Life Hacks. We all have em', little tricks or gimmicks we have to get a 'one-up' on life, and seeing as how we're all friends here, I think it's time we share.
What ways do you get a leg up on life? Do you have a rewards program that gives you mad cash back? Some secret coupon scam that yields you free frequent flier miles? Are you a part of a pyramid scheme where you're on the tippy top / big wide bottom? Do Share!
I have one that I really like, and it's kind of stupid. I use Bing Rewards like it talked about my mother. Essentially Bing is paying me to use their search engine. Not a lot, but if you're going to be googling something, might as well run it through Bing first, earn a few points, and in a couple of months you'll be able to get a gift card or a red box rental or whatever. I figure if someone wants to buy my search, they can have it. Worse case scenario you bounce back to Google for proper results. Yes, that is my referral link above.
Otherwise, switching to E-cigerettes has saved me a fuck ton of money, and I can smoke indoors / sleep at night without coughing, which is boss as all hell. I've also found that once you get over the set-up gobbly-gook, Net10 wireless is a great no-contract phone provider if you consider yourself tech savy and able to deal with somewhat incompetent tech support. I pay 50 bucks a month for a gig of data and unlimited everything else, for my crappy iPhone 3Gs.
----------------------------------------------
Blog Otter Award: Jobber123 for facing the the horrors of Human Resources 'sensitivity' training.
What ways do you get a leg up on life? Do you have a rewards program that gives you mad cash back? Some secret coupon scam that yields you free frequent flier miles? Are you a part of a pyramid scheme where you're on the tippy top / big wide bottom? Do Share!
I have one that I really like, and it's kind of stupid. I use Bing Rewards like it talked about my mother. Essentially Bing is paying me to use their search engine. Not a lot, but if you're going to be googling something, might as well run it through Bing first, earn a few points, and in a couple of months you'll be able to get a gift card or a red box rental or whatever. I figure if someone wants to buy my search, they can have it. Worse case scenario you bounce back to Google for proper results. Yes, that is my referral link above.
Otherwise, switching to E-cigerettes has saved me a fuck ton of money, and I can smoke indoors / sleep at night without coughing, which is boss as all hell. I've also found that once you get over the set-up gobbly-gook, Net10 wireless is a great no-contract phone provider if you consider yourself tech savy and able to deal with somewhat incompetent tech support. I pay 50 bucks a month for a gig of data and unlimited everything else, for my crappy iPhone 3Gs.
----------------------------------------------
Blog Otter Award: Jobber123 for facing the the horrors of Human Resources 'sensitivity' training.
1. For the record I am completely apathetic to malevolent nature in which my question about benevolence was structured yesterday. And you should too. Syntax errors are for college essays, and should be treated here with ambivalence.
3. Welp, I managed to post this 6 hours into the past the first time. I rule!
PArt time hours at the Y teaching kickboxing. Easy gig.
ReplyDeleteA few come to mind...I know a shrink who prescribes me as much adderall as I want. I dont take it alot anymore but it got me through med school and comes in handy for those 14 hour overnight ER shifts.
ReplyDeleteI jump rope between sets while working out. Keeping your heart rate up throughout a workout burns like 3x the calories you otherwise would.
Motherfucking audible e-books on tape/ipod. Love them. If youre in your car 90 minutes a day and go to the gym, you can bust out a book in 3-4 days. Ive gotten through tons of biographies, self improvement books, economic books, sports books, etc. Beats listening to the same shit on my ipod over and over again
Ebates. If you use a site to buy stuff, see if it's listed on Ebates first. They'll let you know if there are any deals, and if you click through Ebates to go to the site, they'll track what you buy and you'll get x% cash back in the form of a quarterly cheque.
ReplyDeleteNEVER heard of it. Ill def check it out tho
ReplyDeleteThe only reason I haven't gotten $20 or more in my checks is because Amazon wasn't on the site for a while, and even now it's really limited. But there are a lot of major sites there.
ReplyDeleteGet your hustle on... Yeah, um... I got some ideas and stories and what not, but it's sure as shit not something I'm going to talk about online, especially on a website where I use my real name.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Paul, your bit about grammar nazis made me laugh my ass off.
I'm part of the NFL.com rewards program, and at one point was in the top 50 in the nation (lots of downtime at work). I've gotten some free shirts and a one on one fantasy football counseling from an nfl.com expert.
ReplyDeleteI also use my Chase credit card for all my bills. Chase pays all my bills, I pay Chase once a month and get 5% back on everything.
This feels like Deja Vu...
ReplyDelete- I know a shrink that prescribes me large quantities of adderall. I dont take it that much anymore but it was a fucking life saver getting through med school, long ER shifts, etc.
- jump roping between sets at the gym: great way to keep the heart rate up. Exercising with an increased heart rate will burn like 3x the calories of a normal weight workout. Doing this has allowed me to eliminate heavy cardio work.
