Timeshare presentations and free gift offers
The last time you were vacationing with your significant other at a popular tourist destination, did you come across sales people on the streets or at your hotel lobby enticing you with free gifts? If you did, it is quite probable that they were trying to register you to attend a timeshare presentation.
First things first, what is a timeshare?
In very simplistic terms, timeshare is a form of ownership of property for a fixed period of time. Example: when you buy a house, you buy the property for an unlimited period of time (until you sell). When you buy a timeshare property, it is yours to use only for the amount of time that you buy each year (ranging from 1-4 weeks). The more weeks you buy the more expensive it is.
Timeshares are very profitable for their owning companies, and so they try to convince as many people as possible to buy them. The most common way they do this is by making people attend a timeshare presentation. Most times, in order to attend these, they provide free gifts and incentives, like free cash, free hotel package, etc. For this very reason, attending these presentations can be very rewarding based on the gifts they promise you. So the next time you are approached by a sales person trying to register you for a timeshare presentation, keep in mind the following points:
- They almost always prefer couples (married or not) or families to attend these presentations.
- The free gifts are often negotiable. If you appear to be very reluctant, they will usually increase the monetary value of the free gifts to entice you further.
- The free gift is usually mentioned clearly as you sign up on the registration form. Make sure it is the same as what the sales person has promised you.
- The presentation is usually at a separate location, and involves a separate sales rep dedicated to presenting the timeshare concept to you and your significant other. You are NOT obligated to make a purchase at the end of the presentation.
- These presentation are officially supposed to last 90 minutes, but may go on for as long as 3 hrs. If you consistently show no interest in purchasing the timeshare, chances are that the presentation will last for a shorter duration.
- It is very important that you choose a reputed brand name presentation. From my experience, Marriott presentations are very much more professional and organized than unheard of companies like Westgate timeshare. The Westgate salesman was very unprofessional towards the end and they used some strong arm tactics like bringing in more people to convince us to buy.
- Make sure the gift that you recieve is what was promised to you while registering.
I have attended two such presentations: Westgate (Las Vegas) and Marriott (Honolulu, Hawaii). We received a free lunch and $200 in casino chips at the end of the Westgate presentation. The presentation itself was very unprofessional, unpleasant and lasted much longer than what had been promised. The Marriott presentation on the other hand was very professional, understandable and extremely low-pressure. Our sales rep was very friendly and did not use any unpleasant sales tactics. At the end of it, I received a free round of golf at the Ko Olina Golf Club (with cart, a $150 value), and my wife received a free lunch along with a day-long owner’s pass at the Ko Olina resort giving here free access to the resort amenities ($100-$200 value).
So the next time you are out on vacation with your significant other, consider attending a timeshare presentation from a well-established brand name. Not only will you walk out of the presentation knowing more about the timeshare concept, but you will have received some exciting free gifts for your time.
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Entertainment Coupon Book: The Holy Book of Money-Saving
As far as religion is concerned in the true sense of the word, I am not really a religious person. But if the ideology of saving money were one day declared a religion, I would consider myself a devout follower 
. If that were to indeed happen and us money-savers were to choose a holy book for our religion, I would positively vote for the Entertainment coupon book!
I was introduced to this holy book sometime last year, when a friend of mine recommended it to me. And what can I say, the experience made me feel like I was a born-again money-saver !
What is the Entertainment Book?
It is basically a coupon book. If you remember one of my earlier articles about saving money online using coupons codes, this is a very similar concept. Except that these are physical coupons that you can use at stores, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.
The good thing about the Entertainment book is that there is a different book for each region. For example, I live in Rhode Island and so I have a book that has coupons exclusive to Rhode Island stores and restaurants. The advantage to this is that there is a good possibility of finding a coupon for that local authentic Ethiopian restaurant that you love so much. To give you an example, there is this one Vietnamese restaurant in Cranston, RI called Minh Hai that my wife, friends and I absolutely love to frequent. Since it is a pretty small and cozy family-owned and managed restaurant, I never expected to find coupons for it anywhere. Lo and behold, the Entertainment book for RI had a buy one-get one free coupon for any entrée at this restaurant. That one coupon alone saved us $10.
