This Christmas break when I went home for the holidays my family has persuaded me to pay off the two credit cards I don’t use. Those two are just sitting in a drawer collecting dust and I’m making regular payments on them but I couldn’t really think of a convincing argument as to why I don’t pay those off other than it makes me feel better to have X amount of assets. Well, to pay those off I’m going to have to use up my “emergency” savings. What argument is there really?

The total debt is less than $2,600 but that’s more than half of my savings. The amount I have saved up is just pocket change compared to what most people have saved up but it’s my hard earned money. Although my net worth is going to stay the same, my assets will be dropped heavily!

I’ll have to do this next year when my interest for the savings account goes through, then I’ll pay everything off on my Citi Diamond Preferred and BofA World Points. Those two credit cards I’ll just be able to crumble up and toss away. However, Citi has been treating me extremely well and they sent me a letter asking what they can do for me regarding reward points, lower APR, and other services.

Also, I just got money for Christmas. Money is the best gift of all.

Normally I hate using coupons because the ideas seems so cheap. But it’s actually really smart. I’m not talking about the “save $.50 on this product” coupons, but the real awesome ones! Last night, I just used a coupon for $25 off on purchases over $50 at Staples. Ro-chan and I got a planner for my mom and one for herself. Why the hell are the planners so expensive? We got $55 worth of planers for only $30! Yeah!

I visit these websites before I go make some of the bigger purchases:

$lickdeals
DealMeIn

Those two websites have similar stuff but it’s always better to have more than one source. And on top of those two websites, I also google for coupons.

For about a month now I’ve been using my credit card to pay for everything. Generally, I used to put everything on my debit card except for major purchases but perhaps this was because I wasn’t so responsible with money, therefore, buying more than I could really pay for. Now that I’m more financially aware and mature about my personal finance, I am able to use my credit card for all my purchases and pay it off all of the statement balance at the end before the interest can be calculated. This way I get to take advantage of my reward points and build my credit at the same time.

However, using my credit card for everything means that my debit card will begin collecting dust and Keep the Change program, which is great, won’t be a factor anymore. But that’s OK since I have 2,394 point available right now on my AmEx Blue Sky. At 7,500 points, I can purchase any plane ticket up to $100. Assuming I charge $600 per month on Blue Sky, that’s already 7,200 points per year. My side goal for the future (in 10 years or so) is to have enough points racked up so I can use it all up on a trip to anywhere. Blue Sky isn’t American Express’ best airline rewards card, but it has no annual fees, no blackout dates, and especially, no expiration date for the points.

Also, I’m seeing rebates for my Citi Driver’s Edge card show up. I’ve made $109.07 worth of gas, grocery and drugstore purchases, and I am now seeing that I’ve earned 6.54 Driver’s Edge rebates. That’s about 5.996% rate on rebates, rounding up to 6%, on my first month of purchases. I’ve been reading all these stories about how people are earning huge rewards through smart rewards cards and I think I am finally getting a similar type of feeling. But on a smaller scale of course.

I love the internet. I was able to save a bunch of money on some of the gifts I wanted to receive and give. I say that I saved on money I wanted to receive because they are gifts Ro-chan is giving me, and I feel much better knowing that my girlfriend and I are being smart about saving money. Well, at least I am doing it for her. Let’s just get to the deals.

25% off any one item @ Sports Authority - expires 12/16
Code: TSAFFSAVE
I also have an in-store coupon which I’ll have Ro-chan use for the LED Maglite flashlight she is going to buy me. In fact, I can just have her buy something online and go to the store that’s 5 minutes away for multiple use.

25% off the highest priced item @ Barnes & Noble - expires 12/18
This coupon can be printed out and use for in-store purchases or online. I sent this one out to a friend of mine who is a big time reader.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $39.99 @ Amazon.com - expired
This was a one day sale at Amazon for an awesome game. It usually sells for $59.99 but amazon.com had $20 off deal on Friday. I nabbed this as soon as I saw it!

Logitech LX 710 Cordless Desktop with Laser Mouse for $56.48 @ buy.com - doesn’t expire
My roommate wanted this for our Christmas gift exchange and he gave me a link to the item on zipzoomfly.com. I thought, why not do extra shopping for coupons and/or better deals? Well, he went to bizrate.com and gave me the link to the cheapest seller. But bizrate.com apparently didn’t list buy.com’s price. Well, I went on, found it for $61.99 (without shipping and tax), which is almost as expensive as zipzoomfly’s total cost (including tax and shipping!). But after a Google Checkout and selecting the free shipping option, I got it for $56.48! Good deal.

Be smart when shopping for the holidays.

Uh, oh. As the title of the article says, federal fund rate was cut a quarter point. I finally noticed a new APY rate when I checked my ING Direct account yesterday.

What a surprise. ING Direct has been known to drop its rates like no other and after federal rates were cut .25%, ING Direct’s Orange Savings account is now at 4.1% APY. Does this matter to me even though I don’t use ING’s account except to earn referral bonuses? Well, not really but knowing that a big company like ING is dropping rates so quickly is unfortunate. Who knows which online bank is going to do the same next time?

FNBO Direct, the online savings account I use, is still above the 5% APY category. FNBO did drop .2% a while back during September but it’s certainly been more consistent than ING has. My previous article about the best online savings account with $1 to open needs to be updated since many of them have different rates now. UFB is down to 5.22%, Savings Square is at 5.00% and iGoBanking is at 4.9%. It seems that UFB did the best to manage (out of the banks that lowered their rates) with the new federal rates by only decreasing their original APY % by .9%. Anything above 5.0% for an online savings account is still pretty nowadays.