Best of blog posts for week of June 5th

Trent at The Simple Dollar has some good ideas to save on software with : Amazon’s 25 Software Bestsellers - And Their Free Equivalents You can also see my post for some free video game suggestions.

Trent also asks himself the question : Is Renting a Vehicle for a Long Road Trip Worth It? Our Math Says Yes

JD at GetRichSlowly talks about The Lazy Way to Investment Success
Lazy investing is something I've talked about before. I also showed how even a simple lazy portfolio can out perform the S&P500.

How I've made $24 off Ebates

So far I've made the following rebates from Ebates:
Orbitz = $3
Tell a friend = $5
Sign up Bonus = $5
Hotels.com = 3% of $375 = $11.25 pending

Thats $24 .25 total.

The first 3 have been registered by Ebates already. The last one is a recent purchase and hasn't shown up on the Ebates site.

I missed out on the following simply cause I forgot to check Ebates if they have a discount:
Newegg 2% of $13 = 26¢ Oops. Well at least it was only 26¢.

I really don't do a ton of online shopping. Theres only a few things I get online. One area that I can benefit from Ebates is travel purchases. I get almost all my travel reservations via online sites. So if I simply need to remember to stop by Ebates to check and see if the site I'm buying something from has a rebate. It only takes about 1 minute to swing by Ebates, log in, search for a vendor and then follow the link to the vendor site. It only took me an 2 extra minutes to get over $14 cash back from my Orbitz and Hotels.com purchases.

Of course you can only get cash back via Ebates if you spend money on merchants that they get rebates for. I wouldn't recommend changing your spending habits due to this. But if you are going to spend money on a merchant that works with Ebates already then why not go ahead and get an extra percent or two back? Its a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Switch to New www.FreeBy50.com Address

I've recently switched the address for this site over to the new www.FreeBy50.com domain. Previously the site pointed to FreeBy50.Blogspot.com.

I have some static links that still point to the old address and I'll try and go back and fix those to point them to the new www.FreeBy50.com address.

If you run into any problems with the address then I'd appreciate it if you let me know. You can leave a comment here if you'd like.

Please bear with mean and I appreciate your patience for any annoyance this may cause.

Get $25 free when opening an ING account with $250

I've been an ING Direct customer since 2005. I'm a happy customer. ING offers a high yield online savings account. Right now the rate on the savings account is 1.5% which is well above the national average. If you wish to sign up for an ING account you can get $25 free by using a link below.

ING Direct is FDIC insured, there are no fees and you get 24 hour online access.

Simply follow one of the links below and setup a new ING account with $250 initial deposit and you'll get a $25 bonus. If you do, I'll also get a $10 bonus. To qualify for this bonus, you must use a link below.

Here are the links to use:

Referral #1

Referral #2

Referral #3

Referral #4



(Links refreshed June 7th)

Note if you do not plan to open the account with $250 then just follow this link instead. There is no $25 bonus if you don't start with at least $250.

The links are one use only, so if you get the following message its been used:
We’re sorry, but the referral link within the email you received has expired and is no longer valid. We recommend that you contact the sender and ask them to re-send the referral email. Or click ‘Continue’ to proceed with the application process without the account opening bonus.

If you see that then please try another link. If all the links are used then please leave a comment to let me know and I'll replace them with new referral links.

Rules of the game: Bonuses are only paid for accounts that are opened with an initial deposit of at least $250. Initial deposit does not include bonus. The $25 bonus is available only for new accounts with a new Customer as primary owner. Only one bonus will be provided per household. Bonus starts earning interest upon account opening, but is unavailable for withdrawal for 30 days. Valid through 7/4/2009.