Car Negotiation Coach

Last Halloween I reviewed the best cars to survive a zombie apocalypse which oddly enough has been one of my most popular posts to date.  In fact, I’m still getting a lot of search traffic from search terms like best zombie vehicle, top zombie vehicles, and good car for a zombie. 

So since I enjoy writing about zombies, and apparently a few of you like reading about them, today I’ll address a second concern during a zombie rampage.  Where should you sleep?

Considerations when choosing accomodations during a zombie outbreak:

• Safety:  Has the structure been thoroughly cleared of undead and is it locked down and fortified to prevent unwanted entry?  
• Defensibility: Can you defend your new home from an undead assault or marauding band of looters? 
• Detection:  The best defense is not being found in the first place.  Can the undead hear or smell you from outside?  Does your home look enticing to marauders who may want to evict you? 
• Escape Access: Do you have a secure second exit if your position becomes overrun?
• Sustainability:  Is there an accessible source of food, water, or alternative power?
• Sanity:  Is there room for more than just you? After a few weeks it can get awful lonely as “the last man on earth”.  And if you are with a group, do you have a good supply of books or board games to entertain the troops?

Unfortunately, most people will not have the luxury of a military bunker or nuclear submarine, so I’ll list out my favorite places that may actually be accessible to the average post-apocalyptic survivor. Here’s where you’ll have the best chance of surviving the end of the world:

An Abandoned Prison

With safety and defense top priorities, a prison can serve as a fortress to protect you and your friends.  And since prisons are scattered everywhere, hopefully you’ll find one within a safe distance.  If you’re lucky, it’s already been evacuated, the mess hall has some rations, and you can find a way into the armory. 

Guard towers are a nice bonus for spotting bogeys and providing a long range position for snipers.

Major weaknesses: It may be just as hard to get out of a prison as it is to get in after an infestation.  Also, you may not be the first survivor there and the prior inhabitants may not have the same “value system” as you. [CONTINUE READING]

If anyone knows about bargain hunting, it’s the Financial Engineer over at Engineer Your Finances.  Over the holidays, F.E. was in the market for a new car and decided to try out my free guide on how to buy a car. 

After his purchase, he was kind enough to circle back and share his thoughts with us.   

“Find the Best Car Price” lives up to its website’s name.  We didn’t just beat MSRP or Factory Invoice, but got our new car under Dealer Cost!  Within a few short emails, we shaved $4,000 off our purchase. 

Initially skeptical about this email process, I was amazed with how easy it was to negotiate down the costs.  We were anticipating much more dealer resistance – no one should subject themselves to the unnecessary pressure tactics again!

One of my own website’s pillars is knowledge.  Much of financial success & security is about learning what’s out there and educating yourself as much as possible.  With all the information available on the web, dealers can’t hide their profits anymore.  Protect your own profits and save thousands using this negotiation technique.

Three farmers are selling the exact same apples for $2.00, 2.50, & $4.00 per pound. Which farmer are you going to buy from?  Don’t let dealers take you for a ride and get the price you deserve using “Email Price Reduction”.

How do I know we got a great deal?  After our purchase we looked at the “used” counterparts and couldn’t find anything cheaper that didn’t have 30,000+ miles already on it.

Thanks for the feedback F.E.!  It’s always fun to hear how people saved big just by sending a few emails. 

If anyone else wants to share a success story, please send it my way.

Once you’ve decided which hosting provider to use, let’s talk about how to switch hosting providers for your blog.  Since I can’t address every scenario, I’ll try to address the most common one: moving a WordPress blog to a new web host.  You should be able to do these steps on your own, but be very careful when editing your database files.  If you are not comfortable or have questions, call and ask your new hosting provider for help.  While it’s easy to move your blog, it’s also easy to mess it up.

Do not end your current hosting agreement before you are finished moving everything!  You’ll want to try to make the change in providers without any downtime to your website. 

Step 1: Backup (export) your WordPress database and files at your existing account

1. Access phpMyAdmin from cPanel.
2. Click on the name of your WordPress database. 
3. Click on the Export tab.
4. Leave the default settings and then click “Go” to export a copy of your database to your computer.
5. Use an FTP client to download all other files for your blog.

Step 2: Create a new WordPress installation at your new hosting provider 

1. Use a wizard to install WordPress (most hosting providers will have a WordPress installation wizard from cPanel like Simple Scripts). [CONTINUE READING]

In Part 1 of this series, I explained why you should consider self-hosting your blog and that it can easily pay for itself.  But how do you choose a hosting provider?

Finding the best hosting provider for your blog is not as simple as picking the webhost with the lowest price. 

Cost is important but you need to consider other factors like reliability and support.  In this post I’ll review what you need to consider when selecting a provider.  And also, because it’s so hard to determine quality based on flashy hosting advertisements, I’ve polled several bloggers and asked them to share their unbiased opinions on webhosts below.   

