Recycling Ink Cartridges for Money

Update 5/8/13 - I just recycled my first 10 cartridges today to officemax.  I bought 2 $25 amazon gift cards because they are on sale for $45 (10% off) until 5/11 - page 1 of the circular.  I will update when I find out if the amazon purchases count towards my rewards.  I assume they will not.

Update 5/2/13 - The credit, for Staples at least, tends to post to your account the 15th or 16th of the following month.  Thanks again SW.

One of my readers, Shmuel Winiarz, came up with a way of getting free stuff at office supply stores and has already put it into practice.  Similar to just about everything else on this blog, there is rarely an actual free lunch.  You have to be willing to put in some effort to make it work.

I haven't tried this myself yet, but I am excited to give it a go!

Here's how it goes:

As an incentive to recycle ink cartridges, Office Depot, Office Max and Staples will give you $2 per cartridge you bring in for recycling, up to 10 cartridges ($20) a month.  These are rewards towards anything in the store that isn't a cash equivalent (no gift cards or prepaid cards).

What if you can buy cartridges for less than the office supply stores give you to recycle them?  Well, you can and for significantly less too.  Let's learn more!


Right now, you can buy 300 empty ink cartridges on ebay for $60, or $0.20 a cartridge.  If this one is sold out, just search "empty ink cartridges" from ebay.com and a different good deal will come up.  These cartridges are worth $2 so you are netting $1.80 per cartridge!


Keep in mind that you don't get your gift certificate on the spot.  At the end of the month, the store starts processing your rewards and you will get your rewards a different time.

The Catch

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not all fun and games and someone may get hurt.  There are a few things you need to be aware of with each store.

• Office Max - You need to spend as much in office max as you earn.  For example, if you bring in 10 cartridges last month, but only spend $8 at office max you will get $8 in rewards, not the full $20.  The $12 of rewards will be pending until you spend $12 more in office max or until January 1st when the rewards disappear.    
• You can't buy gift cards, computers or stamps towards your minimum spending to unlock your rewards
• If you go to office max occasionally anyway, this is the way to go.  If you don't, staples is probably the best move.
• Office Depot - same catch as Office Max.
• Staples - You need to have spent at least $30 on ink and toner within the last 180 days (around 6 months) to be eligible.  
• If we assume you will make $1.80 per cartridge and recycle 10 cartridges per month you will have netted $18 a month.  After 6 months, you will have $108 towards Staples products, but you have paid $30 towards ink so a net of $78 or $13 a month.
• If you are planning on buying ink from staples anyway, this is a great deal.

Leveraging the Payout

It's hard to know the best way to spend the money.  Most likely gift cards are out, but maybe stamps won't be?  Probably the easiest way to get the full money back is to buy "free after rebate" items.  You will have spent the gift certificates, but you get cash back later.

Have you done this too?  Found a way to leverage this deal even better?  Comment and everyone gains.

Teaneck, NJ Here We Come!

My family and I are moving to Teaneck, NJ, which is quite a change from Buffalo for a frum family.  I'm going from a place with a nice Jewish community to one of the few counties in America that still has Blue Laws.  In all seriousness, it will be quite an adjustment.


There are many things that I will miss about Buffalo.  One of the pertinent ones to this blog is that I have a Walmart within a 5 minute drive.  I can buy Chase $500 Gift Cards for $500 on my credit card, deposit the $500 into my Bluebird account and use Bluebird to pay my credit card bill while getting the rewards on my credit card with no fees at all.

In addition, there is a CVS on the way home from school.  I usually stop there a few times a month to stock up on the healthy supply of Vanilla Reload cards and put that money on my Bluebird.

Naturally, I was not so happy to be giving up these very lucrative ways of generating points and miles.


My wife was talking to one of her friends from Teaneck and she asked "is your apartment the one that is right near CVS?"  Maybe the move won't be so bad after all :)  No sales tax doesn't hurt either!


Here's to looking for lucrative deals in the New York Metropolitan area!


Let the research begin:  Are there any supermarkets with $500 prepaid cards? Does CVS carry vanilla reload cards or have DDFers already cleared them out?  How can we get Walmart to move closer?  All these questions and more coming to a blog near you.

32GB Flashdrive $15, 64GB $35

I guess today is media storage sale day for me

$15 - Silicon Power Touch 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive and eligible for super free shipping 

From the same link you can get the 64GB version for $35.  Both are pretty good deals.

2013 Free Money Roundup

Disclaimer: I do not receive a referral fee for any of the links below with the following exceptions: Top Cashback and Betterment

The first 4 months of 2013 have been a decently lucrative start for me and my wife for Free Money (though she would rather not know how I accomplished it for plausible deniability - kidding of course).  The opportunities have been in great abundance and also very lucrative this year!

I am aware that this is not actually free money.  Time and work are involved and everyone has to make their own calculation whether a deal is worth it to them

I don't write this to gloat, rather to show everyone what I've done so that you can try and replicate the same thing yourself in the future.  Obviously, you can pick and choose which ones you think are worth it and which ones are not.  Some you can still do now and some are dead deals, but new ones are always popping up, but you usually need to jump on them to get full value.

Instructions in how to leverage each deal are found at the provided links.

