Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Earn Rewards with Swagbucks

By 3 Comments

It’s been a while since I last wrote about Swagbucks.  A little over a year to be exact.  And almost 3 years before that.  I’ve been using Swagbucks for a long time, I guess.  What is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is a rewards program.  You earn rewards called Swagbucks for doing a variety of activities.  What sort of activities?  Glad you asked.

Swagbucks Search

Earn SwagbucksThis is probably the easiest way to earn Swagbucks.  You can install the Swagbucks add on for your browser and set the Swagbucks search as your default search so that when you search in the location bar it directs you through their search engine.  When you use their search, you can randomly win Swagbucks.  It’s not every search, but depending on your search volume, you might win about once a day.  Your winnings will vary, but they can range from lower amounts like 5 Swagbucks all the way up to 20-50.  The search feature is powered by Yahoo search.

Swagbucks Polls and Surveys

This is probably the second easiest way to earn Swagbucks through the program.  You log into the site and take a poll.  The payout is usually something like 2 Swagbucks for each poll you take and the polls are usually pretty short.  You can also take surveys which tend to be a little longer, but the payout, which varies, is usually a bit better as well.

Swagbucks Coupons

Swagbucks has a relationship with Coupons.com that allows for you to sign into their site and print off coupons.  Because of that relationship, there’s always a pretty good selection of coupons on stuff you’ll use all the time.  For each coupon that you redeem, you earn 10 points.

Swagbucks Shopping

Like most rewards programs, Swagbucks has agreements with all kinds of online retailers where you can click through a link on the Swagbucks site and then earn points based on the money you spend at the retailer.  For example, their homepage is showing 4 Swagbucks for every dollar spend at Walmart.com right now.

Swagbucks Daily Crave

This is a newer way (to me at least) to earn Swagbucks.  There’s a link on the sidebar of the Swagbucks site that leads you to a new page that shows you some videos.  You earn a Swagbuck for watching a few of them.  Pretty easy to use and easy to earn a few Swagbucks each day.

Swagbucks Play

With the play feature, you can play online games for Swagbucks.  The amount you can win varies depending on the game, but certainly a great way to have a little fun and earn some Swagbucks easily.

It’s pretty easy to earn Swagbucks and work towards rewards.  Do a few of these tasks each day and the Swagbucks will add up pretty quickly.  And trading the Swagbucks in for your rewards is pretty easily too.

There’s two ways to redeem your Swagbucks.

Rewards

This is my favorite way to redeem Swagbucks.  For me, the thing I redeem them for the most is the $5 Amazon gift card.  It’s only 500 Swagbucks.  There’s a whole bunch of different places that you can get gift cards from, and you’re sure to find at least one or two that you’ll want to have.

Swagstakes

While it’s never a sure thing, Swagstakes can be a fun way to redeem your Swagbucks.  Obviously, Swagstakes is a play on Sweepstakes.  You redeem your Swagbucks for entries into a Swagstakes with the hope that you’ll win something worth way more than your Swagbucks are worth.  The entry “cost” varies by the Swagstakes, but most are less than 20 Swagbucks per entry.  I don’t use this option very often as I tend to prefer the sure thing of a gift card, but I have entered a few of them.  Never won yet though. 🙁

Swagbucks is a pretty cool rewards site that I’ve been using for years and I’ve never had a bad experience with them.  Over the years, I’ve redeemed my Swagbucks for a whole bunch of Amazon cards.  Depending on how much I use the site, I’ve sometimes earned a new card every month.  On average, it’s more like every 3-6 months though.  Still, for a few minutes a day, it’s an easy way to save a bit of money on my Amazon purchases.

 

 

Is Not Keeping Up with the Joneses Boring?

By 3 Comments

We’ve been on a journey to pay off our debt for 3.5 years now.  At first, we were gazelle intense, but then I burned out from working too hard, so we slowed down on the debt repayment.

Last year, we moved to Arizona from Illinois, so our money became much tighter as we faced unexpected moving expenses.  (Aren’t there always unexpected expenses when making such a long move?)

To make matters worse, in the first 3.5 months of 2015, we’ve faced $5,000 in unexpected car repairs and dental bills.

The good news is that even though we haven’t made significant debt repayment progress over the last year, we’ve been able to pay for all of these most recent expenses in cash, without going further into debt.

Boring JonesesBasically, each year for the last 3.5 years, our budget has become tighter and tighter.  We’ve definitely NOT kept up with the Joneses.

Yet, we’ve not found this type of life boring.

