Spending Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Comparing the Cost of Different Coffee Brewing Methods at Home

October 13, 2019 by Justin Doyle 3 Comments

The following is from a new author who offered to write a piece on the most talked about liquid in personal finance – coffee!

If you’re like 83% of adult Americans, you’re probably a coffee drinker. You might be even enjoying a cup of Joe as you read this.

We all know that brewing your own coffee at home equals savings, as opposed to buying it from your local Third Wave café or your local Starbucks. Different strokes for different folks.

There are countless devices that make brewing coffee at home pretty much a work of art, with each device having its own pros and cons as far as cost of appliance and its subjective differences in taste.

Here is some food for thought, though – have you ever thought how much your everyday coffee habit costs you every time you make it at home?

Let’s take a look at what the cost of making coffee at home amounts to depending on which device you use to brew it.

Drip Coffee Makers

Drip coffee makers, as their name implies, employs a system of brewing that directs water through a layer of coffee grounds in a paper coffee filter. It’s an easy, cost-effective method employed by conventional electric drip coffee makers which have been in use since 1954, when the Wigomat was first invented in Germany as the first drip brewer powered by electricity.

As far as taste is concerned, however, your mileage may vary. Drip coffee makers do not enjoy a lofty reputation as far as creating coffee complete with all its essences and oils like other methods would. Some swear by it. Coffee snobs won’t. Those of us who just want a quick caffeine fix will find it just right.

It’s a great choice for frugal coffee drinkers, because it helps them save money over time. Ground coffee can be had from $10 per pound – working out to approximately $0.45 per cup via this method. Using beans and something to grind them would lower that number to $0.33 per cup

A drip coffee maker can’t make you the perfect espresso or a latte macchiato, but it’s one hell of a frugal way to get your coffee fix. And it works for many. And that’s fine.

Capsule Coffee Makers

Capsule coffee makers are a flavorful, fast, and extremely convenient way to enjoy a decent espresso, but aren’t necessarily equating to cost savings. While capsule coffee makers are certainly cheaper than those huge rigs that take care of all of the work from start to finish in terms of cost, coffee capsules might be an issue if you’re trying to save. Nevertheless, capsule coffee pods taste much better than drip brewed coffee – but coffee pods are significantly more expensive than coffee beans, whether pre-ground or otherwise.

It’s the convenience that makes it expensive, and that is just exactly what you pay for. Cost always depends on your consumption or your household. One coffee pod will set you back anywhere from 50 cents to $2 depending on the quantity and the brand you choose.

Espresso Machines

An espresso machines is, as the name implies, a device that is designed to make you the perfect espresso from coffee beans – the way Italians take it. A good machine will make you artisan-level coffee and save money at the same time, all in the comfort of your own home.

Granted, espresso machines can cost you a pretty penny, but that’s not the purpose of our discussion. We’re looking at the price of making homemade coffee depending on the brewing method.

Well, turns out, you can actually save over the long term with an espresso machine, because all you’ll need to buy are the coffee beans. Espresso beans can range anywhere from $10 to $60 per 2.2 pounds. Assuming you purchase a good brand (~$25 per 2.2 pounds), it would equate to $0.20 for each shot of espresso you make.

French press

A regular 12oz pack of coffee beans equates to approximately 340g worth of it. A single cup requires about 20g on a regular French press, which can then be broken down to about 16-17 cups of coffee per 12oz bag.

Assuming each bag of high-quality, premium coffee beans costs you $15 at 340g, this will work out to 88 cents per cup using one of the most enduring coffee-making devices that is held in regard by many a coffee purist. It’s even cheaper if you purchase decent, middle-of-the-road coffee beans.

Considering the average cup of coffee costs more than $2 at your local neighborhood coffee shop, you can imagine the savings you can make employing this method, all while getting to enjoy a good single serving of joe. Very useful if you just need your daily morning perk, and very tasty too.

Aeropress

The Aeropress was developed in 2005. It’s a device that’s gaining increasing popularity, and offers a bevy of ways you can enjoy your coffee using it. It goes without saying that this method, like every method we discuss, has its own dyed-in-the-wool fans who say you can make the best-tasting coffee with it, while you will hear others who don’t have too much of a high opinion of it.

