Smarty Pig Micro Savings Account

Smart. Simple. Savings.

I stole that. That's SmartyPig's slogan. And it is true. I don't remember how I stumbled onto SmartyPig, but I'm glad I did.

The first time I mentioned SmartyPig to my wife, she said, "Smarty what?" Then proceeded to tell me how we were not going to put money into something called SmartyPig because there was no way a reputable bank would call itself SmartyPig. Well, SmartyPig is actually a niche market of BBVA Compass. And boy is it a good one.

Here's the gist: Throw out your credit cards and start saving for the things you want like a real adult. Set a goal, like a KitchenAid mixer, because you couldn't normally afford one. You put $25 or more in to open the account. You set a target date to save the money by--3 months, 6 months, a year. You contribute to the goal every month automatically from your regular bank account. You get to see the progress toward your goal. You can even share on Facebook and accept contributions if other people want to help you out.

So I convinced my wife to let me try it. Now she wants SmartyPig accounts for birthdays (we have 8 kids so it is always somebody's birthday), Christmas, big ticket items we need to replace like our washer and dryer, a KitchenAid mixer, summer family vacation, you name it, we can save for it. Then, when we are ready to cash in, we can get a "cash boost" by getting Amazon gift cards or cards from other retailers and getting bonus cash added to our final dollar amount. It's awesome. This is one of my favorite things I've ever stumbled upon. And we have been able to completely eliminate our credit cards because we now have an alternative to plan responsibly to get what we want. What better lesson could we learn and teach our kids at the same time?

KitchenAid Mixers

You get what you pay for.

If you read any of my reviews, you will see this maxim at least once. And I have come to believe it. When my wife and I first got married, we were the king and queen of outlet and liquidation shopping. We could not pass one of those salvage stores.

Don't get me wrong, we still hit those. But we are looking for the rare deal where you get a "best of breed" (thanks Jim Cramer) brand for a heck of a price. We went down the road of buying cheap and we got cheap stuff. It broke. It gave out. It didn't perform as promised. And usually at the most inopportune time: with company on the way.

So we've decided to get smart and quick throwing good money after bad. The last straw for me was when we bought a Sunbeam stand mixer when my wife really wanted a KitchenAid. The Sunbeam was $99 at Walmart. It looked and felt heavy, but was plastic. Still, we didn't think we could afford the $300 for a KitchenAid. So we bought it. It lasted a year or two, then gave out. Burnt up mixing a cake. So my wife bought a $9 hand set which promptly burnt out and wore her out as well. So she got another...it's possible she bought a 3rd, but I have lost count.

So I opened a Smarty Pig account (see my hub on Smarty Pig). We had saved 2 months short of our goal when Amazon ran a special on Kitchen Aid mixers. Not just a kitchen model, but the pro series. We were able to close our Smarty Pig goal early by cashing it as an Amazon Gift Card, saved around $100, and had our mixer two months early! Which means I had to buy my wife something different for her birthday. That might have been a good thing since jewelry is better than a mixer to say, "I love you."

Anyway, the mixer is a hoss. This thing would stir hardened concrete (almost). Again, I will reiterate: You get what you pay for. If we had settled for a standard kitchen model, I think we would have been happy, but we wouldn't have known what we were missing. Need potato chips? Add an attachment. Need pasta? Add an attachment. Need raw nuclear material processed? I don't think they make an attachment for that yet. But wait a little while.

The pro series we got is a beautiful black pearl color. It has a bread hook that mixes bread so i don't have to knead it by hand. It has a whisk that keeps me from standing there to get "stiff peaks" out of my eggs. Finally, the beaters made short work of 5 pounds of peanut butter with a pound of honey (my kids love sandwiches).

Save your money. Buy the best. Get a KitchenAid.

I love my Kindle

I waited almost 2 years to buy a Kindle.

But every time I tried to think of something I wanted more, I couldn't. Finally, with gift money I recieved from family for finishing my doctorate, I gave in and bought a 2nd generation Kindle with 3G access. I loved it so much and began plowing through book after book (I've read 30 or so in the last 8 months--much of it public domain material that cost me nada, zero, zilch, $0) that my wife bought a 3rd generation and we gave our freshman daughter one for Christmas. Our daughter's is a wi-fi version and I would recommend sticking with the more expensive 3G models.