We Appreciate Splurges More

If anything, living this way makes us appreciate a “treat” that we used to take for granted.  For instance, I homeschool my kids, and my daughters recently completed preschool and kindergarten.  They were both very excited about moving on to kindergarten and first grade, respectively, so my husband and I decided to take the family out for a treat.

We went to our favorite restaurant.  We went for breakfast, so the bill would be cheaper, and we used a $25 gift card that we had gotten at Christmas and saved.  Because we had not gone out to eat in about five months, the kids were beyond thrilled.  All of us enjoyed the meal greatly.

Because we haven’t gone out to eat in so long, doing so was a special treat.

Before we got on a budget and started paying down debt, we often went out to eat three or four times a week.  Honestly, because we did it so often, going out to eat had become boring.  Now, because we don’t do it very often, we appreciate the meal when we do go out.

Because we have simplified our lives, we are able to enjoy special occasions much more.

We Have Plenty of Fun—For Free

Just because we aren’t keeping up with the Jones and are on a budget doesn’t mean we aren’t having fun.  Just this week, my mom was in town for a visit.  We took her to a national park, which had free admission that day.  We watched artisans make homemade tortillas and weave baskets.  We listened to a local band, and we got an excellent tour of the site.  Before heading home, we enjoyed a picnic lunch on the grounds.

Last month we went to the Tucson Festival of Books.  There was so much to do (for free!) that we stayed over five hours.  We could have stayed even longer.

Going on a tight budget and deciding NOT to keep up with the Jones can be difficult at first.  Now, however, we’ve done it for so many years that we find living this way actually improves our quality of life.

 

Would You Consider Moving to Improve Your Standard of Living?

By 5 Comments

Last July, our family moved from the near suburbs of Chicago to the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona.  We knew that there would be some significant changes to get used to, like the change in weather, but honestly, we weren’t sure how our lives would change.

Had my husband not been offered a job in Tucson, we never would have considered moving so far away from family and friends.  However, making this move turned out to be a wonderful decision.

Even though my husband is only making $2,000 more than he was making in Chicago, our quality of life has improved tremendously.

Benefits of Moving to Tucson

Moving improve Standard of Living
Original img credit: <a href="https://flic.kr/p/5NWSvX">pbarry</a> on Flickr

We can own a house.  In the near suburbs of Chicago where we lived, a house, even a fixer-upper, cost at least $300,000.  Then, there were the property taxes to consider, which ran $10,000 to $25,000 a YEAR depending on the neighborhood you live in.  In Tucson, we got a very nice house for less than $200,000, and our taxes are only $2,000 a year.

Our kids have room to play.  Even though we lived in the suburbs of Chicago, the population is so dense that the houses all have very small yards.  Plus, the house that we rented backed up to an alley, so I never dared leave the kids outside alone.  Now, we have a large backyard with a cement fence around it.  I can see the kids outside playing while I’m in the kitchen preparing food.  We love this feature of our new home.

Money stretches so much further in Tucson.  Although it’s a challenge, in Tucson, I have a grocery limit of $125 a week.  There is absolutely no way I could have such a low grocery bill in Chicago.  It simply was not possible.  Gas here is much cheaper, too.

The environment is so much quieter and friendlier.  In Chicago, many people were just, well, grouchy.  (Not all of them, but certainly enough of them.)  We lived in a middle class suburb, and we had some sketchy characters in our neighborhood like a woman who lived down the alley and routinely dug through everyone’s trash.  (I’m not making that up!)  There was also so much noise from the nearby fire station, trains, and constant traffic.  In Tucson, our neighbors are very friendly, there is no one sketchy (that we’ve met so far), and it’s much, much quieter here.

Drawbacks to Our Move

We’re far away from family and friends.  Most of them live in the Midwest, so we are far, far from family and friends.  That is a challenge.  If we move back to the Midwest, it will be because we want to be closer to family and friends.

Everything is so far away.  In Chicago, I was very spoiled.  I had three grocery stores within a two mile drive.  Our dentist and doctor were each less than 4 miles away.  In Tucson, everything is 10 or more miles away.  We have to drive a half an hour to get to our dentist.  Driving so much can take up a large part of our time.

I never would have considered moving to improve our standard of living, but now that we’ve done so, I can see what a great move it was for our family.  Our quality of life has improved dramatically, and this move is giving us a chance to improve our financial situation.

Would you, or have you, moved far away to improve your standard of living and financial situation?  Or is this something you would not consider?