19 Ridiculous Ways to Make $10,000 You Definitely Haven’t Thought of Yet

The entire cost of tuition at these colleges.

A healthy starting point for investing in your future.

Depending on your location, it could even be a downpayment on a new home for your family to live in or rent out for profit (see #6).

No matter how you slice it, having $10,000 to spend would be nice. But it’s a lot of money to save!

So we’ve gathered X weird ways you could earn that extra cash… and how much effort you’d need to put into each to do so.

How to Make $10,000

1. Cricket Farming

Not afraid of things that hop, crawl and scuttle?

You could try cricket farming. No, follow me here for a second.

It’s pretty easy to get started, and there’s actually more demand for them than you might think.

You basically just need a fish tank, some egg cartons, and dirt to get your habitat set up, and once you start breeding them, they can sell for up to $12 for 250. By the way, the females lay 5-10 eggs… per day.

Check out our full-blown guide to cricket farming to get started. Reptile owners have to feed their pets, and hey, if the business falls through, you’ve got a home-grown source of protein for yourself!

You said you were brave, right?

How many crickets you’d have to sell: 208,333 ⅓ crickets. Wonder which third of the last one you’ll get…

2. Watch Youtube-Like Videos

The folks over at Swagbucks will actually pay you to watch videos!

Now, most of them aren’t as entertaining as the Grumpy Cat series, but you’re getting paid — so who cares?

This works because the videos are sponsored by brands who need to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Every time you watch one of their ads, they’ll credit your account with cash.

Here’s a link to signup. They give you $5 just for signing up.

How many Swagbucks videos you’d have to watch: Most videos are worth between 1 and 3 SB to watch, and each SB amounts to about a cent. After your $5 signup bonus, you’d need to watch 499,750 videos to reach $10,000!

3. Share Stories About Your Kids on Scary Mommy

If you’ve got kids, you’ve got automatic story generators.

From pregnancy fashion choices to dealing with finding your tween daughter’s dating profile, there’s lots to say about parenthood. And on Scary Mommy, it’s “real talk” only — no sanitized, TV-commercial family frolicking in a white-picket-fenced yard.

As long as you have a way with words, you can generate some cash off those face-palm parenting snafus. Here are eight parenting magazines and blogs that pay contributors, averaging about $100 per submission.

How many stories you’d have to share: 1,000. Good thing your kid’s full of antics — and young…

4. Tell Companies How You Really Feel About Their Products

If you don’t mind filling out surveys while you’re vegging out on the couch, you could reap rewards for your efforts.

Plus, you get a chance to make your voice heard. It’s like writing a Yelp review… that might win you a free vacation!

Check out the NPD Group’s VIP Voice. The company will reward you for sharing your opinion to help marketers figure out how to make their products better.

Surveys range in how — and how much — is rewarded, and you’ll have to be part of an eligible demographic.

But if you’re just hanging out in front of Netflix… why not?

How many opinions you’d have to share: If you only made $1 per survey — a lowball estimate — you’d have to tell 10,000 companies how you feel about their goods!

5. Drive for Uber

If you find solace on the road and enjoy finding the best route across town, this is a great way to make money doing it!

As an Uber contractor, you’re responsible for setting your schedule and motivating yourself to work — no one is keeping tabs on you. You keep 80% of everything you earn as a driver (Uber keeps 20%).

If you want to give it a try, there’s a few things to keep in mind.

You must be at least 21 years old and have three years of driving experience, an in-state driver’s license, clean driving record, and be able to pass a criminal background check.

Finally, your car must have four-doors, seat at least four passengers (excluding the driver), be registered in-state and covered by in-state insurance.

Here’s a link to apply with Uber.

How many uber rides you’d have to give: This Uber driver says a 30-minute ride nets him about $11.14. Although this number will vary based on surge pricing and geography, at this rate you’d need to give 898 half-hour rides and spend a total of 1,796 hours driving!

To put that into perspective, there are about 2,000 working hours in a calendar year if you account for two weeks of time off.

6. Search the Web

I love this one, because you just set it and forget it.

Did you know Bing will pay you every time you make a search on your computer or phone? You just have to sign up for Bing Rewards, which is free and takes 30 seconds.

How many searches you’d have to do: Each Bing credit translates to about 1 cent. If you get one credit per search, that’s 10,000,000 searches! Better get curious…

7. Test Websites Drunk

Like surfing the Internet? Like drinking?

You could take a page out of Richard Littauer’s book and charge website owners to browse their sites… while tipsy.

Why, you may ask?

Well, by testing how navigable a website is while you’re drunk, you can give the creator valuable information about how to make the interface foolproof and the experience so user-friendly.

The idea is a site should be so easy to navigate, someone should be able to use it while drunk. And flask-proof.

Littauer’s a user experience professional and an engineer — what you might call a professional web-surfer. So your mileage in this business may vary… but man, what a sweet gig if you can land it.

How many beers you’d have to drink: To make $10,000, you’d have to test 200 websites at Littauer’s original price of $50. If it takes you three beers to work up a sufficient buzz, that’s 600 beers!

8. Open Credit Cards

If you’ve been following The Penny Hoarder for a while, you know we love making our credit cards work for us.

Not only do we take advantage of their awesome rewards, we also go in for sweet signup bonuses.

Heck, this guy’s accumulated 1,500 credit cards over the years. He started collecting them after making a bet with a friend… but if he picked the right cards, that could be a lot of extra cash in his pocket!

As long as you’re responsible, cash-back credit cards are an easy way to make some extra money without ever having to think about it.

For example, right now you can get a $200 cash-back bonus just by opening a Cash Card from TD Bank.

To earn this bonus, you’ll need to spend $1,500 within the first 90 days of signing up for the card. You’ll earn 1% cash back on all your purchases with the card, plus 2% on eligible dining purchases.

Our advice is to set your Cash Card to automatically pay your monthly bills: You’ll earn rewards and keep everything paid on time, without giving either a second thought.

How many credit cards you’d have to open: 50 TD Bank Cash Cards. That’s less than 4% of the number of credit cards Walter Cavanaugh has. Totally achievable! (But start with one.)

9. Cook Dinner in Your Own Kitchen

Can’t get enough of shows like Chopped or Cutthroat Kitchen? Itching to recreate some of the inventive meals you see chefs whip up?

Well, don’t just sit there.

Get in the kitchen, grab a knife, and start cooking! You could make those meals into money with foodshare programs like EatWith.

How many meals you’d have to prepare: If you charged $10 per meal, you’d have to make 1,000 meals to earn $10,000.

10. Sell Pine Cones

Yes, seriously.

Or K-Cups. Or instruction manuals. Or the cartons your eggs come in. People buy so much random stuff on eBay.

How many pine cones you’d have to sell: 16,667.

11. Scare Your Friends and Family

Obsessed with Halloween?

If you regularly pull out all the stops on your costume and decorations, you might be a good candidate to start your very own haunted house.

This team of brothers made not just $10,000, but $200,000 — in one month.

Granted, if you had the $200,000 startup cost handy, you might not be reading this post. But if you do, it’s a scary smart way to double your money.

How many people you’d have to scare: 400. Totally doable. You might even have more Facebook friends than that!

