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Staples is feeling generous this week! Also: how to make a living in an arcade

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FREE STUFF FROM STAPLES: This ad is mostly self-explanatory…

I say “mostly” because the cards you get aren’t real Staples gift cards, they’re “ePromo cards” which are only good until September 22. Here’s the link to the Slickdeals thread if you want to dig a little deeper. The recommended approach there is to buy four $50 gift cards in one transaction to get the maximum of four ePromo cards.

(EDIT: Thanks to Frequent Miler for pointing out the software deal you can do for some free points and a few extra dollars. You can combine that deal with the deal above.)

Also from Slickdeals, here are this week’s Staples deals:

  • 12-pack BIC Ultra Round Stic Grip Medium Ballpoint Pens (Black) Free after $2.79 Easy Rebate
  • 100-pack Staples 3″x5″ Ruled Index Cards $0.01 w/ $5 Purchase
  • 2-Pocket Paper Folder (Assorted Colors) $0.01 w/ $5 Purchase
  • 8-pack Staples #2 Pencils $0.01 w/ $5 Purchase
  • 12-pack Staples Cap Erasers $0.01 w/ $5 Purchase
  • 5-Tab Avery Insertable Dividers $0.25
  • Staples 8.5″x11.75″ Wide Ruled Perforated Writing Pad $0.50
  • Westcott 12″ Finger-Grip Ruler $0.50
  • 5-pack BIC 0.7mm Mechanical Pencils $0.50
  • 125-count Staples Stickies 1/2″ Tape Flags $0.50
  • 10-pack Crayola Classic Markers $0.75
  • 7-pack Zebra Z-Grip Retractable Medium Ballpoint Pens $1
  • Staples Steel 1-Hole Punch $1
  • 5-pack Sharpie Fine Tip Permanent Markers $1
  • 5-pack Sharpie Accent Tank Highlighters $1

If you really want to get hard core, somebody figured out how to turn this week’s Staples deals into a $60 money maker.

GAMING THE GAMING SYSTEM: This article is several years old, but a fun read. Apparently somebody figured out one of those ticket-paying games they have at places like Dave and Buster’s and actually made a living from it:

He decided to do the only thing at which he was exceptional: Drill-o-Matic. He’d seen it in arcades elsewhere as a ticket-awarding machine. Those arcades had prize huts with extremely valuable merchandise offered for exorbitant, almost unreachable ticket values. Robert knew how to get them. He knew how to line up the drill to get the 100 ticket payout every single time, as the top prize target was always located in the same space. Doing research that wasn’t fully explained to me, he determined every location that had this machine and, investing in a plane ticket, set out there to empty it of its tickets for as long as they would let him play. He’d redeem the tickets for the most valuable items and sell them on eBay.

In other news, you know that game where you drop the claw down into a pit filled with toys? It’s rigged.

BIG LAW IN BIG TROUBLE: Here’s a slightly less old article from The New Republic reporting on the current law school mess:

In the past decade, twelve major firms with more than 1,000 partners between them have collapsed entirely… And then there are the indignities inflicted on new lawyers, known as associates. The odds are increasingly long that a recent law-school grad will find a job. Five years ago, during a recession, American law schools produced 43,600 graduates and 75 percent had positions as lawyers within nine months. Last year, the numbers were 46,500 and 64 percent. In addition to the emotional toll unemployment exacts, it is often financially ruinous. The average law student graduates $100,000 in debt.

It’s not just the law schools and their grads that are getting squeezed. Harvard et al. may be more popular than ever, but other schools are hurting:

As Loyola University New Orleans gears up for fall classes next month, the 101-year-old Jesuit University faces a crisis: There will be 25% fewer freshmen than the school had banked on.

…School officials were stunned this year by the low fall turnout, and the vice president for enrollment management resigned abruptly in June. Moody’s Investors Service said this month a downgrade is likely in the school’s credit if “the university is unable to improve operations in a relatively short time frame.”

Loyola officials believe a catalyst for the decline was a reduction in financial aid it offered to the incoming class off its $35,504 tuition, from an average discount of 58% last year to about 55% this fall.

