Selling your Books

If you have a lot of books lying around from college days or otherwise, you could make some extra money if you are never going to look through them again. Of course, the obvious place to sell books would be on Amazon. You can start a seller account and manage your inventory easily. The #1 tip for selling on Amazon is to check your account frequently and make sure that your books have the lowest price.

If your books are not selling on Amazon as quickly as you would like (a month or two), then you could try a book buyback option. The one that I have used the most is Abebooks Buyback. With a book buy back, you type in your books' ISBN numbers and they tell you how much they will pay for them. If you have a lot of books, this might be the way to go. If you accept their prices, they will print you a mailing label and all you will have to do is to box them up and drop them off. The only drawback to buy backs is that they often require you to reach a certain total before they buy your books such as $15.

However, there are many buy back companies out there, just Google them and you'll find a ton. You might have to look through many websites to find the best price, but you can copy and paste all the ISBN numbers at ones, making the check a lot quicker.

Ebates - $5 for Signing Up

Like Upromise, Ebates pays you to shop online. Upromise can be directly linked to your Sallie Mae account and you can involve your relatives to participate and gift all their money to your loan account. For Ebates, you receive cash, yet you usually receive a larger percentage.

Just for signing up, you'll earn $5 in cash. If you keep shopping, you could earn a percentage of all your purchases on your Ebates account. Your money is automatically transferred from Ebates to Paypal in $5 increments.

Some examples of merchants and their cash back offers:

1. Groupon - 3%
2. Mint.com - $1.50
3. Entertainment.com (Entertainmnet Book) - 17.5%
4. Snapfish - 6.5%
5. ATT - $50
6. Netflix - $10
7. AMEX Gift Cards - 1%
8. Walmart - 2%
9. eBay - 1%-4%

Pretty much anything you buy online can be bought through Ebates and, therefore, you could earn cash back. It ads up quickly.

Restaurant.com

If you ever go out to eat, one great way to do so is by buying gift certificates on Restaurant.com. Restaurant.com offers gift certificates to restaurants usually at a 50% discount. Although there is usually a clause about how much food you have to buy, it usually ends up the amount that you would spend anyway. Buying a $10 gift certificate for $5 to a burger joint is still a good deal if I have to spend a minimum of $20. Two burgers and two drinks is usually $20.

Many restaurants will automatically add tip on the pre-discounted amount. Usually the tip is 15-18%. However, there are many restaurants that do not have the tip included, just read the fine print. I don't like going to places where the tip will be automatically included, I feel I don't get as great of a service as the waiter already knows that I am forced to pay 15-18%. I'd rather pick my own tip amount and it will only be 15-18% on an exceptional service. I used to be a waitress too at one point in my life and I think the society has moved to accept tips as mandatory, but I think if the customer had to wait a long time, didn't get what he ordered or the waitress showed the customer attitude, minimal tip, if any, should be left. Therefore, I always seek the restaurants that do not automatically add tip to your bill.

Now, Restaurant.com seems to offer more than restaurants in some places as well. For example, in Miami, Restaurant.com is offering a sunset cruise at a 50% discount.

You can buy Restaurant.com gift certificated at the website itself. However, there are ways to get the gift certificates at deep discounts or free:

1. Most likely you have some miles that are expiring with an airliner that you do not fly often. Usually, you can trade in your expiring miles for Restaurant.com gift certificates in their miles mall. I received my first ones through United.
2. You could buy Restaurant.com gift certificates at a deep discount on eBay.
3. American Express usually has free 30-day trials of services that will give you Dining Dough certificates for free as an incentive. Just make sure to cancel the service that you are trying.
4. Some retailers will have special promotions for Restaurant.com. For example, I recently received $50 in Restaurant.com gift certificates for purchasing $50 worth of goods at Drugstore.com.
5. You could use coupon codes on Restaurant.com to get certificates for pennies. Google "Restaurant.com coupon codes."

E-Miles - Free Miles

Most airlines give away free miles through email subscriptions, a dining program, magazine subscriptions, etc. Another way to get miles is through looking at advertisements and possibly answering a few questions. e-Miles Miles for Minutes is a website that gives away miles or points for companies such as AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hilton HHonors, etc. Check to see if your airline is there and fly sooner.

Checking Accounts - PerkStreet

I'm in the market for a new checking account. Looking at what's available locally is discouraging even when i live in a place with the largest concentration of banks. Citi and Chase still seem like the top choices due to ATM availability. However, their free checking accounts do not earn any significant interest and their debit cards are not even 1 point to a dollar. In addition to the low rewards, they have restrictions for free accounts such as direct deposit or a minimum balance.

A better checking account is one that can be found online. The one that came out on top for me is PerkStreet.

The Good:

• 1% cash back on all purchases
• 2% cash back on all purchases if your account balance is over $5,000
• free ATMs in places such as Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid
• refund of up to $10 per month for non-network ATMs
• easily transfer funds from any bank account online 
• monthly specials where you can receive up to 5% cash back - info should be on Facebook and Twitter
• online account that gives you checks

The Bad:

• limit of $1,500 transfer for a bank account per 30 days (if you want to deposit more you can through an ATM or by mail)
• if you want a refund for non-network ATMs you must email, fax, or mail the receipts from the ATMs that charged you
• apparently PerkStreet does not separate the rewards you earn per transaction, making rewards hard to track

As you can see, 'the good' outweighs 'the bad.'

Upromise

Upromise started off just for Sallie Mae Student Loan customers to reduce their loan amounts. The way it works is: if you ever shop online on sites such as eBay, Travelocity, OfficeDepot, etc., then you can earn a percentage of your purchases. By searching for a retailer you want to shop at through the Upromise site, and clicking on the link to redirect you to your retailer, you earn a percentage of each purchase into your Upromise account.

In the past, you were only able to deposit those funds against your student loans. However, now you may also receive a check or deposit it into your Sallie Mae Bank account. If you deposit it into the Sallie Mae bank account (currently earning 1.25% interest), you are also eligible to receive 10% of your Upromise earnings at the end of the year as a bonus.

There are many ways to earn money in your Upromise amount. In addition to earning a percentages of your purchases online, you may also earn extra Upromise cash by using a registered credit card at participating restaurants. You could also join e-Rewards and redeem the money you earn by filling out surveys for Upromise cash. Many companies also award a dollar amount for joining or trying their services. For example, ServiceMagic pays $4 for getting a quote for any services you may need around the house.

Therefore, Upromise is a great deal. If you shop online anyway, you should sign up and get your friends and relatives to sign up and add you as the beneficiary.

Missing Money - Unclaimed Property

Did you know that if a company ever owed you money and could not find you, they could have placed the money into the unclaimed funds. To check to see if you any unclaimed funds, you could check two great sites:

Unclaimed

Missing Money

Please remember that the reason the company could not find you was because you moved, so look for all states that you have previously held an address at. Check your friends and relatives. Every time I have checked, I have always found money for friends, unfortunately never for myself though.

You could also check out your favorite celebrity for fun to see their previous addresses or who owes them money.