12. Shovel Your Driveway

Hurry, before winter’s out!

Although you may not have quite as much supply as Kyle Waring did in the famous Boston snowstorm of 2015, it turns out people in sunny locales will actually buy boxes of snow.

Because it’s exotic or they’re masochists or something.

How many boxes of snow you’d have to sell: 112 ⅓  six-pound boxes — or 500 ½ 16.9-ouncers!

13. Pour Drinks

If you can open a bottle and your spill rate is less than, say, 15%, you can land a sweet gig as a brand ambassador (read: the smiling girl pouring the samples of Malibu coconut rum at the liquor store).

One of our writers earned between $20-$30 per hour for this kind of work (and wrote us a sweet article about it, along with 20 other ways to make money at the bar). Not bad!

How many shots you’d have to pour: Say you do one a minute. To get to $10,000, you’d have to pour 24,000 shots and make $25 an hour!

14. Sell Your Poop

No, that’s not a typo.

In fact, some people earn up to $13,000 a year for their… deposits.

There is one catch: You have to live in the vicinity of Medford, Mass., where OpenBiome uses the poop to help physicians around the country treat infections of a nasty bacterial infection.

And you also have to be OK with the fact you’re selling your poop.

How many “samples” you’d have to provide: 250. Hope you’re regular!

15. Keep Your Receipts

I used to give my mother a baffled look when she consistently responded in the affirmative to the cashier’s paper-trail question.

Why do you need a receipt for a carton of eggs?

I’ve long since changed my tune, thanks to a rebate app called Ibotta.

It’s super-easy and super-cool: I scroll through available rebates for whatever store I’m in, and if I see something I bought, I just check it off, snap a quick picture of my receipt, and boom — I’ve earned a rebate.

They range anywhere from a quarter to up to $5!

If you really want to up your game, check Ibotta ahead of time and plan meals around which items have the steepest rebates.

How many receipts you’d have to snap: If you can manage to get a $0.75 rebate each time you shop (not hard), you’d need to submit 13,334 receipts!

16. Find a Red Paperclip

I mean, it worked for Montreal’s Kyle MacDonald.

Although he was never handed $10,000 in cash, he was able to barter his way up from a humble red paper clip until he owned a house.

Significant stops along the way included a snowmobile, a recording-studio contract and an afternoon hanging out with Alice Cooper.

But he traded all of these items until he was offered a home in Kipling, Saskatchewan. His home is almost definitely worth more than $10,000.

How’s that for a weird way to make money?

How many red paperclips you’d need: if you’re as lucky as MacDonald, just one!

17. Give Fluffy a Massage

Your faithful companion needs spa days, too.

If you adore animals and have strong hands, consider becoming a pet massage therapist. You could earn up to $120 an hour

How many pets you’d need to massage: 286 half-hour pet massages at $35 each.

18. Play Video Games

Yep, it’s actually possible.

But you have to really like video games. I’m not talking about your Candy Crush “obsession.”

Team Liquid is a group of five LA men who play League of Legends for a living. They each make more than $60,000 a year.

How many hours you’d need to play: A lot.

To keep on top of their game — literally — the men play up to 14 hours per day… and they had to invest the time to get that good in the first place.

19. Get in Shape

Picture this: You step on the scale and finally see your goal weight.

Congratulations! But it gets even better.

You’re about to receive a generous check to spend on a celebratory dress in your new size, stock up on household necessities, or to wisely stick into savings — all just for losing weight!

It’s not a fantasy. If you wager on your own commitment with HealthyWage, this could very well happen for you… if you stick to your guns and lose the weight.

It’s simple. Sign up for HealthyWage, and then define a goal weight and the amount of time you’ll give yourself to achieve it. Place a monetary bet on yourself ranging from $20 to $500 a month.

Depending on how much you have to lose, how long you give yourself to do it and how much money you put on the table, you could win up to $10,000!

How many pounds you’d need to lose: This will vary based on your wager. Check out their calculator to find out!

Your Turn: Which of these weird ways would YOU try to make $10,000?

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. We’re letting you know because it’s what Honest Abe would do. After all, he is on our favorite coin.

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Inspiration from Carl Sandburg, Cory Booker, Jean-Luc Picard and More

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.

1. Carl Sandburg on the true currency of your life

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” – Carl Sandburg

As I write this, my children are about to wake up, as they do like clockwork around seven in the morning on the weekends. Today is going to be a very laid back day after a very busy week for all of us. There will be games played, meals eaten together as a family, soccer lightly practiced in the back yard, books read, and a family movie night at the end of it.

More and more, I’ve come to view time like this as the currency of my life. Time that I spend on something meaningful to me that’s completely of my choosing, without any sort of income motive in mind, is truly the most valuable commodity in my life.

I want to spend that time as well as I can. Right now, while my children are young, spending that time with them is a pretty valuable way to spend it. At the same time, I also need to spend at least a little of it on solitary activities or activities with other adults in order to recharge.

I don’t want to spend that coin on something that isn’t meaningful to me. To me, that is the greatest misuse of my life – to use my time on something that isn’t bringing me genuine joy or pleasure or isn’t helping me to build something I deeply care about, like a lasting relationship with someone.

We only have so much time in the world, and we have to spend some of that time on sleep and on earning income and on maintaining our living environment and other basic life chores. That leaves us a surprisingly little amount of time to spend in ways that we choose. I want to make those choices as meaningful as possible.

2. Reshma Saujani on teaching girls bravery, not perfection

From the description:

We’re raising our girls to be perfect, and we’re raising our boys to be brave, says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code. Saujani has taken up the charge to socialize young girls to take risks and learn to program — two skills they need to move society forward. To truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half of our population, she says. “I need each of you to tell every young woman you know to be comfortable with imperfection.”

Before we had children, I was fairly apprehensive about having a daughter. I grew up in a family where all of the children were boys and the idea of having a little girl to take care of made me feel pretty uncertain.

Now that I’ve had that experience for eight years, I actually don’t do anything that different than I do with my sons. All of my children react differently in different situations and I know how to handle that, but that’s not a gender difference.

In terms of values, I try really hard to instill the same values in all of my children. Focus. Put in your best effort. Be kind to others, and that’s especially important with those who are different than us. Don’t run away from challenges.

I don’t want or expect perfection from any of my children. I’d far rather cultivate their bravery and willingness to take on challenges of all stripes.

3. Jean-Luc Picard on losing without error

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” – Jean Luc Picard

When I was in the ninth grade, my father contracted spinal meningitis and had to spend more than a month in the hospital recovering. My mother stayed with him at the hospital, which meant that I was sent to live with a relative. I stayed with my uncle and grandmother.

My uncle worked late at night. He would come home not too long before I woke up, sleep about half of the day, and the be around during the afternoon and evening hours. My grandmother also worked, but she worked during the daytime hours. I was on summer break, so I mostly just hung out around the place taking care of a few chores like mowing the grass and so on.

Due to their schedules, I actually spent more time with my uncle than with my grandmother. He and I didn’t know each other really well before I went to stay there, so there was some “getting used to each other” for the first few days, but before long we settled into a very familiar routine, a routine centered around Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show was on at two different times during the day, showing two different episodes. It was a show that we both agreed on, so it gradually became the centerpiece of our days – one episode in the early afternoon and another one just before he left for work.

