Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

Quick recap for anyone new - I'm a family practice doctor and I regularly have the opportunity to do online medical surveys. These can take anywhere from 10 or 15 minutes to an hour to complete. Some are fairly simple. Others are pretty involved and tedious. But they do pay well. I used to ignore most of the invitations I got and several months ago, decided to start doing every one I possibly could.

For the month of October, I earned $585.00 doing these surveys. That beat last month by $5 and brings the total since June first to $2,099.25.

I got my bank statement yesterday and sat down last night to balance the checkbook. I got 2 nice surprises when I did.

First, on 9/17, our NJ Homestead Rebate (or whatever they call it now) was direct deposited. That was $956.93.

Second, I neglected to record my wife's 9/27 paycheck. That was $427.19.

So a total of $1,384.12 turned up that wasn't previously accounted for. What a nice way to start the weekend.

I realized I didn't mention my last casino visit. I went to Harrah's Chester on Sunday morning. I played for a little over 2 hours and ended up slightly ahead. I made $42.50. I also earned 950 comp reward points. Comp points are essentially worth a penny each, so about $9.50. That makes the total won $52.00. Not spectacular but not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday morning when I had nothing else going on.

DW and I agree that we haven't been eating all that healthy lately and need to get back on track with diet and exercise. I decided to take a trip to Whole Foods today and spend some time exploring some different options, particularly looking for some healthier snack options since that is often our downfall.

I picked up a number of new things to try, a couple of which we already sampled tonight and liked. I was mainly focused on items with little to no saturated fat, no trans fat and no high fructose corn syrup.

The one problem with those things is, of course, that they are more expensive than the crappy versions, but I'm willing to spend a little more for good health. Also, we are working to get back to cooking at home more and eating out less which will save a lot of money. I'd rather spend it on better quality groceries than on high calorie meals out.

My wife started working in July. We filled out the 401K forms to have 50% of her salary deducted and go into the plan. The first couple of paychecks only had 3% taken out, so we figured they hadn't processed her paperwork yet. They do 3% automatically for everyone. Then we went out of town for a couple of weeks and I didn't get a chance to question it. Finally, in September, it still wasn't right, so I went online and downloaded the form again and resent it.

She got her paycheck yesterday and it is finally correct. 50% going to the 401K plus a 3% match. She only works part-time but still, 50% is a whole lot more than 3%. That should add up nicely assuming she stays at the job for a good long time.

I always say, half-joking, that every dollar she puts away for retirement is one less dollar I have to put away and that much sooner we can both call it quits.

This isn't a financial post, just so you know.

I went for my semi-annual periodontist appointment today. I always feel like I'm on a construction site. First they go at me with the metal picks. Then they get out the powerwasher and blast me with a high-powered stream of water. Then they finish me off with the mint-flavored sandblaster. I always joke that next time, I want them to do my face and give me a dermabrasion treatment at the same time.

Quick recap - I am a physician and get to do various online medical surveys. These are not the kind available to the general public. They can be fairly detailed, really quite tedious at times, but pay very well. I used to skip a lot of them just because I didn't feel like doing them or wasn't in the mood or whatever. I decided a few months ago to see how much I could earn if I did every single one I could.

So far, I got $293 in June, $370 in July and $271.25 in August.

Anyway, September was a banner month. I just added everything up and for the month, I earned $580!! I can't believe I used to let these things go. That's a total of $1,514.25 in 4 months. I certainly won't ever ignore those e-mails again.

I posted awhile ago about how I do surveys for one company that pays me in Amazon.com gift certificates. I get $30 each time I do one, and I've done as many as 5 in a month, so the money adds up pretty quickly. At first, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it all, but the more I browse, the more I've discovered that Amazon sells pretty much everything. And they have pretty good prices, too. My most recent order, a few days ago, was a scientific calculator DD needs for school, vacuum cleaner bags and an ink cartridge for my printer. After that order, I checked to see if they sell the filters for my aquarium, and sure enough they sell those too. So rather than ordering from the pet supply company I've always used, I'll start getting them from Amazon with my free credits.

