Priority Club points at Holiday Inn Express are less than worthless

· · 1 Comment

I was shopping around for a hotel and don’t quite have enough priority club points to get a free room at the Holiday Inn Express I was wanting to stay at. When you don’t have enough points Holiday Inn Express lets you buy down the cost of your room with points. That is you spend some points and some money to get a room. Here is what I found I could get for my 20,000 points.
priority club points

So I could pay $94.00 for a room or I could pay 20,000 points AND $94.05. Hmmmmm… No thanks, Holiday Inn Express. I’ll go see what I can get with my Choice Hotel points.

This is exactly the reason I don’t sign up for credit cards that offer me “points” as a reward for using them.  Give me cash back or I’m not going to bother with your card.

I built a treadmill desk from stuff laying around my house

· · 1 Comment

img_20160911_143957505_hdr

I wanted to try out a treadmill desk, but with the most popular treadmill desks (AL) on Amazon going for over $500 I needed to find a different way to do it.  I figured out a way to do it for free with stuff laying around my house and it was so easy to do that absolutely anybody can do it.  Here is everything you need to know to make your own treadmill desk.

What you will need to make the treadmill desk

I was lucky enough to already have everything I needed already, but even if you don’t have everything on this list most of these items can be purchased fairly cheaply.

  • A treadmill- Never buy a new treadmill. You can find my guide to buying used treadmills here. If you are looking for a treadmill specifically that will make a good treadmill desk there are a couple features you want to look out for.  Look for one that has nice wide flat handles.  We are going to mount a board on this flat part, so it will have to be wide enough to give you a little bit of work space.
treadmill

This treadmill has wide flat handles, perfect for placing a board on.

Secondly, you will want to look for one that has an incline feature that allows you to walk uphill for a greater challenge.  Why? So you can raise and lower the treadmill to get it to a comfortable height for you to work on.  More on that later.

  • A board- Wide enough to sit across the handles and about as deep as the handles they will be laying across.  An old board that used to be a shelf worked perfectly on my treadmill and I am guessing shelf wood is going to work well for many other treadmills.  If you can’t find anything absolutely perfect you might have to saw down an old piece of plywood.
  • Spring clamps- These are the easiest way hold the board down on the treadmill.  If you don’t have spring clamps around your home other clamps will work almost as well, or you can buy a set on Amazon for about $10. (AL- see disclosure below)

Now we put the board over the handles and use the spring clamps to keep the board in place, creating a mini desk like so:

emptry treadmill desk

We have now created a treadmill desk

So there you have it, a treadmill desk.  Now we just put a laptop on there and get to work, right?  Well… no.  You see that just wouldn’t work very well, that wouldn’t be ergonomically correct.  Imagine standing up and typing while looking at the laptop screen.  If the keyboard was at a comfortable level for your hands then you would have to look down at your screen, which wouldn’t be comfortable for your neck.  If the screen was at a comfortable level for your eyes and neck then you would have to hold your hands at a level that would quickly become uncomfortable after a very short period of time. So, we need just a little more equipment.

Office equipment needed

  • A desktop or laptop computer- We aren’t going to be keeping the computer on our little treadmill desk, so a desktop computer will work if that is what you have.  I myself use this ASUS laptop (AL) which is a great deal on a budget laptop except for the fact that the keyboard and trackpad are awful.  So awful that I can only assume the person who designed them had a background in psychological torture rather than anything even vaguely related to consumer electronics. The keyboard and trackpad are so awful that after trying the computer I immediately drove to Staples and purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse which actually worked out OK because the next items we will need for our treadmill desk are…
  • A wireless keyboard and mouse- Since our computer isn’t going to be on our desk, we need a way to control it, so a wireless keyboard and mouse will do the trick.  Don’t cheap out and try using wired versions here.  Having cords hanging off your treadmill desk is nothing but asking for trouble. A highly rated keyboard and mouse set can be found for as low as $17 (AL) on Amazon.
  • A big screen TV- I am guessing you already have one of these around your home.  If not, congratulations, you are a very cheap person indeed and I salute you. Plug your computer into your TV and use your TV as an external computer monitor.

So, we put the keyboard and mouse on our desk and we plug our computer into a nice big TV which is big enough for us to see and high enough for us to comfortably see while on our treadmill desk.  This is how my setup looks:

img_20160911_144021957_hdrJust a couple last minute adjustments

Before you get to work, there are just a couple more things to adjust.  Do the words on the screen look big enough for you?  If not, go into the setting on your computer and you can adjust the resolution to make everything on your screen look bigger or smaller.

Does the keyboard feel like it is at the right height? You can make the treadmill go up or down by playing with the incline settings.

