Saving Money

Saving Money was Originally Posted on February 28, 2012 by lavarock

A news item said that gasoline prices may exceed $5.00 a gallon. Well, welcome to OUR world!

Lanai gas prices are now $5.23. The highest price here on the Big Island range from $4.39 to $4.68. The cheapest prices I see in San Francisco is $4.13, although I didn’r spend too much time looking.

Websites like GasBuddy.Com allow you to see which station near you is chgeaper. The mobile map is useful should you have to drive a long way. Drivers use their smart phones to update a gas price and often the priices are minutes to hours old. For example, one nearby station was updated 7 hours ago and Costsco prices were updated 45 minutes ago. Those two stations happen to be less than half a mile from each other, and the price difference is 30 cents a gallon. For my truck, that fillup would cost $6 cheaper at COSTCO. Plus In get 3% back on my gas purchases.

It amazes me that people line up at the gas station a few feet from COSTCO where the same wait time would happen. They say they don’t shop at COSTCO because of the membership cost and they don’t need to buy a truckload of toilet paper. Yet for me, just 9 fillups would pay off the cheapest COSTCO membership. If I were to to buy a tank of gas every 2 weeks, I would save $156 a year! Subtract out $55 for the membership and add in a bunch of those $1.50 hotdog and drink specials and you are way ahead if you buy nothing else.

It is not much different than my recent investment. One stock I have been buying has gone up $65 a share in the past three weeks. That investment has brought me a 44% increase and as of today have made $1000 off that stock. Few stocks have done well long term, but this one has. I used to own it decades ago and shou,ld have kept it. Instead, I sold it and bought another stock that plummeted and I stupidly followed that stock all the way to the bottom, rather than cutting my losses and selling early on.

In this case, I’ll be buying more of the magic stock in the morning, but am watching closely to decide if I need to sell. I had money getting a decent rate at IngDirect but moved it over to Sharebuilder where I can automatically buy stocks (or partial shares of stocks) and started an investment plan a while back. I also can make one time buys, which is what I am doing tomorrow.

I am not here to sell you on the purchase of a stock, but to tell you that if you have money sitting in a bank, you are not making ANY money. Just switching to a credit union could double or triple your rate of return with no chance of loss. Investing in a CD could bring an even higher return. Stop onover to BankRate.Com and look up savings rates and CDs etc.

Look at your savings account. Does it offer ANY interest? Bankrate shows that with a minimum of $1000 you could get over 1% APY for a 1 year CD.

You can get over .8% for a savings or Money Market Account.

So, if you have money just sitting around, you COULD be saving more, without having to buy a truckload of toilet paper!