Lazy Man and Money

Three Things I Often Buy on Amazon Subscribe and Save

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This week we had a major financial event. Today was going to be my first chance to write about it. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the event, I only have time for a quicker article. I also like to end the week on lighter, fluffier post.

Here are some items that I get most (or all) months from Amazon Subscrible and Save. They are affiliate links, so if you choose to buy them I may earn a commission. That disclosure aside, I buy all these products (that’s the point of this post obviously), so I feel it’s more than fair to recommend them.

KIND Bar Minis, Variety Pack (30 count)

My kids gravitate to junk food. That’s almost all they’ll eat. However, they eat these Kind bars as if they were candy. And is a way they kind of are. We might have to start ordering two of these to get us through the month.

The only downside is that these are mostly nut-based, so we can’t pack them in the kids’ school lunches.

HIPPEAS Organic Chickpea Puffs (48 ounces)

My wife started buying these at the store for the kids. I wouldn’t have bought them because they are super expensive. The kids love them, they are healthy (at least much as a “puff” can be), and they can go to school.

Buying in bulk and with the 15% Subscribe and Save discount makes it more manageable. They each bring about an ounce and a half, so two kids eat 3 ounces a day. That’s 16 days, enough to get us through most months.

Orajel Jurassic World Anticavity Fluoride Toothpaste – Berry Blast Flavor

My kids will only use one kind of toothpaste and this is it. It’s hard to find, so I’m happy that Amazon carries it. I probably don’t need to get it as often as I do, but I’m nervous they’ll stop making it someday. At a price of around $2.50 it’s a great filler item to get up to 5 items for 15% off.

Caffeine Pills (250 tablets)

I’m adding this last one as a bonus. I don’t have to buy these very often. I use a pill splitter to make a 200mg pill a 100mg pill. For a little more than $10, I have around 500 days of caffeine. That’s two cents a day in caffeine costs. How Much is Your Caffeine Costing You?

Now it’s your turn. I can use a few ideas to get to the five items to unlock the 15% Subscribe and Save this month. What are some items that you buy on Amazon most months?

The Cost of Summer Camp

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This past weekend, I finished signing up the kids for summer camp. Camps have changed a lot since I was a kid. I think my mother said she spent about $25 to send me to camp for a week. That was around 40 years ago though. It might have also been subsidized. In any case, we pay a lot more than that for our kids to go to summer camp nowadays.

We used to send the kids to the local YMCA for most of the weeks. That was similar to the camp I had growing up. Play sports, do arts and crafts, go on hikes, and have a little swim time. The price for the YMCA is reasonable and they have long hours which is good for me. Unfortunately, the kids hate the YMCA camp. The camp counselor takes away anything fun if one kid misbehaves. Their groups are big (that’s how they keep the price reasonable), so there’s always one kid that spoils it for the whole group.

This is the first year that we skipped YMCA or a general, old-fashioned camp. Instead, the kids have picked the camps they enjoyed the most over the last few years. Unfortunately, those happen to be the most expensive camps. This is one of those cases where Kids Ain’t Cheap. The good news is that there’s a lot of enrichment.

Kid 1: Nine-Year-Old

We signed up our oldest for 4 camps. He’s doing a theater camp, a sailing camp, a veterinarian camp, and a cooking camp. The theater camp is 3 weeks and the sailing camp is two weeks.

Sailing is big in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s so big that the National Sailing Hall of Fame is moving here. The theater camp is fairly renowned. The veterinarian camp fits well with my dog boarding business. If I’m going to spend a lot for a camp, I don’t mind the money helping out our local animal shelter. I’m a huge fan of kids learning cooking – it’s a lifelong skill that will save them a lot of money.

Kid 2: Eight-Year-Old

Our youngest is signed up for 6 different types of camps. One camp has four separate weeks of activities. They are a maker camp, art camp, Lego robotics, and a sports camp. Drawing and building are what he loves and does best. It’s also being done at his school, so there’s a good chance he’ll know some kids.

Like his older brother, he has a sailing camp and a veterinarian camp (a more junior version of the same veterinarian camp). He also has a cooking camp, but it’s only 3 days as an introduction. Essentially he traded his brother’s theater camp for building and art.

The Cost of Summer Camp

Summer camp has become a big business. Consumers will pay for the education of their kids. Perhaps it is a trap, but I’ve fallen for it.

The 9-year-old’s camps add up to $2,150. The 8-year-old’s camps add up to $2,420. That’s over $4,500 for two kids to have 7 weeks of camp. We are taking three weeks of camp off, but they’ll be small road trips. With hotels and driving and events, they’ll be even more expensive than the camps.