Can I check what kind of coupons the Entertainment book has for my area?
Yes you can. Just go to the Entertainment.com website, enter your zip code and you can view all the discounts available in your area.
So the book must be pretty expensive right?
Wrong!! If you order it online, the book only costs about $30 . In most cases, if you were to redeem just 3 or 4 coupons from the entire book, you could recover the value of the book. And the book easily has over 200+ coupons. I cannot begin to explain to you the tremendous value of this book.
Do you expect me to lug this big fat coupon book with me everywhere I go?
No, you don’t have to. I just leave the book lying in the back seat of my car. Anytime we decide to eat out, watch a movie, go bowling, or shop at a retail store, I take a quick glance at the book to see if it has any pertinent coupons. All in all, it takes a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes to save a whole bunch of dollars? Sounds like a good deal to me!
So what kind of coupons does it have?
As I mentioned earlier, everything from restaurants (fast food and local) to retail stores, to movie theaters. You name it and there’s probably a coupon for it in this book. The good thing about it is that it has an alphabetical index of stores on the last couple of pages so that you can search for coupons by business name. It also has an index of stores grouped by their neighborhoods if you want to search based on a particular locality. There is another index of stores grouped by business type (restaurants, retail stores, services, entertainment).
Sounds good, but give me some examples.
Besides the example of the Vietnamese restaurant earlier, I saved about $50 on a car repair service at Firestone. I have also saved at least another $20 in fast food purchases. Most recently a group of friends and I saved $30 by using two coupons at Boston Billiards Club, a sports bar and billiard hall that is quite popular here in Rhode Island. So considering just these particular examples, I have saved a total of $110. If you run the numbers, the book has already paid itself 3 times over. And I still have enough coupons remaining to pay for it at least another 2 times over.
Sounds like a great deal! Where can I get the book?
Just click on the link below to proceed with your order. Remember that Entertainment comes out with a coupon book every year, with each year’s book having coupons that are valid until November 1st of that year. So right now you would want to get the book for 2009. They currently have a special offer where they provide free shipping on your order, so hurry up! Here’s the link:
But remember: you control the book, not the other way around!
One very important thing to keep in mind is that as far as possible, you should use it only for those purchases that you would have made whether you had the book or not. Oftentimes, the coupons have a tendency to tempt you to make unnecessary purchases just because of the exciting discount offers. It is in such a moment of absolute truth, my fellow mortal, that thou shalt resist the temptation put forth by Lucifer himself (Money-savingism Genesis 12:34-56). The goal is to use the book to help you save money on things you would have purchased anyway. If it makes you buy more than you need, then it goes against the fundamental principle of saving money.
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Saving money on gas: Use of fuel additives
Oil, often called ‘black gold’, appears to be the life and blood of the global economy today. With our energy needs increasing year after year and the oil supply not showing signs of catching up, it is but obvious that we are seeing increasing energy costs. It is due to the mismatch in supply and demand of oil that we have recently seen the price of a barrel of oil cross the $100 mark. Every global economist and his brother is making predictions about how much the price of oil is going to go up or down in the coming years. I don’t blame them - that’s how they make their living. Whatever happens in the future, the current price of oil is a concern that is certainly causing a great deal of pain in our daily lives. So until we can find an alternative to oil for our energy needs, we need to be smarter about using our existing oil resources. And since most of the oil is used to derive gasoline, what better place to start with than your very own car.
Start first with paying the lowest price for gas
Before I start talking about fuel additives, one smart way to save on gas itself is to pay the lowest price possible for it. And there’s a great website out there to help you do just that:
All you need to do is to enter your zip code and it gives you a list of the gas stations in your area offering the lowest gas prices. All that is left for you to do is to make a stop at one of these gas stations when you need to fill up next.
Once you’ve got the best gas price, work on making that fuel do more for you:
One of the key metrics that we use to measure the fuel efficiency of our cars is their mileage. Mileage is usually calculated as MPG (Miles per Gallon) in the US and KPL (Kilometers per Liter) in most other countries. This effectively measures how far your car will travel in miles on one gallon of gas (for MPG). So in order to get the most out of our fuel, we obviously need to try and bump up the MPG on our cars. One way to do so is by using fuel additives. There are two types of fuel additives: those that work by increasing the fuel’s octane rating, and those that simply act as corrosion inhibitors or lubricators within the piston-cylinder mechanism. In this article, we will focus mainly on the latter type because they are generically applicable to most types of car engines. Fuel additives that increase the octane rating may not always make sense for lower-performance engines.
