Welcome to November and the holiday season and the triumphant return of The Financial Liberator. It’s been a long four months since my last post and a lot has changed over that time. In June I was laid off after just having purchased my first house, and I explained that I had a few leads because of the connections I had made over the years. One of them turned into a job and I couldn’t be happier with my new situation. My commute is now only 10 minutes (vs. 45), the corporate culture is much more “me”, and the position is better suited to career advancement. And speaking of career advancement, I passed the final part of the CPA exam in August and will officially become a Certified Public Accountant in February 2012 (I still need 15 more months of experience but I’m not counting).
There is also one big piece of news on the family front, and that is my wife and I are expecting our second child. We are both overjoyed and ecstatic about the new addition to our family and know we will face many new challenges, both emotionally and financially. So as I move forward with this column, you can expect to hear more about dealing with increasing children on a not-so-increasing income.
Shrink your bills
In my first post back I’m going to explore a new website I came across called www.billshrink.com. This is a very easy to use site that claims you will “start saving money in under a minute”. The idea is that you choose what category you need to save money in and they will find alternatives for you. The current categories are wireless phones, television, credit cards, savings and CD’s, and gas stations. For example, if you want to find an alternative for your wireless service, it will ask you for basic information about how you use your current cell phone and what carrier you are with. It will then find other carriers that match your usage style and give you prices on phones and plans.
The two best categories are credit cards and gas stations. If you are in the market for a new credit card, this site will search the internet for cards with the best rates and rewards. Different people will find different uses for this based on how you use credit each month. If you pay your bill in full every month, you might be looking for a rewards card without caring what the interest rate is. Or maybe you have a big balance and you want a balance transfer offering 0%. Finding a new card that fits your needs is quick and painless with this website.
Finding the cheapest gas station is also very easy as you only need to enter your address and it searches nearby gas stations for price information. It will also tell you how much it will cost just to get there. My concern with this tool is that it gets its information from GasBuddy and OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) and the true up-to-the-minute price of gas is not always accurate. But it’s a fun site to play around with to see if you're paying too much for gas.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a fun site to play around with whether or not you are in the market for one of these services. If you are like me and spend a lot of time on the internet, you may know of better websites to find this information (i.e. Bankrate.com for credit cards and savings accounts) so please share them below.
