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.

After I saw this guy carry something around in a dirty old tube sock when I was at work, I was thinking about some stuff last night and I had an idea. These are painfully lame ways to save money but they work! You would have to sacrifice your dignity and self-respect, but you will have extra money left over at the end.

10. Drop the name brands. You can eat, wear, and use no name brands and still get by. If it’s got a brand name you can recognize, then stay away from it. You’ll probably get made fun of for wearing NIEK or BEEBEE, tell them your knock off cost you only a 1/10th of theirs!

9. Never turn on the heater. Just keep on putting on layer after layer depending on how cold you are. I personally don’t have to do this because it doesn’t get that cold where I live, but you can give it a shot.

8. Never buy clothes until they are not salvageable. Let your clothes go out of style, who cares about the latest fashion trend when you’re saving money! Got a hole or a tear in your jeans? Good, because a lot of jeans nowadays come like that anyway. I think I’ve bought new shoes in 4 or 5 years.

7. Bike to work, school, grocery store, video rental, friends house, and everywhere else. Of course you will end up sweating like a pig by the time you get to your destination, especially if it is during the warmer seasons, but you’re saving a lot of money on gas!

6. Give up your diet. Often times a new work out regime requires you to eat less or more. Just forget about it altogether because dieting sucks and working out and exercising is even worse. Well, it’s really tough to get started on. However, the point is, healthy foods and extra meals are money spent.

5. Get a hair cut twice as less than before. I usually get a hair cut once a month, which means I’m spending $20 each month. That’s $240 on just hair cuts alone! Cut that down to once every two months. You get to try out a new hair style with your longer hair on the second month .

4. Don’t shower everyday. I shower everyday 99% of the time, but that is a massive amount of water that is being wasted. You don’t need to have Spring scent fuming from your hair everyday, nor do you need to smell like mountain fresh air at work.

3. Eat every part of everything that is edible on spoiled food. Did you leave the rest of your loaf of bread out too long, and are you starting to see mold grow on the crust? Just cut it out, and eat it! It’s technically not good for you, but if you got a strong stomach, it won’t kill you. Same with cheese.

2. Blow off your friends. Stop going out all the time and you’ll save tons of money. Every time you go out you spend $20 on drinks, $25 food, and other things here and there. If they are your true friends, they’ll still consider you part of the group even after you ignore them.

1. Cold morning showers. If not showering everyday was bad enough, try waking up in the morning to freezing cold water pouring on your head during Winter. Cold water doesn’t work as good as hot water when it comes to cleaning more effectively, working with soap, or providing an enjoyable time in the morning, but it’s cost effective. The thought of this makes me sick.

On Friday night, I was pretty bored at work so I decided to check out some customer features on American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, and Citi’s websites. For fun, I tried increasing the credit limit of all of my credit cards. Not that I need a higher credit line, but just to see what kind of issues I’d run into and how convenient and quick the process would be. I graded the four services on these categories, which were all rated 1 through 5:

Convenience: How easy was it to access the option? Were there any issues of any sort?
Quickness: How long did the request take to get approved? Were the request forms lengthy? How long did it take to complete the entire request?
Satisfaction: Was the specifically requested credit line approved? Was there a hard pull on your credit report?

American Express
One of the absolute easiest process I’ve gone through. Am Ex was the first service I went to and I was very happy at the end. Log in to your account, click on “See All Account Services” on the right hand side, click “Credit & Balance Transfer” on the left tab, and then click on “Increaes Your Line of Credit”. The next page will ask you to input the four digit number located on the front right side of your card, after doing so, you get to enter in the credit limit you want along with some extra information about your income and such. I asked for $7,500 ($2,600 originally); I wanted to do $10,000 but I got shy. After a few seconds of loading a new page, I was told that my request had been approved. It was very quick process that was easy. Also, I heard that a request under $24,000 is usually safe. There is no hard credit pull.
C: 4/5
Q: 4.5/5
S: 5/5

Bank of America
Another easy process that didn’t take any more than five minutes of my time. I logged in to my account, clicked on the credit card account, clicked on the “Services” tab, and finally clicked on “Request Credit Line Increase”. Filled out a quick form (which has a short blurb about how the review of your credit won’t impact your credit history) and submitted. Because my credit was recently increased to $3,400. I only asked for an increase of $2,000 more. It said that I’d be notified of the decision within a business day. So I checked back on Saturday and I noticed that my credit line had been increased $1,600 to a max limit of $5,000. Not too bad.
C: 4/5
Q: 4/5
S: 4/5

Citi
This is the easiest process. My Driver’s Edge card wasn’t qualified for a credit line increase because I haven’t had it for longer than six months. But I was able to do it with my Diamond Preferred card. Very simple: log in to your account, click on the “Manage My Account” tab at the top, then click on “Credit Line Increase Request”. If you already pre-qualify for an increase, you’ll automatically get a preset amount; which I did. If you don’t, then you’ll need to fill out a form of the usual stuff (desired limit, household income and bank information). I read that there is no credit history check if you are automatically approved, but there is a hard pull on your credit report if you fill out the form.
C: 5/5
Q: 5/5
S: 4/5

*This was rated only for the automatic approval. If it had been the form request, I would have graded it much lower.

Capital One
This took me about 20 minutes to complete over the phone since I couldn’t find the damn option to request an increase. But I didn’t even get a credit line increase because I hadn’t used my card in over a year. I explained that I didn’t want to use it because my APR was so high. I was then transfered from one sales representative to another. After some chit chat, my rate was lowered from 14.7% to 12.9% for two months, then I’m back on some weird APR I couldn’t understand. Even after talking to the supervisor, my credit line remained the same. She told me I had excellent payment history with them and had been a member since 2003, but that didn’t mean anything. Don’t use Capital One.
C: 1/5
Q: 1/5
S: 1/5

As with many people, the quality of customer service alone can influence someone enough to make a decision on whether or not the customer will stick with the service. Capital One is my first credit card, I’ve had good experiences with it, but the fact that they haven’t increased my credit line or lower my APR even when I was actively using the card makes me just want to hate them. They have really neat features such as the Card Lab, and their rewards are pretty nice, but their poor customer service drives me away. Am Ex, BofA, and Citi have been rather fantastic with the quality of their service.

Tricia @ Blogging Away Debt is staying motivated through some setbacks. See what she is doing to cope with this situation! You may be able to relate.

Learn why and how to consolidate your Citi credit cards from Jim @ Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Citi cards users like myself can learn a thing or two from this article.

Consumerism Commentary’s Flexo posted about how his blog was mentioned on CNN Money! That is truly impressive and one day I wish to reach that level!

Here are 10 things Lazy Man hates about Monster.com. I can agree! I have posted resumes on there along with Career Builder and it’s been almost useless and a waste of my time and effort.

I just read that there is no such thing as bad debt. Is this true? Do you agree or disagree? Find out for yourself by checking out goldguru’s Money, Matter, and More Musings blog.

Enter to win some fantastic prizes at creditcard.com via an article on My Card Blog. Prizes are from $500.00 to $2,500.00 in prepaid VISA cards!

One of my favorite personal finance blogs to read, My Money Blog, just posted an article about Lending Club. Once I have enough money I to lend, I think I will join in this shindig