The great thing about this particular survey company is I can do their surveys pretty much whenever I want. I don't have to wait to be invited. I log in to my account and there is a list of available programs. I can even do a program more than once, as long as it is still on my list. The only negative is I can only do them until 6pm Monday-Friday and, I think, until 4pm on Saturday. Of course, most of my free time is in the evening. I'd do one every night if I could.

My wife started her new job back in July. We signed her up for the 401K and requested 50% of her salary go to the plan. The first couple of paychecks, only 3% was deducted, which they do automatically, so we just figured they hadn't processed the request yet. Then we went away for 2 weeks followed by her surgery, so she didn't work for about a month all together.

On Friday, she got her paycheck and they are still only deducting 3%. I went online tonight and downloaded the salary reduction form and we filled it out again and will mail it in the morning. Hopefully, this will solve the problem and she'll start getting the 50% deducted and the full company match.

I got an e-mail today from one of the online companies for which I do medical surveys. It said that I have accumulated $165 in my account for surveys done dating back to April but I need to log-in to my account and confirm my mailing address before they can send out a check.

I didn't start closely tracking the surveys I do until June or July, so I didn't realize I had never been paid for these surveys.

So that was a nice surprise. I should be getting that $165 soon now that I've confirmed my address for them. Apparently they've changed their system so checks will now be sent automatically and not have to be requested (which I didn't even realize was the existing system). Why would anyone not want the check sent out? Kind of a dumb system.

Our daughter went on a rafting trp today from our temple youth group so DW and I took a ride down to Atlantic City.

We went to the Showboat casino. Haven't been there for years. We also wanted to see the new shops/restaurants they opened at Taj Mahal which is next door, and I figured we'd visit my cousin who has a store at Resorts (Caprice).

We got down about 10:45am. We wandered through Showboat, just looking around and checking out the smoking/non-smoking sections (we HATE being anywhere near smoke). Then we walked over to Taj to see the new shops. By then we were getting hungry and headed back to Showboat to decide where to eat.

We decided to do the buffet, but they didn't open until noon, so we hit the casino for a half hour or so. I played blackjack (that's all I play) and won $20. DW played video blackjack and lost some (not sure how much - no a lot).

Lunch was very good. The buffet is $17.99/person and I had a $7 comp coupon, so with tax and tip it came to $34.

After lunch, we walked down to Resorts to visit my cousin. There was a special prize drawing every hour at Showboat. We had been there for 1:00 and 2:00 so we made sure to be back for 3:00 and 4:00 (but we didn't win). We played for another 40 minutes or so, and I won another $80, before we called it a day. We had to pick up DD at 6:00 so we couldn't stay too much later than that (although she ended up not getting home until 7:15 but we didn't know that at the time).

Overall, a very nice day. The weather was beautiful, though a bit humid. I won $100. DW lost some, but not nearly that much - I think about $25. We got a $7 comp for food and enjoyed a great buffet.

Happy September. Time to look back at the past month. I collected a total of $271.25 from online surveys for the month. That's actually lower than I expected because I did one survey for $125 at the end of July but haven't received the check yet. Certainly not complaining, though.

I also earned points at mysurvey and a medical site that has a rewards catalog rather than cash payments.

We got home Saturday afternoon. We had a really great trip - did lots of fun things in New Hampshire. If anyone is ever thinking of visiting the state, let me know. I'll be happy to share lots of tips we gathered during our 2-week stay.

Went back to work yesterday. Busy, as expected, and lots of messages waiting for my return. I got through some of them, but still had plenty left at the end of the day.

I was actually off again today as my wife was scheduled for surgery on her hand to remove two growths on her fingers. Everything went well and she is feeling fine. Just a bit awkward having her left hand all bandaged up.

Tomorrow, I really need to start attacking the stack of charts, messages and forms at the office. Fun, fun, fun.

I did find time this morning to do one medical survey, so that earned me a $30 Amazon certificate. I tried to do more later in the day but couldn't connect with the call center (the survey is done online while speaking with a rep by phone at the same time).