I have always said, you get what you pay for and the 3G model is no exception. You can turn it off to save battery when you don't need to buy books. Turn it on when you want it. You don't have to hook it up via USB to a pc or find a McDonalds or Starbucks to get online to set it up or buy stuff you want.

Why the Kindle instead of the Nook? Amazon invented this type of eReader. I'm not saying the Nook isn't good, but they are touting their color version and you just don't need it. If you are strictly wanting to read text, the e-ink of the Kindle is unbelievable. It creates absolutely no eye strain whatsoever. The commercials that show you reading on the beach are a bit of a stretch...you can do it, but the "no glare" is true if you hold the Kindle at an angle from the sun. The screen is a matte plastic covering so you get a slight glare until you angle it. However, the iPad and the Nook have gloss plastic or glass screens, so glare is unavoidable. I'm not saying those are not good devices for those of you about to get offended...I am just saying that the Kindle is the best option if you strictly want 1,500 volumes of text available at your fingertips.

You can also register several Kindles in your name so they all contain the same books. If we'd have known this, I would have bought the other two Kindles under my account so we all had the same library. Oh well, hindsight and all. They simply would have been registered as Kevin's Kindle 1, Kevin's Kindle 2, and Kevin's Kindle 3. No biggie. But you can lend books under a limited basis. I think this will get better as the demand grows. The Nook might even be ahead in this area.

If you buy a Kindle, order a top quality cover at the same time to protect it. Our daughter sat on hers the 3rd day she had it. Cracked the screen and it was shot. Amazon offers a one-time replacement for half price during the 1st year. So, our daughter had to save her money up and replace it herself. I wasn't buying her another one. But we did buy her a cover. And we bought one for my wife and I too. Mine is a nice, black leather one that fold back nicely so I can still read with one hand.

I switch back and forth between my right and left hands. The reader is easily light enough to hold while using your thumb the navigate forward and backward in the book. It has a small joystick or arrow pad that lets you move a cursor around the screen. When it stops on a word, you get an instant definition of the word. You can add your own highlighters and notes as well.

Finally, you can send other ebooks to your Kindle through publishers like Smashwords just by sending them to your own Kindle email address that is created when you buy one. This is by far my favorite purchase for myself in years and years. I even started publishing my own series of short episodes for 7 to 14 year old kids called "Adam Powerhouse" on the free Kindle Direct Publishing platform just for kicks and grins.

Treat yourself and get a Kindle. Your brain deserves one.

Is Rango a good movie for kids?

Don't let the PG rating fool you.

Don't get me wrong. Rango is hilarious. But this cartoon was made more for adults than kids. We thought the PG rating was because it was a Western and would have some action.

Nope. "Hell" was used liberaly throughout the movie. One character used "Damn!" for no reason. I must admit, I began to get worried whenever Rango was talking with a Barbie torso that had one arm and he said, "Are those things real?"

It is too bad Hollywood continues to throw this junk into kids' movies and I am learning to expect this type of crude content from Nickelodeon anyway. My suggestion would be to keep the kids away from this movie unless those words are commonly used in your house--which with my experience as an educator, I know these words aren't a big deal in some households. The other day, I heard a kindergartner drop the "F bomb" in the bathroom and his teacher nearly came unglued. But kids hear this stuff at home. What makes me even madder is when a parent comes up to the school and reams their kids for repeating what they hear at home. One time when I was a middle school principal, a mom came up and said, "What the hell were you thinking? I can't believe you'd talk like that at school, dammit!" Boy, that's world-class parenting for you right there.

Should I buy groceries on Amazon?

We have 8 kids.

So we go through groceries at our house. My 2 year old and 3 year old eat from sunup until sundown. Don't ask me how they do it. They weigh 18 and 26 pounds. My oldest is a freshman in high school and she weighs 90 something. All 8 are tiny like their mom. Yet, they eat like NFL linebackers.

So how do we do it? Honestly, I don't know. The grace of God for one. School breakfast and lunch helps us keep our sanity since we aren't fixing 30 meals every day. Even dinner is a challenge. Now, my wife has decided to go vegan so we are fixing carby stuff for the kids, weird vegetarian stuff for my wife, and I am trying to lose weight so low calorie stuff for me (but I gotta have meat with most meals so I can't just eat what my wife is having).