Vanilla Reloads and Blue Bird

• Total of $315.75 - Unfortunately, these deals ended at the end of March.
• Chase Freedom - $63.15 - Chase Freedom was offering 5% back at drugstores, including CVS with Vanilla Reloads up to $1,500 of purchases.
• 7,500 ultimate rewards points, which I value at more than 1 cent per point, but they can be redeemed for cold, hard cash at 1 cent per point so we'll call that $75.  $11.85 in fees for a total of $63.15
• This is from January (I also paid part of my tuition on this card during this bill)
• 
  

• Citi Dividend - $252.60 -  Same thing as Chase Freedom except the limit was $6,000 in purchases, instead of $1,500.
• $300 in rewards and $47.40 in fees is a total haul of $252.60 over 3 months

Chase Gift cards and Blue Bird

• Chase Freedom - $20 a month (only $20 so far)
• Chase recently started selling $500 gift cards with no fees whatsoever.  They need to be bought with a Chase credit card.  I bought $2,000 of them last month so that was 2,000 free ultimate rewards points. 24,000 free points a year is pretty good to me, hopefully it lasts.
• The statement hasn't closed yet so I don't have a picture to show you yet.

Top Cashback and Blue Bird

• American Express and Visa Gift cards through Top Cashback shopping portal - $167
• There was one day recently where you could get 2.5% back on a purchase $3,000 of american express gift cards ($75).  The next week, I used the $3,000 to buy 3 Visa gift cards of $993 dollars each (accounts for the fees) and got another 2% back ($60).  Add 2% from Fidelity American Express ($60) and you get $195 in rewards and $27.95 of fees  for a net profit of $167
• 
  

New Credit Card Sign up Bonuses

• American Express Blue Preferred - $150 Sign up bonus for spending $1,000 in first 3 months

• $1,000 on Vanilla reload in the first month
• Already received $150 statement credit
• I already have this card.  I got it for my wife because there is a $6,000 yearly limit on the great rewards.  In addition, I will close my card so that I can be eligible for a new bonus.
• There is an annual fee of $75, which is not waived the first year.

• Citibank AAdvantage - 30,000 miles after spending $1,000 in first 3 months.  I value AA miles at least at 1 cent a mile, so it is a minimum of $300 towards AA flights.  I won' t count this because I cannot redeem the miles towards cold, hard cash.

• $1,000 on vanilla reloads in the first month
• Still waiting for the bill to settle to get my miles
• Annual fee is waived the first year

Better Balance Rewards Credit Card

• I signed up myself and my wife for the Better Balance Rewards Credit Card along with fee free checking accounts.  I expect to get $60 a quarter ($10 a month for me and $10 for my wife), basically for free.
• I already have them on autopay (you have to call up) and I hope to get one automatic bill a month to be paid by these cards so that I never have to think about the card and it is always generating the $10 a month for the both of us.
• It has only been two months so I don't have anything to show for it yet.

New Checking Account Bonus

• $125 - This is cheating a little bit.  I signed up for this is November of last year, but I didn't get the money until this year, but I did get $125 for free.

Betterment

• $25 - Still active - Add $250 to your Betterment account and you will get $25.  Betterment invests your money automatically.  You allocate percentages of bonds and stocks.  Your principle may appreciate or depreciate.
• To get the bonus, you need to add $250 within 90 days and keep it there for 90 days.  At that point you are free to take your $275, or so, out.

Grand Total = $862

$315 in 5% categories, $20 from Chase gift cards, $167 from topcashback, $150 from sign up bonuses, an assumed $60 from Better Balance card, $125 from checkout account, $25 from Betterment = $852 for 4 months or $213 a month.  Not bad when you don't have a job!

4TB External Hard Drive $150

Amazon has the Seagate Backup Plus 4 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STCA4000100 for $150 right now.  $40 per TB at this size is pretty good.  Obviously, only buy it if you need this much storage.  As with anything in technology prices can go down in a hurry.




Here is the same product from newegg at $189 and from Dell at $207

32GB SDHC Memory Card $20

For everyone who likes taking a lot of pictures, a 32GB+ memory card is a must.  When I use up all the storage on one (that can take a long time), I start another and it is a cheap and small alternative to an external hard drive backup for all your pics.


Right now, you can buy a 32GB Sony SDHC memory card for $20 with free shipping from Ebay.

This is not an amazing deal, but it is decent.  My rule of thumb is that I try to pay no more than $0.50 per GB which is closer to $16.  You can buy the same card on Amazon for $22.  There are tons of ways to get Amazon money for cheaper so this might even end up as a better deal, but if you are in need of an SD card right away, go with the Ebay one.

Free Ovaltine Sample - Facebook Required

Free sample of Ovaltine by liking their Facebook page.

I am pretty sure Ovaltine is kosher.

Visa Gift Card from Staples - $10 off

Disclaimer - The Discover offers are no longer valid.

When you use coupon code 43994 at Staples, you will get $10 off a $100 item, including Visa Gift Cards.


When I tried, the $100 gift cards were out of stock, but try it yourself.  I may be blacklisted from Staples website :) I ended up buying 2 $50 gift cards for $101.90 because they each come with a fee of about $6.

Why would I do this?

If you start shopping from the DISCOVER IT™  Card Shopping Portal (I get a referral fee for accepted applications), you get 5% back at Staples or over $5. In addition, I will still get my usual 1% cashback for using my Discover card for a total price of $95.79.

Based on redemption with gift cards that I use anyway, I consider every $1 at Discover to be worth $1.25.


I have never tried this with the Discover portal, but I have been successful in the best with both Ebates (2% for Staples) and Top Cashback (3% for Staples) and I don't see why this will be different.  I will report back when I have more information.

Once I get the cards, I hope I can add a pin to them and cash them out via Bluebird so that I can pocket the money.  If I get confirmation that the Discover money posts, I will buy more of them as well.