Regardless, it’s similar in principle to a French press in terms of ease of use as well as the method of immersion. The main difference is that an Aeropress employs pressure to brew coffee, similar to how an Espresso machine does.

It’s really simple to use – all you need to do is to fill it with water and fine-ground coffee, and voila! You can stir it and let it sit, pour it through a filter into your cup, and there you have your Aeropress-brewed cup of joe. You can then mix it with whatever accoutrements you prefer your coffee with, such as milk for latte, a bit of water for a strong Americano, or simply straight from the device as an espresso. It’s self-cleaning, it’s portable, and robust to handle everyday wear and tear. And you might just find it makes the perfect cup of coffee according to your requirements. That said, you can expect to pay the same as you would with a French press, depending on your choice of beans.

Percolator

Nothing screams old school like using a coffee percolator. And, like each one of these coffeemaking devices, coffee percolator fans will say that their way of brewing coffee is the best. Now, that is of course a matter of preference. Percolators offer robust flavor, particularly when done the right way.

Using a coffee percolator is easy and foolproof – but it takes time to master it to an art form. While you won’t probably impress your local neighborhood coffee snob, it’s the most economical method of brewing coffee, and will give you the perk you need. And for perc fans, that’s good enough. How much is a cup of coffee made via a percolator? Assuming you purchase decent coffee beans at $10 per pound, your cost per cup would equate to less than 25 cents per 12 oz cup. That’s some impressive savings.

Again, it’s all a matter of subjective preference – we are spoiled for choice when it comes to the methods by which we can enjoy coffee. If your coffee spendings won’t change your financial situation, our best advice is to use whichever method gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling you need to start your day.

More Fees, More Fees, and… No Fees?

October 10, 2019 by Lazy Man 8 Comments

Over the past week or so, I couldn’t help but notice that there’s been a cluster of news reporting around fees. What I found interesting is that two industries’ fees keep going up and up… and the third industries’ fees have gone to zero. Specifically, ATM and cable company fees continue to rise, while brokerage trading fees are disappearing.

As consumers of these services, being aware of these trends can help us make wiser financial decisions. Of course, it’s not always clear what’s going on behind the scenes, so let’s take a look at each in more detail.

ATM Fees Keep Rising

ATM fees have reached a new all-time high. According to this this USA Today article, the average cost of an ATM withdrawal is $4.72. That’s crazy.

I haven’t been following ATM fees too much because, as the article notes, fewer people are using cash nowadays. My bank, USAA, reimburses us for ATM fees since they don’t have a network of their own. However, for a significant percentage of people, this can be a pretty big hit. That’s why I recommend having a bank that reimburses some or all of the ATM fees if at all possible.

Cable Companies Hide Increasing Fees from Consumers

The headline from Ars Technica was shocking, Cable companies use hidden fees to raise prices 24% a month. Or maybe it’s not shocking since we are talking about the cable industry here. I’ve written about Cox’s banana pants pricing, anti-competitive behavior, and shady pricing tricks.

I don’t mean to single out Cox, Comcast wasn’t any better when I had them as a cable service. Consumer satisfaction surveys repeated show that people hate their cable provider. The system was designed to eliminate competition, so most consumers must accept whatever pricing and terms they can get if they want high-speed internet.

I’ll now step off that soapbox and get back to the news of the 24% increase a month. The news mostly comes down to disclosure, but there’s some interesting fees in there too. For the disclosure part, if a company sells you on a service for $99 it should be $99. If there are government taxes involved, they could clearly state exactly what those are up-front in the advertisement. It shouldn’t be, “$99, plus fees that happen to be ~25% more.”

The interesting fees that I mentioned above are not necessarily government fees. For example there’s broadcast TV fees, which is what you pay to watch NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. that you could get for free with antennas. This is a touchy subject for me. I don’t think I should have to pay for something free just because of a technology hack.

