We all have horror stories about how we were mistreated, overcharged, or otherwise screwed by a bank at some point in our lives. If we find this happening again and again, it’s quite possible that we’ve chosen the wrong bank. The choice of a bank is less about whether a bank is good or bad, but whether it is good or bad for you.

The bank that I use is notorious for infuriating some of its customers. There are websites out there whose sole purpose is to bash my bank and tell all the reasons why it’s so horrible. I laugh when I see people getting so worked up about this because I have never been charged the ridiculous fees described, received anything but the best customer service, and have had a simply wonderful banking experience. Clearly they are the wrong bank for some people, but the right bank for me. In fact, in addition to having a checking and savings account with them,

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I’ve already covered how Vonage can save you money, but now I’m saving even more by paying for my service once a year. By paying for 12 months upfront, I get an extra 20% off! That means I’m getting all the phone service I need for 12 bucks a month. How can you beat that?

Now that I’ve used Vonage for a few years, I know that I love their service (and low prices) and that the quality of the calls is as good as the phone or cable company. That’s why I had no problem signing up for an extended period.

You can save even more by referring friends and family to try Vonage. Each person you sign up will get 2 free months of service and you’ll get a credit as well. If you’d like to try Vonage, send me an email ( service at spindage dot com) with the subject “Vonage” and I’ll send you a referral link for two free months of service.

MyGallons.com is a new service that allows you to prepay for gasoline, “locking in today’s prices.” As more an more people come to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that gas prices can only continue to rise, it’s no surprise that a company came along to take advantage of this line of thinking. I seem to remember another item that could only go up and up in price: real estate. Prepaying for gas at today’s prices seems so savvy because the thought of a decline in gas prices is so unbelievable to most people today.

Obviously if gas prices start to fall, mygallons.com is going to start making more and more of a profit as people pay more than the market price for gas. Prepaying only locks in today’s “low prices” if prices continue to climb. If they fall, then prepaying is locking in today’s “high prices.” I suspect that mygallons.com is hedged for either move in the market. Since their public business model only seems to profit with falling prices, they are probably using some of the money you give them to buy oil futures expecting price increases. If that’s true, they stand to profit either way.

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Being frugally minded and debt averse I’ve always been proud to say that I pay cash for my cars. One of the cars in our household was bought new and the other one was bought used. After calculating the costs of buying a previous car for an upcoming post on the Lending Club blog, I’ve come to realize that paying cash may be costing me more for a number of reasons.

The main reason why paying cash for a new car costs more is the fact that new cars depreciate so quickly. As a result, leasing may be less expensive than paying cash and certainly less expensive than buying with borrowed money. To perform a reasonable comparison, I looked at the latest deal being offered at my local Honda dealer. Here’s what I found:

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President Bush today signed into law an updated GI Bill that had broad bipartisan support. The new bill provides service members, who served in the military for at least three years, full tuition at any in-state public university along with a monthly housing stipend. The benefits (which are as high as $90,000) can also be used at private schools.

The bill adjusts the benefit scale based on cumulative active service, a move that levels the playing field between active duty, National Guard, and Reserve members. Everyone on active duty will receive the benefit from now on free of charge.  Previously, service members paid $1200 to buy into the benefit. Benefits are also significantly higher, up to $90,000 from $40,000 under the old plan. The bill also allows veterans to transfer education benefits to their spouses or children.

With the rising cost of secondary education,  service to our country is a great way to pay for college and an excellent way for our govenment to reward our brave veterans.

Budweiser has been running an ad showing an old refrigerator being moved to the garage when the new one is purchased. It says that although it doesn’t have a water dispenser or an ice-maker, it has plenty of room for what’s really important, i.e. Cold Beer. While the ad is entertaining and does make a good point about reuse and storage capacity, it fails to consider one of the main reasons we replace appliances today: improved energy efficiency. We will only see our electric bills go down if we replace appliances with more energy efficient ones. Adding a new appliance, even one that is energy star compliant, while still running the old one will cause our electric bill to go up.

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Finding cheap gas in your area is becoming increasingly important to everyone’s budget. In the past I’ve spoken highly of Gas Buddy which does just that. To make the search even easier, there is now a website that merges Gas Buddy data with a Google Map of your area. The combination of the two is so natural and should prove to be highly successful. The site, affectionately known as Google Gas, has gained so much interest that it has been overwhelmed with traffic and largely unavailable. Hopefully Google will provide some reliable server space to this excellent use of their technology. Until Google Gas is back online, you can use the old Gas Buddy site to find the best deal.

Rising gas prices causes people to try many alternative forms of transportation. One that has been getting a lot of coverage in the news is the Segway scooter. Getting about 25 miles to a charge means they are a viable alternative in some circumstances. Having ridden one myself, I can also vouch for the “cool factor” (if only in a nerdy sense of the word) as well. Before you go out and buy one though, consider a much more affordable option that has many of the same benefits: a bike.

People who do the cost analysis of a Segway usually just think about the savings in gas. For example, paying $75 a week for gas ($325 / month) means that you’d recover the Segway’s $5000 asking price (or more depending on model, taxes, shipping, etc) after owning it for about 16 months. Other costs associated with the Segway include

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Few things have as much impact over your personal finances as where you live. For most Americans, housing is their largest expense. Moving to an affordable market can do for your personal finances what years of frugal living in an expensive area cannot.

In her article To Cut Costs, Move to Small Town USA, Liz Pulliam Weston profiled a few families that made such a move and the dramatic personal finance gains that followed. One of those profiled is Rob Bennett, whose book Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work, is on my list of books to review for Richer by the Day. In his profile, Rob mentioned two things missing from his new small town, a movie theater and a bookstore. You might think that such amenities are a small price to pay for a lower cost of living, and you’d certainly be correct. I have another strategy to cut costs, but without such down sides.

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photo credit: lisatozzi

Ask nearly any personal financial adviser about the risks and rewards of playing the Lotto and they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s a waste of money. What is often lost in that advice is that there’s more to the Lottery than the potential for riches.

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