Frugal Francis

OK, I opened a Bank of America Keep the Change Savings account with $300 dollars. They automatically take the left over change on checkcard purchases, and put the change into your savings account. For example, a checkcard purchase of $10.01 would put .99 into your savings accent. In total your checking account would reflect -$11.00, and savings +$.99. The big incentive is that Bank of America will match some of your change… (restrictions below)

Started my account with $300, my change has added up to $329.16 and Bank of America is due to award me $128.41 on the anniversary of the creation of my keep the change checking account. (See Below)

Bank of America keep the change program

My $300 investment and $329.16 auto-invested change equals $629.16. YTD, it looks like the $128.41 yield I am expecting from Bank of America at the 1 year marker would be a 20% return on my own money.

The math: $300 + $329.16 = $629.16. $629.16 + $128.41 (matched from Bank of America) = $757.57. $757.57 divided by $629.16 = 1.20. 1.20 translates to the principal investment plus a new 20% in earnings!


Frugal

ps. As mentioned in first Bank of America keep the change blogpost: “The restrictions are 100% match to your first 3 months of savings up to $60.00, and 5% of the rest of your savings, up to $250.00. If you are using the program to its maximum potential you would be getting a free $310 ($60 + $250) for free from Bank of America.”

Back in October of ‘09, I signed up for Lending Club for FREE. I had simply clicked a link from a blog I was reading and the next thing I knew I was given $25 to invest into Notes. With a free $25 to start the account and the referral credit I got of $25 bucks, my account started with $50. 11 months later, I am at $53.49.

Lending Club Update

Yes! You read correctly above, I have made $3.49 for FREE! Any new member gets a free $25 dollars, and additional money for referring people to Lending Club. In fact, when I referred someone I got $25 free but nowadays, I believe you can refer people and get a free $50. My free money of $50 has now turned into $53.49, which has grown 6.9% since Oct’ 09. Lending Club says my “Net Annualized return is 12+% but I don’t really understand how they compute that, nor do I care. I made almost 7% on FREE money that was given to me for clicking a simple link (below).





Give it a click, worst thing that happens is you just got a free $25 to loan to people and make money…

Frugal

Hello World!

Hope everyone is enjoying the rest of their summer. Tonight I am going to update Frugal Francis and get the ball rolling.  The domain name has almost been around for a year, the Search Engines should pay a bit more attention to me.  But, no one is gonna pay attention to me if I don’t have fresh, new content.

Coming right up; Blogging to you with some visual proof that Bank of America’s keep the change program, and Lending Club actual pays you and makes you money. While my success does not require 2 commas, I am happy to show evidence that anyone can make a few or many bucks for free.

Updates with returns are coming right up:

1. Lending Club – Invest Money, or Use Free Money to Invest

2. Bank of America ’s Keep the Change Program

Frugal

Ever go out on the golf course and finish the day with less golf balls than you started with? Even if you are a scratch golfer, the tendency to lose a golf ball or a few golf balls is fairly likely. Why pay top dollar for Golf Balls if you do not have to.

One of my friends turned me on to this site KnetGolfwhich sells Golf Balls at discount prices. One of the real values to this site is their their Assorted Mix of Golf balls. Basically you can order a mix of assorted Grade A or Grade B Golf Balls very cheaply. There is nothing wrong with these golfballs. They have been overproduced with someone else’s logo on them, and KnetGolf packages them up for a great deal.

KnetGolf not only provides a cool way to save money on golf balls, but another cool thing about their Assorted Mix of Golf Balls is that they will have a random logo on them, so it will be easy to tell you ball apart from others on the course.

Feel free to reach out to me in the comment section with any questions pertaining to Saving Money on Golfballs. Happy Golfing!!!

Hello Readers,

I apologize for the delay since my last post.  I aim to start writing and sharing some thoughts on how to save money and will make a better effort in doing so for 2010.

Today I want to talk about Affiliate Advertising.  Basically you can earn a commission from transactions that are made on the internet.  A great example of this would be amazon.  Amazon allows their affiliates to earn a %, usually around 3% on any products that are purchased with a referral from you.

I am reviewing LinkShare today which I think is a good site that allows you to easily get started in the Affiliate world.

Lending Club is a really cool concept. Basically you can lend money to various people online and collect interest and build an online savings portfolio. I do recommend to be very careful and read the fine print as well as the particular reasons why each person is borrowing money.

One of the coolest parts of lending club is that they will give you a free $25 to invest with their site. I basically got a free $25.00 that I put into a loan at the rate of 15%. Please keep in mind this is by no means an instant process. First you sign up, your account gets a free $25 dollars just for signing up and then you choose from various lending opportunities.