We have not perfected the system of buying groceries from Amazon. For one, you need to be able to plan about a week out on meals and my wife is an impulse eater. I used to fix up a calendar for the month, buy the stuff that was on it, and then every night she would say, "I don't want what's on the calendar for tonight." So, we had something off a different night. Or something not on the calendar. Or we went out because I got mad and refused to cook.

With Amazon, we can buy our favorite things and save a chunk of money. With Amazon Prime, we get our stuff in 2 days. You don't believe you'll save money? If we go to Walmart, we buy off brand cereal for about $2 to $2.50 a box. That's ok. We like off brand cereal, but in our 12 passenger van, we get 14 mpg at $4 a gallon and we live 70 miles from a Supercenter (yeah, we are that far out in the boonies). So instead, we can buy name brand cereal by case (4 boxes to the case) for $7 to $9. Slightly less and we didn't have to drive anywhere to get it. If we are going to drive that far, I'd rather spend my time at the Mongolian BBQ having Kung Pao stir fry than pushing a cart through the store anyway.

You really need to spend some time looking through the groceries Amazon has to offer. When you decide to start buying groceries through Amazon, get an Amazon Prime account so you get free 2 day shipping every time you order something. That way you don't have to order a whole bunch at once. Just load your grocery budget onto an Amazon gift card (see my other hubs) and buy things AS YOU NEED THEM or think of them. You'll feel good about saving money!

Should I buy pet supplies on Amazon?

I hate spending money on our dog.

I hate pets in general except for fish. I'm allergic to every type of pet but fish. Pets stink (I challenge you to find a pet store that Febreze could make a dent in). And my kids and wife love our Chihuahua, Izzy. Izzy showed up on our doorstep a week after the neighbors shot our dog, Goldie. So I lost the argument that it was too soon to replace Goldie.

So an outside dog I tolerated was replaced with an inside dog I am incredibly allergic to. Once my asthma is under control, the allergist will let me begin to get allergy shots. My wife thinks it is all in my head. My lungs tell me otherwise. Anyway.

I don't want to spend a lot on pet supplies. I'd already dropped about $1,000 getting Goldie back to health for the kids since she was an abused, abandoned puppy that showed up on our doorstep. After the neighbors killed her while we were on vacation, Izzy showed up and we spent a lot on her getting the same things done. She was older, had obviously been taken care of and somehow lost, and she didn't need as much work. Luckily, she survives on small amounts of food, dropped chips, and stray Cheerios.

But, like all Chihuahuas (I'm guessing since I don't have a frame of reference--Goldie would have eaten a sweater for lunch), Izzy has to have sweaters, leashes, premium food, dog treats, special shampoo, and myriad other things that make her better dressed and fed than me. So, a dog I don't want nor need is costing me money. My wife can order that stuff off Amazon with our monthly budget and I never have to see it.

Me, suspiciously, "Oh, is that a new sweater?" My wife, innocently, "Oh that old thing. Izzy's had that forever."

Plus, she saves money. My wife, not Izzy. Izzy just sleeps on top of the couch or on my pillow when I'm not home so I nearly die in the middle of the night so she isn't going to dignify herself by discount shopping. My wife will shop around on Amazon until she finds the pet supplies she needs and then it arrives at our doorstep in 2 days and I am none the wiser. Now, if only she would buy a pet brush and try to get rid of some of that extra hair. I can't take much more.

When my allergist said dog hair was my worst allergy, I asked, "Does this mean we should get rid of the dog?" Apparently he has been down that road with someone else's wife, because he said, "No. That is a lifestyle decision you and your wife will have to make." Dangit.

Should I buy makeup on Amazon?

I like my wife to look good.

My wife is beautiful. And I want her to look her best since she feels good when she does. Whether she is just getting up in the morning (she is NOT a morning person) or whether we are going out to our favorite fine dining restaurant, I think she is beautiful and I love her.

But when we go to Wal-Mart or Target or wherever and she drops $40 on 2 make-up items that I know she is going to have to replace in no time, I get chest pains. Heck, I'll spend money on Blu-Rays we don't need, candy, fresh fruit that goes bad before we eat it, but I don't think she needs make-up to look good, so this one kills me.