I haven't totaled up the vacation spending yet. I'm really curious to do that and see how we made out. The first half of the trip was quite cheap as the hotels were free on Marriott Reward points and we hardly spent anything on activities - just on food. The 2nd part of the trip, we did more activities that had fees associated with them, and the last 4 nights, we paid for our hotel. I'm guessing that we spent somewhere in the $2,500 range for the 2-weeks including everything, but that's really just a ballpark estimate. I'll post when I have the final numbers.

Today was our next to last day of our trip and turned out to be the most expensive, but that's fine.

Even though our hotel includes breakfast, we went out to eat, something we almost never do when traveling. We had breakfast at Polly's Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill, NH, a local landmark ($29.59). It was very tasty, definitely worth a trip if you are ever in the area.

DD and I rode the Alpine Slide at Attitash Mountain ($30). Had lunch at a nice little sandwich shop in N. Conway ($10.85) before riding the Conway Scenic Railway on a 1-3/4 hour roundtrip ride to Bartlett ($66.50). Ended with dinner in a not-so-great little place in Twin Mountain, NH ($29.76).

So $166.70 spent today (not counting gas as we drove about 150 miles).

One more day enjoying New Hampshire before heading back to the real world.

My previous post talked about non-food spending on our trip. Ima asked about food costs. Our hotel includes breakfast so we are only responsible for lunch, dinner and snacks. So far, after 8 days, we've spent $391.38. The first day, we were visiting family. We had lunch at their house and they paid for dinner out, so we spent a total of $4.50 on food that day.

If I figure based on the 7 days we've been paying our way, it is $391.38/7 days=$55.91/day or $18.64/person/day. This includes our meals, beverages and snacks.

Our typical travel average is about $20/person/day, so we're right on track. Monday and Tuesday mornings, we'll be at a hotel that doesn't serve breakfast, so we'll spend more those 2 days. Then, we'll be back to breakfast included the final 4 days.

We are in the midst of a 2-week trip to New Hampshire. My rough budget included up to $100/day for activities - admission fees, boat rentals, tickets, parking, etc. I knew there would be days we spent that much or even more and days we wouldn't. So far, on day 7, we've spent hardly anything in this category. We've spent just a few dollars in parking fees. We haven't visited any museums, have not rented any watercraft and only went to one state park that charged a fee (and that was done on an honor system, but we did pay the suggested amount).

The more expensive part of the trip starts Sunday, though, so we'll make up for it in week 2. My wife already said, at least, that she won't feel so bad spending money on stuff next week since we spent so little this week.

There is a thread asking if people are saving for a reason. I just posted something there that I thought would be a good blog entry.

As I've said, we love to travel. We left home Saturday for a 14-day adventure in New Hampshire. This morning, we headed southwest from Manchester heading toward Keene with no particular itinerary in mind. Partway there, we passed a sign for a state park with an auto road. We pulled in and found there was a road up to the summit at 2,290 feet. We drove up the steep, narrow, hairpin-turn road. At the top, we decided to hike one of the trails that went around the summit. We got some beatiful views, saw some wonderful rock formations, saw a big swarm of dragonflies and DD discovered a snake in the grass.

Being able to get away and have experiences like that together as a family is why we work and why we save.

Took the van in for service today. It wasn't actually due yet, but we leave for vacation on Saturday and I wanted it serviced before we took it on a road trip.

It was due for the 90,000 mile service, needed an alignment and had to have some other general maintenance stuff done. Of course, that all added up to hundreds of dollars. I did have a $25 coupon which helped a tiny bit, and they don't charge me for the rental car for the day, which also helps a bit.

Whenever I'm upset about how much the service is costing, though, I just think about how much more it would cost if we got a new car. If we average about $100/month or so on repairs, I figure I'm way ahead compared to getting a new one.

The check from those missing funds I tried to transfer from my checking account to my home equity loan finally arrived today. Now I just need to run the check over to the bank on Thursday and get it properly applied to the loan account. The only downside, besides the hassle it has been, is that the payment was originally supposed to be made on July 23, so I've been paying interest for and extra 2-1/2 weeks on that $1,015, not that it amounts to a whole lot, but it's something.

I am not the kind of shopper that retailers love. I buy what I need, and I don't need a whole lot. I'd much rather save and invest my money than spend it on stuff just for the heck of it.

