quietmint

How To Win At Credit Cards

2008-09-04T17:27:00.002-06:00

Credit cards are awesome. If you're not using a credit card for every purchase, you should be. Apart from the free benefits that pass many people by -- like automatically doubling your warranty up to an extra year on almost all purchases (including electronics) and refunds on prior purchases in the event of a price drop (remember the first iPhone?) -- credit cards allow you to earn cashback and other rewards. Of course you won't be able to quit your day job, but free money is free money. As long as you have some self control, you can make the system work for you instead of against you.

This post lays out how I run my credit cards. You should first familiarize yourself with the video clip Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford. To make this work, you must never pay any fees and you must never pay any interest. With that in mind, let's get started.

Find a card with a rewards program that matches your spending habits
Finding the right card can be one of the most challenging parts of the whole process. Ask yourself basic questions about your spending to help you figure this out. Where is all your money going? What is it that you're buying all the time? Where are you shopping? If you don't use credit cards exclusively yet, you should first look for a good general-purpose cashback card (e.g., the highest reward amount you can find that is not dependent upon purchase amount, location, category, etc.). If you already have a general-purpose card like I do and are now looking to get some extra goodies, try to pinpoint an area of your spending for improvement (e.g., a certain category or certain store that gets a large share of your money) and find a card that gives higher rewards to this area.
- The best general-purpose card I've found was the Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards card, but the version I have is no longer offered. It beat out the other cards because you could earn 1.25% on every purchase instead of just 1%, but Capital One is now charging an annual fee for cards with this option.
- The best gas card I've found is the Discover Open Road card. They offer 5% cashback on the first $100 of gas and automotive purchases each month. Since it's a Discover card, it's not specific to any particular gas station so you can use it anywhere. Another bonus is that you can use it at Sam's Club (which generally has the cheapest gas around) and still get the 5% discount. At $4/gallon, you save $0.20 on each gallon of gas purchased with the Discover Open Road card so you are effectively paying $3.80/gallon. Although you must redeed cashback in $20 increments, the rewards never expire as long as you use the card. Obviously, since you are only earning 5% on gas and since you stop earning 5% after the first $100 per month, you should only use this card to buy gas and only up to $100 per month! Any gas once you reach the $100 monthly limit as well as all non-gas purchases, should, of course, be purchased using your general-purpose cashback credit card (in either of these cases, the Discover card turns into a crappy tiered reward system starting at 0.25% -- yuck).
Double check for deal-breakers
- Anything with an annual fee is out, no questions asked. This generally means airline credit cards. You aren't going to spend enough each year to recover the cost of the annual fee. The idea here is to save money, not spend $59 a year on absolutely nothing.
- Stay away from tiered reward systems. This means you should avoid things like the Blue Cash card from American Express. You aren't a big spender, remember? If you need to spend $6,500 before you start earning decent rewards, you aren't winning.
- Avoid reward systems with expiration dates. You aren't going to be making money hand over fist (in fact, it's quite the opposite), so don't run the risk of losing your cashback because you didn't earn enough in X months.
Apply for the credit card online
I'm assuming you know how to use the Internet, so this should be self-explanitory. Since you probably aren't going to read all of the terms and conditions, make sure that you save a copy of everything you "agree" to during the application process.
Card activation and automatic payment request
When you receive your card in the mail, follow the activiation instructions (call the number on the front of the card from your home phone). You will be sent through an automated activation system, then transferred to a sales representative who will try to upsell you other products and services offered by the company. It is important that you refuse all of this value-added crap! Do not let them give you a free trial, you must outright refuse. Don't hang up, however, because you need to speak with someone about automatic payment. Most likely, the credit card company has an automatic monthly payment option that allows you to have your entire statement balance withdrawn from your bank account each month. Usually you must call customer service to have this activiated, which will result in a paper form being mailed to you. While you're on the phone with customer service, have them mail you this form (or have them transfer you to someone who can mail you the form) so you don't need to call again.
- Chase allows you to setup automatic payments online so you don't need to play snail mail tag.
Privacy policy opt-out
As soon as you've hung up with the activation line, you'll want to stop your credit card company from cashing out on your personal information. Look through the documents that accompany your credit card and find the privacy policy leaflet. Located in the middle of this leaflet will be a section titled "How Can You Limit Sharing of Information About You?" with a toll-free phone number or website. Call the phone number and opt out of both kinds of information sharing. You don't want your creidt card company sharing information with non-affiliated third parties or within their family of companies.
- Chase allows you to opt-out online.
Setup your online account
Of course you'll want to keep up with your credit card accounts online, so sign up for an online account. Enable paperless statements to stop your credit card company from mailing you a paper bill every month with your personal information written all over it.
Automatic Payment Setup
When you are signing up for automatic payments, make sure that you choose the option to have the entire statement balance automatically withdrawn from your bank account monthly. The key is that you must pay the entire balance every month! If you're paying any interest, you're not winning. Setting up automatic payments will ensure that you are never late on your payment, and that you never pay interest for carrying a balance.
- Mark the date that that automatic payment will be withdrawn on your calendar. Have your calendar notify you 3 - 4 days before the payment will be withdrawn so you can ensure sufficient funds are availble in your bank account.
Win
Use your credit cards for thier outlined rewards purposes. Never pay interst or fees and get cashback deposited to your bank account or applied as a statement credit. :)

