Interesting opportunity just came up today. If you were offered the chance to work somewhere undesireable (at least to you), but were offered a significant raise to move there, would you?

As for details, this would be a rural area in the Midwest, and significant raise would be 50%. Given that the standard cost of living is also much lower there, this would be a way to save a good amount of money for a few years. This would also mean few friends, isolation, change of culture, good restaurants, and so on… Would you suck it up for the money?
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My buddy just had a free meal at Todai, a Japanese seafood and sushi buffet located primarily along the West Coast. They offer free meals to people on their birthday (they check ID), as long as you go with one paying customer. I usually avoid buffets, but where else can two people eat about five pounds of raw fish for $30? And unlimited crab legs. Mmm… I love sashimi. If you see a guy eating only the fish and leaving the rice balls underneath untouched, that’s me. Gotta save room!

Here’s a nice list of other places to get free food on your birthday. Many are just desserts or kids-only, but it includes such chains as Red Lobster, TGIFs, Baskin Robbins, and Burger King. Nothing I’d really go out of my way for, besides maybe Baskin Robbins 🙂

When I can’t find an ATM without fees, I just go into the nearest grocery store, and buy something small and pay for with the ATM card and ask for cashback. In urban areas I look for a drugstore like Walgreens. I’ve never had a surcharge, and it’s a ‘purchase’ so your own bank won’t charge you either for using a foreign ATM.

But what should you buy? If you buy something useless, that’s wasting money too right? If I see something on sale or need something anyways I’ll get it, but my standby is stamps. You’ll use them up sooner or later, the price is the same everywhere, and they don’t lose value.

Most people know about online price comparison websites like Froogle or PriceGrabber, but what if you’re actually in a physical store and you need to find out if a price is good or not? Enter FruCall, which lets you find out the prices online, including shipping to your zip code, by calling them at 1-888-DO-FRUCALL and entering the UPC barcode number. I gave it a test run:
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My local grocery stores (mainly Safeway) are having some great prices on BBQ staples competing for your July the 4th money. Check if yours is too, and stock up!

Ground beef – 5 lbs for $5 ($1/lb.)
Salmon fillets – $4/lb.
Chicken breasts – $1.29/lb.
Coke – Four 12-packs for $10 – $10 mail-in rebate = Free

Mmm… meat, fish, and soda. Grill-tastic! By the way, our no-grocery-shopping month went very well. We only spent about $20 on produce and fruit instead of the usual $200-$300, and we cleared out a lot of various stuff. It was like Spring Cleaning for our cupboards.

Well, it’s actually only for $42, but that’s what eBates calls their rebate checks. eBates and other similar sites were discussed previously.

You can wring out the most cashback at each separate store by checking out EvReward first, but the thing with these programs is that since you always have to wait at least two months before getting your promised money, so you want to deal with a reputable site. Free money!

I finally installed Skype about a month ago, joining the techie elite. Actually the great thing about Skype is it’s really easy to use. If my parents actually had internet at home I bet I could teach them to use it. All you need is a headset and their software.

Anyhow, the big news today is that SkypeOut, which allows you to dial real phone numbers from your own computer (as opposed to just other Skype users), is free to any number in the U.S. or Canada until the end of the year. This is a great way for them to get users used to using their service, which used to cost 2 cents a minute within the U.S.

Here’s the e-mail:

Hello,

Calls to friends and family on Skype have always been free. Now we’ve made calls within the US and Canada to all phones totally free till the end of the year.

Starting from today it doesn’t matter if it’s a Skype-to-Skype call or a call to landline or mobile phone – it’s free as long as you’re calling from within the US or Canada to US or Canadian phone number.

If only they offered fax service…

Although I’m still not worked up about gas prices personally, I still hear all kinds of tips to save gas left and right. But do they really work? Edmunds.com tests them out and gives us some hard(ish) numbers. Briefly:

What worked
Driving less aggressively
Using cruise control
Avoiding long idles

What didn’t
Turning off the A/C
Ensuring proper tire pressure (ignoring safety issues)

Got a bunch of gift cards you haven’t used yet? Sell or trade them the new site CardAvenue.com. For example, you could swap an unwanted $100 Pottery Barn gift card you just got for a $100 Home Depot gift card that you could really use. I’ve already spent my $200 in free Target gift cards, but maybe I can pick some more up at a nice discount. At least for now, the site looks to be supported by advertising, and does not charge any fees to buy, trade, or sell. All you have to pay is postage, which hopefully will lead to better prices for both buyers and sellers.

As with any other person-to-person system, you have to watch out for fraud. CardAvenue try to avoid this in a variety of ways. They are able to check gift card balances ahead of time, and also have an eBay-like feedback system. If something does go wrong, you must use the PayPal claim system (you can only use PayPal), and then their own CardAssure protection system (up to $100). I’d still be careful.

If you require prescription medication, and are like me and have lots of pharmacies around, you should really check out your next Sunday newspaper. Almost every pharmacy around here regularly has a $15-$20 coupon if you switch your prescription to them from an outside company. I’ve almost gone through them all now – Safeway, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and even Target Pharmacy. If you time it right you can just go to a new one every month. Time to see if we can make another complete roundtrip!

All you need to do is bring in your old prescription label, and they do the rest. This way, we are actually making money off of our meds since we only pay a $10 copay each time.