Are we spending too much on camp, or are we investing in education and things we believe in. Perhaps it is a little of both? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

A Very Spendy Christmas

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I know, Christmas is now more than a month ago. I was hoping to put this article before now, but COVID had different plans for me and our family. I had been debating about whether is wise to publicly put this out there. Usually, I’m usually quite frugal and all this spending is very off-brand. However, since we aren’t spending money on vacations and we have a lot more dog boarding money, we have a lot more money to spend than we usually would.

Here are a few of the deals we bought, what they might typically cost, and what we along with the prices we paid. Please note that some of the products have Amazon links and I may get a small commission if you click through and buy from there.

  • Oculus Quest 2
    This was the only thing I wrote a review about (see link above) and it was worth every penny

    Typical Cost: $299
    Our Cost: $299 (but with a $50 Amazon gift card)

    It wasn’t a big savings, but it seems like the Oculus Quest 2 is never on sale. It’s the best VR you can buy, so it doesn’t have to be.

  • Dyson V8 Fluffy HEPA Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner

    When my wife was deployed they had a V7 version of these at her pharmacy. She said it was incredible. Then I read another blogger say they had one that was incredible. Dyson’s are expensive, but I have to admit that it comes as advertised. It’s so light, quiet, and strong. It does wonders for picking up dog hair, which is very important when you run a dog boarding business. This particular model comes with a brush for hardwood floors, which is 75% of our house… and 90% of the dog hair.

    Typical Cost: $449
    Our Cost: $299

    A deal site had highlighted this one at NewEgg. I was originally looking for a refurbished one because I read that’s where the best deals are at. However, refurbished Dysons seem to be in very limited supply. I’m surprised to have gotten as good a deal on a brand new one.

  • Samsung Galaxy S7 Tab
    I’ve never paid more than $200 for a tablet before now. I had a $99 HP Touchpad and a bunch of $100 10″ Kindle Fire HD. My biggest splurge was a Google Nexus 7 for $183.

    However, I’ve been in the market for a tablet that my kids can use to learn digital drawing. (I want to learn as well.) It seemed like getting into the Apple iPad ecosystem was going to be $300 – per kid. And then I’d have to get pens (at additional cost) or share pens.

    I happened to catch a flash deal on Samsung S7 Tab (their latest at the time) where it included their S-Pen and their wireless earbuds. If you traded in a tablet (anything working) it brought the price to under $200. Trading in that old Nexus 7 worked. I plan on selling the earbuds, so maybe it gets under $100.

    Typical Cost: $510
    Our Cost: $187 minus whatever we can sell the earbuds for.

  • DJI Mavic Mini – Fly More Combo

    I’ve wanted a good drone for a long time. I’ve had some cheap ones for about $25. They are perfect if you have kids ages 6-8. They can’t mess up things too much. They are perfect for kids to practice on. I even have a step-up option for the kids that has a camera for recording video. It should be all they need for a year or two.

    I wanted to explore with something better, so a DJI Mavic is the best way to go. The first-generation Mini is probably the cheapest entry-level you can get. It’s still usually $350-$400. DJI has been selling refurbished models on eBay at a big discount. I paid a little more for extra batteries so we can “fly more.”

    Typical Cost: $469
    Our Cost: $230

    Everyone on the deal sites says that this is the best deal you can get. It went away a couple of hours after I bought it. I guess it comes back every now and again though.

  • Canadian Goose Coat

    My wife has wanted a Canadian Goose Coat for a long time. After buying some of these gadgets for me and the kids, it made sense that my wife get something nice for herself too. A vacuum wasn’t going to cut it. She’s not into drones or tablets. She does love the Oculus though.

    Also, when you have a year when the President of the United States thanks you for visiting him – well, that’s something to celebrate.

    Typical Cost: ???
    Our Cost: ???

    My wife knows the cost because she paid for it. I didn’t ask, but I played games like, “I can’t believe you spent $600 on a coat. I mean $800 is way too much for a coat. A $1200 coat? For $1,600 it better fly you to Canada.” It didn’t get a reaction and I’ve gone all the up to about $40,000. I could probably look up the cost online, but that’s no fun.

    I’m a little jealous because it looks great on her. My coat is wool and all the dog hair sticks to it. Sometimes people make fun of it and I just say, “I love my business so much that I bring it with me wherever I go!”

