The Buzz

With its debut at the TechCrunch conference two years ago, Mint has always yielded a mixed reaction from me.   I’ve heard people raving about the free personal-finance Web site, which recently announced it was being acquired by Intuit (of Quicken fame).  I liked the idea of a centralized spot to see my finances and budget at a glance.  However, I also worried about giving so much information to one site.

I finally caved last week, and passed along my account log-ins to Mint and let it do its thing.  It quickly (with one exception, which we’ll get to) pulled in balances from checking and savings account, retirement accounts and credit cards. As the past week and a half has tracked along, it has neatly filed my expenses into largely logical locations, and helped me build a budget based on my trends, and has already helped me tweak my budget in areas I hadn’t found as obvious.

The security question is answered by their lack of identifying information.  No names, no social security numbers, no way to edit anything relating to the accounts.  No one can open an account without your information, so Mint sidesteps it by not asking for it at all.  It does ask for basic information, like age, credit score range and income range, so it can make better recommendations. Its Web 2.0-based design makes it easy to follow, and it updates with each log-in.

The one downfall I found is it’s not always able to capture all of your information.  In my case, I have a store credit card that it could not follow because it’s not in their list.  However, they do accept submissions on what else should be included, so just because it’s not included now doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future.

I liked their tool to make recommendations on how to save or make more money, by making recommendations.  They are clear that this is an advertising tool, but it’s pretty honest in its comparisons of most things to what you’re paying or saving with the new service versus the old.

Mint is worth checking out, especially if you currently do all of your banking by pen and paper or don’t have a clear budgeting tool in place.  Those who use Quicken or the dearly-departed Microsoft Money might find this unnecessary or even not powerful enough, but for most of us it’s a solid choice, and a free one at that.

Here’s a nice, quick bullet list of 20 free things compiled by Kiplinger and posted on Yahoo! Finance.  A couple of these things are on the radar for discussion ahead, but there’s a lot of good stuff on here, including a few tech angle ones  like free anti-virus; casual games, which I’ve previously discussed here; and TV and movies you can watch online.

The Internet is definitely helpful for rewards programs. Technology advances have made them easier to find, and more importantly easier to be a participant.  There’s a ton of them out there, and if you’re a smart person, you can stack rewards programs in clever ways.  For instance, shop using a reward program online, using a credit card that gives you points or cash back, and you can double up on reward options that can save you even more.

One of the longest-running online rewards programs is MyPoints. The service gives you a number of ways to collect rewards: you can take surveys, read E-mails from sponsors, use their search bar, or, most importantly, shop.  They are partnered with hundreds of merchants, from Apple to Office Depot, and you can earn points for every dollar (which varies by merchant, and sometimes by promotion).  Time a purchase right, and you can be rewarded with oodles of points, which then can be redeemed for gift cards from everything from department stores to gas stations.  Sure, cash is better (as some credit card reward programs offer), but given that the service is free and can be combined with a cash back credit card to get the best of both worlds, I think it’s pretty cool.

However, cash is king for many, so you can’t go wrong with Microsoft’s Cashback program, now part of their relaunched search engine, Bing.  You can get a percentage of your purchase price back, as part of their sharing of commission revenue with you.  There may be a lag in receiving the cash, as with any rewards program, but this is a great way to save money, even if it’s after the fact.

Another program that helps you save, although in a different way, is the long-running UPromise program from Sallie Mae.  By tying credit cards, supermarket loyalty cards and so on to the program, it will save a certain percentage of purchases made at participating restaurants, gas stations and specific items at grocery stores.  This is set aside in addition to anything your credit card company provides, so that too can boost your savings.

The point (and original goal) of UPromise is to help family members save for a young one’s college bills, but the program also allows you to request a cash refund (it’s quite a ways down the page to find the item in the Q&A).  While it takes some time to get the cash back, as they only send checks quarterly, it’s another way to get an extra few bucks.  Their Web site lists companies and merchants participating, a list which evolves and can change from year to year, which can help you maximize the benefit you receive from their program.

Of course, the holy grail for many is credit cards with cash back or points programs.  If the balance in full is paid off each month, avoiding interest fees in the process, cash back and reward cards are the easiest way to gain on each purchase.  A friend of mine in college told me his parents were paying tuition with a cash back card just to get a 5% rebate from each semester’s tuition – smart stuff!  Creditcards.com offers information about many cards and the reward programs they offer, varying from cash to airline miles to points programs similar to MyPoints’ offering.  They also have great information on manging credit cards wisely, and update information regularly, so it’s a good source of information as well.

If you know of any other good loyalty sites or programs, let me know!  I’ll feature them in a follow-up post.

The Consumerist is at it again!  Keeping with the theme lately of foods and their appetizing (or not) looks and taste, here’s another one for the “huh?” pile: McDonalds is testing Big Mac Snack Wraps, which are effectively a Big Mac burrito.  If you’re done eating dinner, click here to see Consumerist’s pictures.