Occasionally, that poses a problem, like when my birthday rolls around and folks ask me what I want. Most of the time, I say I dont' want anything. When there is something I really want, I buy it. Otherwise, I've got all I need.

One of the survey companies that I do work for pays me with Amazon.com gift certificates - $30 for each survey. Well, I did 5 of their surveys last month so I've accumulated $150. Plus, I still had $12 left over from the holiday gift my staff gave me last December (see what I mean). That gave me $162 I need to spend somehow.

I've actually managed to spend $56 over the past couple of days, which is rather impressive for me. My wife and I went to Broadway recently to see Avenue Q, so I ordered the soundtrack. My daughter found out the school show this year will be You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, so I ordered that soundtrack so she can start learning the music. And we saw my MIL this weekend, and she mentioned a DVD she'd like as a gift for her birthday, so I ordered that.

And today, I went to Amazon to browse a bit and saw that they offer magazine subscriptions. The past year, I had been getting Smart Money and I liked it. I had somehow gotten a free 1-year subscription (don't remember how) but had decided not to renew it as I didn't want to pay for it. Amazon has it though. $18 for 2 years, so I ordered that.

Only $106 more to spend - until I do another survey.

In a previous post, I said that two payments from my checking account to my HEL account had gotten lost somehow. I called customer service twice and couldn't seem to get them to understand exactly what the problem was. I thought it was simple enough. I made a payment and it didn't get applied to my account, but they just didn't get it.

So today I went to the bank in person. The bank person called the loan department and it turned out that after my last call, they though I was saying that the payment had gone to the wrong account, so they cut a check and mailed the money back to me. The check supposedly was mailed yesterday so I should have it tomorrow or the next day. The person at the bank just said to bring the check in and she'll apply it to the loan principal.

Quick recap. I'm a doctor and often get invited to do medical surveys, mostly online. I also do some non-medical ones like AOL Opinion Place. I used to pass up lots of invitations because the surveys are often long and boring, but it was like throwing away free money. A couple of months ago I decided to get serious and do every survey that I could. In June, I earned $363.

July is over now and my survey earnings for the month were $370!! I also earned a few non-monetary gifts including a couple of USB flash drives, a wireless computer mouse, a blood pressure cuff and a couple of other things.

I've also started to record each survey I do so I can match them up when the payments come in. According to my log, I've already earned $340 that I haven't collected yet, so August looks like it will be as good or better than June and July.

It's been a few months since I had any "extra" money build up in my checking account. This was largely because I had laid out money for numerous things that I would ultimately get reimbursed for. Well, I finally got all the reimbursements and the checking account balance plumped up nicely. So last night, I transferred $2,603 from my non-interest bearing checking account to my 5.03% money market account. I figured out that just that transfer alone will earn me an extra $131.00 in interest in the next year. After we get back from vacation in a few weeks, I'll sit down and see if buying a CD might be better to lock in a higher rate for the next year to earn even more.

I posted before how I'm putting a certain amount from each paycheck toward the principal of our HEL. Last week, I made 2 transfers that totaled $1,015. I checked my account activity today and the 2 transfers did come out of my checking account. BUT they did not appear as payments to the loan account.

I called the bank and the 3rd time I got transferred, I think I got a guy who understood the problem and put in a requisition to properly allocate those funds. Right now, apparently, the money is just kind of sitting in limbo. It isn't in my checking account but isn't in my loan account either. It is floating around in cyberspace somewhere, so if you happen to see it, send it back my way.

They're just paper losses, but I decided to see how today's stock market sell-off impacted our portfolio. We lost about $4,300, or about 1.07%.

I don't plan to make any changes or sell anything. I just plan to keep everything on autopilot and continue our automatic investing plans same as always. I'm 20 years from retirement so in the grand scheme of things, today is just a little blip in a very long line.

While I'm usually not a proponent of prepaying one's mortgage, prepaying a HEL or HELOC is often a better idea because of the higher interest rate. That's the situation I find myself in. We're meeting all of our savings goals and have additional money available for something. Our Roths are fully funded for 2007 so I'm sending extra principal payments to the HEL. So far, I've been able to send in $1,015 this month. The balance started at $17,300, so this will bring in to about $16,300.

