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5 Ways to Save on an Amazon Prime Membership

December 21, 2020 By MelissaB 1 Comment

save on an Amazon Prime membership

An Amazon Prime membership offers a number of perks such as free Amazon shipping, free movies and music, a discount at Whole Foods, and many more.  However, some people balk  at the $119 annual membership fee, which is understandable.  If you’d like to have an Amazon Prime membership but want to save money, there are a number of possibilities.

Split an Amazon Prime Membership

If there’s another adult family member that you’d like to split Amazon Prime with, you can.  And no, this isn’t like sneaking another family member into a hotel without telling the hotel staff.  Amazon has a whole page dedicated to how to split a membership, which they call Amazon Household.

how to s

Say your mother-in-law lives with you.  You’ll share a membership, each putting in a payment method to pay your portion, and you will have separate accounts.  If you can do this, you’ll automatically pay just half–$59.50 instead of the full price of $119.

Get a Student Discount

If you’re a college student with an .edu email address, you can get a discounted Amazon Prime membership by signing up for an Amazon Prime Student account.  The first 6 months are free, and then you’re charged $6.49 per month (equaling $79 per year, a $40 a year savings from traditional Prime)

EBT & Medicaid Discount

If you receive EBT benefits or Medicaid, you’re eligible for a special Amazon Prime membership for just $5.99/month.  You’ll need to verify that you actually receive benefits, and every 12 months, you’ll need to verify that you’re still eligible for this type of membership.  You are allowed this special rate for 48 months.

Credit Card with Prime as a Perk

save on Amazon Prime membership

Some credit cards offer an Amazon Prime membership, or a discount on the membership, as a perk.  For instance, the Uber Visa Card by Barclay offers $50 off an Amazon Prime membership after you spend $5,000 on the card each year.  This will take the Prime membership down to $69.

Likewise, the Amazon Business Prime American Express Card offers a $125 Amazon.com gift card when you’re approved for the card.

Amazon Prime Discount

Amazon Prime rarely offers discounts, but once a year, you can usually find them.  They may offer the deal in July during Amazon Prime Day, or when they have new shows to debut, or their shows, like Mozart in the Jungle, win awards.  You’ll just need to keep a close eye on Amazon to snag the discount when it’s available.

If none of these discounts applies to you or you just don’t want to spend the money, keep in mind, you’ll get free shipping from Amazon if your order is over $25, and you can always get a 30-day free trial membership should you want to binge watch a show or order a number of items, say around Christmas time.

Do you currently have an Amazon Prime membership?  If so, do you use one of the above strategies or another one to avoid paying full price?  Do you think Amazon Prime is worth paying the full price?

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Filed Under: Frugality, Saving Tagged With: amazon, Amazon Prime membership, discounts, subscriptions

Cheap Foods to Buy When Broke

November 30, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Cheap Foods to Buy When Broke

Whether it’s nearly the end of the month and you’re out of cash, or you’ve just lost your job or you had a large expense this month, we all have times when we have to nourish our bodies for as little money as possible.  Luckily, there are many cheap foods to buy when you’re broke that are also nutrient power houses.

Cheap Foods to Buy When Broke

To get the most nutrition from limited money, you’ll want to first focus on fruits and vegetables.

Vegetables

There are many basic vegetables to choose from:

Carrots

Carrots are so versatile!  You can eat them raw or use them in soups and stir frys.

Cabbage

One head of cabbage can stretch, and stretch, and stretch and be used many ways.  Just recently, our family of five had a head of cabbage to use.  The first night, we made cabbage beef soup; it fed us all, plus there were leftovers.  The second night, we had skillet kielbasa and cabbage, and again, there were leftovers.

You’ll find plenty of recipes for cabbage.  Consider looking for recipes from other countries, too, as cabbage is a staple in the cuisine of many countries.

Fruits

While fruits like grapes, blueberries, and strawberries are delicious, they’re not affordable when they’re not in season.  Instead, focus on fruits that are affordable in any season.

Bananas

Bananas are quite filling and cheap.  You can eat them plain, or blend them up and use them as mock ice cream.

Apples

Cheap Foods to Buy When Broke
Photo by Sarah Gualtieri on Unsplash

Apples are in season for quite a long time and can often be found for less than $1 a pound.  I like these because of their nutritional value and because they can be eaten as a fruit, or used in a meal, or baked for a dessert.