Another fee mentioned is the regional sports fees. I watch a lot of regional sports, so I don’t mind paying for it, but they used to be part of the cable package. For people who don’t watch regional sports this is just wasted money. An easy solution would be to make it a package you can optionally buy. However, why give people the choice when you can just charge them all?

It’s worth reading the full Consumer Reports PDF here.

Brokerage Fees Go Zero

In the last couple of weeks, a group of brokerages have eliminated fees for trading stocks completely. It seems like it started with Interactive Brokers Group, but I’m not familiar with them. The big news was Schwab going commission free. TD Ameritrade and E*Trade followed suit. Then Ally Invest joined the party. Literally hours ago (as I write this) Fidelity decided they’d go commission free too.

I’m old enough to remember when a stock trade could cost hundreds of dollars. Typically it was done over a phone call (gasp!) with a stock broker. You had to deal with messy fractions. With the expansion of the internet in the mid-late 1990s, E*Trade and other brokerages brought stock trading to the masses with commissions that ranged from around $10-15 a trade.

I feel this movement to commission-free trades is another revolution. I hope that it encourages more people to invest. Some people are very fee adverse (*raises hand*) and this removes that. It’s also one less thing to explain to someone new to investing.

Part of the reason of the drop to zero commission fees is the success that Robinhood has had. It’s hard to get someone to pay for something when someone else is giving it away free. That’s specifically why I opened a Robinhood account for my kids years ago. As we’ve learned in other areas of technology, something free sometimes costs you in other ways.

Consumer Reports highlights a couple of the catches:

They are trying to get new customers to sell them products with higher fees. That’s something to be aware of.
You may not earn a good interest rate on the spare cash in your account. The brokerages can use all that money and earn more interest. The good news is that with zero commissions, you could invest almost all the extra cash into a very conservative investment like Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (NASDAQ: BND) paying a 2.5% yield (or interest rate for practical purposes). That’s what I’ll be doing.

I don’t mind these catches at all since I can control both cases well.

Final Thoughts

I find it interesting how all these fees are trending. The cable company fees are going up because of a lack of competition (among other things). The brokerage fees are going down because of fierce competition. This isn’t a surprise, but the contrast of the two industries makes it clear that regulation matters greatly.

The outlier is the ATM fees. They are going up because fewer people are using cash. It seems like that would mean that they have to physically fill the machine with cash less often. That’s logically what the fees should go towards. If that’s the case, the fees shouldn’t have to increase. I suppose the fees should also cover the rent for the physical space they take up which is a fixed cost.

The movement of these fees have been gradual over time. If not for all the news coming out at the same time, I wonder if I wouldn’t have even noticed it? Sometimes, it’s helpful to step back and look at something fresh and think about how we got to where we are.

Let’s Bring Frugality Back

October 2, 2019 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

Before I get started on the main event, I’ve got a little blog housekeeping work to get out of the way. I hadn’t realized how much work my kids extracurricular activies would be in additional to school. We went from zero homework last year to school homework and Boy Scouts homework this year. The school also lined up a billion “welcome back” events. Finally, we had 4 birthday parties for my newly 7-year old – immediate family, school friends, and two different grandparent and aunt ones.

In the midst of all that one of my best friends’ father died. I don’t deal with death well, so I’ve been a bit of a mess for the last few days.

Notheless, the show must go on…

When I started blogging in 2006, almost all the blog posts were about saving money. It’s much easier to write something concrete like “avoid the artisan grocery store” and “bring your own lunch to work” than “work harder and hope for a raise.” It was especially easy for me to focus on the frugal aspects because I had control over many of my expenses. When I put together the case that I was being paid less than 95% of all software engineers according to Salary.com, the answer I got was, “Sorry, there’s nothing in the budget to do anything.” They couldn’t even get creative with stock option compensation or vacation time.

My fiancee (now my wife) wasn’t satisfied with her work environment either. She applied for a promotion across the country in San Francisco. She got it and we moved shortly after. Silicon Valley is a very good place for a software engineer like me to find a job. Unfortunately, during that time, the push was to get superstar coders under the age of 25. I wasn’t a superstar, but I was a useful cog. At 30, I was the oldest person at the 25-person company. The CEO was 19 or 20. I don’t know if Silicon Valley is still the same way, but by age 30 you are way over the hill. At that point, people don’t want to live on the campus and work 16-18 hours a day. They, like me, want to have a wife, and maybe start a family.