The really great part about this routine was the discussions that the show spawned between the two of us, something that ended up playing a huge role in the development of my values as a person.

To this day, I have an incredibly soft spot in my heart for Star Trek: The Next Generation. It reminds me of my uncle, who has long since passed, and the great conversations we had. I miss him, but I know he’d be glad to understand how much impact those things had on me.

4. Trampled by Turtles – Wait So Long

I love a wide variety of music (as you’ll see a bit later in this article), but bluegrass music has always had a special place in my heart. Part of it comes from my paternal grandfather, who was an incredibly skilled banjo player who could play almost anything by ear. It was an amazing skill, but it was one that I simply didn’t inherit.

Bluegrass music makes me think of the wide open spaces in the world, with beautiful trees and green grass. At the same time, it reminds me that it doesn’t matter where you are, you take the joys and the sorrows of life with you, on the inside.

This is a splendid example of modern bluegrass music, mixed with a bit of other musical types as well. Trampled by Turtles fits in perfectly with many of my other favorite musical acts, such as Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers.

5. L.R. Knost on parenting and cruelty

“It’s not our job to toughen up our children to face a cruel, and heartless world. It’s our job to teach children how to make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” – L.R. Knost

I feel as though this quote goes hand in hand with that earlier video on the value of teaching children – particularly girls – the importance of being brave more than the importance of being perfect.

In the end, perfection is a false front. No one is perfect. However, trying to maintain perfection can often end in cruelty. If you surround yourself with a facade of perfection, what happens to the imperfect things, the imperfect people? They’re discarded for no real reason.

The world can be a cruel place. It takes a brave person – not a perfect person – to make that world a little less cruel for others and to know how to handle the cruelty yourself. That’s the kind of person I want my children to be, and that’s a big part of the goal of my parenting.

6. Deep Work by Cal Newport

I’ve deeply enjoyed reading this book in the past week, and I think at some point it deserves a longer review here on The Simple Dollar. However, it’s been incredibly inspiring and I wanted to mention it while it was all incredibly fresh in my mind.

The idea behind Deep Work is simple: the truly valuable creative and intellectual work in this world is deep and focused, not shallow and multi-tasked. It requires people to bear down and dig deep into the task at hand, without distraction, so that the piece can be understood in a way that’s impossible to reach if you’re constantly pulling your mind away from that task.

It’s a wonderful read, full of smart ideas and suggestions for doing deep work even in a crazy and distracted professional environment. It’s one of the best books on doing quality work that I’ve read in a very long time.

7. AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol

Lee Sedol is without a doubt one of the best go players in the world.

Wait, let’s back up a second. Go is a classic abstract strategy game for two players that originated in China thousands of years ago. The game itself is simple – players simply alternate placing stones on a 19 by 19 grid, and pieces are captured by surrounding your opponent’s pieces with your own. Playing it well is incredibly difficult, however.

Up until now, computers haven’t done very well at playing go. Unlike chess, go isn’t a game that can really be played by simply looking at a huge database of older games. Virtually every go game played winds up with unique board positions that have never existed in a game before, once you get past the first dozen or two moves or so. That means that the records from classic games won’t necessarily provide you with the best move in a given situation. Plus, there’s the issue that there are thousands of moves you can make on a given turn, and your opponent then has thousands of responses to that, and so on, so it’s really hard to plot more than a few turns down the road. Computers haven’t been able to handle that.

Until now.

In the last few weeks, Lee Sedol played a five game match against AlphaGo, a program developed by Google DeepMind, which specializes in artificial intelligence. Not only did AlphaGo win 4-1, it made some brilliant moves that were outside of the expectations of Lee and every observer of the game. In other words, the program was actually coming up with moves that humans would have never considered – it was essentially thinking on its own about an incredibly hard problem and coming up with novel solutions.

That’s simultaneously amazing and a bit scary. The ideas behind AlphaGo are applicable to lots and lots of different real world problems, and as computer hardware gets better and better, they’ll be able to tackle more and more sophisticated problems. It’s a matter of time before computers are fully designing cars, houses, and countless other things. The pieces are already there for it – it’s just a matter of time before it happens.

It’s truly an amazing world we live in.

8. Friedrich Nietzsche on corruption

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Again, this harkens back to the earlier thoughts about perfection, parenting, and cruelty. Striving for perfection means ironing out the surfaces that aren’t smooth, and that often means discarding those who think differently in favor of those who think just like you.

That’s a mistake for children, and it’s a mistake for us as adults, too. The modern world makes it easy for us to wrap ourselves in a cocoon of people who think like us, and often those people treat those who don’t think in the same way with disdain, often to the point of hatred and cruelty. Hasn’t this current political season shown us many, many examples of this?

Step back. Don’t just shut out those who think differently. Listen to them. Often, their ideas and statements come from the same place as yours do – they just follow a different path to their conclusion. The more we can recognize that we’re all humans and we’re all stumbling through life, the better off we all are.

9. Anthony Hamilton – NPR Tiny Desk Concert

From the description:

Anthony Hamilton’s soul sound was refined in the churches of Charlotte, N.C. Watching the Grammy winner perform, you get the hunch that it’s harder for him to keep the soul inside than it is to actually unleash it. What he and his backup singers, The Hamiltones, do would be better classified as a musical purge, with a stage show that can double as couples therapy and church service. Their warm harmonies have the ability to shrink theaters and stadiums, so we knew this intimate setting was perfect for them.

Following a spot at the final In Performance show of the Obama presidency, the singer, The Hamiltones and his band made their way over to our offices to give us a dose of what’s to come, as well as a heavy helping of what fans have grown to love about him. He opens the set with “Amen” — the debut single from his introspective new album, What I’m Feelin’ — and followed it with three songs that have defined his career.

This is just gorgeous soul music from beginning to end. The phrase “a stage show that can double as couples therapy and church service” is a beautiful description of what’s on offer here.

Anthony Hamilton has one of the most soulful voices I’ve ever heard and he’s surrounded it with wonderful vocal and instrumental accompaniment. This music deserves to be heard.

10. Cory Booker on the true showing of religion

“Before you speak to me about your religion, show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children.” – Cory Booker

I very rarely talk about my own religious and spiritual views on The Simple Dollar because, like many things in life, it’s just talk. When I talk about financial or career advice, it’s tangible – I can point to specific things I’ve done and the outcomes they’ve produced in my life that can be demonstrated with the dollars in my bank account or the free time I have. When it comes down to things like spirituality and faith, it’s not so cut and dried.

To me, the words of someone telling me about their faith mean very little unless I have seen the actions of that person acting out that faith first. I’m far more likely to listen to the spiritual views of the woman in my town who spends countless hours each week keeping the lights on and the shelves stocked at the food pantry, or the guy who greets everyone kindly almost everywhere he goes without any self-promotion, simply out of kindness.

Those people have earned the privilege of my attention when it comes to their thoughts on God, because they’ve earned it with how they live their lives.

If you want my attention on matters of the spirit, show me your love for others.