Starches

When you’re on a budget, you need foods that are filling.  After fruits and vegetables, your next priority should be starches.

Potatoes

Potatoes are almost always a reasonably priced food.  Add them to meals to bulk up the content.  (One of our favorite breakfasts is diced, cooked potatoes mixed with a little cheese and scrambled eggs.)

Oatmeal

Oatmeal makes a great, filling breakfast for just pennies.  Stir in some protein powder or jam for a little extra flavor.

Oatmeal can also be used in muffins and ground up in a food processor and used as a substitute or supplement to flour in baked goods.

Flour

The price of flour can’t be beat per pound.  Use it to make homemade breads, rolls, desserts, etc.  You can also use flour as a thickener to homemade sauces and gravies.

Rice

Rice is also versatile and can be used for a side dish, dessert, or breakfast.  When rice is combined with beans, it is the ultimate frugal meal.

Protein

Protein will help satiate you longer, stretching the length of time you feel full, so hopefully you’ll need fewer in between snacks.

Dry Beans

A pound of dry beans costs between $1 and $2 per pound and can likely be used for several meals.  Use beans in soups, casseroles, and dips like hummus.  You can even use beans in desserts like black bean brownies.  (Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.  They’re delicious!)

Chicken

Chicken is a great animal protein that can be frugal if you buy it on sale or on the bone.  We usually try to use our animal protein as a supplement to a meal, not the main focus of the meal.  Try dishes like fried rice with some shredded chicken or chicken pot pie to complement all of the vegetables in the meal.

Don’t forget to take the bones and turn them into a homemade broth to use for future meals.  (We freeze our broth in ice cube trays for future use.)

Final Thoughts

If you’re on a tight grocery budget, remember that if you choose the most frugal food options, you can still eat healthy, nutritious, and filling foods.

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Filed Under: budget, Frugality, Saving Tagged With: frugal food, frugal groceries, frugal kitchen, frugal produce, groceries, grocery budget, grocery shopping

How to Find an Affordable Apartment in a Big City

November 23, 2020 By MelissaB 5 Comments

Affordable Apartment

Moving to a large city from the suburbs or a more rural area can be a big shift. I’m not just talking about a little culture shock, but also a big financial change. I found that out first-hand when I moved to Chicago. One of the biggest challenges when moving to a new area, especially a large city, is finding an affordable apartment.

How to Find an Affordabe Apartment in a Big City

Cities like New York, LA and Chicago have reputations for having pretty expensive apartments. If you’re moving from an area where you get a lot of value for your money, the shift can be pretty intimidating. But with a little know-how and research, you can find some hidden jewels.

Here are some of my top tips for finding an affordable apartment in a big city!

1. Talk to Locals

Before actually making the move, I visited Chicago three times. With every visit, I talked to taxi cab and Uber drivers to learn more about the city and get their advice on the best areas.

What you’ll find in most large cities is that they’re broken down into distinct areas or neighborhoods, each with their own culture and vibe. Your first priority should be to narrow down a specific neighborhood or two you want to move to, then look for apartments.

When you run into people, ask them what neighborhood they live in and get a feel for how expensive it is. You don’t want to downright ask strangers how much they pay for rent, but ask how the area stacks up against other neighborhoods.

If you’re moving for a new job, be sure to talk with your soon-to-be coworkers. This was another good source of information for me. Someone from HR emailed me some of the affordable neighborhoods that I should consider checking out, which was a huge help.

2. Check Apartment Hunting Sites

Sites like Trulia and Zillow are extremely helpful for finding apartments in a new area that fit your budget. I spent countless hours browsing online listings to find apartments that were within the budget I felt comfortable with.

The good thing about these sites is they allow you to filter based on price, amenities location and other options to really help you find what you’re looking for.

Don’t just rely on the national apartment listing sites. I was recommended to check out a local apartment listing site specifically for Chicago. Zillow and Trulia tend to cater to large property management companies, whereas these niche city specific sites cater to individuals.

Often times the apartments you find on these sites are a lot less expensive than the bigger sites because they’re rented out by private owners.

Of course, you can also look at the local Craigslist. This is a good option if you want to save money by renting with a roommate. Getting a roommate will automatically cut your rent in half or even more depending on how many people you live with. Just keep in mind that sharing an apartment with a roommate comes with some potential risks as well.