I got a little off-track there. However, the point, I’m trying to make is that I’ve found it very difficult to find a job that is both interesting and pays even an average salary for my experience. As a software engineer, I was still being paid better than most people, so it’s relative. (I would have still liked to be bumped up to the bottom 25% instead of the bottom 5%.)

One of the things that saved me was frugality. From a very young age, my mother taught me to save money. I think I had always been a saver anyway as I’d save all my Halloween candy until it went bad. Nowadays, there’s a lot of talk on Twitter personal finance about earning more money. That’s certainly half of the equation. It’s just a difficult half for me to speak to. I don’t know what kind of job your are in or what your education is. Perhaps making more money is extraordinarily difficult for your situation. I can suggest adding a side hustle, but that’s way off-brand for this “Lazy Man.”

One of my favorite things to do is think about reducing our necessary expenses. For example, we got solar power 4 and a half years ago. We paid a lot up front, we’ve saved more than half of what we spent. After around 8 years any electricity our panels generate will be “free” (compared to what we would have paid if we didn’t get the panels).

The other thing I like to do is save money on groceries. Soon after we moved to our house, we lost the local Best Buy. That’s terrible for technology geek like me. However, we gained an Aldi, which is perhaps the best grocery store if you are frugal. That’s a great financial trade-off for us.

Saving Money on Chicken

I seem to be in the right place at the right time to save enormous money on chicken. Our chest freezer helps us stock up quite a bit. I’ve been so fortunate with saving money on chicken that I’ve been able to write some creative articles like, “McFly, Are You Chicken?” and Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken.

Today, I have another chicken deal to share. It’s appropriate because as I described at the beginning, I’ve been feeling like a chicken running around with its head cut off.

In the photo below (click for larger version), we have 3 types of chicken:

We have thighs with bones, thighs with no bones, and breasts. Typically, I use the chicken breasts for the dogs I sit. I slow cook them until they pull apart like pulled pork. Then I put a little in their kibble. They eat their food so fast. My dog won’t eat anything now without incentive. We used to use cheese like many people do, but I feel that chicken is healthier and it’s often much, much cheaper.

At the top of chicken pyramid scheme, I was able to get 2.47 pounds of chicken for $2.15 or about $0.87 a pound. As you’ll see, this is quite a splurge! Some dogs eat better than people. Then again, most dogs I know are better than people ;-).

On the second level of my pyramid, I have chicken things with bones and skin. These bake well, especially with an egg-wash and breadcrumbs. Here I was able to get 7.73 pounds of chicken for 2.98 or 38.5 cents per pound. I’m paying for some bone here, but I’m also getting the skin which locks in the flavor.

Finally at the bottom of the pyramid, I have boneless, skinless, chicken thighs. There are great with a simmer sauce in a slow cooker with onions and peppers. I make rice is separate rice cooker and it’s quality healthy dinner, with just a few minutes of preparation for just a few dollars. With different simmer sauces, there are almost endless options. Here I got 14.61 pounds for 5.69 or 39 cents per pound. I’m not paying for bone here, so this is probably the best chicken deal overall.

I would love to tell you how many meals this will come out to be, but I don’t count them. I make a batch and then we eat it until its gone. Sometimes it’s smaller lunches. Sometimes it’s paired with more starches and rice to stretch it further. So any kind of guess would be nothing more than speculation.

It’s not every day that I can find these kinds of deals. However, as you can see with the other articles above, they do come around. I’ve certainly have had the best luck with Aldi, but occasionally, I can find a deal at our local Shaw’s. The local military base can be a good source as well. I usually don’t go to different stores looking for these deals. I’ll only give it a look while I’m doing the rest of our shopping. It’s easier to “shop our chest freezer” from previous deals.

While this may seem like a small thing, I believe that a bunch of small things add up to something significant. It’s really difficult to try to make an extra percent or two investing in the stock market. Even if you do, it’s likely to be mostly luck. However, any time I can save 40%, 60%, or 80% on something like food, it gives us more money to invest. Getting that money in the market early has been critical to our very secure financial position now.

