $60 saving every year.

And the most important thing to do before pulling the trigger on a buy would be to compare prices through different vendors. You can use any of the popular sites like www.pricegrabber.com or www.bizrate.com. Do not forget to add up any shipping and handling fees before you buy. Many vendors have a lower retail price but shipping and handling charges can jack up the final price quite a bit.

What I have learned by now is, it’s OK to use coupons. It’s OK to save money. Every dollar that you save is essentially a dollar that you’ve made. I know it sounds cheesy but wouldn’t you like a $3000 raise this year?

Life is a beach and then you dive right? Well, tell you what? Loans are a bigger beach and diving is prohibited! The past 3 months or so, I have been trying really hard to get rid of my mammoth debt by cutting corners everywhere. I undertook the money experiment where I scraped about every darn place I could and ended up a 1000 dollars richer. I was ecstatic. That meant I was a 1000 dollars closer to debt-freedom. In fact, I am about 33 percent away from the day when I will have zero debt. Absolutely no debt that is. No mortgage, no credit cards, no car payments, no nothing. I have been dying to see that day every since I left home in 2000. That day is a big big deal for me. However, there have been quite a few roadblocks on the way to that goal. One such roadblock came about by my beloved credit card company Citigroup.

In my quest to consolidate everything into a single loan, last week, I made a balance transfer of 4k to my Citi account. They had a zero percent promotion until September of 09 and I had a couple outstanding balances on prime rates. So my brilliant brain thought, for a 3pc transaction fee, I could get a zero rate for 9 months. 4k in 8 months, that’s $500 a month for 8 months. Not a bad deal right? I did the transfer by paying a $120 transaction fee. Next week, I was expecting a balance of $4120 in my statement. But I see $4146 instead. They had charged me $26 in ‘finance charges’. I call them up asking them why the $26 in finance charges and this is the reply I get.

Since you had an existing balance ($2000) on the account and then you made a balance transfer of $4000, your new balance was $6000. However, you did make a payment of $2000 which we have promptly applied towards the $4000 @ 0% APR. The $26 was finance charges for the $2000 that you have had previously @ prime APR. Our policy states that any payments made to the account would be applied to low rate balances first.

If you haven’t gotten confused enough by now, I don’t blame you. This is what corporate America thrives on. A confused consumer. Essentially, what it meant was I had a total balance of $6000 out of which I had paid $2000, thinking that it was towards the statement balance of $2000. But what Citi says is that the $2000 I paid went towards my transferred balance of $4000 even though I had made the payment and the transfer on the same day. So, now my 0% balance was down to $2000 in a matter of 5 days (against my original plan of 8 months) and my prime rate balance was still stuck at $2000. What that means is until I pay off the entire loan, I will be getting charged a prime rate on the $2000. If I were to stick to my original plan of $500 a month for the next 8 months, I shall be charged about $26 a month for the next 4 months and another $65 for the remainder of the 8 month period, a total of $169. This is in addition to the $120 that I had already paid for the transaction. What a ripoff! All I can do now is either take those charges bending backwards or I will just have to pay off the entire balance next month out of my emergency fund. What a bummer dude!

Lesson learned here is, if you are planning on doing a balance transfer, make sure that you have absolutely no existing balance on the account, no pending charges of any sorts. Let the statement arrive, you make sure there are zeros all over the place and only then you go ahead with the transfer. Otherwise, they will make you pay interest on that $20 haircut you got from that Korean woman last week, for the next 3 years.

Ciao!

Oh, by the way, I did call Citi like 4 times and got my $26 back. Take that to the bank Citibank!