One downside to Craigslist is that it can easily become a bait-and-switch game. I found that out quickly after calling some listings that had been posted the same day, only to be told “I don’t have that specific unit available anymore but I have some other options I can show you.” Those other options were generally at least a couple hundred dollars more.

3. Walk Around the Neighborhood

Affordable Apartment
Photo by Alicja Podstolska on Unsplash

Once you’ve decided on a specific neighborhood, don’t do all your research online. Hit the pavement and go walking around. Although you might think everyone lists their apartments for rent online, it’s not uncommon for condo owners or old school landlords to just put a “for rent” sign outside their building.

In larger cities, there’s so much foot traffic that just putting a “for rent” sign outside saves landlords the time and fees that come along with listing their property online. You can often find steals with these types of rentals because the landlord isn’t doing a ton of competitive research on what everyone else is charging. They’re just charging what they think they should, which is generally less than market value.

On one of my visits to Chicago, I walked around the main area I was interested in and noticed a lot of for rent signs. So when I went back home, I contacted a few of them to schedule a tour for my next visit.

4. Be Open to Compromise

There are probably some must-haves on your apartment checklist, but if you’re on a budget you have to be willing to compromise. Before moving, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get the same value and amenities I got from my previous apartment so I just accepted it.

I recommend making a list of must-haves and a separate list of things that would be good to have, but you could live without. For instance, an in-unit washer/dryer could be a must-have, but a community gym might be something that you could live without.

In most cases, the cost for all those extra amenities comes out in the costs of added fees or higher rent. You might be surprised by how quickly your needs can change once you see how much more the rent is for an apartment with a pool, doorman and business center.

The key is to compromise, not sacrifice.

5. Consider Living Further From Downtown

The closer you live to the downtown area, the higher your rent will be. When I first started looking, I thought about how great it would be to live close to the downtown area, but I quickly changed my mind after seeing how much the rent was.

Affordable Apartment
Photo by Sawyer Bengtson on Unsplash

My main reasoning for wanting to live closer to downtown was to make my work commute shorter. But it’s well worth spending an extra 10-20 minutes on the train to save hundreds of dollars on rent each month.

Do research and find neighborhoods a little further out that still provide a lot of the amenities you’d get downtown like restaurants, fun activities and shops.

6. Get a Broker

I’ll be honest. I didn’t even know that rental brokers were a thing until I started looking for an apartment in the city. After all my research, I eventually decided to use a broker to find my apartment.

Rental brokers are like real estate agents for renters. You tell them your budget, amenities you’d like and the areas/neighborhoods you’re interested in, and they’ll find a place for you. They’ll even drive you around to the different apartments, which is super convenient when you’re searching in the city. Some will charge you a commission, and others get paid from the property management companies they work with.

In larger cities, there are tons of options available, and there is no single location to see them all. Using a broker makes your search a lot easier and quicker.

7. Look for Up-And-Coming Neighborhoods

This tip saved me a lot of money. When you’re moving to a big city, there’s a lot of temptation to move to one of the trendy, established neighborhoods. However, consider choosing an up-and-coming neighborhood that isn’t quite as well known.  You can get a lot more bang for your buck.

A lot of people associate up-and-coming neighborhoods with being dangerous. However, that’s not necessarily the case. Often times these are neighborhoods that weren’t the most well kept in the past, but over time new homeowners and businesses start to move in to revitalize the area.

The period of time right before a neighborhood becomes mainstream and trendy is the perfect time to rent because you’ll be able to snag a great location before the prices inevitably go up.

Find up-and-coming neighborhoods by talking to people like I mentioned earlier, or just searching Google. There are plenty of blogs that are on top of what’s going on in the city.  They usually put together lists of burgeoning neighborhoods to look out for.

One thing to keep in mind is you always want to make sure you’re moving to a safe neighborhood. While up-and-coming areas aren’t ripe with crime, they are still developing. I used Walk Score to look at the safety rating for the neighborhood I moved into before signing the lease. It’s a great way to check how crime in the neighborhood compares to the rest of the city.

Saving money is great, but you don’t want to risk your safety to save a couple bucks.

Final Thoughts

Putting all these tips into action will allow you get a great apartment in a large city without needing to live off Ramen noodles and bologna.

Read More

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Filed Under: Frugality, Saving, ShareMe Tagged With: affordable apartment, apartment, frugal

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