Free money, free credit monitoring, and expensive gold

Okay, enough silly posts for this week… Let’s make some money, shall we?

MONEY SALE: OfficeMax is having a sale on money! Specifically, $20 off $300 in MasterCard prepaids. BigHabitat is all over it and you should be too. If your store is out of the $200 cards, ask if they have any extra in stock. And make sure they scan the offer book they keep by the register to give you your discount–I just encountered a clerk and a manager who were unaware of this deal.

Between this and the Best Buy bonanza a few weeks ago, 2014 is off to a tremendous start for retail deals. We haven’t seen any killer credit card offers yet, but I’ll be surprised if we don’t see something big in the next month or two as the 2014 marketing budgets get into gear.

COSTCO PRICES EXPLAINED: Thanks to WeddingSpend for passing this one along… There’s a method to Costco’s pricing madness, and it’s explained clearly here. By paying attention to the last two digits of the price, you can get an idea of how good of a deal you’re getting.

FREE CREDIT MONITORING FROM TARGET: In case you haven’t signed up for this yet, here’s the link. As per the FAQ, the package includes:

• Credit Report: You will get a free copy of their Experian credit report. If you enroll online, your report will be available online. Online credit reports are available for 30 days.
•  Daily Credit Monitoring: You will receive alerts for one year that reflect changes to your Experian credit report during your membership term. This includes new inquiries, newly opened accounts, new derogatory information (such as delinquencies or medical collections) and more.
•  Identity Theft Resolution: If confirmed that you have been the victim of identity theft, you will be assigned a dedicated, U.S.-based Experian Fraud Resolution Agent who will walk you through the fraud resolution process—and remain available to answer questions—from start to finish.
•  Identity Theft Insurance: If you have been a victim of identity theft relating to this incident, you will immediately be covered by a $1 million insurance policy that can help you cover certain costs, including lost wages, private investigator fees, and unauthorized electronic fund transfers for one year.
•  ProtectMyID ExtendCARE: Access to personalized assistance from a highly-trained Fraud Resolution Agent will continue even after the initial one year ProtectMyID membership expires.

STAY GOLD: Grant Williams has some fascinating stuff here about manipulation of the gold market. If the tale is to be believed, the Bank of England sold almost 400 tons of gold at the market’s absolute bottom in 1999 in order to keep a couple of financial institutions (AIG and Rothschild) with big short positions from going under. Williams argues that we’re about to see a scarcity of physical gold and correspondingly higher prices. You may have heard about the surge of gold-buying in Asia recently:

Are any of you buying or selling gold these days?

I’M LOVIN’ IT: A science teacher named John Cisna lost 37 pounds in 90 days… by eating nothing but McDonald’s food:

With the help of three of his students, Cisna simply planned and followed a diet that totaled no more than 2,000 calories each day and closely mirrored the reference daily intakes of carbohydrates, protein, fat, and cholesterol. Mind you, he didn’t merely scarf a single meal to sate those requirements; he savored three square meals each day! A typical day’s sustenance varied, but it would typically include two egg white delight McMuffins, a bowl of maple oatmeal, and a 1% milk for breakfast; a salad for lunch; and a value meal for dinner.

“So this isn’t something where you say, ‘well he went to McDonalds and he only had the salads.’ No, I had the Big Macs, the quarter pounders with cheese. I had sundaes, I had ice cream cones,” Cisna told KCCI.

Also included in Cisna’s self-experiment were 45 minutes of daily walking. Moreover, the teacher dutifully tracked his meals and exercise in an Excel spreadsheet. By the end of the 90 days, he was 37 pounds slimmer, and his LDL (bad) cholesterol had plummeted by 60 points.

I don’t really have anything to add to this, so here’s a pre-Seinfeld Jason “George Costanza” Alexander in a McDonald’s commercial.