And a lot of that started with being frugal.

I Got a Year of AT&T Service for $20/mo (and you can too!)

September 17, 2019 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

I love a good bargain, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for. When it comes to cell phone service, I’m always looking for something cheaper than my $35/mo Cricket Wireless plan (which includes a $5 discount for autopay). It’s a pretty competitive price for a no-compromise service in my opinion.

I’ve tried a few other carriers to reduce my bill… and it didn’t work out. I actually felt scammed by Red Pocket Mobile. My attempt with Mint was an incomplete and that’s on me. I plugged in the sim chip and got dozens of spam SMS and calls almost right away. I think it got better, but I put it in a super cheap phone (instead of my real number) and then didn’t want to carry two phones around. I also didn’t want to deal with a slow phone when I had a fast one.

Today I come with a cell phone deal from a company you have probably heard of… AT&T. For fair disclosure, I personally bought this deal and I will make no commission if you decide to do the same.

Simply put, you pay $300 upfront for a year of service. Get your yuks in with my bad math while you can. It gets effectively cheaper, just keep reading.

I always give credit where it’s due, so I found the deal through this CNET Cheapskate article. A reader found the promotion and he thought it was good too. Don’t blindly follow that link and sign up yet though. There’s more money to be saved.

I love saving money, but the thing that made me go for it was something many people may consider minor. It’s what we’d call an “edge case” when I was a software engineer. It’s not likely to impact a lot of people, but it impacts me greatly. (I feel my life is a giant edge case, but that’s a different article all together.) This deal included mobile hotspot at no additional charge. On my current Cricket Wireless service (same AT&T network) it is another $10. I don’t need a mobile hotspot. However, my kids love Pokemon and Pokemon Go and we can use some old phones lying around to play… if they have a mobile connection while we walk around. For the 2-4 hours a month we’d use it, it’s hard to spend an extra $10 on a mobile hotspot. Also, I’m certainly not buying a 5 and 6 year old cell phone service.

So instead of paying $45 a month for Cricket with a hotspot, $20 is much, much better.

Ugh, there’s my bad math again. It’s time to fix that.

I Tweeted out this deal and the Awesome Jackie Beck saw it and bought it. She said that if you download the Honey extension for your browser, you’ll get 20% back. I did it and they promised me 20% back, so I expect that it will be legit. I’ve heard of Honey before and it’s reputable, just like Ebates (or Rakuten as it now has been rebranded by the new owners). That 20% back ($60) would make it effectively $20/mo.

If for some reason Honey doesn’t come through, I’ll happily pay $25/mo. It’s still a great price. At a minimum it saves me $10/mo. and solves a problem in my life (the Pokemon Go thing). At a maximum it saves me $15/mo. and still solves that problem.

Other than the saving big money part, perhaps the best part is that you have a full AT&T account. You can go to a store and get good customer service. You won’t find a store for Red Pocket Mobile or Mint.

What happens in a year from now when it expires? I always have Cricket Wireless to go back to. There are almost always deals in the wireless space, and maybe a new one will surface.

I should note that this may be for new AT&T customers only. They won’t just let you switch from your existing plan it seems. However, if you do what I do, have your main phone number ported to Google Voice, you should have no problem. Let me know how it works for you.

How do you actually get the deal? I tried to find a direct link, but couldn’t find a good one. I just used the CNET Cheapskate link, but with Honey installed.

What do you think? Is $20-25 a “buy it now”? Let me know in the comments.

Lessons Learned From Spending $1000+ on Prime Day

July 23, 2019 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

I always plan any big purchases months and months in advance. I simply shut down when it comes to spending money spontaneously. That’s one of my secrets to my frugality. Spending money can often cause me incredible mental stress. (Yep, I’m not mornal.)

Before Amazon Prime Day, I had resigned myself to take advantage of one deal. I think the Amazon Fire HD 10 is a great deal and I feel that my kids need to have their own space and apps. Remember when everyone loved the $99 HP Touchpad fire sale years and years ago. This is a 10″ full HD tablet for about the same price. By buying two at the same time, it was $90 each.