  • Finished Basement

    My wife was deployed until the week before Christmas. We rushed Christmas through. We told the kids that the big gift was the finished basement. It wasn’t intended to be a Christmas gift, but the timing just worked out. They love having the space – even though we have to furnish it (and do some final decluttering).

    Typical Cost: ???
    Our Cost: $25,000 – estimated

    Yes, it is expensive. However, it turns our 1800 sq. ft home into about a 2100 sq. ft. That’s much cheaper than buying a different bigger house.

    • Outside of the last two items, we spent $1018 on things that would have normally cost $1727. Because of the $50 gift card that came with the Oculus and the Galaxy earbuds that came with the tablet, we probably spent about 50% of retail. And, notably, these things usually don’t have sales. I had to resort to buying refurbished with the drone, but I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from brand new.

    The kids got other things for Christmas that were more appropriate for their age.

    Get Free Fast Food

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    We’re in the middle of a Christmas crunch. My wife was deployed for a month and got back on the 18th. The construction crew that we’ve been trying to get here for months booked us for the 20th (that’s today as I’m writing this). They’re finishing our basement, so we were up at 5 AM moving the last stuff. They needed a lot more moved than we had anticipated and it’s our main storage area. It’s also our staging area for wrapping Christmas presents. Throw in decorating for Christmas and we’ve been listening to The Twelve Pains of Christmas on repeat.

    With all that going on, there’s at least one thing that I haven’t had to worry about much lately. Every fast food restaurant wants to give me free food. If I planned it well, I could probably feed two people on a couple of dollars a day.

    All of this food isn’t free in the sense you just walk up and say, “Give me some food free” and they say, “Here you go.” You have to spend some money and then they give you additional free food. The key to all this free food is downloading the apps. I’ve got the McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, and Taco Bell apps on my phone. I use Taco Bell and Mcdonald’s the most.

    Taco Bell Free Food

    Taco Bell is my go-to app for two reasons:

    1. Taco Bell has the best value menu of all fast food restaurants that I know.
    2. I have a lot of money stored in gift cards from when they had a deal of “buy $20 in gift cards, get $5 free.”

    For $1, the beef burrito delivers a tasty 430 calories. This month, they’ve been offering a deal each day that involved spending $1 and getting a free menu item. It’s often another taco or something like that. One day, I had to take my son to the doctor and the deal was a Doritos Taco. He’s a big Doritos fan, but not a taco fan. He loved it though. Aside from the obvious health problems of eating fast food, it was a good meal for a dollar.

    During this time, we’re also earning points to add up to rewards (more free food) in my account.

    McDonald’s Free Food

    McDonald’s has been offering free food via its app as well. Some of the deals are underwhelming, but every now and again, they offer a great, I-can’t-believe-this deal. They have recently had a bunch of a “spend $1 and get [X] free.” I’ve gotten a couple of free crispy chicken sandwiches that way. I usually spend $1 on a super large Diet Coke, but they have a value menu that would net you another food item as well. It would be a stretch to call it a meal for two, so adding some healthy foods at home would help fill it out.

    McDonald’s reward program seems is trash though. The points are always expiring on me. I would have to go much more often to make the reward program worthwhile.

    Subway Free Food

    For months Subway was offering a free sub with a promotion code. That was a tremendous deal because $7 would be enough to feed my wife and me for a long time. I would usually eat half my sub and then a few hours eat the other half. I didn’t have a pressing need to eat 1,000 calories in one meal. Now the app has “buy one, get one 50%.” That’s still a decent deal.

    They are currently offering a free 6-inch sub with a purchase of a $25 gift card. That’s not a tremendous deal, but it stacks with the above 50% off deal. You could even buy it with a restaurant rewards card and get another few percent off.

    Wendy’s Free Food

    Back near the start of the pandemic Wendy’s was offering free breakfast Baconator sandwiches just about every week. I had to make a purchase then, but it was easy to find something cheap that my kids or wife would eat. Looking at the app now, they have a free any size fries with purchase, free small chili with purchase, and free Baconator fries with purchase. There are a couple of other deals, but that’s the free food. It’s not great.

    Burger King Free Food

    Burger King’s app is junk right now. I hadn’t used it in a long time and fired it up just a couple of days ago. The best thing on there is $1 onion rings. Fortunately, they have a tremendous chicken nugget deal – 8 pieces for $1.49, which is great for the kids.

    Final Free Fast Food Thoughts

    We all know that eating fast food isn’t healthy. Some options are healthier than others, but in the world of free fast food, you can’t be picky about health. It’s important to note that fast food is a sometimes food. That’s fine though, because free fast food is only around sometimes.