Add "Play DVD With VLC" To Folder Right-Click Menu

2008-03-17T15:10:00.015-06:00

Are you, too, annoyed by how difficult it is to just play DVD video files from your hard drive? Simplify your life by adding "Play DVD with VLC" to the right-click menu of every folder in one easy step! Press Windows Key + R to bring up the Run dialog and enter the following command:

REG ADD "HKCR\Folder\shell\Play DVD with VLC\command" /ve /d "\"%ProgramFiles%\VideoLAN\VLC\\vlc.exe\" -f \"dvd://%1\""

That's it! The effects are instant; try right-clicking on a folder now. :-)

If you decide this tweak isn't for you, run this command to undo the change:

REG DELETE "HKCR\Folder\shell\Play DVD with VLC" /f

Label All Forwarded Messages In Gmail

2008-03-05T01:49:00.007-07:00

If you're like me, you've gotten tired of checking each of your multiple email accounts and have finally decided to have all of your mail forwarded to your main Gmail account. You login to the extraneous accounts and set them to forward to you@gmail.com. You login to Gmail and setup filters based on the To: header so your forwarded mail is automatically colored orange. It sounds like a great plan -- and it is -- until you discover that only some of the forwarded messages are getting labeled. Huh? As it turns out, those mailing list messages are addressed To: mailing.list@school.edu and those viral marketers can't be bothered with the To: header at all, so your filters aren't very effective.

Fear not, however, because there is a simple solution to this problem! This trick works because of plus addressing, a feature in Gmail that allows you to create an unlimited number of email addresses by adding a plus symbol (+) after your username. In other words, all mail sent to you+anything@gmail.com will arrive in your inbox. You can take advantage of this when aggregating your email accounts by having your secondary accounts forward to a unique plus address. For example, set your school email to forward to you+school@gmail.com and set your spam account to forward to you+junk@gmail.com.

Now for the real key: Gmail has a secret "deliveredto:" search operator that will catch all mail arriving at the given email address -- whether or not you were listed in the To: header. In other words, this will even apply to messages from mailing lists and bcc emails. To automatically label you forwarded junk mail, for example, create a new filter and type deliveredto:you+junk@gmail.com in the Has the words textbox. Congratulations, now all of your forwarded email will be automatically labeled! [Update 3/28/08 (thanks Phil): The deliveredto: operator expects you to enter the entire email address, but if you want to filter on just a portion of the email address, you can place it inside of double quotes (for example, deliveredto:"+junk").]

[Update 3/5/08: Wow, what timing! An Official Gmail Blog post about plus address appeared about six hours after this was published. Although plus addressing is nothing new, this is the first time Google has publicly acknowledged its existence on their blog. They didn't mention the real secret to making plus addressing work, though, which is the "deliveredto:" operator.]