11. Audrey Choi on making a profit while making a difference

From the description:

Can global capital markets become catalysts for social change? According to investment expert Audrey Choi, individuals own almost half of all global capital, giving them (us!) the power to make a difference by investing in companies that champion social values and sustainability. “We have more opportunity today than ever before to make choices,” she says. “So change your perspective. Invest in the change you want to see in the world.”

This is a very interesting look at what “profit” really is.

Let’s say you’re an investor and you have a million dollars to invest. You could earn 10% by investing in a company doing something that’s great for the world or earn 20% investing in a company that’s doing something that’s destructive to the world. Which one do you invest in?

Of course, most investment choices aren’t that stark, but simply investing purely for profit means that you’re openly supporting the worst that humanity is doing to our planet and to our people.

It’s definitely something worth thinking about.

12. Ali ibn abi Talib on detachment

“Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.” — Ali ibn abi Talib

Modern life gives us constant opportunities to put ourselves in servitude of the things that we own. We take out a car loan and suddenly we’re finding ourselves having to pay out hundreds per month for years. We take out a mortgage and suddenly we’re paying thousands per month for many years. Even the little things, like buying expensive foods, ends up draining our pocketbooks.

Those types of choices, from the big to the small, restrict our choices in other aspects of life. We have to work certain jobs. We have to work lots of hours. We have to put up with certain types of mistreatment. We often end up feeling miserable about ourselves and our situation.

My entire goal in life is to reach a point where nothing owns me, where I can make my life choices without worry or constraint. That means downsizing, and it also means saving for the future. It means working for freedom.

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Best Credit Card Points to Redeem for Gift Cards

While it’s easy to assume credit card rewards are only lucrative if you like to travel, that’s not really true. In reality, a large number of rewards credit cards actually work better when you’re redeeming points for cash back or gift cards. And some even provide more value when you redeem your points for high-dollar gift cards instead of cash back. Go figure.

If you’re into earning free stuff but don’t necessarily want to go on a far flung getaway, earning points for gift cards or a statement credit might be your best bet. With an actual gift card in your wallet, you might actually treat yourself instead of paying household bills or groceries. And if you don’t want to go the gift card route, having a statement credit on your card might make it easier to do something special for yourself.

But, which card should you choose? The following rewards credit cards offer some of the best options when it comes to redeeming your points for gift cards and/or statement credits:

Discover it®

The Discover it® card offers the perfect opportunity for people who mostly want to earn points for statement credits and gift cards. With this card, you’ll earn 5x points on your first $1,500 spent in categories that rotate every quarter, plus one point per dollar on all other purchases. Best of all, Discover promises to double the cash back you earn during your entire first year. If you plan to use your card often, this can be a huge boon – and of course, it can definitely help you earn more gift cards.

Not only can you redeem your points for a statement credit, but the Discover it® makes it easy to turn in your points for gift cards as well. Even better, you can often score a $25 or $30 gift card for only 20,000 points, which is much better than the basic penny per point value you can expect elsewhere. Here are some more details on the card:

Discover it®

Highlights:

Chase Freedom®

Like the Discover it® card, the Chase Freedom® card lets you earn 5x points on your first $1,500 spent in categories that rotate every quarter and one point per dollar on all other purchases. The biggest difference is, this card actually offers a signup bonus after you spend just $500 on the card within 90 days.

The fact that it comes with no annual fee and offers 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for the first 15 months makes it a card that could fit a wide range of consumer’s needs. And if its gift cards or statement credits you’re after, this card makes both options easy. Simply redeem your points for either at a rate of one cent per point.

Chase Freedom®

Highlights:

Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express

While can only redeem your points for statement credits with this card, the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express simply cannot be ignored in this space. With this card, you’ll earn an astounding 6% back on your first $6,000 in grocery spending each year, which will lead to $360 in rewards if you maximize this category. Plus you’ll get 3x points at gas stations and select department stores, and one point per dollar on all other purchases.

While this card does charge a $75 annual fee, the signup bonus alone more than covers it. And if you spend a lot of money at grocery stores, you’ll recoup that investment several times over. Here are a few more details to consider:

Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express

Highlights:

How to Maximize Your Statement Credits and Cash Back

Whether you’re after statement credits or gift cards, the strategy for earning as many points as you can is the same. The first thing you’ll want to do is make the most out of your card’s bonus categories – which will obviously depend on which card you sign up for. If you have the Chase Freedom® card, for example, you’ll want to go after your rotating 5x point categories with fervor when they align with your regular spending. Having the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express, on the other hand, means you’ll want to use that card exclusively each time you visit your local grocery store. Here are some additional tips that can help:

• Use your card for everyday expenses and bills. Since the number of points you earn is tied directly to how much you spend, putting as much on your card each month as you can get away with is the smartest way to beef up your point balances quickly. Aside from groceries and gas, see if you can pay other bills like your cell phone or Internet, utilities, kid’s activities, and even insurance payments with credit.
• Always pay your bill in full right away – treat your card like cash. Credit cards are best used as a complement to your budget. In other words, you should only spend the money if you have the cash in the bank to back it up and pay your card off right away. That second part – paying your bill off right away – is especially crucial as you build good credit habits. It can even be smart to pay your bill off a few times each month if that helps you stay on track.
• Don’t use credit as an excuse to overspend. Using a credit card makes it easier to overspend, forget how much you have spent already, or knock your budget entirely off track. To avoid that trap, get in the habit of tracking your credit purchases as the month ticks on. If you keep a running total, you’ll be in good shape to keep yourself out of trouble as you pursue rewards.

The Bottom Line

If you don’t necessarily like to travel but want to earn rewards, statement credits and gift cards might be your new best friends. Just remember to read the fine print on any offer you’re considering and use credit wisely and judiciously, and only when you have the money in the bank to back it up.

Earning statement credits and gift cards may be an exciting proposition, but spiraling into debt is no fun at all.

Which do you prefer? Statement credits or gift cards? What is your favorite card to earn these type of rewards?

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This Guy Thanked 42 Companies, Hoping to Get Freebies. Here’s What Happened

We all claim to hate nasty reviews and high-maintenance customers.

Yet, complaining seems to be the most effective way to get what you want out of a business. It’s especially true of large corporations.

Why do companies give free stuff to the meanest people? It seems like they’re just being rewarded for whining.

No one is rewarding you for being nice and just enjoying your products.

Sure, the squeaky wheel gets freebies, or however the saying goes. But does the wheel have to be such a jerk about it?

You could, perhaps, try being squeaky and nice.

Do you think that would work?

The Flattery Project

Jim Wang at Wallet Hacks put this question to the test: Could flattery get you anywhere?

Instead of contacting companies with complaints, Wang started complimenting every company he liked to see what it would get him.

He wrote to thank 42 companies for their products and included a soft request for freebies.

“I don’t know if you have any samples or coupons you could send my way but I’d be most appreciative to try more of your products,” Wang wrote.

He even included in the emails, “I know a lot of folks probably email to complain and it can be tough responding to those, so I thought I’d add a little sunshine.”

