Family Dollar Beats Estimates

There is probably no better sign that we are in a serious recession than seeing dollar store profits skyrocketing.

It was announced today that Family Dollar, a franchise founded in 1958 where most items cost less than $2, smashed analysts' expectations and came out with its highest profiting quarter in over 8 years.

Obviously the reason for this is because of consumers feeling the pinch in high gas prices and grocery store purchases. When you're strapped for cash, the dollar store is always your best friend. They even have their own NASCAR.

I'm not sure how many of our readers frequent their local dollar stores, but as scummy and chaotic as they appear, they are definitely a lot of fun. You really have no idea what you'll find in there. It's kind of like going to a great flea market, where all the stuff is new and usually costs much less. I really wouldn't be surprised if someone told me they found 24 loaded handguns in a 99 cent bundle package in Aisle 4.

Family Dollar isn't some punk on the New York Stock Exchange either. This bad ass mofo laughs and then slaps anyone who thinks its stock price is worth $1. Try $22.81 per share as of this morning, son! On the news that the Dollar boys killed estimates, the stock jumped 12%.

I would be on the lookout for trends like this continue. As Starbucks begins closing 600 stores and cutting 12,000 jobs, more high-end daily luxuries will no longer fit into the average consumer's budget. Wasn't Starbucks saying not too long ago the reason it was losing business was because customers were frustrated that lines were too long? Turns out that was a load of crap. Maybe they should close that Starbucks that right across the street from another Starbucks and put a Family Dollar there instead.


Bloomberg: Family Dollar Gains Most Since 2000 as Profit Beats Estimates, July 2, 2008

MarketWatch: Starbucks to Close 600 Stores, July 1, 2008

Continue Reading...

The Best Times To Buy Plane Tickets

Using a bunch of algorithms, some fancy computers, a little bit of complicated math, and what must be some sort of new magic, one man has successfully charted when air fares will go up and down, plus what the new prices will be.

According to a recent feature in Wired magazine, Oren Etzioni became perturbed after realizing everyone sitting near him on a domestic flight had gotten a better deal on their ticket.

Hellbent on rectifying those wrongs, Etzioni used his computer lab powers and the resources of the University of Washington to establish what is now called Farecast. It keeps track of 175 billion fares originating at 79 American airports.

In the article, Etzioni shares some interesting trade secrets. Here are a few of the most surprising:

#2.) Buying tickets super far in advance doesn't always give you the cheapest rates. The research shows the lowest rates occur from eight to two weeks prior to departure. The exception to this rule is for Spring Break, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Get those tickets as early as you can to get the cheapest rate.

#6.) The day of the week you buy a flight is almost as important as the day you fly. Everyone knows flights on the weekend are more expensive, but it also turns out most cheap fares are released early in the week. So check your fares on Monday night and Tuesday if you want the best deals.

#8.) Staying an extra day around the holidays can save you over $100 on your return flight.

Check out the rest over at Wired.


Oren Etzioni's project :Farecast

Wired: Tracking Air Fares, June 23, 2008

Continue Reading...

How Compounding Gets You A Bigger Payoff

I came across this interesting cartoon slideshow illustrating how beneficial it is to start saving early and letting compounding interest do its magic.

The slideshow comes from Vanguard, a personal investor group that specializes in mutual funds, IRAs, and other crap like that. Keeping in mind that saving for later by investing in these things is exactly what they are trying to 'sell you', it still offers a good representation of how it all works.

It might also help to explain how something like this is possible in a good financial climate with a sweet IRA.

And for anyone else who prefers to stick to the tried and true, 'cash under the mattress' technique, here's a video of a monkey hosting a talk show where he touches the guest's boobs. Finance can be so cool sometimes.

Vanguard: The Power of Compounding

Continue Reading...

Vespas: Lame or Smart?

The Vespa, a very popular mode of transportation throughout Europe, has failed to ever really seem like a good buy in the United States. But with the rise in both eco-friendliness and gas prices, could this be the summer that all changes?

I submit for your consideration some interesting facts from a recent video interview by MainStreet of a Brooklyn Vespa store owner:

As gas prices cruised upwards, so did the sales of Vespa scooters.

Scooters, on average, get 50 to 70 mpg, produce 65% fewer emissions than the average car, and cost about $5 to fill up at the pump. The Vespa also gets more than double the mileage per gallon of the Toyota Camry and even beats the Prius by about 15 mpg. So, it’s no surprise Vespa USA’s sales jumped 105% from May 2007 to May 2008.

If it’s such a sweet deal, then why doesn’t everyone toot around town on a scooter? Weather, nerves, fear, inconvenience and safety are just a few of the reasons.