Make Wall Posters On The Cheap

2008-03-05T00:44:00.004-07:00

As most college students have learned, posters are an easy, non-destructive, and effective way to decorate. In short, they are awesome. Wouldn't it be great if you could get that same poster for almost free, and with the exact picture you wanted? If you have access to a printer, you can! Websites like Block Posters allow you to upload a photo and have it split into printable pages that can be put together to make a wall poster of any size. The following describes how to do the same task the real way -- using Adobe Photoshop -- allowing you to make wall posters with much more control and of higher quality.

Creating Single Image Posters

The first step in making a poster is always selecting the paper. Although plain paper will work, photo paper is relatively inexpensive and gives a much nicer finished product. Sam's Club sells a 200-sheet box of double-sided matte photo paper for just $20 ($0.10/sheet). Even if you purchase online, deals like this Merax Glossy Photo Paper aren't hard to find and are still affordable ($5.98 with free shipping for 20 sheets, $0.30/sheet). The real reason for starting with the paper selection, however, relates to math. As true borderless printing is not a reality, we must account for margins when splitting our image across multiple pages. Take your paper size and subtract a 0.25" margin from all sides to get the size of the printable area. For example, I'm using photo paper that is standard 8.5" x 11" letter size, so the printable area of each sheet is 8" x 10.5".

Next, decide on the size for your finished wall poster. Here I'm going to make a 9-page landscape poster (3 x 3), so the total printable area of the poster will be 31.5" x 24" (10.5" x 3 for the width, 8" x 3 for the height).

It is finally time to load up an image in Photoshop. I'll be using this photo I took of the Arc d'Triomphe; feel free to follow along. Select Image > Image Size and resize the image to the total printable area you just calculated. You'll want to keep the aspect ratio constant to avoid distorting the image, so it may be necessary to resize the image to something larger than the total printable area (for example, my photo was resized to 32" x 24", because the other alternative of 31.5" x 23.625" was smaller than the printable area). Before clicking OK on the resize dialog, adjust the Resolution to 150 pixles/inch if it is not already at or above this number.

If your image is not the exact same size as your total printable area, which is usually the case, crop your image. Grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and change the Style dropdown to Fixed Size. Type in the total printable area in the width and height fields. Click anywhere on the image to position the marquee around the portion you wish to keep. Select Image > Crop to perform the cropping.

Now it is time to divide the photo into individual pages. Grab the Slice Select Tool (K). Click anywhere on your image to select slice 1 (the default slice), then click on the Divide button. In the Divide Slice wizard, you'll want to divide your image both vertically and horizontally, one slice per page. For my 3 x 3 sheet poster, I divided my photo into 3 slices down and 3 slices across for a total of 9 slices.

The last step is to save each slice to an individual file. Select File > Save for Web. You will get a warning telling you that the image is very large, just choose Yes to continue anyway. When the Save for Web wizard appears and begins to generate the optimized image, press the Esc key on your keyboard to stop the process (remember the warning?). Now press Ctrl + A to select all of the slices. From the dropdown on the right side of the wizard, select PNG-24. Now simply click on the Save button. Type a name for your poster, select Image Only (*.png) from the Save As Type dropdown, and click Save again. Each slice (each page) has now been saved in its own PNG image file. These files can be printed exactly as-is and arranged to create a wall poster. :-)

Creating Multiple Image Montage Posters

The real reason to use Photoshop instead of a one-click website is because it allows you to combine multiple images into a single montage wall poster using the Contact Sheet feature. Because the end result is much cooler, this requires much more math. :-p You'll need to put all of the pictures to be used in the montage into a new folder. [Note: Don't use pictures with different aspect ratios. You'll need to make a new folder for each aspect ratio and repeat this entire Contact Sheet process for each folder.]