The response was mostly underwhelming:

• Eight companies did not respond

• 20 responded but declined to offer anything

• Eight sent coupons in the mail for discounted products

These five companies actually offered something totally free:

• Pepsi sent two coupons for a free six- or eight-pack

• PowerBar sent two coupons for free products

• Republic of Tea sent a thoughtful card and some samples

• Tom’s of Maine sent a sample beauty bar and men’s deodorant

• After a few follow-up requests, Nespresso sent a pair of cappuccino cups and saucers

What You Get for Complaining

On the flip side, Wang received grander gestures from companies when he had a complaint.

He once called Coca Cola’s customer complaint line about a funky can of Diet Coke and got a coupon for a free 12-pack.

Wang emailed a complaint to Southwest about failed in-flight Wi-Fi, asking for a refund of the (probably about $6) access fee. Instead, Southwest sent a voucher for $100 credit.

That’s almost a free one-way flight, just for enduring a poor Wi-Fi connection!

Just calling your utility companies to demand a better deal actually works. When it doesn’t, customers often get deals after threatening (bluffing) to cancel service.

You can save hundreds of dollars a year just pretending to be dissatisfied.

That seems a lot better than a couple of free coffee cups.

Why Do Complaints Get Rewarded?

A cynic would say companies don’t care about the happy customers: You’re already buying the product. Instead, they scramble to appease unhappy customers to avoid losing business.

But it’s probably not as dubious as that.

Consider Coca Cola’s “customer complaint line.” The number is apparently listed on every can. That’s common on a lot of products, usually accompanied with some promise of a “satisfaction guarantee” or “Not 100% satisfied?”

We’re invited to complain, not to compliment. And we’re only promised satisfaction — not free stuff.

It’s annoying to see rude customers appeased and happy customers seemingly taken for granted.

But the exchange of freebies for complaints is how companies rectify dissatisfaction and uphold their formal or informal guarantees.

If you’re calling with a compliment, they’ve already upheld their part of the bargain.

Your Turn: Have you ever received freebies from a company for saying “thank you”?

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).

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Best Credit Card Processing Service

The world of credit card processing might look like a maze of charges, fees, unwelcome chargebacks, equipment, new technologies, and contracts. That’s because it is. There are more than a few players involved (you, your bank, your customer, their credit card’s bank) and the fees are flying everywhere.

When I talked to 30 merchants, I heard a lot about how opaque the industry is. “It actually reminds me quite a bit of shopping for a mortgage,” said Mark Aselstine of Uncorked Ventures, an online specialty wines retailer. “I’m sure there are some back-end payments going on that the average merchant simply cannot be aware of.”

There’s enough happening when you’re running your own business that you can’t afford to get mired down in choosing the best credit card processing service — so I tallied up the fees for 129 different providers, found the standouts, (including my top pick, Payment Depot) and have a few tips on how to evaluate which is best for your own business.

“Trying to figure out the full cost of credit card processing is hard. In the beginning of my business I was lost and had to do the research to understand what each charge was. It can be quite complicated if you are not familiar with the fees and associated terminology. Once you understand the terms, comprehending each statement is so much easier.”
Nicola Ford
HAUTEheadquarters.com

Our Picks for The Best Credit Card Processor

Full disclosure here: There’s no one best credit card processor for everyone. No matter who you are and what kind of business you have, you are going to have to find out the rates and do the math yourself. The coffee shop on the corner and the auto mechanic next door will probably have different “bests” — and that makes sense when you think how much money those businesses are charging, and how frequently. You get to define your own “best” by the nature of your business, but there are a few hallmarks of a great credit card processor: transparent rates, the right equipment, and strong customer service that makes it easy to get set up and just as easy to troubleshoot. In my research, I found five standout services to give you a great starting point:

• Payment Depot, Best for Large Transactions
• Shopify Lite, Best Hybrid: Online & Brick-and-Mortar
• Square, Best for New Startups
• PayPal, Best for Early-Stage Ecommerce Merchants
• Dharma Merchant Services, Best for Established Nonprofits

Know the Players and Their Prices

The essential purpose of a credit card processor is to assess the risk of obtaining cash from a purchaser’s bank on your behalf — it is verifying that there are enough funds to cover the purchase and backing it for a few days. In addition to delivering the funds from the bank to your business, it’s taking on risk.

The bank that issued your purchaser’s credit card is a partner in sending those funds to you; it also works on behalf of the buyer in the event of a charge dispute, refund, etc.

Who’s paying the cost for these services? You, the merchant, in the form of fees (although many will pass those costs onto their customers by building them into the prices).

“It’s nearly impossible to figure out what the full costs of credit are. First, there are many plans. Do I want one with a per-transaction charge or not? How about a monthly charge? How does the percentage rate factor? But it doesn’t stop there. If I do a card-not-present transaction, the fee is greater than a card-present transaction. If I don’t provide the CVV, the fees increase yet again. Foreign transactions also have a different rate. Visa is different than MasterCard is different than Discover. It’s pretty much impossible to figure out the cost of credit for any given transaction, other than on some kind of average over the monthly billing period.”
Tim Thoelecke Jr.
President
InOut Labs

To dissect what it all means — and who pays whom — consider the players in every transaction:

There’s you, the merchant.

You have a product or service that is sold, and that sale is facilitated when you accept a credit card payment.

If item A is $100 with tax, you swipe the customer’s card for $100 and the journey begins.

Then, there’s your customer (or, as the credit card sees them, the cardholder).

Your customer is agreeing to pay pack their credit card company the $100 it fronted them. This can be a pretty good deal for the credit card company: If the cardholder carries a balance, they will likely end up paying more than $100 for that swipe in the long run.

Players #3 and #4 are your credit card processor and bank (also called the “acquiring bank” because it’s the one getting the money, not sending it).

These two guys are closely linked, with your processor doing the work of assessing your business and credit score, setting up your account, and sending you a monthly summary of transactions, charges, and fees.

When a card is swiped, a message is relayed electronically to your customer’s bank (via the Visa Net or MasterCard System, for example) to determine if they are approved for the $100 transaction. If they are, that money is deposited into your bank account.

The final character is the bank that issued your customer’s credit card.

These are the banks associated with the Visa or MasterCard (or Discover card, etc.) and they charge your credit card processor a fee for their service. That’s called an interchange rate. These rates vary by card type and transaction; a Rewards Visa has a different rate than a Visa Debit, and a swipe with a confirmed CVV has a different rate than one without. (Check out the 2016 rates for both Visa and MasterCard.)

If their cardholder (your customer) convincingly claims not to have received a good or service that they paid for, a “chargeback” to the merchant is sent via the issuing bank. The legitimacy of the claim is subject to the merchant’s evidence of delivery or non-delivery of goods (various processors are more successful with chargeback reversals than others).

Your credit card processor pays the interchange fee. It covers that cost — and makes money — by charging you a marked-up fee (and sometimes a membership fee too). It also might lease you the equipment (another ongoing charge), or have you buy it outright.