Obviously riskier loans have higher rates of returns and less risky loans have a lower rate of return. But keep in mind that if you are getting a free $25, you might as well just give it a whirl and see how it works.

My loan was recently approved and I already made 2 cents!!! Take a look at my screenshot below:

I also took a screenshot of the loan that I subscribed my free $25 to. Once again, Lending club will give you a free $25 as a special promotion. You just have to click on the advertisement below, and you will be able to get a free $25 to invest and explore their site.

Summary of Loan Performance

This seems like a great way to make some free money!!! Check it out while this promotion still exists… My hunch is they will not give $25 away forever!

Bank of America offers a Savings account whereby you save “the change” from your checkcard purchases directly into your Savings Account.  In example, if you were to purchase something with your check card for $14.37, the remainder 63 cents would be transferred into your Savings account.

Get this…  Bank of America offers to match “the change” or the “63 cents” you save up to certain limited.   The restrictions are 100% match to your first 3 months of savings up to $60.00, and 5% of the rest of your savings, up to $250.00.  If you are using the program to its maximum potential you would be getting a free $310 ($60 + $250)  for free from Bank of America.  Also, keep in mind that you would have automatically saved money without realizing from your checkcard purchases.

I posted a screenshot above so you can see that I am actively enrolled in this program and to prove it is working… As you can see from the picture above, I’ve been enrolled in the Bank of America program for almost the last 6 weeks, and I have saved $118.56. Soon enough get my free $60.00 within the first 3 months. I am a big fan of this program because Bank of America creates an easy way to save money and additionally they match up to $310 in your first year.

Please keep in mind that Bank of America does require a minimum balance of $300 in your savings account, and will pay the matched earnings after 1 year after accumulation.

For more details on this program, please visit

Bank of America: Keep the Change page:
http://www.bankofamerica.com/promos/jump/ktc/

Snail Mail is a term commonly associated with regular postal service in the United States. Since the adaption of email, people have assigned this nickname to standard postal service as it is viewed as a much slower form of communication than our typical electronic mail messages.

From 1863 to 1932, the cost of a postage stamp fluctuated between 2 and 3 cents. In 1963, the cost per postage stamp was 4 cents, and by 1974, postal customers were paying 10 cents per stamp.

From 1975 to 1995 the stamp climbed from 10 cents up to 32 cents. And throughout the next 11 years, stamp prices climbed to 39 cents in 2006. Once again, the price of stamps went up to 41 cents in 2007, 42 cents in 2008.

Today the cost per postage stamp is 44 cents. If I were a betting man, I’d say the next time the price changes it will certainly be going up.

What is the moral of the story?

The prices of postage stamps have been going up for over the last 75 years, and with today’s economic conditions, I could not imagine the price of stamps dropping anytime soon.

The best way to save money with postage stamps is to purchase Forever Stamps. Forever Stamps are stamps issued by the US Postal Service that will always work regardless of fluctuation in the cost of stamps. So if you know that you will need postage stamps for the next five, ten or twenty years, then it certainly can’t hurt to load up on a boatload of stamps today to secure your pricing at 44 cents.

Please visit your local US postal office for more information regarding Forever Stamps.

Or check out this link from the US postal Services website:
USPS Forever Stamps

I am quite impressed with David Ning from MoneyNing.com

MoneyNing talks about all of the concepts that I’d like to incorporate into FrugalFrancis.com; Stocks, Investing, Early Retirement, mortgages, and achieving financial freedom. From what I see, it looks like he does use some affiliate marketing for some of his postings. What I find most impressive is the instant response that he gets from each of his postings. It must be such a great feeling to know that you have such an active audience out there. I aim to have the same results in due time.

I have some great articles coming soon for Frugal Francis so sit tight while I get it all together. In the meantime feel free to check out MoneyNing and let me know what you think.

As I mentioned in my first post, I found a very easy way to install Wordpress and become part of the blogging community. In the past I installed wordpress manually and ran the install script and it worked fine but I found this rather cumbersome and time consuming.

Recently, I googled “what is the best webhost for wordpress” and based on my research I found a company called bluehost. Blue host is great because they offer 1 click auto install for Wordpress. It is really as simple as signing up for a hosting account and then clicking 1 button and BAM! you have your own custom installed Wordpress site. I found using bluehost, the easiest way to enter the blogosphere and have my own custom Wordpress site.

Here is a bit more information about their value adds and product offering:
“WordPress Auto-Install — new WordPress updates are made available within 24 hours! Unlimited disk storage, Unlimited monthly data transfer, host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name for as long as you host with BlueHost, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 24/7 network monitoring, 99% uptime guarantee, mirrored storage backups, no hidden fees, voted best support in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008!”