Need to get some work done on your AC? Schedule the labor for winter and save.

While the costs of whole house air conditioning units can vary from region to region based on labor costs, you will likely be looking at several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars for a serious repair or replacement air conditioning unit.

If you can manage to limp through the summer with an older unit, you can reap quite significant savings on a large project during the autumn or winter, often to the tune of 400 to 500 dollars.

Even better, you'll be providing people with work during a slow season, and help them make it until next summer.

As a bonus, many manufacturers offer rebates on air conditioning equipment during the winter time to encourage sales, so you might even be able to pocket a little cash.

Replace your Air Filters Frequently to Cut down on Utilities

The average home has one or two filters inhabiting the heating and cooling ducts, and they can easily clog up and impede the flow of air throughout the home.

Freely flowing air is a great factor in keeping heating and cooling costs low, by allowing your climate control system to be efficient and effective.

If you are able to scrape together 10 or 11 dollars for the necessary filters at your local or online retailer, you might be able to save $40 a year or more in energy costs.

As a bonus, cleaner filters help to prevent accumulation of dust and mold on the condensers in an air conditioner, and extend the life of the system as a whole. Not to mention that you will be breathing much cleaner air.

Being Frugal about my Restaurant Expenses With Loyalty and Reward Programs

I don't eat out much, and when I do I think that it's important to limit the cost of my food and beverages. It's a cliche, but eating out in the United States can be much more expensive than cooking food at home, even when you take into account potentially costly ingredients and the hassle of acquiring them.

The cost of labor to cook and serve food is added onto the price of the meal and the upkeep for the infrastructure used to prepare it, and the business owners usually profit from the meal as well, all contributing to the cost of food before it gets to your plate.

Then to complicate matters in many restaurants a diner is expected to pay a gratuity to the serving and waitstaff.

I personally try to limit my excursions to places in which it is not customary to tip, like a quick service restaurant, and then further reduce my expenditure by financing my visits with gift cards that I earn from reward services like Google Screenwise Trends, Bing Rewards, and Swagbucks. All in all I am usually able to finance a few visits per month to a location of my choice.

To make the visits even more useful, I am sure to sign up for any applicable loyalty rewards programs, and I prefer to frequent areas with local Wi-fi service so that I can continue to do work to earn a little extra cash while I'm there.

At this point, I am a Starbucks Gold Card member, which permits me to get free refills, access to discounts and special offers, and a free drink after accumulating 12 stars. The cool thing is, I can actually get stars by referring friends and family to the My Starbucks Rewards program, so I can essentially earn infinite free drinks. The only limitation on it is that I can only refer so many people for stars each month.

I also joined the membership programs for Panera Bread, Dunkin Donuts, and a few other quick service restaurants.

At this point, I can grab a sandwich or a cup of coffee from any one of over 3 dozen locations around town without paying a dime out of pocket.

Are there any ways that you are frugal with your restaurant expenses?

5 Easy Ways to Turn Gift Cards into Cash

One of the most common problems that people deal with these days is how to make effective use of gift cards. Among the most common items purchased as gifts and given as rewards, literally hundreds of retailers are offering gift cards for use in their own or multiple stores, and as a country it has been reported that well over a billion dollars of value has gone unspent in the United States due to being locked into gift cards. Major players have even entered the arena, with many credit card companies offering prepaid gift cards for sale in large retailers such as Visa’s Vanilla prepaid gift card, American Express prepaid gift cards, and more. While similar to a prepaid debit card, these gift cards differ in that they often do not permit a cash withdrawal from an ATM, and therefore usually must be spent on a purchase.

Many websites and services that offer rewards for use, such as Swagbucks, Perk, and Google Screenwise Trends make gift cards more easily accessible than cash or cash equivalent payments, so that people that use their services are able to get a greater dollar value of gift cards for a retailer or restaurant than they are of PayPal or Payza payments. This often leads people to have a greater access to gift cards than money.

In any case, regardless of how you acquired your gift card, you are likely interested in converting it into cash. Luckily, there are a number of easy and straightforward methods for accomplishing this, if you are willing and able to make use of the services that I will describe below.