There are three different pricing structures a credit card processing service can use to mark up its fees and make a profit:

1. Tiered pricing. The credit card processor ranks every type of transaction and sets fees for each one — its fee for a card-not-present transaction, for example, will be different than for a card-present transaction. This type of structure is famously complicated and opaque: Processors don’t share what type of transaction is assigned each rate, or even what those rates are.
   I do not recommend this method. This is the old-school way of doing it, and you’ll find this pricing model at processors like Cayan, Flagship, and Chase Checkout. Under some circumstances, you might be able to score a great rate under a tiered structure, but to do so — and know for sure — requires an incredible about of diligent research. Either of your other two options is likely a far better choice.
2. Interchange plus. The processor charges an up-front fee plus whatever the interchange rate is on the transaction. This fee might be a per-swipe cost (say 25 cents), a percentage of the swipe, or a bit of both. With interchange-plus, you know up front what you’ll be paying each player, but your fees will fluctuate based on card and transaction type.
3. Flat rate. The processor sets a rate that’s the same for every single one of your transactions: say 2.9 percent of the swipe plus 30 cents. These rates are typically higher than interchange plus rates, but they’re always consistent. Every swipe has that same set fee.
   If you go with a flat-rate processor, and it charges 2.9 percent + 30 cents, it’ll take $3.20 of your $100 charge.

“Companies like Shopify Payments, Stripe, and Square decided to step up and say, ‘Forget this, customers don’t understand what the heck this means. Let’s just make it easy for them and charge them one rate for all transactions. We might make a ton of money on one order with a debit card and lose money on a business credit card order, but in the long run we’ll still make enough profit to make it worthwhile for us to stay in business.’

By removing the complexity, business owners can see the cost, agree to it, and move on with their lives. That’s why those processing services are seeing so much success.”
Allen Walton
SpyGuy Security

To choose the rate structure that’s best for you, simply run the numbers.

Let’s look at $10,000 in transactions for two very different companies.

Average Ticket Price	Processor Rate + Fee	Cost	Percent of Transaction
$2 cup of coffee	1.8% + 30 cents	$0.34	17%
$2,000 sculpture	1.8% + 30 cents	$36.30	1.82%

You can see that the transaction fee matters a lot if you’re doing lots of small purchases — taking $0.30 out of a $2 swipe is a much larger percentage than that same $0.30 out of a $2,000 sale. For fewer larger purchases, it’s the rate that’ll have the bigger impact.

Processing equipment (terminals, swipe readers, etc.) can also add costs. If the equipment isn’t free, I recommend purchasing instead of leasing. Arif Gangji (Neon Rain Interactive), president of a Denver-based web development firm that works with a lot of ecommerce clients, agrees: “If a business has an in-store point-of-sale system, they are sometimes contractually tied to their processor long-term if they lease the unit,” he says. “Processors love leased credit card machines because that binds the client. Plus, it is primarily all profit for the processor after the first few months.”

Price matters, but it might not mean everything.

I found across the board that no merchant was happy with unclear fees or murky rates. Everyone simply wanted to know what they were paying. In fact, there were a number of merchants who said they’d rather pay more just to know what they were getting, and not having to stress over whether or not they were being swindled.

The Best Credit Card Processors

Payment Depot
Overall Best for Large Transactions

Payment Depot de-complicates its rates with a simple pricing structure: the interchange fee plus between $0.05 and $0.25 per transaction and a monthly fee of $29 to $99. (The higher your monthly fee, the lower your transaction fee.) The big standout here: It doesn’t charge any additional percentage of the swipe fee. That said, it includes a slew of lower-price, mass-consumer clients including Subway, Domino’s Pizza, and Fantastic Sams — but if you’re a small business, Payment Depot is a good choice if your business model is based on fewer, larger purchases.

Going beyond price, Payment Depot does a good job educating customers on how the credit card processing industry works. It provides 24/7 customer support, intuitive website navigation, plus the full range of equipment options: a Verifone terminal; Clover for POS, chip, and contactless payment stations; and mobile options. There are no service contracts and no cancellation fees, and the company will either reprogram existing terminals you already own or sell equipment outright at wholesale pricing.

“Payment Depot charges a flat yearly ‘membership fee’ based on the annual credit card charges you will run, (mine is $700) and that is how they make most of their money. My credit card charges went from 3.5 percent to 1.6 percent by switching to Payment Depot. With my past processor, each month I was handing over almost 2 percent of my profits.”
Ryan McEniff
Minute Women Home Care

Shopify Lite
Best for Hybrid Online & Brick-and-Mortar Merchants

This is a great credit card processor for businesses that have customers in both online and in-person retail environments. Even if you are in one but might expand into the other, Shopify Lite is worth a good look.

Shopify excels at the online space, but it understands the fluidity of retail. If you have a store that, for example, might expand for just a season into a pop-up shop, it provides an extensive tutorial explaining how that might work — even for merchants who have never ventured offline before.

“If you need a full service website, shopping cart, and credit card processor, Shopify is a great option to get up and running quickly without needing a lot of technical experience.”
David Batchelor
DialMyCalls.com

That service-simplicity factor is evident in many other respects. Even with the Lite plan (other plans are Basic, Pro, and Unlimited) there is 24/7 support, including live chat. In my chats, the customer service was extremely friendly, helpful, and patient. The Lite plan doesn’t limit how many products you can sell or how much file storage you get. The website is simple to navigate (with lots of educational information and an FAQ section) and has easy-to-understand terms of service.

The pricing structure – 2.7 percent + $0 (in person) and 2.9 percent + $0.30 (online), with a $9 monthly fee — likely won’t beat out an interchange plus model, but you’ll always know how much you are paying with every swipe. For equipment, a simple $19 card swiper can be purchased (the first one is free); its NFC (near-field communications) chip reader costs $149.

The downsides: Shopify is designed to process credit cards, not debit cards. Some debit cards can be processed as credit, but an extra (more expensive) terminal has to be added to accept them all. Shopify also has a reputation for being unwieldy when contesting chargebacks. If you expect a lot of them, opt for Square, which has a similar pricing model, but $250 in chargeback protection each month.

There is a very real argument that flat-fee processors like Shopify Lite, Square, and PayPal are, bottom line, more expensive than interchange-plus processors. That’s because interchange rates swing from 0.005 percent to more than 3 percent. In the lowest transactions, flat-fee processors still charge their same amount: between 2 and 3 percent. (Conversely, they lose money on transactions with higher interchange rates.)

If you sign up with a flat-fee processor, you’re paying for the convenience of clarity — and for a lot of small business owners, it’s worth it.

“Using Square, I know it costs X amount when I swipe a card through my reader, and X+Y if I type in the credit card number. It’s super simple for me to understand with Square versus other credit card companies. With others, there were a lot of hidden fees and agendas that make trouble for a small business owner who, at the end of the day, is just trying to make a living.”
Danita M. H.
Rated M Wine Infused Foods

Square
Best for Startups

You’ve likely seen the evidence of Square’s success: Its square card readers seem to be the way to pay at just about every food truck and farmer’s market stand these days. Square has proprietary-design equipment that is cool (both aesthetically and in function) and free when you sign up. But the real advantage is for new businesses, which often lack a credit history to qualify for other services.

Square also charges no ongoing monthly fees, which is really great if you’re running a seasonal business or a side gig, and no maintenance fees. You only pay when you make a sale.

Pricing is a flat-fee of 2.75 percent to 3.5 percent + 15 cents per transaction. That includes $250 in monthly chargeback protection, as well as inventory-management features, payroll functions, and online support. All of this is succinctly explained on an easy-to-read, easy-to-navigate website. For businesses that grow, Square is also willing to negotiate its fees to keep you on as a client.