My planned spending of $180 turned into $1000+. What happened?

Amazon’s ability to sell is amazing… like nothing I’ve ever seen. At the same time, I feel like I worked the system well.

What do you think? Here’s a table of what I bought along with the prices I paid and my best assessment of what the item should cost.

Product Name	Retail Price	Typical Price	Price Paid
USB Micro Cable (5)	$7.99	$7.99	$6.39
USB Type C Cables (3)	$8.99	$8.99	$7.99
IQ Screen Protector (S10)	$9.95	$9.95	$9.95
MKOAWA Clear Cover S10	$5.49	$5.49	$4.39
Samsung S10	$900.00	$800.00	$599.00
Aukey 6-Port USB Charger QC 3.0	$33.00	$33.00	$18.69
Finish Dishwasher Detergent	$14.36	$14.36	$10.75
Kindle Paperwhite 6?	$130.00	$130.00	$63.75
Two Fire 10 HD Tablets	$300.00	$300.00	$180.00
Fire 10 HD Case (ESR Brand)	$18.99	$18.99	$8.55
Fire 10 HD Case (ESR Brand)	$18.99	$18.99	$8.55
Anker 10w Qi Wireless Charger	$15.99	$15.99	$9.67
Pokemon: Let?s Go Eevee	$60.00	$50.00	$30.00
Bose QuietComfort 25	$280.00	$178.00	$89.00
Echo Show 5	$90.00	$90.00	$22.50
Amazon Smart Plug	$25.00	$25.00	$5.00
Fire TV Stick + Echo Dot 3rd Gen	$65.00	$65.00	$12.00
$25 + $5 Amazon Gift Card	$30.00	$30.00	$25.00
Citi Payment Promo $25 off of $75	$0.00	$0.00	-$25.00

Sub-Total	$2,013.75	$1,801.75	$1,086.18
Total (after Prime Card 6% savings)	$2,013.75	$1,801.75	$1,021.01	49.30%

The quickest takeaway is that I bought around $2000 “worth” of products for a little over $1000… a savings of nearly 50%. “Worth” needs to be quotes because one could argue that the products aren’t worth what they typically sell for. I’m not sure I buy that argument, but you can buy Amazon products at a discount a few times a year. So maybe that should be the “typical” price? Also, what something is “worth” to me may be different than what it is worth to you.

Let’s break down some of the big items on the list. (We’ll be jumping around a bit)

Buying a New Flagship Phone

I love cheap phones. You can do so much with so little. I still remember how amazing it was to put a modem into a Handspring Visor so that I could get “web-clipped” scores of baseball games. Most phones nowadays do all the same things, but like cars, some do it with a little more luxury. I’m so frugal that this never sunk in.

My wife suggested that I spend more because I tend to put a lot of stress on my phones. I have 4 different email accounts to consolidate. I have different profiles (personal vs. business) to keep separate. It’s not just blogging, but also dog sitting and the freelance work I do. I debated between a LG G8 for $500 or a Samsung S10 for $600 almost forever. I finally pulled the trigger on the Samsung S10.

I don’t think a Samsung S10 review is useful here, so I’ll just say that I went from a very above average phone in 2015 to one of the best phones in 2019. It’s a quantum upgrade. I’d probably say the same thing about the LG G8, though.

Some suggested that I amortize the value of the phone over a number of years. That’s how I always think of phones, because they last me for a few years. Also my old Moto X Pure sells for around $100 on Ebay. So that’s like spending $500 instead of $600, right?

There were other purchases related to this one. I bought a case ($4.39!) that is great. I wasted $10 on a screen protector (IQ Screen Protector) when the S10 comes with one preinstalled (no one told me that). Perhaps I should send that back?

Besides the case and the screen protector, I also spent $8 on (3) USB Type C cables. I would have needed to upgrade at some point. The phone moved that along. The $9.67 Anker 10w Qi charger is top-rated from all the experts, so saving $6 on the Prime Day deal seemed like a win. I have a couple Qi chargers from my old Nexus 5. They aren’t 10w and would charge slower than the Anker one. I’ve put one of those Nexus ones on my bedside stand, because there’s no rush while I’m charging overnight.