I suspected there would be a lot of sites willing to take in your no longer needed stuff. While I focused more on the gadget side of things, SmartMoney.com (in this article posted on Yahoo Finance) went for a broader approach, but they listed a gadget site I had forgotten about, rapidrepair.com.

The article also references two sites that buy back, respectively, books and CDs. As we move to a more digital world with devices like the Kindle and MP3 players, This could be what helps save the most space for many, as vast collections are consolidated into one device that can hold it all.  To that end, I state one semi-obvious choice for CD sell-back: FYE’s stores.  While they won’t buy back anything, they will not only give you cash for your CDs (and DVDs) instantly, they give the offer of store credit, and either are given instantly, so you can walk out of the store with something useful right away, whether it be new movies or music, or simply money in your pocket, something I’ve found handy in the past.

Here’s one for the “spoil it for the rest of us” category.  My copy desk colleague Tim pointed me to this article, which talks about how an Australian company is promising to help people make more friends on Twitter and Facebook, allowing them to get their marketing message to an ever-growing list of people.

By now I’ve already seen annoying spam messages on Twitter from women in bikinis trying to get me to click here!  I haven’t, and I won’t – I catch on to these things quickly, as I suspect most people do.  But Facebook has been refreshingly clean of marketing messages, courtesy of a surprisingly strong Terms of Use policy, which bans the use of personal profiles for financial gain.  Understandably, they’re miffed.

Twitter, on the other hand, seems more devoid of rules, and is a prime example of how wild wild west the Internet is – the marketing messages are mixed in with the ads.  Or, if you’re a user, you can even get paid by sharing ad revenue for ads shown to your Twitter friends.  As such, this may fly on Twitter.

Those on Facebook or Twitter who agree to be friends with random people may find things get a lot more annoying.  As for me, I’m continuing my policy of pretty much only friending people or sites I distinctly know and talk to, with the hopes that I can minimize my exposure to the unnecessary noise.

And if you’re willing to pay to boost your friend count, because hey, who doesn’t want to have the most friends on Twitter and Facebook, check out uSocial‘s site for more insight as to what they do.  I also am intrigued by the “unlimited press release” idea – who knew that was possible?

One of the earliest phenomenon to hit the Internet was auctions, exemplified by eBay and with attempted copycats from companies like Yahoo.  However, eBay has slowly shifted to more a “Buy it now” format.

Lately, other sites have sprung up, offering new types of auctions and offering what seems like pretty sweet deals. A $50 Visa gift card for 2 cents? How about a 24 inch iMac Desktop for under $20?  These are two auctions I spotted earlier today on Web sites like BidCactus and Swoopo.

The business model of these sites are basically the same.  You buy a stack of bids and then begin bidding on items.  Each time you bid, the price of the item goes up a couple of cents. However, as the number of bids increases, the amount of time left in the auction also increases.  If you’re the high bidder when time expires, the item is yours for the price visible.

What’s challenging about this model is that since additional time is added as the number of bids increase, you have to keep a closer eye on the item, and if you’re not the only one bidding, you could be stuck bidding repeatedly. This points out how the sites truly make money: through the bids.

As I mentioned, you have to buy a block of bids to be able to bid at all.  These bids range in price from60 cents a bid on Swoopo to 75 cents a bid on BidCactus.  You have to buy packs of bids; 25 bids minimum on Bid Cactus ($18.75 total) or 40 bids on Swoopo ($24 total).  That makes that $50 gift card, at minimum, $24.02 (if you get it for the minimum bid, which you probably won’t).

Of course, people who get lucky on this system will do quite well, but gone is the ability to bid up an item just an auction ends to push out the high bidder; the extension of time takes away that advantage.  So timing can pay off, although you’ll know pretty quickly if you’re fighting with a lot of people for an item (but it’ll cost you to gain this knowledge).

So is it worth it?  It’s hard to say.  There’s a real opportunity here to get items at a low price, especially if your timing is good.  But for every person who manages to win three or four items with a bid pack, there will be people who will spend $24 on 40 bids and get nothing because someone just had a couple of more bids than they did, which brings it closer to a roll of the dice.  Do you have more bids than the person you’re bidding against (or will they buy even more to get that expensive item)?  Of course, as the sites get more popular, you’ll also be attempting to wrest an item away from even more people, lowering the chance that you could win.  Caveat emptor, but if you have luck with a service like this, feel free to share with the class by E-mailing me.

Awhile back I pointed you to This is Why You’re Fat, a site that shows less-than-appetizing looking foods that are actually served at restaurants.

More of us will probably relate, however, to Food in Real Life, a site that shows the delicious, mouth-watering pictures shown on packages like frozen foods, and the resulting product most of us end up with.

Some might swear off frozen foods, but honestly?  I’m still not far enough away from college to be fazed.  After all, Easy Mac and ramen were the majority of mine and my classmates’ diets for periods of time not all that long ago.