The Vespa, along with other similar scooters, is viewed with a type of abhorrent disdain on American motorways. Case in point, take the hapless, nerdy, neurotic and decidedly uncool main character of Scrubs. Played by Zach Braff, 'JD' cruises to and from work on a scooter and is constantly lambasted by his friends and coworkers for doing so.

But besides, nerdy TV show characters - maybe it's marketing like the commercial below that is keeping Vespa down.


Vespa Stunt Jumper - Watch more free videos

Yes, I realize that was a commercial for Vespa Canada, but the point is clear. Most Americans look at an ad like that and don't think it's something for them.

I always thought the film Quadrophenia with all The Who's best songs and special appearances by Sting made a good case for scooter riders being a bunch of tough-as-hell punks, but I am probably not in the majority with that opinion.

So does anyone think spending only $20 a month on gas, but driving a Vespa everywhere is a fair tradeoff? Let us know in the comments.

MainStreet: Vespas Steer Consumers In A Gas-Saving Direction, June 17, 2008

Continue Reading...

Be Your Own Butcher and Save

Haven't the supermarkets and specialty local butchers taken enough of our hard-earned money? Ever thought of butchering your own meat? Imagine all the money you'll save and the fun you'll have!

Prices for boneless-cut chicken cutlets can be twice as much as a whole chicken. So why not get yourself some decent knives, take a few butcher classes, and start hacking away?

You don't even have to stop at chicken. Get a huge frozen cow carcass and work it over like a punching bag for a few days. You saw Rocky, right? Do a little butchering here, a little butchering there and you've got enough prime rib, NY strip steak, and countless burgers to last you the summer.

An interesting article with a more serious tone from Bill Mehlman at CheapStingyBargains.com explains how simple it really is:

Stop paying the butcher for nothing. The more he does, the less you get, yet the more you pay. Become your own butcher with two investments: some education about simple butchering (readily available online) and a couple of decent knives (not a big expense, and, if you take care of them, a lifetime purchase).

Wouldn’t it make sense to buy the whole bird, trim out the breasts (30 seconds, once you’ve done it a couple of times) and throw the rest away if it will cost less than buying two cutlets? ...

... You can be your own butcher every night of the week. You can even wrap them in plastic film and freeze them for use later.

By being your own butcher, you’ll enjoy great quality meat at probably two-thirds the price of anything you would buy pre-cut.

Sounds delicious, Bill. I can't wait to start looking for butcher instructions online. I hope I don't have to sift through too much mutilation and furry porn first. Thank God for Google Safe-search!

Is this something you already do? Relive your butchering feats in the comments section today!

CheapStingyBargains: Sharpen Knife, Slash Your Food Costs, June 5, 2008 [via Consumerist]

Continue Reading...

9 Sites That Will Save You Money

We've explained in the past what some of the Worst Money-Saving Tips were, but now we're showing off some of our favorite websites that can save you money.

These recession-like symptoms the economy is producing, look as if they will continue for a while, with some analysts predicting we won't see a bottom till the end of 2009. So prepare yourself by banking some extra dough with these 9 helpful sites:

1. Fat Wallet - This is a community of people constantly searching for hot deals to save you money. If someone heard that K-Mart is giving away $100 lamps for only $25, you'll hear it in the forums section. The site also offers a handy price comparison tool for purchases you are considering.

2. Flyertalk - Remember that guy who bought all that pudding and scammed a frequent flyer promotion?...He was all over the news for his genius plan back in 1999. Well he is a legend over at Flyertalk. This site will keep you up to date on everything frequent flyer related. How to combine deals and where you can get the most bang for your buck. It has also been reported that airline executives monitor the site to find out customers' chief complaints and desires. I have a feeling it has something to do with cheap tickets.

3. The Coupon Clippers - If clipping coupons makes you feel like an old granny, then this should help out a bit. Log on to the site and let them do all the clipping and finding deals for you. Just search for your favorite grocery items and order the coupons to be delivered. They charge a small handling fee for delivery, but this could be a good bet to save some time and money. Coupon proponents claim you can trim 50% of your grocery bill by using coupons.

4. Coupons.com - These guys own the coupon world, or at least just the domain name. If you're not into paying for shipping and handling fees at the Coupon Clippers, check this site. Great looking site with a lot of coupons in your local area which you can print out from home. There's just one annoying catch. You have to install this 'coupon printer', which I'm not a fan of.

5. Coupon Mountain - Maybe the best coupon site around. No registration required, and they provide direct links to where you can use the coupon to make the purchase online. That Coupon Mountain gold digger mascot is absolutely priceless too, look at his little hat and sack of money. Did he steal that?


6. Amazon Gold Box - You gotta love this, even a huge corporate retail site like Amazon is getting into the fray with a deal page. Their Gold Box feature will let you know about items that are selling at huge discounts. The side scroll button is also a great way to view dozens of items quickly with just a few clicks.