Kids Learning Tablets

Did you see how I stuck the word “learning” in there? I’m okay with the kids having fun with their tablets, but I’ve steered them towards ABC Mouse, Duolingo, and Chess Kid. So far it has worked out well. For $180, both of them will finally have their own tablet and I’ll have mine. That’s helpful because signing in and out of Duolingo profiles is tough. They could work together, but that has lead to fights. This way they can go at their own pace on things.

Along with the tablets, I bought two cases for around $17. Normally they would have been $38, so I’m happy with that.

Kindle Paperwhite

I haven’t had an e-ink Kindle in a long time. I was curious to see how the technology advanced. With the Amazon Prime Credit card offering 25% cash back, the $85 Prime Day sale price became effectively $63.75. It’s small, but it’s waterproof, which is especially nice since we live near the beach.

I’ve played with the Paperwhite a little bit, but I’m not very impressed. I wonder if I can sell it extremely lightly used for $90+ which is more than the Prime Day price, but cheaper than you can get it now.

Pokemon Go! Let’s Go Eevee

The kids really want a Nintendo Switch, so it will be coming soon. We know they want it just to play Pokemon games. This is a rare 50% discount on a popular game.

Echo Show 5

There was a deal that if you send in an old echo device you get 25% off a new one. The Echo Show retails at $90, so I traded a second generation Echo Dot for $5 and $22.50 in credit. The Echo Show 5 was at a sale price of $50, making it $27.50 after the 25% coupon, and $22.50 after applying the $5 from the trade-in.

The Echo Show is a nice upgrade for the bedroom. It may sound crazy, but it’s good to have more clocks around the house. I was able to move our old alarm clock to the kids’ room. They can use a clock because they are still working on getting ready on time for things.

Bose QuietComfort 25

This $280 retail device was lowered to $99 on a lightning deal. I saw a deal for $10 of credit when ordering $100+ through an app. The $4 phone case up above was perfect for putting me over the top. For simplicity, I applied the $10 to the final price on this.

The reviews of this weren’t very good, but I thought it was one of Bose’s marquee products. I know that everyone is on the new Bluetooth version, but there weren’t discounts on that one.

Amazon Smart Plug

Normally $25, this was $5 if you ordered it through Alexa. I already have one smart plug and I don’t know what I’d do with another. They seem to sell for $20 on Ebay, I figure this is like a free $15.

Fire TV Stick + Echo Dot 3rd Gen

This was an extremely popular deal that didn’t last long. It’s pretty amazing to get both for $12. The Fire TV stick with voice remote will go on Ebay, where it should get $30 or more. So Amazon is likely going to pay me $18 to take a 3rd generation Echo Dot. That made it easier to the trade for the Echo Show 5 above.

Selling Other Stuff

I should be able to sell my cell phone and an old tablet (replaced by the Fire 10 HD) for a little less than $200. By selling the smart plug and the Fire TV stick, it should all add up to at least $225. Does that count as bringing my cost down to around $800?

Lessons Learned from Amazon Prime Day

1. A lot of things that I found were from watching deal sites. If you are in a tight money situation, it’s best to avoid these sites. I’m okay with spending money as along as it makes sense to do so (brings me good value).

2. Most of the items I bought qualified as bringing good value. The others were simply mistakes (the screen protector that I didn’t know I didn’t need) or items that can actually generate a profit through resale. There’s some questionable value with the Amazon Show. I have to figure out what cool things I can do with the screen (any tips? Leave them in the comments).

3. It can be helpful to batch tech purchases to the nearest “Super Sale” date. That can be Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but I think Prime Day counts now. Even if you are not an Amazon Prime member, a lot of other stores joined in the party.

4. I probably wouldn’t have nearly as much if I hadn’t been doing so well with the dog sitting this month. In some ways, it feels like Amazon might as well be in the dog sitting business and I’m just a useless middleman. There’s certainly a feeling of lifestyle inflation going on.