·         Selling the Card to Coinstar

o   If you have never seen the large green Coinstar machines in a grocery store or local business, Coinstar operates machines that accept loose change and offer a cash voucher that can be redeemed at the checkout counter for real money. These days, taking your change in to the Coinstar machine is a quick and easy way to get bills in your hand, without the hassle of having to count and wrap the coins yourself and take them into the bank. Although this service comes at a price, around 9% of the value of the coins, the convenience and speed are worth the price for many people, and it’s not uncommon to see people with jars of change cashing in for anything from a few bucks to hundreds of dollars. What a lot of people are not aware of is that Coinstar machines will now accept a number of gift cards for major retailers, and give you a certain percentage of the value of the gift card as a cash voucher that can be redeemed at the checkout counter.

This service, called Coinstar Exchange, allows you to scan or even swipe your gift card at a kiosk and trade it in for a cash voucher. At this point, over 150 retailers are being accepted, and there are probably going to be even more in the future! While there is little chance that you will get the full cash value of the gift card, you will at least get something, and it is nice to have cash in hand instead of waiting for a PayPal transaction to clear, check to arrive in the mail and be deposited, or any other option.

Just so you know, Coinstar Exchange requires sellers to verify their identity before selling the card, which means you need to provide a phone number, photo ID, credit or debit card, and email address when you redeem your cash voucher at the register.

·         Selling a Gift Card Online

o   There are a lot of options for selling a gift card online, and many different websites that you can use to do it.

o   Craigslist allows you to make a post to sell pretty much whatever you would like, and for many that constitutes an open license to sell unwanted or unused gift cards. People selling gift cards on Craigslist can sell a physical gift card or a gift card code, and are free to ask for any form of payment that they desire, whether it is cash, a check, a money order or even another gift card or a service like mowing the lawn. You can often get up to the full value of the gift card when selling on Craigslist, if you are patient and are willing to meet with the buyer, but you are more likely to make a quick sale if you offer your card for a lowered price, so that the buyer feels like he or she is getting a deal.

o   Ebay allows sellers to sell a gift card. You are able to sell the physical card with delivery through the mail, or the numerical code from the card just by sending the image of the front and back of the card through an email to the buyer.

Ebay is a great way to get money from an e-gift card, which is usually intended for use online and is often delivered without a physical card at all, only a claim code. The only thing that you must be careful about is  taking pictures of your card, you cannot expose the numbers on the card or the card’s value could be claimed by people before the card has been purchased.

Many people are willing to purchase a gift card on Ebay for close to face value, especially if they are for in-demand places like Starbucks and Target. While a person’s motivation for doing so likely varies, some conjecture that they are purchasing with a rewards credit card anyway, so anything that is bought comes with a certain amount of cash back.

A key drawback is that it takes a long time to receive the money from a gift card sale, which can be a problem if you “need cash now”.

o   Gift Card selling sites

There are a number of gift card buying and selling sites online, which either act as marketplaces for a gift card to be bought and sold directly by individuals, or act as intermediates and buy unwanted gift cards at a fixed price and sell them at a slightly higher fixed price to people who are looking to buy gift cards. Rates are highly variable between these sites, and while it is possible to approach full face value with compensation rates of up to 90% for certain cards on certain sites, the amounts paid will differ depending on the time of year, level of demand for the card that you have, and interestingly the face value of the card. The methods of payment vary, with some sites offering a little bit more for each card being sold if you opt to receive a check in the mail versus an instant PayPal payment, and other sites offering different rates, as well as the policies in place regarding physical gift cards versus e-gift cards.

·         Selling the Gift Card to a Pawn Shop

o   Many pawn shops now will purchase gift cards for major and local stores, to be sold out of the shop to other customers. The amount offered by the pawn shop will vary store to store and card to card, and will likely depend on what the store employee believes that the card can be easily sold for.

The primary upside to selling a gift card to a pawn shop is the ability to get cash immediately, without the work of trying to find a buyer, and without the burden of verifying your identity with a Coinstar machine.

The primary downside is that the store may give you a low offer, and there is no guarantee that the pawn shop will take your gift card at all.

·         Trading your Gift Card for Other Gift Cards

o   There are a number of ways to trade a gift card for another gift card. One is to advertise that you are interested in doing so on Craigslist or in the local classifieds, which would either be free in the former case or of minimal cost in the latter, but another way would be to use a Gift Card Exchange. There is a thriving community on Reddit.com of individuals willing to trade gift cards for other gift cards, often at equal value or rates approaching equal value, and while it might take a bit of time, it is possible to get the full face value of your card in the form of another card.

Since many of the people trading gift cards are interested in a quick sale, there is often a discount applied to the asking price, and it’s not impossible to get even more value than your card’s face value in exchange, especially if you have a gift card for a retailer or restaurant that is in demand.

