Saving money at Starbucks.

 money matters  No Responses »
Feb 112011
 

Normally I never step foot in Starbucks as I don’t drink much coffee or tea. When I do drink coffee or tea I’m usually okay with the plain stuff available at home. However my girlfriend who is in grad school likes getting work done at Starbucks so I’ve decided to look for ways to save money.

The first thing I recommend is get a Starbucks card and register it online. It only takes 5 visits to attain 5 stars. After 5 stars you get such perks as free syrup/milk options and free refills on brewed coffee or tea. The free syrup and milk options are a great way to spice up an order of regular brewed coffee.

The real savings comes from the free refills on brewed coffee and tea. This is especially true if you’re not grabbing your beverage to go. I generally now grab the medium tea and my girlfriend gets a medium brewed coffee and we’ll get refills when needed. This cut our Starbucks visits to less than $5.

Also if you still have a credit card that gets 5% cash back at supermarkets or drug stores you can buy your Starbucks card there and receive the higher cash back.

 Posted by dan at 5:30 pm

Do you tip at SONIC?

 money matters  2 Responses »
Jun 012010
 

For those of you that don’t know or have never been to one. SONIC is a drive-in where you park your car, order your food from your car and a carhop comes out (usually on roller skates) with your food. Two locations recently opened up in my area in the past few years so it’s still a bit of a novelty around here.

Since the chain is relatively new to my area I’m not quite sure what the tipping etiquette is. Usually I’ll tip a dollar or two but the last time the carhop gave me a weird look when I handed her a tip (I usually pay by credit card).

Generally you don’t tip fast food employees at other chains such as McDonalds, Burger King, etc. However on the other hand they are bringing out the food to your car. The carhops will also run back inside to get you miscellaneous condiments if you ask too. I wouldn’t tip if I got the food through the drive-thru.

 Posted by dan at 7:33 pm

Accessing the damage after having all my Chase credit cards closed.

 credit cards, money matters  No Responses »
May 012010
 

In an earlier post I talked about how JP Morgan Chase closed all my credit cards without warning. I’ve given up after several attempts at talking to various people in lending operations to get my accounts re-instated. I’ll just access the damage and move on.

Credit card products. I really enjoyed the Chase Cash Rewards which netted me 5% cash back on gas, supermarkets and drug store purchases. It was also one of my oldest cards.

Credit lines and credit scores. Across five personal cards with Chase I had about $20k total in credit lines. These lines no longer factor into my available credit and raised my utilization percentage. The resulting drop in my FICO score was from 780 to 710.

No more first class tickets to Europe. I was attempting to spend 30k on the Chase British Airways card to get the 2 for 1 voucher to redeem two first class tickets to Europe at the end of year. What’s ironic is the actions on this card caused all my cards to be closed. Since Chase only gave me a 5k limit I overpaid the card on purpose to get more spending power and this set off a flag causing my accounts to be reviewed and closed.

While I won’t be able to get first class tickets to Europe anymore on British Airways the good news is that I still have 100k miles with them. This is good enough for two one way business class tickets there. I also have enough miles on American Airlines to redeem two one way tickets back. Although I won’t be flying in style on British Airways, at least I’ll be able to do the Europe trip.

Lifetime ban from Chase? I’ve talked to other people who’ve had all their credit cards closed in the past and it seems they’ve never been able to get another credit card from Chase. The only reason I would like to have a Chase card again is that they are partnered United/Continental Airlines and I’d like to earn miles on those airlines through CC purchases.

 Posted by dan at 8:55 pm
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