I wrote this article on my treadmill desk and thought it worked great. I went nice and slow at 1 mph, but even that might have been pushing it.  Next time I will probably try about .7 mph or so. So unless you are going to be spending a long, long time at your desk this isn’t enough excersize to meet your daily goals, but it has to be a lot better than sitting down all afternoon, right?  The good thing is that you can remove your desktop and get your treadmill ready for some real excersize in just a few seconds.

Related articles

A standing desk costs less than you think

More cheap alternatives to a standing desk

Disclosure

Links with (AL) behind them are affiliate links and 10% of the revenue they generate will be donated to the charity noted on the upper right hand side of this page. I did not receive compensation of any kind or discounts for any of the products listed in this article.

Don’t ever take excersize or health advice from a frugality blogger, you should really consult a doctor for that. Using a treadmill can be dangerous so you are advised that doing anything described in this article is done at your own risk.

You can get a great memory foam mattress for about $200

·
memory-foam-mattress

Photo by Iris

My wife and I had been making due with a mattress we didn’t really like for several years. We tried a memory foam mattress topper which vastly improved things but after several years our mattress was giving us back pain even with the memory foam mattress topper.  Since we liked our mattress topper so much, we decided it was time to go with a full memory foam mattress, even if it was pretty expense.

When we went to shop for a mattress though we were shocked.  While a name brand memory foam mattress might be pretty expensive, lesser known brands are dirt cheap.  Our mattress only cost us about $200. Here is what we thought of our mattress, and what to look for when shopping for your own.

The decision process

There are a couple of things you want to watch out for when looking for a memory foam mattress.  The big knock on memory foam mattresses is that they can get warm when you sleep in them.  I can’t sleep if I am too warm, so that just wasn’t going to work.  Many memory foam mattresses are not 100% memory foam, but have other materials mixed in with them (often referred to as “gel”) to help keep them cool.

The other thing I was told to watch out for is chemicals.  All kinds of chemicals with unknown health effects could be put into foam, especially if you are like me and are buying from an unknown brand name.  Luckily there is an organization called CertiPur that certifies there are no dangerous chemicals in the foam, so you will want to watch for that.

With those 2 things in mind, my wife and I choose the LUCID 10 Inch Gel Memory Foam Mattress (AL- please see disclosure below) because it had gel in it to keep it cool, was CertiPur certified, was just a little over $200 for a queen sized mattress, and because it had over 2,500 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of over 4 stars.  This wasn’t the only choice though, there are lots of other memory foam mattresses (AL).

Unboxing the memory foam mattress

I don’t own a car large enough to carry a queen sized mattress around in, so having Amazon deliver the mattress to my front door for free was a great bonus for me.  The mattress was delivered in a large box (but much less large than a mattress) and weighed about 50 pounds.  I drug the box to my bedroom and opened it up.  The mattress was tightly rolled up and wrapped.

I carefully cut off the wrapping and the mattress poofed out nearly instantly expanding until it was flat and almost the size of a full queen sized mattress.  A couple hours later it had expanded further and reached it’s full size of 10 inches thick.  The instructions said to wait 48 hours to let it expand fully, but I didn’t find that to be necessary.  After a couple hours it had expanded all it was going to.

Trying it out

As soon as we laid down on it we knew we liked it.  We were shocked at how firm it was but found it comfortable.  After the first night our backs didn’t hurt like they did after sleeping on our old mattress, and after a few weeks my back hasn’t hurt since.

After a few nights my wife decided the mattress was too firm for her tastes so we put our old memory foam mattress topper on it to soften things up a bit.  That did the trick, and now we think the mattress is perfect.

To be fair, many of the reviews on Amazon did warn about just how firm this mattress was so we shouldn’t have been surprised.  If you a firm mattress isn’t what you are looking for Amazon (AL) has lots of other models to choose from

Disclosure

Links with (AL) behind them are affiliate links.  I was not paid to write this article by LUCID, Amazon, or anyone else.  I did not receive a free mattress or any other discounted product.  I paid full retail price for the mattress.

Where to find free moving boxes

·

moving boxes

How To Get Free Moving Boxes

The average person spends almost their entire lifetime not thinking about boxes. Then you find yourself getting ready to move and for a few brief days or weeks boxes become the thing you think about the most. Where are you going to get dozens of boxes to move all your stuff in?

There are so many unwanted cardboard boxes in the world that having to buy some seems ridiculous.  The key here is to find somebody that has some cardboard boxes that wants to get rid of them as badly as you want to acquire them.  Here is where to look for those people.

Your work

There is a pretty good chance that your employer throws away boxes daily. If you ask your mail or administrative department to save boxes for you they will gladly do so.  If you are not currently looking for boxes you can prepare for future moves by not being a jerk to your mail or administrative departments.