You are free to request any form of payment in exchange for your gift card, including a different kind of gift card, cash, or cryptocurrency on a forum based exchange, but at the same time there is a chance that nobody is interested in your offer.

·         Offering to Pay for the Purchases of Others

o   While not usually the fastest way to liquidate your gift cards, when you offer to pay or shop for other people and just have them give you cash in exchange, you can get 100% of your face value of the card, and you get to assist someone at the same time. This method is long honored, and goes back to the days when gift cards were unheard of and gift certificates were common.

Chatting for fun and a bit of gas money on ChatAbout

Are you looking for a website that let's you socialize, take surveys, and enter contests and pays you for doing it?

I was about a year ago, and I joined http://chatabout.com. Since then I have made well over 200 dollars for what I consider to be no real work at all.

I have posted the same type of content that I share for free on sites like Yahoo Answers, 4Chan, Reddit and City-data and get chances to be paid for it. I can even take surveys or enter sweepstakes for even more compensation. It's quite easy for me to check in on the site once or twice a day and do a few activities quickly to rack up points, and the surveys can be a good way to fill up time.

I also like to ask and answer questions to get help or collect useful tips and tricks for personal use.

There are people from all over the world that use the site regularly, and with minimal effort one can easily make the necessary points to cash in for rewards, which currently are PayPal deposits and Amazon gift cards in denominations of $5, $10, and $25 at a rate of 1000 points: $1.

If you are interested in signing up, I request that you do so with my link above, as I receive a percentage of the points that you earn if you sign up with my referral link.

Have you had experience with Chat about or a similar site? Please let me know in the comments! Spare no details.

For me, it is just another part of my daily routine to check out what people are chatting about, if anything looks interesting in the news section on the site, if any surveys are available, and to chat a little, so that I can have some fun and make a little money too. At this point I make at least 50 points a day and usually closer to 100-200, but I have made 10,000 in one day before by completing an offer, so it all depends.

Ever think about just checking out of society? This man does it, on $5000 dollars a year. This is Dan Price, the Man in the Hobbit Hole

Dan Price is a man in his fifties as of now from Kentucky. He had a wife, children, a home and a job and a life, but he left all of that behind to move out and be free.

He currently lives in a place that he has described to the media as his "Hobbit Hole", and makes his way through life for only $5000 a year.

All in all, it's rather impressive that he is able to make it on so little, but it turns out you can do a lot when you are willing to downsize your lifestyle.

What's his secret to making his money last?

Well, for starters he doesn't have most of the luxuries or comforts that we all take for granted, like indoor plumbing, more than one room, or refrigeration.

One of his most common meals is cereal or granola eaten with water instead of milk.

And as for his day to day activities, he works as a caretaker for a local cemetery, clears trees from the land on which he lives for only $100 a year, and works on his hobbies, which include the publication of a small book on a semi-regular basis.

If you're interested in supporting Dan, you can purchase his book called My Tiny House, his journal called the Moonlight Chronicles, or look around the net for more of his work!

He isn't a man of the stone age, though. He pays $53 a month for a cell phone, and has a MacBook Air, an iPad, and an annual round trip to Hawaii where he spends his winters.

Not a terrible way to live, if you can manage it.

Have you ever heard of something similar?

Reward Banking: Making Money by Saving Money!

I am always on the lookout for a great deal, and when I found out that it was possible to get a bonus, a real cash payment as a result of opening a simple bank account, I was really intrigued. at the time I had been using the same couple of banks for many years and I didn't really have a reason to change my habits but I found out that I could receive an actual cash bonus a whole $50 if I just opened up a checking account and used it as a checking account. that was almost 1 year ago and I have been a loyal customer with Capital One Bank ever since.

I like the ability to open multiple accounts and transfer funds between them to meet my savings goals, and I especially like that I can earn money by referring my friends and family to the bank!

I am sharing this opportunity with all of my readers not only to make the initial 50 dollars as a bonus payment, but also to refer your friends to open and account with Capital One and make 20 dollars per referral.

I still use the bank accounts that I had before I joined Capital One, but I like the Capital One MasterCard and the ease of access to my money in checking to transfer into my Capital One ShareBuilder Roth IRA, which lets users transfer funds for free from checking and savings accounts, and even offers free trades to buy and sell securities.

Whether you are happy with your current banks, currently unbanked, or looking for a better bank, Capital One can compete, and it will pay you money!

If you are interested, again I request you to sign up as my referral.

Do you have any similar reward banking deals? Have you had experience with any of them? Please share in the comments below!