If I can keep paying $1,000/month through the end of the year, that would take it down to about $11,000.

I'll stop extra payments in January because I'll have to start Roth contributions again, which increase to $5,000 next year. Hopefully, by July, those will be done and I'll start chipping away at the HEL again. I'd love to have it paid off by end of 2008 or early 2009.

The 3 of us took a drive down to AC today, after stopping to pick up our copy of Harry Potter, of course. DW and I thought there would be enough non-casino stuff to do with DD and I'd still be able to play a little while they shopped or snacked or something.

We got down about 11am and parked at Caesars. I had suggested having lunch at Bally's buffet, where DW and I have eaten before, but we got there to discover that folks under 21 aren't permitted at the buffet. Not quite sure why that is but that's the rule. We decided to eat at Pickles deli also at Bally's. Service was very good as was the food. We all enjoyed our meal.

After lunch, we walked up the boardwalk a bit and browsed in a few shops. Then we headed over to the Pier, the shopping mall across from Caesars. We wanted to show DD It's Sugar, the big candy store there. She loved it, of course, and we bought a couple of snacks for dessert.

After that, we split up. I went into the casino to play for a little while and they stayed at the mall to see the fountain show and wander the shops.

I did ok in that I left with more than I started with, but only by $12.50. I had been up more than that at some point, but slipped back down before quitting. I did get a comp for free parking, so that's worth $5 for total winnings of $17.50 for the day. Any winning is better than losing, so I'm happy with that.

I met up with them and we walked around a little more before heading for home. DD thought it was a great day, so bringing her along worked out fine. It definitely isn't a real family friendly place. Vegas has a lot more to do with kids than AC does, but for a few hours, it's fine. I wouldn't want to spend days there, though. We took DD to Vegas a couple of years ago for 5 days and we had tons to see and do and we could easily go back for 5 more days and see stuff we didn't see last time. AC just doesn't have that kind of set up.

A few weeks ago, my car died. Wouldn't start. Finally had to jump start it and drove it straight to the mechanic to replace the battery. It was about 5 years old, so I figured it was about time.

Fast forward and the past week or so, I had a few times when I got in and turned the key and nothing happened. Turned it again and it started right up. That got much worse yesterday and when it took 3 or 4 tries to get it started and today when the last couple of times I wasn't sure it was going to start at all.

Needless to say, I was back to the shop for what I figured would be a new starter. I'm not much of a car guy, but I know the basics and it turned out I was right. Fortunately, I had nowhere I needed to be and they were able to do the work right away and had the part in stock. About 45 minutes and $486.00 later, I was on my way.

The only thing I'm kind of wondering now is if it was actually the battery causing the problem a few weeks ago or if it was the starter beginning to fail. Doesn't really matter at this point, and the battery was 5 years old, so probably would have needed replacing soon anyway.

There is nothing better (ok, maybe there are some things better) than getting reimbursed for money I've spent and pretty much forgotten about.

Yesterday, my boss gave me a check for $580 to reimburse me for my state license renewal. I paid it a couple of months ago and submitted the receipt. So my finances all reflected that money already spent. Getting it back is like a little bonus. Plus, I had charged it to my rewards card so it amounts to free points.

Same thing happened with our NYC trip last weekend. The theater tickets were a gift from my mother, but I had paid for them a few months ago also with my rewards card. She gave us a check on Sunday to reimburse for that, so another little bonus. She also has traditionally given us some money each summer toward DD's camp tuition. We never expect it or count on it, but we certainly appreciate it when she does so. The check she gave us Sunday included some money toward camp also.

So it's been a good week for "extra" money.

I pulled my Experian credit report last night. I actually hadn't checked my report for a year so I was overdue. Everything was in order on my report except for my one credit card. The report gave my current balance, which was correct, but said the credit limit on the card was $0. Of course, that makes it look like I've overdrawn the account.

My FICO score was 794 which is very good. In the comment field, though, it says the amount owed on my credit cards is too high.

Not that it really matters with a score that high, but I did send in a dispute form for them to correct the credit limit on that card which is actually $32,500, not $0.