    Free fast food seems to be around more often in the holiday season as companies compete for your money. However you can usually find some available year-round.

    Do you have any fast food hacks, even if they are not free food? Let me know in the comments.

    “You’re on the wrong side of the equation.”

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    I had this dream a few hours ago. It’s a true story. No, it’s not true the stuff that occurred in the dream itself. But it is true that it happened like this. Yes, I’m even including the parts where I am a bit of a jerk.

    To start, this takes place back when I was around age 25 – a few years after graduating college. In the dream, I had two roommates from college and it was a Three’s Company situation – two women and me *. For the purpose of this article, it’s me living platonically with two of my very good (and real) friends from college. I never lived with them in real life though. These friends overspent on anything catching their eye and racked up big credit card debt. They planned to pay it back when they “made real money.” **

    Imagine throwing a touchdown to this guy! He’s signalling that he’s open!
    On this day, one of the young women decides that we simply must have the latest Pokemon football video game. I couldn’t fault them that much, because the idea of throwing a touchdown pass to Froakie with his jumping ability was one of the most vivid parts of my dream. (If anyone has contacts with The Pokemon Company make this happen. It will be a hit, trust me.) Unfortunately, the video game requires buying the latest gaming system and the game itself. For them, it also means buying a desk and a couple of chairs. I estimate the total bill was around $800 or $1000.

    I am not sure this is a great plan, but they are determined. I decided that even though I want out, I will end up getting sucked into Froakie’s charms and play the game myself. So I offer to be part of the split. However, they decline because it would make ownership of the system weird. It was already weird, but this is a dream so I don’t question it much other than to say that they often seemed to share a brain when it came to spending.

    I give them some money anyway with an explanation that I’ll end up playing it so I need to contribute something. Then I wander off. Suddenly my old high school friend is there. Because it’s a dream, he’s living with us now too. It’s funny how things like that change mid-dream. However, he points out that we’ll need to save our games and you need an extra gadget to do that on this system. We come across an Aimbo robot ***, which is one such gadget. It looks like a more modern version of the Nintendo robot that you could get with the NES back in 1985. This version not only can save your games but do a bunch of other things. None of the other things were explained in the dream, but it was clearly the “thing to get.” We weren’t 100% sure about buying it without asking the others. We went off to do that and they agreed it was necessary.

    But when we got back, all the Aimbo’s were sold out. So we could “make due” with another thing that just saved games. It would tide us over while waited to find Aimbo back in stock. This substitute was almost as expensive, but the extra Aimbo things were an upgrade the group wanted.

    My high-school friend buys the substitute and comes back to make an interesting observation, “The credit card processing fees are crazy! What a scam!”

    I don’t know why in this dream he has to pay credit card processing fees. In every place, it’s the merchant, but maybe he’s trying to use a weird debit card or something. I simply take his remark at face value for being true.

    This is when I ask everyone to take a seat while I go on a mansplaining ****, lecture. (This is clearly the kind of thing that surely makes me the life of any party.) I ask if anyone knows what I am going to say, half expecting they’ve heard me do this Brainy Smurf routine a hundred times. One new character shows up to go on a five-minute suggestion that was completely wrong. I don’t even remember what it was, but I guess it was only to give me the opportunity to be a bigger jerk and dismiss it outright? I don’t remember.

    I said, “The problem is that you’re on the wrong side of the equation. You wouldn’t care about the credit card processing fees if you owned the credit card company and made money from them, right?”

    I continued to explain that I invest in all these companies: the credit card processor, the maker of the video game, the store we are in, the furniture place that makes the desk and chairs, the game system, etc. So when anyone buys this stuff, I will get a fraction of the money back. Those fractions add up over time and I become more of an owner than a buyer. But to get there, I had to use my money to buy ownership in these companies instead of their products.”

    This is when I woke up. I never got to see the reaction on their face to see if made any sense to them.

    * If you are too old to know Three’s Company, I’m giving you some homework. Looks like you stream it on PlutoTV for free. It’s very formulaic with nearly every episode revolving around some misunderstanding because a word or two was heard wrong from the other room and hilariousness ensues.

    ** We were friends after college for a while and one did make “real money” and I assumed paid it back, but it took a while. I am not sure the financial situation of the other, but I think it followed her for at least a decade in some form. We didn’t have regular conversations about money.

    *** I’m sure I took the name from Nintendo Amiibo, which is a real-life Nintendo gadget/figurine thing that I can’t wrap my head around.

    **** Can you mansplain another man? I don’t think so, but it seemed the best word to fit.