- Happy Independence Day! Be thankful for what you've been given by those who have gone before! #
- Waiting for fireworks with the brats. Excitement is high. #
- @PhilVillarreal Amazing. I'm really Cringer. That makes me feel creepy. in reply to PhilVillarreal #
- Built a public life-maintenance calendar in GCal. https://liverealnow.net/y7ph #
- @ericabiz makes webinars fun! Even if her house didn't collapse in the middle of it. #
- BOFH + idiot = bad combination #
AAA – Save Some Cash
- Image via Wikipedia
Have you ever driven off the road at 100 miles per hour into a grove of trees at midnight, only to have 2 cops and your father spend 2 hours looking for your car with high-powered spotlights? Let me tell you–from experience–that a free two will, in fact, make that night a little bit better.
Enter AAA.
At its most basic level, AAA is just a roadside assistance service. If your car breaks down, you lock your keys in, or run out of gas, you call AAA from the side of the road and they send a hero at any time of day or night. I’ve used the service to get a car pulled out of an impound lot and out of a ditch. They’ve helped move broken-down cars from my driveway to the mechanic.
We pay $85 per year for the basic service, which includes 5 miles of towing, up to 4 timers a year; lockout service; gas delivery; “stuck in a ditch” service; free maps, trip planning and trip interruption protection. Higher membership levels boost those services and include things like free passport photos, complimentary car rental when you use the tow service, concierge service and more.
I’ve been a member since I got my driver’s license at 16, and over the years, just the roadside assistance has paid for my lifetime of membership several times over.
But–as the man said–wait, there’s more!
They certify mechanics. Not for skill, but reputation. It’s harder to get screwed by a AAA mechanic.
Then there are the discounts.
Most chain hotels, some oil-change shops, and a lot of car-rental services have AAA discounts. Combined with the trip planning, the discounts can easily pay for themselves, if you travel even once a year.
There are also discounts at a ton of restaurants and attractions, sometimes adding up to savings of $50 or more. I don’t think I’ve ever had a year where AAA didn’t pay for itself, and I don’t even use the services efficiently.
For example:
- 10% off Target.com
- Discounts on Magellen GPS units
- Theater(stage and screen) discounts
- Discounts on minor league baseball and college football tickets
- Prescription savings plan
- $3 of at our local for-profit aquarium
- 10-30% discounts from Dell
- 5% off at UPS
- 20% off at Sirius Satellite Radio
- 10% off PODS(hoarders take notice!)
- 10% at Amtrak
- Up to $200 off at DirecTV
- A crapload more
I know I sound like a salespitch, but they didn’t pay for this post. I’m just a happy customer.
Do you use a roadside assistance or a discount-from-a-million-places membership?
Saturday Roundup – Side Hustles Rock
- Image via Wikipedia
We’re busy cleaning for our party next weekend, followed by spending an evening lying in a coffin in my yard, scaring the crap out of kids and giving them candy.
The best posts of the week:
Right now, I am actively pursuing 4 separate side hustles, 3 of which are generating actual cash. It’s about $500 a month at the moment, but each of them are growing. My goal is to hit $1500 a month by spring and have full replacement income within 2 years. Everybody should have some kind of side income, just as a safety net.
One of my side hustles involves training in a niche with 200 companies competing for about 10,000 one-day students each year. I could try to compete on price, but that’s an arms race to bargain-basement pricing. Instead, we compete on value, and as such, we’re on track to bring in several multiples of our share of students this year, with growth projected to go well beyond that next year.
Knowing how much more I enjoy my side projects over my straight job, I want to encourage my kids to develop their own lines of income that will allow them to live the lives they want to live, without being a leech on society.
If they can start to get some of their own income, they can learn the value of the things they own, instead of assuming that everything is free. I will not spoil my kids.
Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:
Actions Have Consequences has been included in the Festival of Frugality.
If I missed anyone, please let me know. Thanks for including me!
Zombie Wheels: How to Own a Car That Just Won’t Die
The average car dies somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 miles. My car is coming up on the lower end of that range and I’d like to see it last a lot longer than the top end. I paid the thing off in January, and I’ve grown fond of not having a car payment. Extending the useful life of your car–and continuing to use it–means fewer car payments and cheap auto insurance premiums.
Who really wants to keep making car payments month after month, year after year? I want my car to outlast me. Scratch that. If that wish come true, I’ll have a meteor fall on me the day before the transmission explodes.
How can you help your car continue past undeath, past the point when other cars have given up and accepted the True Death?
Keep Your Gas Tank Full
Here in the frozen north(though not as frozen or as north as some of you), it’s conventional wisdom to keep your gas tank full in the winter to prevent your fuel lines from freezing. Did you know you should keep it full the rest of the year, too? An empty tank is more likely to rust. Even before the rust eats a hole through the tank, there are tiny flakes of rust drifting into the gas lines and clogging the fuel system.
Change Your Oil
When you run old oil, you’re leaving contaminants and little flakes of metal flowing through all of the important moving bits of your engine. Changing your oil removes those tiny abrasive bits from the equation. I don’t recommend buying into the propaganda put out by the oil-change stores and changing it every 3000 miles, but do it regularly. I aim for about every 5000 miles, but a better recommendation is to do whatever your owner’s manual says.
In between changes, don’t forget to check your oil level and top it off when it’s needed. All by itself, that will improve your fuel efficiency and keep your car running happy.
Consistently keeping up with just these two small things will keep your car running smoothly for a long time.
How many miles are on your car? How long do you plan to keep it?
Huh?
Am I the only one who just noticed that it’s Wednesday? The holiday week with the free day is completely screwing me up.
Just to make this a relevant post:
Spend less!
Save more!
Invest!
Wee!
Good Friday
We don’t have daycare on Good Friday.
We do, however, both have to work today. Two rounds of little-girl tonsillitis have zapped our available vacation time.
On an entirely related note, we put our 12 year old son through Red Cross babysitter training a few weeks ago, just for something like this.
My wife gets nervous at the idea of leaving the girls with the boy for very long. I think she thinks the world will explode if he takes care of them correctly.
Our solution for today is to have a slightly older friend come over and help.
She’s 13 and she brought her 10 year old brother with her.
That’s kids aged 3,5,10,12, and 13 in my house today. Total Lord of the Flies.
Hold that thought.
My son, being 12, doesn’t feel it’s necessary to brush his hair for school, or change his clothes every day, and he needs to be reminded to brush his teeth.
This morning, he woke himself up and ran into the bathroom. He emerged with clean teeth and combed hair. I asked him if he was wearing the same shirt as yesterday, and he flew into his room to change.
Hmm. Something is afoot.
While I was putting my shoes on, I reminded him to take care of the house and his sisters, and he made some smart-aleck joke in response.
She giggled.
Watson, I think I’ve found a clue.
Her father told me, just yesterday, the she thinks boys are gross.
The boy has never shown an interest in girls, until this morning.
Grr. The next decade just got considerably more interesting.
Time to lock them both in their respective basements until college.