Key Factors for Selecting a Hosting Provider

Price: When comparing the cost of web hosts, be sure to compare the total cost of everything you will need.  If a provider advertises $4/month but you end up spending $36/year on extras, you should consider using $7/month for comparison purposes (36/12 + 4 = $7).  Some providers bundle everything within their monthly fee and others will charge you extra for:

• Domain registration (Average cost is $8-12.  Checkout fellow Yakezie member Mike @SavingMoneyToday’s informative guide on registering a domain and how to make a website.)
• Annual domain renewal (usually the same cost as registration)
• Domain privacy ($4-8 to keep your name and address from being publically listed with your domain)
• Hosting multiple domains
• Exceeding a certain bandwidth
• Additional email accounts
• Priority tech support and backups
• IP Addresses  (You can assign multiple domains to the same IP address using folders and subdomains.  This is convenient for smaller blogs.  When you have a lot of traffic, you may want to consider a unique IP address for each domain.  This will generally help you with search rankings as each IP address is given more credit as a unique site and interlinking sites will provide you with more of a search ranking boost.  Also, if one of your sites happens to incur a penalty by the search engines, you can limit the damage by using separate IP’s.)

Reliability: How often does a webhost have uptime or performance issues? A slow website or frequent downtime can mean lost readers and lost revenue!  Do they have any service level agreements or guarantees? 

Scalability: For the small to medium sized blog, a shared web-host is sufficient (like most of the reviews below).  If your goal is to get main stream traffic, consider picking a host that will allow you to upgrade as you grow.  Look for those that offer VPS (Virtual Private Servers) or dedicated servers that you can migrate to down the line.

User Interface: How easy is their administration system?  You don’t have to be a techie to accomplish a lot of normal blog functions.  But you do have to have an easy to use, intuitive management panel.  Many companies use standard user interfaces like cPanel or Plesk.  But some companies have more complicated systems so make sure you know what you’re signing up for.

Tech Support: Can you get a knowledgeable person on the phone 24/7 to assist when you eventually need help?  Some providers only offer email support.  Would that work for you?  If tech support is unwilling to help with certain tasks will you need to budget for professional assistance?

Word of Mouth: It’s a challenge to sort through the flashy promotions and claims of “we’re the best hosting provider” so a good referral based on experience is gold!  Since it’s hard to find an objective opinion,  I’ve asked some of the best personal finance bloggers about their experiences with different hosting providers and included their comments below.  [CONTINUE READING]

As you probably know, I usually write about shopping around for big ticket items (anything over $100). Well, for bloggers, web hosting is definitely a big ticket item. Hosting can start around $90/year and easily jump up to hundreds per month.

It definitely pays to shop around for a hosting provider for your blog. However, when selecting a web host, you’ll want to consider both cost and other factors like service and support. Any money saved with a cheapo hosting provider can quickly be lost to hours spent reviving your site from crash or missed revenue when it’s down.

In Part 2 of this series I’ll talk about what to look for in terms of price and service when selecting a webhost. I’ll also share feedback and unbiased reviews I’ve collected from the best personal finance bloggers on hosting providers they’ve used. But before I get to that, let’s talk about…

What does it mean to self-host a blog?

Many bloggers start out with free blogging accounts on websites like WordPress.com and Blogger. They will host your blog for you, let you choose one of their themes, and give you a subdomain (for example, you.wordpress.com). These sites are great to get your feet wet, but as your blog evolves, you’ll quickly realize that free hosting doesn’t provide the flexibility, control, and money making potential you need to run a serious blog.

When you self-host a blog, you have total control over your design and how to monetize your blog. You’ll purchase a domain name and a hosting account where the domain and files for your website will reside. You can register a domain and setup hosting independently, or you can bundle them together to save yourself a step (and usually a couple bucks).

My provider (Bluehost) gives you one free domain registration (and free domain renewal every year) when you sign up for a hosting account. That ends up being about a $10/year discount.

It may seem daunting, but the process of setting up your blog at a hosting provider is fairly [CONTINUE READING]

Wagering on your Credit Score

Ever played credit card roulette where everyone throws a credit card on the table at the end of a meal?  The waitress get to picks one lucky sucker who has to pick-up the whole tab and everyone else gets to breathe a deep sigh of relief.  If you’re the kinda sicko that enjoys that game, you may also like Credit Score Roulette.

My best friend and I are nutty about personal finance and we both take our credit scores very seriously (as everyone should).  We also love to gamble.  So about ten years ago we decided to make the annual routine of checking our credit scores a little more interesting.   Each year we make a wager that whoever has the lowest credit score has to pay for dinner and drinks at the restaurant of the winner’s choice.  We check our scores on the same day and share the result at the same time.  Aside from the obvious prize, we both want to win because we pride ourselves on a good score and we’re super-competitive.

… so competitive in fact, that we took it a step further and bet on our wives’ credit scores.  We didn’t tell them at first and when they later found out, one of them wasn’t too happy to learn she was the reason her husband had picked up a big tab .  So we’ve since shifted focus back to ourselves…..at least until our kids are old enough to start developing their own credit.