I talked to Shaun Eli Breidbart, a performer with Liberty Comedy Corp, who depends on advance payments to secure performance gigs — he said price isn’t his biggest consideration. “With Square, I can send a payment link to the client and they can pay the deposit by credit card when signing a contract,” he explained. “I’m not super thrilled to give up 2.75 percent, but it does speed things up and makes clients more secure about paying 50 percent in advance. I’m sure that some rush to pay because they want the credit card rewards.”

PayPal
Best for Early-Stage Ecommerce

While PayPal is making headway into brick-and-mortar retail by providing card-reader equipment for in-person transactions, online transactions remain its core business and strength — and boy does it have that down.

PayPal’s payment portal integrates easily with websites. Customers can pay via PayPal with one click, and funds from one PayPal account can easily be transferred to other business accounts. It also easily integrates with accounting software like Xero. “Workflow and avoiding double entry are important to me,” says Thoelecke. If your credit card processor helps decrease time spent in the back office, then it may be saving you money through time and salary cost even if its rates are a bit higher.

Speaking of rates: PayPal’s are a straightforward 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction (a higher 3.9 percent plus a variable fixed fee is charged on international transactions). But, like Square, there are no fees charged for startup processes, no monthly costs, and there are no termination fees if you decide to go with another provider. It even has an invoice-creation system that works with a Microsoft Excel template and facilitates a direct payment from those invoices.

The PayPal website is a clean interface with lots of good educational materials, however 24/7 live chat and phone support are not provided.

Dharma Merchant Services
Best for Established Nonprofits

No processor that we could find works exclusively with nonprofits, but several offer special rates. The credit card processor that rose to the top in fundraising transactions is Dharma Merchant Services.

Dharma is a B Corporation, a distinction for its work with cause-related enterprises. It places equal emphasis on people and the planet as much as profit. In 2015, the company contributed $175,000 – 50 percent of its own profits — to nonprofit causes.

Dharma’s $15 monthly fee added to its low per-transaction fees – 0.25 percent + interchange + 10 cents (in person) and 0.35 percent + interchange + 15 cents (online) – are competitive, but they’re even lower for nonprofits: 0.2 percent + interchange + 10 cents (in person) and 0.3 percent + interchange + 15 cents (online). Compare these to PayPal (also popular with nonprofits), which has a flat nonprofit fee of 2.2 percent plus 30 cents.

These rates are still subject to variable interchange rates, of course. But as co-founder and president Jeff Marcous told us, Visa and MasterCard also have lower interchange rates for nonprofit transactions and donations. Dharma turns away for-profit and nonprofit clients with transactions totaling less than $10,000 per month, as well as those without an established credit history. Those restrictions enable them to provide a high level of customer service. “The idea is we want to build a community,” he says. “We have a high retention rate because we try to be present for our merchants.”

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Shopping for Credit Card Processing Service

Credit card processors are not a one-size-fits-all matter. Before you look at what the credit card companies offer, spend some time detailing the transaction of your business.

• Are you a startup or are you established?
• Are you selling online or by other means: over the phone, with a mobile reader, or at a cash register in-person?
• How many transactions to you process a month, and what is your average ticket cost? Do you make 5,000 transactions at $6 each, or 6 transactions at $5,000? Or 5,000 transactions at $5,000 each?
• Do you want to be able to track your cash payments in the same system, and do you want integration with your accounting software?
• Are you a nonprofit?
• Is your business high-risk? (Some businesses like gun sales, airlines, and even selling on eBay or Amazon as a third-party can be considered high-risk, so not every credit card processor will accept your application.)

Take Action

• Assess your business. What is the range of transaction sizes and with what frequency do small, medium, and large transactions occur? Got it? Now, run the math on the credit card processors you’re considering. With transparent pricing, it’s easy to see what you’d be charged. You can see who charges the lowest rate for your transaction mix and weigh that against each company’s perks.
• Do the math on your current plan (if you have one). Look at statements from your current provider and see if its fees and charges are as expected. Are the rates transparent? If not, it’s time to switch processors.
• Start accepting chip cards. As of October 2015, if you’re not accepting chip cards with a chip-card reader, you are on the hook for any fraudulent charges. This liability shift was created not by law, but by the banking and credit card processing industries to put more pressure on merchants to prevent fraud. If you don’t have and use an EMV reader on a “dip chip” card, you accept full responsibility for any fraud.
• Do a semi-annual checkup. Just like last summer’s clothes don’t always fit the following spring, your business may have changed enough that you need a new credit card processing service. Time to start negotiating!

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The Best Cheap Home Insurance

Finding the best cheap home insurance should be easy. Just call up some providers, compare prices, and pick the lowest one, right?

Not quite. Price isn’t always the best measure for comparison because insuring your home is a big deal: It’s not just protecting the four walls and the roof, but also all of your belongings and yourself too, in case someone slips on your front steps or is bitten by your dog. As such, stability and quality of service need to factor into your decision. Chances are you won’t care that you saved $10 a month if your insurer drops the ball after a burglary, or can’t deliver on a claim post-hurricane.

The hardest part of finding cheap homeowners insurance is doing your due diligence: getting quotes from a handful of providers to find which ones have the best rates for you. Rates vary widely from person to person, house to house, and location to location, and unexpected things can affect yours: basic demographics, home-specific upgrades, swimming pools, and certain dog breeds — even your credit score.

The Simple Dollar’s Picks for Cheap Home Insurance

Your rate will be different from your neighbor’s rate, even if you live in identical subdivision homes. At the nationwide level, we found a few companies that stood out from the rest, blending service, stability, and value.

• Amica
• Liberty Mutual
• Allstate

Now it’s up to you to compare their rates with the providers in your area. Pop your ZIP code into our quote generator to get started.

Compare Home Insurance Rates Enter your zip code below to find the cheapest home insurance rates for you.

How We Chose the Best Cheap Home Insurance

We used two criteria to assess the best cheap insurance companies: their services and price-related factors. We looked at each insurer’s availability (discounting companies that did business in fewer than 35 states); financial strength, as measured by independent agencies such as A.M. Best; customer satisfaction, as reflected in studies by J.D. Power and Consumer Reports; and whether the company offered the popular “open perils” coverage also known as HO-3.

To assess price, we looked at the number of discounts offered that can lower premiums, as well as customer satisfaction with their price (measured in the J.D. Power and Consumer Reports studies, as well as Insure.com rankings). Individual quotes, which can vary so widely from person to person, were only given weight in the case of a tie.

Amica

We’re big fans of Amica, and so are its customers. The company reigns in customer service studies, which means you’re less likely to encounter any runaround after submitting a claim. Customers are also very happy with their premiums relative to the level of coverage and service they receive. When we hunted down quotes in our all-up review of best homeowners insurance companies, Amica consistently came in cheaper than other insurers.

But will Amica be cheapest for you? Maybe; maybe not. Admittedly, the company doesn’t offer as many discounts as some of its competitors, which will dole out better rates for everything from storm shutters to deadbolts. However, because it sells direct to customers, local agents aren’t taking a cut of profits via commissions, which means the company can pass those savings onto you.

