The financial snowflakes have been falling fast and furious lately, so I’ve updated the Snowflake widget on the site. Each month’s snowflakes will be listed out as they happen, but once the month is over, they’ll be rolled up into the first line.
Managed to sell off some of my brother in law’s comic books last week, so I earned over $36 from Amazon.ca, and then also another $22 from my colleagues as they purchased some of them too, which is nice.
This weekend I was on the hunt for a new CD as I’ve looking for new music over the last several months. I heard a song that I liked on last week’s Grey’s Anatomy (I know, cheesy show, however I find they use music very well in the show, introducing new artists at the same time). I found the song in iTunes, but I was curious to know if I’d like the whole album, so I looked up the album and listened to the clips of the songs. Very cool. But I didn’t want to spend the $14.99 on the album download through iTunes if I could buy the CD for the same price in the store. I’m one of those that likes to hold the CD in my hands some times…not always, but most of the times.
This morning I popped on over to my local HMV to see if they had it, and first off, I think I surprised Mr. Cool Music Dude in the store by asking for the artist. Secondly, he wasn’t sure if they had any left. We looked high and low, with no success. He mentioned that it was on an end display at one point, but when we looked, it wasn’t there. Oh well, I thought, I’ll keep my eyes open for it later. I took a closer look at the display to see what else was there, and wouldn’t you know it, I found the CD I was looking for! Someone had hidden it behind another one. Heh heh, I’ve done that before, but this time I snagged it. And wouldn’t you know it, it was on sale for $9.99. So I saved myself $5 and got the song tout de suite. Nice. I listened to it all the way home, and I’m pleased.
Oh, and the name of the artist is Florence + the Machine, the album is Lungs. I highly recommend it, especially if you like Imogen Heap-type music. In fact, I actually thought the song was Imogen Heap when I first heard it on Grey’s Anatomy.
Today I was running some errands and stopped into my local drug store to pick up some hair spray. It’s been a while since I’ve had to buy some, as I tend to only buy it when it’s on sale, but the sprayer on the last bottle I bought broke, so I was stuck. I wasn’t sure if there was anything on sale, but holy crap, was I ever surprised at how expensive the regular prices were. And this was on the “regular” products, not those “professional” brands that they sell. Wow.
Last time I paid attention, hair spray was around $3.99 for a bottle. Now those same bottles are $5.99 and $7.99! How crazy is that?
Luckily there was actually a brand on sale for $2.99, and while it wasn’t the exact “hold” I wanted (it was strong hold as opposed to flexible hold), the fact that it was $2.99 sold me. I realize that these days a lot of items cost a bit more than I’m used to, however this increase in price on hair spray surprised me the most.
What price increases have you surprised right now?
In 2009 I started trying to earn a little more snowflake money by spreading around a few Amazon.ca affiliate links. I asked all my friends to purchase things thru my link, and I made a little moolah on it. About $150 for the entire year. Not great, but not bad. The annoying thing was that I couldn’t actually GET any of the money Amazon owed me. Their system supposedly could send me payments by direct deposit (my preference), however it kept bouncing back. I tried several different accounts, all with the same result.
What made things more frustrating was the way Amazon.ca’s affiliate program handles questions from users. You fill out a form and they email you back the next day. <sigh> Not the best way when they’re keeping money that I’d actually earned, you know? Having worked in customer service I wasn’t about to get bitchy with them, but I was definitely short, if you know what I mean. I was so frustrated at not being able to receive my money nor even speak to a human to sort the problem out. Last week I just told them to cut me a cheque and forget the whole thing. (The minimum amount of earnings for a cheque is $100, whereas for direct deposit it’s $20–needless to say you can see why I preferred the direct deposit.)
I figured that by asking for a cheque it would take forever to get receive it, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the cheque in my mailbox. So I’ll be depositing the $130.67 into my bank account tout-de-suite! Okay, maybe not immediately, but tomorrow fer sure.
Update: I actually got my cheque this week. Impressive.
