Betcha didn’t know about this one: turns out that in some department stores, such as Macy’s, you can get an additional, stackable discount of around 11% if you’re a citizen of a country other than the United States!

Of course, you HAVE to be from another country, and not just show up with a fake name and accent … “Helo, mein neim iz Gunter, eym from Deutchland … Pleez geev me sum diskountz” ain’t gonna work.  The easiest way to accomplish this would be to bring one of your foreign friends with you when you’re renewing your wardrobe.

After all, if you’re spending several hundred dollars on some businesswear, why not save some money by essentially getting your tax reversed?

I came across this little thing when I took my legitimately foreign-born, foreign-residing parents to Macy’s and coyly asked the salesgirl about any “other discounts” that we could apply to our $500 total.  She smiled and said, “well, yes, as a matter of fact, there is one thing you can do, since I couldn’t help but notice these folks you’re with are not from here“.  Then there’s a small matter of actually wanting to support your local government via paying the sales tax …

Unit #1 sold for $61.00. Profit made from shipping is roughly offset by eBay and PayPal fees. Net profit: $61-$35=$26.

Unit #2 sold for $73.00. It had a Buy It Now of $75.00. Net: $73-$35=$38.

Unit #3 sold for $51.50. Net: $51.50-$35=$16.50

Unit #4 sold for $58.00. Net: $58-$35=$23.

Total money made: $26+$38+$16.50+$23=$103.50. This is $3.50 more than what I was aiming for, so I consider this mission accomplished. The money will probably go to pay Internet-related bills and buy a few more domain names.

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As I was trying to kill time waiting for my wife at a local Wal-Mart, I hung around the electronics department. I was wishing I had my old Dell Axim PDA so I could start writing a post or some code for my brand new web project (I’m rolling it out very soon). So I aimlessly roamed around the isles full of country music CDs and 900MHz cordless telephones. Suddenly, on the very bottom shelf I saw four Linksys-colored boxes with lots of red price stickers on them. As I looked closer, I realized my local Wal-Mart was trying to dump Linksys Wireless Kits (notebook PCMCIA adapter + wireless 4-port router). After numerous mark-downs from $89.94, the units were for sale at a mere $35.00.

I phoned my wife and asked her to punch in “WKPC54G” into eBay. “They are going for $60-70″, she replied. “Sixty less thirty-five, times four is a hundred”, I thought and got excited about a prospect of making easy hundred bucks. So I bought all four and listed them on eBay, one unit per day for four days to make sure I don’t flood the market.

Also, I kind of fibbed in the listing saying “I’m not looking to make any money”. In my defense, however, there is no reserve, and I listed them at $35.00 so I could at least recoup my cost. Of course I’m looking to make money. That line indicates I’m a real person, eBay selling/reselling is not my business, and I’m not a storefront.

They are still on eBay, one unit ending in a few hours, the rest expiring one a day until Friday. I’ll keep you posted. Oh yeah, today is a fixed listing price day. Check out Jeffrey’s blog for more info.

Lessons learned – sometimes Wal-Mart’s Corporate sends some gadgets to these heer parts where no one’s hankering to git ‘em. They can’t sell them, so they mark them down, sometimes a lot. If one had an Internet-enabled gadget in his/her possession, one could quickly estimate market values of certain products as well as margins, and make some wild money.

Once in a while, there’s free money lying around the Internet. This is one of those times. I’m not the first one to break the news, but Pinecone Research is paying qualified survey fillers $5.00 per survey (link).

A while ago I read about credit card balance transfer tricks (I wish I could link to my old post). Basically, you take out a credit card A with a 0% rate on balance transfers, request maximum allowable amount and apply it towards an existing credit card B with no balance. The resulting refund check from credit card B is deposited into a high-yield savings account for the length of the transfer deal (12-15 months), like ING or EmigrantDirect (3.85%-4.00%). I took the advice and completed the transfer/deposit.

Like anything else, this trick has its pros and cons. Among the cons, a deteriorated credit rating. If you’re about to buy a house or take out a loan, it’s a bad idea to do the balance transfer trick for obvious reasons. I suspected it might affect me, and it did. My car insurance quote went up.

My AAA insurance quote bounced from $1,450 to $1,550 per year for 2 vehicles. I attribute the increase to the lowered discount on credit rating caused by the balance transfer trick. My wife suspects the increase has something to do with 3 emergency tows, 2 unlock/recovery calls, and 1 accident. Though it’s probably a combination of factors, the increase needed to be offset somewhere else. I’ve accomplished that by getting a $20/month discount from my cable company (listen, 5Mb mp3) after threatening them with switching my cable service to DSL.

Overall (per month): AAA quote – ($8.40), EmigrantDirect interest income – $30.00, cable savings – $20.00, I’m up by $41.60.

That’s money effectively made by doing practically nothing.