Day In The Life of Baz

After reading this article I sat and thought for a minute. I thought about the things that I do personally and I wondered, am I frugal or am I just a cheap bastard? I never had a lot when I was growing up, so this has taught me to appreciate the little that I have, but I to wonder sometimes, am I going to far? I mean, I’ve never had much disposable income. From primary school I got a scholarship to go to high school. This scholarship consisted of free books and $50.00 monthly transportation allowance. Luckily, my mom worked next to the school so I never had to use this on transportation. So what did I do with it? Stuck it in the bank. Yep, at ten (10) years old, I stuck money in the bank. So, I’ve grown up handling money very carefully.

I got home today and fired up MS Money to do my lil’ balancing act. I have direct deposit to my ING account, of course, so I checked my account and noticed there was a rather large sum of money deposited lately. It could be nothing else than my paycheck. Now I also have an auto paycheck thing set up in MS Money, which enters automatically on the 1st and the 15th of the month.

So I downloaded my statement from ING in order to reconcile the transactions, but something was wrong. It didn’t add up. But that was a good thing. It was $100.00 more than what I expected it to be. Pleasantly surprised, I logged onto PayChex.com (yep, we’re high tech, aren’t we?) , and checked my paycheck (lol, check paycheck :)). There it was, $105.00 in overtime and about $5.00 more in taxes, for a net increase of $100.00.

Yep, I love over time, don’t you? I guess working on the weekend and staying working later to meet deadlines has it’s perks.

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Almost three (3) months ago, I was looking around for a place to get an oil change. I stumbled onto PepBoys. Why? Because I was lazy. I drove past it everyday on my way to work, so in I went. Problem number one is that it took way too long. I mean, how long does it really take to hoist a car up and and drain the damn engine? Oh well. One thing that kept me in there was that they had a rebate going on. I love rebates, don’t you?

Rebates are free money. But there’s a catch, there’s always a catch. More often than not, you can get the goods/service from somewhere else for a cheaper price off the bat. But the rebate entices you. You think, “well after the rebate, it’s $10 cheaper”. That after is the problem. Most rebates I’ve come across say expect 6-8 weeks. That’s that’s about two months right? Well, let me explain this a lil’ bit better. All rebates expire at a certain date. It’s only after (there’s that magic word again) that date that they begin processing your rebate. It doesn’t matter when they receive it; it doesn’t matter when you send it in; no one cares.

Why I Don’t Use Coupons

Usually, I’d be against the whole coupon thing. I can hear you now, “But Baz, coupons save money. Aren’t you all about saving money?” I can’t use grocery store coupons. The reason is because the coupons are always for the high priced version of what I’m looking for. There are tons of Kellogg’s coupons but none for the Great Value brand that I buy at Walmart. Even with the coupons, the cheaper brands usually work out cheaper.

The Exception

The exception is for electronics. For electronics, people usually buy the name brand versions anyway. This is where coupon codes come in handy. The last ones I remember using where Buy.com coupon codes. I got myself a blue tooth headset for next to nothing.

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A few days ago I was driving down to go to the store. It was early afternoon. Since summer is fast approaching, it has been hot down here for some time now, but that day it was a beautiful 69 degrees outside. I got in the car, rolled down the windows and enjoyed the window blow in my hair face. It was a great day.

I was sitting at a red light in a little bit of traffic and I noticed something that shocked me a little bit. I could see condensation dropping from the car to the left of me. Yep, all the windows were rolled up and, no doubt, the A/C was on. Now, to recap, we’re not on the highway doing 60 mph so we don’t need the windows up to reduce drag. We’re on a suburban street with a speed limit of 40 mph and we’re sitting at a light. And it’s bloody 69 degrees out. I peered into the window and noticed that an elderly woman was driving, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt: maybe she has some sort of problem, maybe she can’t stand the sun.