7. Absurdly Cool Freebie Finder - This site aggregates from a number of 'free stuff' sites on the internet and compiles their results for you with direct links. Free subscriptions to magazines are abundant, I even saw one for TV Guide. And who would want to pass up a free sample of Teddy Grahams? Have you no soul?

8. SlickDeals - Probably the most popular deal site on the internet. Similar to Fat Wallet, but claims to have livelier forums and more frequent updates. I like the new Deal Alert feature that allows you to ignore alerts you're not interested in. For the last time, no more Playtex/Midol coupons!

9. Travel Zoo - This page is one of the best places to compare flight and other travel options. Unlike all those other annoying travel sites, you don't have to keep reentering your travel info after each search. They also offer a cool newsletter e-mail sent each Wednesday listing some of the best offers on cruises, flights, and vacation packages. If you really like this site, you can even trade its stock which was going for $110 per share back in 2005.

Are there any other deal/money-saving sites you use regularly? Let us hear them in the comments section.


Also check out:
GetRichSlowly: 21 Money Saving Sites, January 21, 2008

Continue Reading...

Bad Economy Leads to Rise of Snitchin' On Fools

Many people hit hard by the economic recession are reporting crimes to the police for reward money to supplement income.

'Crime Stopper' hotlines all over the country have been ringing off the hook with people trying to get money to pay for increased gas prices, food prices, and rent after having a home foreclosed.

But how much can you really earn from turning in your friends or neighbors?

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times:

... programs in most places pay $50 to $1,000, with some jurisdictions giving bonuses for help solving the most serious crimes, or an extra “gun bounty” if a weapon is recovered. In Sussex County, NJ the average payment for a tip that results in an arrest is $400, Sergeant Beller said.

“Usually you deliver the money in an unmarked car and meet them somewhere,” he said. “But these people come right to the office and walk right through the front door.”

Wow, these people are ballsy. I would be worried someone's 'boyz' would get pissed and come after me if they saw me counting $100 bills just after their ringleader got clinked. But I suppose these people have more important things to with their time than lay low and mess around with discreet packages from unmarked cars.

The article also goes on to point out that no matter how much the Crime Stoppers spokespeople illustrate a tipsters' sense of righteousness or moral virtue, the Crime Stoppers slogans and logos are all about hyping up the money aspect of the transaction:

“Crime doesn’t pay but we do,” say the mobile billboards cruising Jacksonville, Fla. A poster in Jackson, Tenn., draws a neat equation: “Ring Ring + Bling Bling = Cha-Ching.” The bling, in this case, is a pair of handcuffs.

Probably not the same 'bling', Lil Wayne and the rest of the Cash Money Millionaires sang poetically about during the dawn of the term in the late 90s.

However, the rise in people ratting out their grandchildren, ex-boyfriends, and neighbors has spawned a new industry and given a few 'entrepreneurs' a new career (via the NYT article):

“We have people out there that, realistically, this could be their job,” said Sgt. Zachary Self, who answers Crime Stoppers calls for the Macon, GA Police Department.

“Two or three arrests per week, you could make $700, $750 per week,” Sergeant Self said. “You could make better than a minimum-wage job.”

Could this soon replace Wal-Mart as the hottest minimum wage job in town? I can see it now, a couple of enterprising senior citizens sitting on the porch, binoculars handy, and the Crime Stoppers number on speed dial.

One could argue that the likelihood of citizens not being able to make ends meet due to the recession has forced more people to commit crimes such as burglary, robbery, and drugs. And therefore, in a natural correlation, the Crime Stoppers call volume has increased as well.

But I don't buy that theory, it seems a lot more likely that snitchin' on the thugs and punks down the street has become a much more accessible option with text messaging as a means of reporting crimes.

Does anyone think it's possible criminals are being turned in by their family/spouses, and then bailed out with a portion of the reward money? If you keep a 20% profit out of the whole deal, is it worth the trouble?


New York Times: As Prices Rise, Crime Tipsters Work Overtime, May 18, 2008

Continue Reading...

How Much Should You Save Each Year?

The 'Million Dollar Question': what should you be doing now when you're young to make sure you can live in style when you stop working?

Did you ever notice that almost every bank or finance advertisement features the same recurring elements and themes? They're always trying to explain retirement and savings with the same tired comparisons. It's usually 'training for a marathon' with investments that pan out over time, rather than a 'short sprint' with huge initial returns that fizzle.

Don't forget those large noble elk roaming around the forest looking very wise and stately with their financial planning advice. My favorites were always all those sailing-themed commercials. Apparently Wedding Crashers was right, 'Sailing's like sex to these people. They love it.'

But really what it all boils down to is the one big question: how much of my yearly income should I sacrifice for the greater cause of my 'savings'? That's all I really want to know. Give me a number, a percentage, and I'll just plug away at it until my ripe old age of 65. At which point I will hopefully be able to retire somewhere and steal small items from stores without fear of incurring any consequences for my actions.