For simplicity, I'll be making a 2 x 1 poster (total printable area: 21" x 8") using a few of my favorite Boy On A Stick And Slither comics. Feel free to follow along by downloading this ZIP file containing 12 comics. The comics are square, and if I place 6 comics across, the dimensions of each will be 3.5" x 3.5" (21" / 6 = 3.5"). With 2 rows of 6 comics, the height will be 7". We'll call this 21" x 7" measurement the total montage area.

Armed with your calculations, launch Photoshop and select File > Automate > Contact Sheet II. Change the Use dropdown to Folder and then click the Browse button to navigate to the folder containing your images. For the document size, enter the size you calculated for the total montage area (here that is 21" x 7") and a resolution of 150 pixels/inch. Also from the calculations, enter the correct number of rows and columns in terms of images -- 6 x 2 in this example. Uncheck Use Auto Spacing and set both the Vertical and Horizontal spacing to 0. Also uncheck Use Filename As Caption and you are finally ready to click OK. A contact sheet will be created; examine it carefully to ensure that the images tile seamlessly with no white space.

Before going any further, you'll need to select Image > Canvas Size and resize the document to the total printable area (21" x 8"). After entering the number in the Canvas Size wizard, place the Anchor in the top-left corner and press OK. At this point, follow the instructions as above for creating a single image poster, diving the document into 2 vertical slices.

Make Free MP3 Ringtones For Your Cellphone

2008-03-04T14:09:00.007-07:00

Making your own ringtones not only saves you money, but also gives you a small sense of pride, accomplishment, and self-worth.

The easiest way to get ringtones onto your computer is using Bluetooth. Your phone and computer both need to have Bluetooth capabilities for this to work. If your phone doesn't have Bluetooth, you are pretty much out of luck. Make it a point to demand Bluetooth on your next cellphone. [While you may be able to transfer ringtones using a data cable specific to your phone or via WAP/the mobile web with an unlimited data plan, neither of those topics are covered here.]

Don't worry, however, if your computer does not have Bluetooth (most don't). You'll just need something like this Bluetooth USB dongle (only $8.50 with free shipping :)). Besides the low price, this specific adapter looks like a good choice because it is compatible with the native Bluetooth stack in Windows. This means that you won't need to worry about any drivers -- just plug the device into any XP or Vista computer and it will magically just work (like a USB flash drive does).

One-Time Bluetooth Setup

The first time you connect your computer and your phone via Bluetooth, it is necessary to go through a pairing process. Right click on the Bluetooth icon in the system tray, next to the time and choose Add a Bluetooth Device.

The Bluetooth wizard appears. Now it is necessary to make your cellphone discoverable so it can be found by the computer. Navigate your phone's menus to enable Bluetooth and make your device visible (this is sometimes called "Find Me"). Once your phone is discoverable, check the box labeled My device is set up and ready to be found in the Bluetooth wizard on the computer and click Next. Your computer will now begin searching for Bluetooth devices, and your mobile phone should appear in the list shortly. Select the device and click Next. If your device does not appear, refer to your phone's user manual for instructions on ensuring Bluetooth is enabled and that the phone is discoverable.

On the next screen, leave the default Choose a passkey for me option selected. Windows will begin the pairing process and will display a passkey of random numbers on the screen. Your phone should prompt you about connecting with your PC and ask for the passkey. Type the numbers on your phone as they appear on your screen. Windows will then perform some additional set up and your phone will be ready to use! Once your phone has been paired with your computer, you won't need to repeat these steps again.

Creating Ringtones

To trim songs into 30-second clips, download Audacity. It's free and also lets you apply cool effects like adjusting speed, pitch, and volume. Using Audacity is left as an exercise for the reader. Play around with the options and trimming until you get the part of the song you wish to use as a ringtone, then simply choose File > Export. This will allow you to save your clip as an MP3 file.

Transferring Files Via Bluetooth

Once you have your desired ringtone as an MP3 file, open My Computer. Depending on your make and model of cellphone, you may be able to directly send this MP3 file to your cellphone (this works for most Motorola phones, such as the ubiquitous Razr). For my Samsung m510, I found that the file must first be renamed to have a .3g2 extension. Search the Internet for tips about your specific phone model. To transfer the file to your phone, simply drag and drop.