AS LONG AS I’M CLEANING OUT OLD ARTICLES: This post from 2007 is the most popular post of all time at The Simple Dollar: Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think. The title’s self-explanatory, and I’ll second the sentiment: homemade bread truly is easy, cheap, and delicious. I have my doubts about the healthy part, so I like to use einkorn flour as that seems to have a less detrimental effect on one’s blood sugar. Of course, just about any homemade bread will still probably be healthier than store-bought. If you’ve never baked bread before, I highly recommend giving it a try after you get home from Staples.

How to game the Obamacare system

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LET’S START WITH SOME CHEAP PIZZA: Courtesy of Slickdeals, we learn that online pizza orders get 50% off with the code SUM50 at Papa John’s.

FREE CLUB CARLSON GOLD STATUS?: Apparently Delta Skymiles members may be eligible for Club Carlson Gold status. Delta Points has the story.

GAMING THE OBAMACARE SYSTEM: First off, a word about politics. I’m going to touch on Obamacare today, but there is no intent to be partisan on my part. There are about a million political websites already, and the world does not need another. My interests lie in financial deals, gaming the system, behavioral outliers, and suchlike.

And that, not politics, is what brings me to Obamacare today. Here’s Forbes:

If you’ve been following the latest news around Obamacare, you know that on Tuesday evening, just before the Independence Day holiday, the White House announced that it would be delaying the implementation of the health law’s employer mandate—requiring all firms with more than 50 employees to provide health coverage to their workers—until 2015.

According to the law, you aren’t eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies if your employer has offered you what the government considers “affordable” coverage. But if employers are no longer going to report whether or not they’ve offered “affordable” coverage, how can the government verify whether or not workers are eligible for subsidies?

Now we know the answer. The government is going with what Kliff and Somashekhar call “the honor system.” “We have concluded that the…proposed rule is not feasible for implementation for the first year of operations,” say the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “The exchange may accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in an eligible employer-sponsored plan…without further verification, instead of following the procedure in §155.320(d)(3)(iii).”

And it’s not just there. The feds will also allow people to gain means-tested subsidized coverage on the exchanges without having to…test their means. “For income verification, for the first year of operations, we are providing Exchanges with temporarily expanded discretion to accept an attestation of projected annual household income without further verification.”

Hopefully I don’t need to say this, but lying to obtain government benefits isn’t really my thing and I certainly don’t condone it. At the same time, people who read this blog and others in the points-and-miles-o-sphere are savvier than most about how human beings respond to incentives. We recognize that if there is a system to be gamed, it will be gamed, even if we personally have no interest in doing the gaming ourselves.

I’m wondering three things:

  1. How much will this one flaw be exploited?
  2. How many other flaws, loopholes, and exploits will be uncovered?
  3. How many of the loopholes will be of a more legal and ethical nature, and thus of interest to readers of this blog?

I’m guessing that both (2) and (3) will be greater than zero, as complexity and gaming the system go hand in hand. Time will tell.

A REMINDER OF WHY WE GAME THE POINTS-AND-MILES SYSTEM: Hack My Trip has a nice trip report on a Cathay Pacific first class flight from Hong Kong to New York. It’s nice to see what you can get by being smart with your miles and points, and author Tahsir Ahsan is apparently quite smart in these matters.

I’ve got you covered for National Doughnut Day! Plus zero taxes and rising mortgage rates.

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Friday, June 7, is National Doughnut Day, which I’m pretty sure is just something concocted by the Doughnut Lobby to get us to buy more doughnuts, but whatever. I love doughnuts. Here are three free doughnut options for you on this most sacred of days:

  1. Dunkin Donuts will give you a free doughnut with the purchase of a beverage.
  2. If you don’t want to shell out for a beverage, no problem. Krispy Kreme will give you a doughnut absolutely free of charge, no purchase necessary.
  3. You can also search here to see if any local bakeries are participating in National Doughnut Day.

Enjoy!

Mmmmm…. doughnuts

HOW TO PAY ZERO TAXES: I mentioned the Puerto Rico tax haven recently, but Forbes has some more great ideas:

– Look for companies paying dividends that qualify for the reduced tax rate. The category includes most U.S. corporations (but not real estate investment trusts) and a surprising number of foreign corporations.