Surrendering the Bet

Last year we had a development that caused us to temporarily put our game on hold.  After reviewing my credit report, I found that I had been the victim of identity theft.  Someone had fraudulently opened a couple utility accounts in my name.  After several dozen phone calls, faxes, a credit freeze, and way too many hours… I was able to get the matter resolved.  The resolution process was a nightmare, but discovering the issue is all the more reason to check credit regularly.  My score has bounced back, but had I not caught it, I would have been in for a nasty surprise had I tried to use my credit to buy a car or refinance my house.  And in case you were wondering, my friend was kind enough to waive last year’s dinner due to extenuating circumstances.

Anyway, you already know why it’s so critical to know your credit score.  But maybe Credit Score Roulette will give you that extra little competitive inspiration to improve your score.  Even if you lose, it’s still great fun to take your friend(s) out on the town.

And if you’re wondering how to get your score for free (all those advertisements do come with a catch), here’s a simple trick I learned…

How to get your credit score for free (seriously free)

First off, you can absolutely get your credit report for free once a year from each of the three credit bureaus or from annualcreditreport.com.  However, they will not provide you with your credit score for free. And you really ought to be checking both your report AND your score. 

One easy way to do this is to get the MyFICO free credit score when you sign up for a free trial of Score Watch®.  And then immediately cancel the Score Watch®….unless of course you determine that you want Score Watch®.  I’m neither for or against it, it’s just not something I’ve decided to pay for myself.

After you sign up, make sure you print your credit report out BEFORE cancelling since you won’t have access afterwards.  Cancelling is fairly painless and only takes a minute or two.

How to cancel MyFICO Score Watch® (you won’t need to call)

1. Click “Support” on the top right (next to “My Account”) when signed in.
2. Click on the link that says “How do I cancel my Free Score Trial?”
3. Click the link that says, “The easiest way to cancel is to send a request by clicking here”.
4. Choose “I would like to cancel my product subscription” and “Score Watch® – Free Trial”.  Then click “Next”.
5. Enter your name and email (you can leave order# blank if you don’t have it).
6. In the comments, type “Please cancel my Score Watch® subscription effective immediately.”
7. Send your request and you should receive a confirmation within 24 hours.

Hi Folks, thanks for reading in 2010 and I hope you come back for more in 2011!  Here are my top 3 favorite posts I’ve written this year (zombies, cars, and TVs….not your typical blog!).

• Best cars to survive a zombie apocalypse
• How to find the best TV price
• How to systematically negotiate a low car price (flowchart)

And to close out the year, I’d like to recommend some reading from a few of my Yakezie friends.  Happy New Year to all!

• Is Your Car Worth It? (Green Panda Tree House)
• A look back at Len’s Magic 8-Ball Predictions for 2010 (Len Penzo dot Com)
• The Golden Rules of Haggling (Beating Broke)
• Sales Pressure Tactics (Frugal Confessions)
• Negotiating a Job offer (Fabulously Broke)
• 20 Ways You Can Save Money on Gas (My Personal Finance Journey)
• And I’ve been a bit delayed in mentioning that I was included in carnivals and round-ups on these fantastic sites: Not Made of Money, Money Reasons,  The Financial Blogger, Invest it Wisely, Sustainable Life Blog, BarbaraFriedbergPersonalFinance.com, Faithful With a Few, and Financial Highway.

Everyone wants to get a deal on a car, but some people are willing to put in a little more effort than others.  Let’s look at the different types of car buyers and see where you fit in.

Types of Car Buyers

1. The Fabulously Wealthy.  We’re talking about Vincent Chase from Entourage wealthy.  You walk into the dealership, pick out a Maybach and pay the full sticker price without batting an eye.  You ignore advice from the best financial books because your time is just too valuable to waste negotiating.
2. The Average Joe.  This is the category most people fall into. You know that you’re not supposed to pay full price.  You do no car research, decide you like the look of a Toyota Highlander, and throw out a number.  Eventually you buy it when the salesman knocks off a whopping $200 (but you could have saved $2000).  You leave feeling like a winner, not knowing you left money on the table.
3. The Savvy Shopper.  You realize that getting car price quotes online from multiple dealerships will allow you to get a better price than negotiating at the dealership. You probably got a pretty good deal, but you didn’t bother to negotiate.  In fact, you may not even know that Internet prices are still negotiable. 
4. The Hammer.  Like the Savvy Shopper, you got price quotes online.  But you took it a step further.  You dropped the hammer and told each of the dealerships that you were going to take the best offer you could find, and you’ll give them each a chance to beat your best price.  You don’t mind driving an hour out of your way because it could save you several hundred dollars more than your next best offer.  You are a true negotiator!

So are you a Hammer?  Do you want to be?  It’s not that hard.  Learn how to buy a car and that spending a couple hours to send a few emails could save you a couple grand.  And feel free to send me a thank you note or gift basket (my wife likes chocolate ).