When she buys from Amazon with our monthly set-aside from our budget for groceries and sundries, I don't have to hear the "beep" and watch the price add up as I stand at the register. It's a small thing, but it makes my life less stressful. Besides, Amazon is competitive with ANYBODY on prices. And if the shade isn't right, she just sends it back. Not only that, with Amazon Prime, she gets free shipping, so can order just what she needs when she needs it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive, I just prefer to be in the dark with how much she spends on this sort of stuff. Besides, I say every time, "You get what you pay for" and she buys the good stuff now. I mean, you've seen the majority of people that shop at those other stores and the makeup department is going to cater to them. Most of those women look like the lesson their best friend taught them in middle school to put on makeup is the only one they ever learned--orange? Really?. The cool thing is, as my wife has read reviews and narrowed down what works for her, it takes less makeup to do what she wants it to do. And instead of looking like she is wearing makeup, it looks like she isn't wearing any makeup. Which is how I like her!

Manage your household budget with Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime saves you money!

Ok. How can a service that costs you $79.99 a year save you money? Well, Amazon Prime is just that...PRIME!

My wife and I discussed this at length for some time. Because she is a college student right now, she got a great deal on signing up and trying it. You have to have a college email account to get the special price for the first year. But anyone gets the one month free trial.

In the end, we decided we buy enough stuff from Amazon, it was worth it to get FREE 2-DAY SHIPPING with our Prime Account. Not only that, we could begin to get groceries, household goods, etc. without having to pay shipping on small orders of things we needed: toilet paper, $0 to ship; cereal, $0 to ship; pasta, $0 to ship. And we don't have to get out and spend $4 a gallon to drive somewhere to get stuff--It comes straight to our door!

Heck, just with the amount of stuff we bought on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we got our stuff quick and shipped for free. Let's face it. I have said in every product review I've done that you get what you pay for. Amazon Prime is no different. On top of that, you get Amazon's outstanding customer service and return policy. We often order things we aren't sure about and if we don't like it, we simply return it. No questions asked. Amazon credits our account and we get what we actually want.

Here's what I recommend: Try Amazon Prime for 1 month for free, put part of your household's monthly budget on an Amazon e-Gift Card (see my other hubs on Amazon products), and try ordering things as you need them instead of getting out in your car. After a month, I'll think you'll extend your Amazon Prime account. Have fun saving money!

Amazon Gift Cards Rock

There are 3 reasons to buy Amazon Gift Cards: 1. You need to buy a gift for a guy. 2. You need to buy a gift for a girl. 3. You need to manage your money better.

1. Get your guy exactly what he wants: The opportunity to get what he wants because he doesn't really know yet. Listen. I'm a guy. There are a few things I like (elecctronics and books), but I have to look for several weeks before I'll commit to buying anything and unless you listen to my ramblings about which surround sound speaker system has moved up and down the best sellling list for the last 52 weeks, then you are going to have no idea what to get me.

However, with an Amazon e-gift card, I can research, research, research, and then when I'm ready to pull the trigger: BAM! I get exactly what I want. Of course, it is going to be electronics or a book. But oh so many choices! And, if the money is sitting there waiting, as soon as Amazon pops a sale--whammo! I can get it at a discount and feel smarter...which I love to feel smarter.

2. You don't know what to get your girl. Here is where I am at a disadvantage. I am the worlds best gift shopper for my wife for several reasons. I listen to the hints she drops all year. I know her taste better than she does. I look for sales like a bloodhound. But if you are not super awesome like me (my wife's words), then an Amazon Gift Card is going to be the way to go. Here's why: she knows what she wants and she is going to return what you get her. Unless it is a diamond ring, diamond earrings, or a gold brick, she is going to return what you bought. So just send her an e-Amazon Gift Card...it'll pop up in her email and you can tailor some little romantic note to go with it (you're on your own on that) and she will get exactly what she wants. Whether you send $50 or $5,000, she will find exactly what she wants. And you'll be a hero.

3. You need to manage your money better. Amazon sells anything and everything. When you get paid, put some money in your Amazon account then have anything you need shipped directly to your house. No gas to the store. No overdrawn account. Hey, if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can even have those items shipped for free in 2 to 3 days. Realize you are down to 3 rolls of toilet paper? Find the best-selling toilet paper and have it in a couple of days. Just a box of Cheerios left? Order more and have it in no time. And you will always know how much you have left and if you save money, it'll be there for next month until you have enough left to buy something nice for yourself. You can get literally anything on Amazon and a e-gift card is the way to manage your household budget!