– Claim the foreign tax credit. Example: The dividend yield on Total, the French oil company, is over 4% even after French withholding, which offsets your U.S. tax.

– Sell losers from your stock portfolio and let winners ride. Losses of up to $3,000 a year can shelter ordinary income.

–Defer Social Security and IRA distributions until age 70. Live off non-IRA assets.

– Once you pass 65, consider buying energy partnerships like Kinder Morgan and Enterprise Products. Their taxable income, low or nil in early years, rises sharply after a decade or two. But the deferred taxes are erased on inherited shares.

THE RATES THEY ARE A-RISIN’: 30-year fixed mortgage rates are the highest they’ve been in over a year, says Bloomberg:

Rates for a 30-year home loan rose to 3.91 percent in the week ended today, from 3.81 percent, McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac said in a statement. That’s up from 3.35 percent at the start of May as the Federal Reserve signaled to bond investors it may scale back the stimulus that had driven borrowing costs to record lows, amid signs of continuing improvement in housing and the U.S. economy. The 15-year rate has increased to 3.03 percent from 2.56 percent at the start of last month.

Bankrate Inc., an interest-rate aggregator, said today that the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate has climbed to 4.1 percent, according to its weekly national survey.

The article suggests you might want to hurry up and conduct whatever real estate transaction you’re considering before rates go even higher:

“Have we seen the rock bottom for interest rates go past?” said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com, a Riverdale, New Jersey-based mortgage information website. “That’s a pretty reasonable certainty. We are off the record lows. To get back to those record lows, we’d need to see a considerable slowdown in the economy.”

Maybe, though I’d stop short of calling it a reasonable certainty. After the turmoil of the past few weeks, it’s not hard to envision a scenario where the Japanese investment markets go to hell, likewise for Europe, and there’s a flight to (relative) safety as the dollar strengthens and interest rates get ridiculously low… for a short time, anyway. I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but it’s certainly possible. We shall see.

On a related note, John Mauldin thinks this is the year everything falls apart for Japan, and I’m inclined to agree. Take a look at his article and decide for yourself.

PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN AT PANERA: I began today’s letter with doughnuts, and I’m ending with pastries. That’s the magic of National Doughnut Day. Panera’s been testing a pay-what-you-can model on certain menu items in certain markets, and here’s an interesting snipped from the WSJ’s interview with CEO Ron Shaich:

WSJ: You operate five pay-what-you-can stores. How do they work?

Mr. Shaich: Opening the first Panera Cares store was a roller coaster of an experience. People came up to me and began talking about the fact that they had been customers for 5-10 years and had lost their jobs. And how appreciated it was. There were occasionally people who tried to beat it, or game it. So ultimately it was a test of human nature.

This year we’ll service over 1 million people in these cafes. And 20% of customers leave more than the suggested donation, 60% leave the suggested donation, and 20% leave what they can, but often significantly less.

Good for them, and good for you guys for not abusing this! Let’s just hope this doesn’t get posted on Flyertalk or Slickdeals…

A Qdoba hack

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This is small potatoes, but if you’re at Qdoba and you’re trying to be thrifty and/or go low carb, this trick will save you a few bucks. It’s worked at several different Charlotte-area Qdobas, so I’m assuming it will work elsewhere.

If you only order a few ingredients in a burrito bowl (a naked burrito, to use Qdoba’s terminology), then you can have them ring up the ingredients individually. For me, this usually ends up being $4-$5, vs. $6-$8 for a regular burrito. It may or may not work with a regular (i.e., tortilla-enclosed) burrito, I’ve never tried.

In my experience, some Qdobas will automatically ring you up the cheaper way, and others will not do so unless you ask them, it all depends on who’s working that day.

The receipt you see here is for double chicken, cheese, salsa, and lettuce:

I probably spend too much time thinking about this stuff
I probably spend too much time thinking about this stuff

This same order would have cost a little over eight dollars ordering the regular way. Like I said, small potatoes, but it adds up over time. If you’re willing to give up the rice and beans, this is a good way to save money and lose weight (or at least gain weight more slowly).

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