Grocery stores and other retail stores

Grocery stores are swimming in cardboard boxes they don’t want.  If you go to your local grocery store and ask any employee I am sure they would be happy to load you up with boxes.

Craigslist

It doesn’t seem like it right now, but as soon as you unpack all your stuff you will want to get rid of all those empty moving boxes just as badly as you want to find them now.  If you check on Craigslist there is a good chance you will find somebody trying to give boxes away for free.  If you don’t find anybody giving them away for free, just post an ad saying you will be glad to come over and pick up any extra boxes anybody has laying around.  Here is my complete guide to buying and selling on Craigslist.

You could purchase boxes

If you are having trouble finding free boxes you could always go to Amazon and…  LOL. No, seriously, that was just a joke.  Don’t pay for things other people are trying to give away for free.

Recycling plant

My local recycling plant gives away free cardboard boxes.  My local plant doesn’t pay for cardboard, but they have an area where people can come in and throw their old cardboard away.  Because they don’t pay people for the cardboard they don’t mind when other people come in and take it away.  I’m not really an expert on the economics of the recycling industry so it is probably a good idea if you give your local recycling plant a call and ask how they feel about this before trying it.

What to do with those boxes after your move

At some point soon you will be done with those boxes and your next problem will be that your trash can isn’t big enough to fit all those old boxes you no longer need. When this happens, try to remember how badly you wanted boxes a few weeks ago and then try to help out the other people who moving and want boxes just as badly as you did a short time ago. Post an ad on Craigslist for free boxes.

After my recent move we noticed one of our neighbors had a sold sign in their yard.  So I knocked on their door and asked if they could use some moving boxes.  They happily accepted.


Don’t fall for the old “shill at the open house” trick

·

shill

My family has been spending all of free time house hunting recently, and I wanted to share with you a particularly sneaky trick one home seller tried pulling on me.

Home Seller didn’t want to show me his house except at an open house

It all started on a Wednesday when a nice looking house showed up for sale by owner on Zillow.  The house was in the right location and for the right price so my wife and I called the seller to see if we could see the place.  There was no answer so we left a message.  A couple days later our call hadn’t been returned so we left another message. Why wouldn’t somebody selling their home by owner want to return a call as quickly as possible?

Finally, our call was returned Saturday evening.  The seller didn’t offer to show us the home whenever we wanted to see it but instead welcomed us to come by his open house on Sunday.  We were already planning on spending our Sunday at open houses so we told the gentleman we would see him there.

A suspicious amount of interest at the open house

On Sunday my wife and I spend all day at open houses. Before we go further I’ll point out that according to this article on realtor.com nobody actually buys a house from an open house. (We did! But that is another story.) Anyway, this open house seemed to be working out unusually well for the seller.

We toured the house and it was very nice. So nice in fact, that I was considering buying it. As we were touring the house another couple was also working their way through the home. I was making my way towards the front door to speak to the owner and tell him I was interested. Before I could though the other couple started speaking with the owner.

The couple asked the owner if there had been any other interested buyers.  The home owner told them a guy who had been by earlier wanted to put in a bid but had to go get pre-qualified for a mortgage first.

“Well, we better act fast then!” said the couple.  Then they started talking about how much they loved the place and wanted to buy it.  I was kind of disappointed because I had been considering making a bid, but I didn’t want to get involved a bidding war because there is no way possible to get a good price for a home if you get involved with trying to outspend another buyer.  I gave up on the idea and left. I considered the home off the market and went on to the next open house.

The shill game

Later that week the same house showed up as having another open house the following Sunday. Huh? I was confused.  The couple I had seen was obviously wanting to buy the place, so what happened?  That is when I realized that I had almost fallen for a little scam.

The couple I had seen at the open house weren’t really home buyers. They were shills, friends of the owner.  They were hanging around the home all through the open house pretending to be buyers to put heavy pressure on other potential buyers that they better get a bid in fast or the house would be gone. I am sure if somebody had put a bid on the home that the owner would have used these shills as a bargaining tool during price negotiations.

That is why the home owner never answered his phone or returned my calls until right before the open house, because he thought his little trick would pressure people into buying his house before it was gone.

What I did right

Being unemotional about home buying is difficult, but it saved me from getting involved in a bidding war against myself I wasn’t going to win. I wanted to find a fairly priced home, made a fair offer on it, and get a good price. When somebody else is also bidding on a house you will get scared about the possibility that you won’t get the house, so you don’t think clearly and soon you start bidding more and more and more.

Sometimes houses with multiple bidders even end up selling for more than the asking price. That is why when I saw somebody else wanted the house I walked away.

 

Photo by Vlastimil Koutecký