- motherfucking audible e-books on ipod. Easiest way to learn stuff ever. Full length books are 7-9 hours, thats a few workouts and car rides. Ive gotten through tons of biographies, sports books, self improvement stuff, economic and political books by simply listening to them instead of 2pac or adele for the millionth time
Yea, I use a Chase also and 5% is solid. I used to use a SouthWest/Visa card when I traveled, and SW has a fucking great reward system
ReplyDeleteThe best way I've found to do everything I need to do is, I don't sleep. At least, I don't sleep in my bed at night anymore. I sleep at my desk in my home office. I sleep while I watch TV with my kids. I sleep on the train on the way to work, and sometimes I sleep at red lights while I drive to the train station. Sure, I hallucinate sometimes and I'm going to die when I plow my car into the side of a garbage truck, but dammit my to-do list will be almost empty when I go.
ReplyDeleteCapital One Venture card. Pay a small annual fee and get 2% rewards on all purchases which are redeemable towards travel expenses. I travel quite a lot and this is the best rewards cards I've found. Doesn't matter what the airline, hotel, or rental car service is.
ReplyDeleteCapital One also has no foreign transaction fees, so it's a double win for folks on the move.
I don't have cable and cell phone bills or any other recurring subscriptions. Would probably be hellish for many but I dig it.
I like the jump rope between sets. I always put it into outdoor circuit workouts between upper body stuff, but have never brought my rope to the gym. Really a great idea, I'm going to give this a try tomorrow morning.
ReplyDelete5% back on everything all the time, or is it one of those things were there are different categories at different times of the year?
ReplyDeleteI pressed up up down down left right left right B A Start while in the womb, so now I have 30 lives.
ReplyDeleteReminded me of this...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9tHJ-cm338&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Yea, youll like it if youre used to circuit stuff. Now if I dont do it, I feel like Im slacking if im just sitting between sets.
ReplyDeleteThe rewards thing is actually 1% on everything, with 5% on categories, certain merchants go up to 10% if you click through the Chase website, plus you get points per purchase on top of the percentage, and other odd little bonuses... mine averages out to 5% monthly in cash back.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a big advantage if one can plan well and utilize it, so good going.
ReplyDeleteYeah Discover is basically like that right now. 1% on everything, 5% on categories, up to 25% on stuff from selected retailers. Gamestop is 5% cash back, so a local game tournament needed 20 copies of call of duty. Bought all of them on my discover card, reimbursed in cash. Quick easy profit.
ReplyDeleteDiscover's last promotion for 5% back was on gas. Everywhere I went with people, we stop for gas, I'm buying and people pay me back. Another quick profit.
Lots of little deals like that. With the volume I put on the card and the fact that it gets paid in full every month they keep raising my credit limit.
I love audible ebooks. Listen to them on my iPod when I drive, and at the gym sometimes.
ReplyDeleteSometimes at work when I have downtime I do http://www.inboxdollars.com and a couple of other survey sites. Makes me about $30 a week, and helps to pass the time when I am not fucking off on this site.
ReplyDeleteWhat is this exactly? Do you have to give your bank account info?
ReplyDeleteNo. You just fill out survey's and shit, read a couple of emails, and maybe do an offer (though I never have). When you make enough to get paid you have them send you a check... I have gotten 3 so far. Its not much money but if you are wasting that time anyway there is nothing to lose.
ReplyDeleteOk thanks. I waste tons of time online (see: BoD) so might dabble. My email is mhaas42@gmail.com if referrals help
ReplyDeleteI was doing something like that through eRewards for the longest time. It took forever to build up the money though. I managed around $300 in rewards dollars and put it towards Caribbean Points on a cruise or something like that... gave it up over a year ago.
ReplyDeleteCool. Just sent you the referral link... might hit your junk mail though so check there.
ReplyDeleteOk. Yea 30 bucks aint alot but its a bar tab so whats the down side.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts exactly... it goes faster once you become more adept at lying your way through the surveys (if you don't qualify you don't credit, but there is a thing where you get a bonus "spin" when this happens) always pick "None of the above" as your industry for example.
ReplyDeleteI am also looking at getting into http://www.clickbank.com to find some products to make a profit on and combine that with affiliate marketing to make some money while I am doing other things... I noticed a problem with my ceiling recently,.. it didn't have paper stacked to it!
ReplyDeleteThis is of course what I WOULD be saying if I didn't maintain the highest integrity in all things.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to get in touch with some sort of science-y person and make a prototype for a snow-melting driveway tarp. Get one of those suckers under say, 50 bucks and you got yourself a fortune.
ReplyDeleteDude,do the surveys that take you to other sites crush you with spam?
ReplyDeleteGenerally no. But I created an email address to dump them to if they do ask for your email address just in case.
ReplyDeleteWow, 5% I need to look into that. I get 1%, or 2% at selected retailers.
ReplyDeleteHow the Eff am I not involved in the local game tournament scene. More importantly how are there not local game tournaments near me!
ReplyDeleteI've been doing Bing Rewards for about a year now. We have 3 accounts in our household so I created a macro with AutoHotKey that will auto-search Bing for me 90 consecutive times to max out my points in about 5 minutes total. I've gotten around 25 $5 Amazon giftcards from 5 minutes a day.
ReplyDeleteThreadjack: just got off work and have been contemplating moving closer to downtown Tampa so started doing some research... HAVE YOU GUYS EVER DONE THE SEX OFFENDER SEARCH FOR YOUR ADDRESS?!?! WTF, THERES A FEW BY ME BUT THERES FUCKING 1428 WITHIN A 3 MILE RADIUS OF MY GFS ADDRESS. Had to vent. Thanks.
ReplyDelete