The fuel additives that act by inhibiting corrosion and lubricating mainly decrease the resistance to motion of the various moving parts of the engine assembly. They also help by cleaning any blockages that may have developed in the fuel delivery system, like the fuel injectors, carburetor, intake valves, etc. The fuel additive that I recommend using is the Lucas Oil Upper Cylinder Lubricant and Injector cleaner. I have tested this product and based on the cost of the fuel additive and the amount of fuel that it can treat, I highly recommend it. Here’s how the calculation behind my recommendation works:
Test Car: 1999 Nissan Maxima
Cost of fuel additive = $30 (good for 25 uses)
Cost of fuel additive per use (completely filling the tank from almost empty state): $30/25 = $1.2/use
Average number of gallons of gas filled in each use: 16 gallons/use (approximately the tank capacity of my car)
Therefore, cost of fuel additive per gallon of gas filled: ($1.2/use)/(16 gallons/use) = $0.075 per gallon
Test Results:
Mileage without using fuel additive: 24 mpg (highway)
Average cost of gas during testing: $3.70 per gallon
Therefore, number of miles that I get per dollar (without using fuel additive)= (24mpg)/($3.7 per gallon) = 6.5 miles per dollar
Mileage with using fuel additive: 28 mpg (highway)
Average cost of gas+fuel additive during testing: $3.70 per gallon (for gas) + $0.075 per gallon (for fuel additive) = $3.775 per gallon
Therefore, number of miles that I get per dollar (with using fuel additive)= (28mpg)/($3.775 per gallon) = 7.4 miles per dollar
As you can see from the calculations, I almost get an extra mile per dollar by using the fuel additive. Furthermore, without going into details of the calculation, I would always end up getting more miles per dollar using the fuel additive as long as the price of gas is above $0.45 per gallon. And with the way things are going, I seriously doubt that we will ever get close to those kinds of fuel prices again. So as you can see, the numbers have spoken! It always makes more sense to use the fuel additive to get those extra miles per dollar. Keep in mind that the mileage you get on your own car may vary from my test results. If you still want to test this out yourself before you take my word for it, you can always first buy the smaller bottle of this fuel additive, test it with you car and see what results you get. Click on the image below of the 5.25oz. size bottle of the fuel additive from Partsamerica.com (also operates as Advance Auto Parts)
If you are ready to get the bigger container of the Lucas Oil fuel additive, click on its image below:
The good thing about purchasing this from Partsamerica.com is that you can also search whether the product is available at an Advance Auto Parts store near you, and pick it up from that location directly (without paying any shipping charges).
If you would rather buy the product from Amazon, click on the Amazon image for product below. Be sure to check out reviews from other customers who bought this product on Amazon as well. A lot of them have also experienced a boost in vehicle acceleration after using this product.
Below is an Amazon link for a small sized bottle:
Another product that I briefly tested and saw good results with is the STP Fuel Injector and Carburettor Cleaner. This product is a little more expensive, but if you prefer to go with a brand name, then you can give this a shot. Click on the product image below for a link to Partsamerica:
Always remember that fuel additives are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to getting better gas mileage from your vehicle. In conjunction with this, you must always make sure that your vehicle undergoes routine maintenance tasks like oil changes, tire rotation, tire pressure, wheel alignment, etc. For details on these other methods of increasing the mileage of your vehicle, check out the following links:
http://www.ehow.com/how_6193_gas-mileage-with.html
http://financialplan.about.com/cs/cars/a/SaveGas.htm
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt064.shtm
http://www.savingadvice.com/forums/money-saving-tips/39923-how-save-money-gas.html?highlight=mileage
If you do decide to purchase the fuel additives that I have suggested in this article, I request you to purchase them by clicking on the appropriate PartsAmerica or Amazon links in this article. They are affiliate links and so with every purchase that is made, the commission earned will help pay for the maintenance expenses of this blog.
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