Liberty Mutual

Liberty Mutual really shines when it comes to discounts: You can save for all sorts of reasons, including bundling your home insurance with (for example) auto insurance, staying claims-free, purchasing a new home or renovating an old one, and getting a new quote before your old policy expires.

Compared to Amica, customers aren’t quite as satisfied with Liberty Mutual’s value. They may pay less, but some customers feel they don’t get as much for their money. For homeowners who never have to make a claim, that’s no biggy. But who ever plans on making a claim? That said, getting a quote will help you see whether Liberty Mutual’s discounts stack up significantly for you.

 Allstate

Like Liberty Mutual, Allstate has a wide range of home insurance discounts. They include popular price breaks for bundling policies and staying claims-free, as well as not-so-common discounts for not smoking and for being a new customer.

Also like Liberty Mutual, customers are divided on whether Allstate is a good value for the money: Some are satisfied; others aren’t. You’ll need a quote to see whether Allstate can deliver you the lowest rate.

Other Companies to Consider

We only considered companies that had a nationwide (or near-nationwide) reach, but customers are also big fans of smaller companies such as Erie, Auto-Owners, and Auto Club of Southern California (AAA). If they service your region, definitely get a quote. If you’re military, check out USAA, which customers routinely laud for its value and service.

Compare Home Insurance Rates Enter your zip code below to find the cheapest home insurance rates for you.

7 Steps to Avoid Overpaying for Homeowners Insurance

Several factors influence your home insurance rates. The most obvious include your home’s location, age, and construction type. Newer homes in areas with a low risk of natural disasters or crime are the cheapest to insure. But the list of things that affect what you pay goes on and on, which is why it’s especially important to get more than one quote.

Unfortunately, most of these things are beyond your control (unless you want to move). But there are still a few strategies you can use to reduce your home insurance bill.

Step 1: Buy Only What You Need

First, you’ll need to calculate the full cost of replacing your home in the event of a total loss. This is the amount it would cost to rebuild your home in the same location using similar materials at current labor costs. This number could be vastly different than your home’s market value, experts warn. A professional estimate can help if you’re unsure.

Second, you need enough to cover your possessions. A rule of thumb is a dollar amount equal to between 50 and 75 percent of what it would cost to replace the structure of your home. So, if you figure rebuilding would cost $250,000, you’ll want at least $125,000 to cover your belongings. Conducting a home inventory by listing important items and their values can help you arrive at a more exact number, and remember expensive possessions such as jewelry and fine art may require add-on coverage.

Third, you’ll need to think about liability — that is, what you’ll be responsible for if someone is hurt on your property. The minimum typically included in a standard policy is $100,000, but experts often recommend $300,000 to $500,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Finally, think about special situations, like where you would live if a natural disaster destroys your home. A standard policy might provide 20 percent of your rebuild cost for you to use on temporary housing, but you may have the option to add coverage. Also consider whether your home is at risk for disasters not covered by standard home insurance: Floods and earthquakes are often left out. In these cases, you’ll need separate policies to protect your home.

Step 2: Be Careful of ‘Actual Cash Value’

Even after you’ve determined a dollar amount for coverage, you’ll need to choose among three standard coverage levels for your home insurance policy:

• Actual Cash Value. This is the least expensive level of home insurance because it factors in the depreciation of your home and belongings, decreasing what these things are worth.
• Replacement Cost. This type of home insurance doesn’t factor in depreciation, but payouts are subject to policy limits.
• Guaranteed Replacement Cost. Like replacement-cost insurance, guaranteed replacement doesn’t factor in depreciation. However, it does allow you to exceed your policy limits, paying whatever it takes to replace your home and belongings. These policies are the most expensive and might be hard to find. Some insurers offer “extended replacement cost policies” instead, which pay up to 120 percent or 125 percent of your coverage amount.

Choosing actual cash value can indeed save you money on your premiums, but it could be at a steep cost in the event of a claim. Think about the shiny new TV you bought a few years ago. It’s still your pride and joy, but because it’s a few years old, your insurer isn’t going to pay you anything near what it costs to replace it with a new one in the event of a claim. Extend that principle to all of your other belongings and you’ll know why most experts recommend a replacement-cost policy instead.

Step 3: Lower That Deductible… Maybe

As with most types of insurance, the higher your deductible, the lower your monthly bill. When you make a claim, your deductible is the amount you agree to pay your insurance company before your coverage kicks in. Going as high as you can comfortably afford in the event of a claim can mean major savings. Raising your deductible from $250 to $1,000 can save you as much as 24 percent, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. A $5,000 deductible can save you as much as 37 percent.

Just remember that raising your deductible only makes sense if you have savings to pay the higher amount in the event of a claim. Hello, emergency fund.

Step 4: Think Discounts, Discounts, Discounts

No, there aren’t as many home insurance discounts as there are car insurance discounts, and the ones that do exist may not be heavily advertised. Make sure you ask if all applicable discounts have been applied when you’re getting a quote.

The most common discount is for multiple policies, otherwise known as bundling. Your insurer would love all your insurance business — home, auto, and life — and may give you a break on each policy because of it. But don’t assume that staying with the same company is automatically your cheapest option. Compare whether you’ll actually be paying less overall with the same company than you would with policies elsewhere. (You guessed it: Get some quotes!)

Step 5: Make Your Home a Safe Haven

You may feel safe at home, but it’s time to think like an insurance agent. That means adding as many safety features that are reasonable and eliminating risky elements.

Standard safety features such as deadbolts, smoke detectors, carbon-monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers may earn you a small discount. A security system can save you even more, depending on your insurer. Of course, security systems aren’t cheap, and you’ll want to balance the price of having one with any potential break (if there is one) on your insurance premium.

If your home is in a disaster-prone area, check on special modifications you can make to further reduce your premiums. Adding features such as storm shutters, storm-resistant garage doors, a stronger roof, and shatter-proof windows can help you save, too.

Finally, you may want to avoid the things that make insurance agents wake up in a cold sweat: swimming pools, pit bulls, trampolines, etc. The best things in life can actually be liabilities, and while they may be worth it, they will raise your rates.

Step 6: Polish That Credit Score

We love to preach the importance of a good credit score at The Simple Dollar, and we’ll do it some more.

Unless you live in the few states that prohibit it (California, Maryland, and Massachusetts), most insurers consider your credit score when calculating your premium — often with dramatic results. It’s a controversial practice, but the logic is if you have excellent credit, you’re less likely to file a claim and are rewarded with lower premiums; if you have bad credit, you’re seen as a greater risk.

Unfortunately, building good credit can be a time-consuming process, and it won’t be something you can do at the last minute before you buy insurance. However, given the range of financial dealings your credit can impact, it’s worth it to keep working on it.

Step 7: Always Shop Around

You’ll need to shop around to find the cheapest home insurance. Don’t assume a certain provider will be the cheapest home insurance company just because it was for your family or friends. Your home and circumstances are different and your bill will be different too.

Some companies will require you to call. Don’t be shy — it typically doesn’t take very long. Online quote tools will help you save time everywhere else, and some (like ours!) even allow you to compare quotes from several companies at once. Happy quoting!

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