Apparently that number is a very elusive figure to get a hold of. There's practically an entire industry dedicated to keeping it a big secret. Between financial planners, retirement specialists, savings experts, and market analysts, you may have to fork over some serious dough to get the answers you're looking for.

One thing that may help you is a handy social security calculator. Find out exactly how much you'll be getting from those social security checks when you retire. If you are in your 20s and 30s now, a safe bet might be to not count on social security handouts paying any of your expenses.

These figures can be argued, but one could use them as guidelines for an estimate:

• a steady 3% salary increase each year (lucky)
  
• a 3% inflation rate increase (likely)
  
• Then if you invest in stocks, you might hope for something like a 10% return on them annually (not counting any future recessions)
  

If you saved 15% of your pre-tax income for 35 years, that would put someone in their late 20s at 80% of their annual income upon retirement.

Also, this is not including anything you might put into a 401k or company matching retirement plan. You also might want to try and figure out how long you have to live. If you plan on dying very soon, maybe retirement isn't for you?

There are also plenty of people out there who would be bored by retiring early and would rather keep working at a job they enjoy. Are you one of those people?

But to give you a general guideline, if you decided to save between 10% and 15% of your annual income, that would be a great start. Considering that almost no one in the United States believes in long-term savings, it would put you significantly ahead of the curve.

And who knows, maybe one day when you die you could screw your bratty kids out of your massive inheritance? We can all dream big, right?



USA Today: How Much Should You Save?

Social Security: Quick Calculator

Monster: How Much Should You Save?

MSN: Plan for Retirement

Continue Reading...

The 7 WORST Money-Saving Tips

In these hard-fought recession days, every penny counts and there is no shortage of money-saving tips and lessons. Unfortunately, many of them are terrible. But have no fear, we've scoured the internet and dissected some of the absolute worst.


1. Stop Buying Alcohol- Well, how do they suggest we get it then? Steal it from somewhere? Now that's just advocating theft. If meeting up with a few friends for drinks after work is the only thing that gets me through the workday, then maybe I have a drinking problem. But if I don't, then it's totally fine. Some better ideas that will keep your sanity are to have updated lists of all the local Happy Hour specials. That way you're not the chump buying $7 Bud Lights on $2-Miller-Night.


2. Attend Free Events You Find In Your Local Newspaper- First off, a newspaper? What are we, stockbrokers from the 1930s? Get digital, baby. Second thing, those free events in the park are always a horrible idea. Most of the time they're nothing more than crappy local theater groups and pukey kid choirs. But if 'park cleanup event' or 'charity fundraisers' are on there, stop and think. Are you trying to save money or are you looking for a second job with a guilt trip?



3. Don't Pay For The Internet At Home, It's Free At The Library- The people who suggest this one are either psychopaths or shut-ins. Don't they know the only people using the computer at the library are perverted homeless men looking for some 'motivation' before 'using the facilities'? I wouldn't let my kid use the library's computer if his life depended on it.



4. Go For A Walk- I almost don't want to dignify this one with a response, but many people are proponents of going out for some fresh air rather than letting some expensive indoor hobby or gadget occupy their time. So to those people I ask, what's the point of going for a walk? You'll just end up back at your house later, and a bunch of people will probably see you on the sidewalk while they drive by and wonder if maybe you went insane or had your car stolen. If I'm going outside for a stroll it's going to be while wearing a pair of expensive anti-gravity boots.



5. Sign Up For Every Customer Rewards Card- Here's where those bright young cashiers try to pawn off theirs scams on you at the checkout. These cards can save you a couple of bucks at the register, but signing up for each one will guarantee you an inbox full of spam. And who knows where Best Buy will sell your personal information for the right price. Is sorting through every 'Barnes and Noble' Weekly Newsletter worth saving the $2 next time you buy something?



6. Buy Cheap Generic Medications- So instead of getting Tylenol, you'd rather just buy Tyleñol, which is made on a Mexican dirt farm with whatever similar ingredients they cooked up out back? The best way to get healthy is to go with a name-brand you trust. If you start dabbling with Ukrainian herpes medication, you only have your cheap self to blame for that third testicle.



7. Plan Your Meals Around Your Grocery Store's Flyer- You should only go this route if you have an acquired taste for week-old-sushi and out-of-season fruit. I'm also sure the grocery store 'coincidentally' planned that 50% discount on ground beef for a few days after the E. coli outbreak hit the headlines.


There are plenty of other ways to save money. Stop driving an SUV around the neighborhood and buying Starbucks coffee each morning strike me as good starts. But trust me, you can do way better than some of these other ones.

Heard any other horrible money-saving tips recently? Let us know in the comments section.

Continue Reading...