If it seems like I’m not popping up in your daily reading list as often this week, I do apologize. You see, I’ve simultaneously caught every virus and bacteria known to man which is making it slightly difficult to hold a pen for drawing comics, type on a keyboard to write articles, and resist the urge to rip out my own lungs and beat them with a shovel. Happy times!

So in the meantime, join me in enjoying a website which has entertained me for the last 24 hours or so with tons of free electronic versions of your favorite print magazines. The website is called Mygazines, a clever play on the words “magazine” and “gay,” I think. At this website, you’ll find lots of current magazine issues including popular ones like Money, Smart Money, Even Smarter Money, and Naughty Neighbors. Yes, that’s right, financial and pornographic magazines, all in one place, all for free. No need to thank me.

Tune in for more Punny Money programming just as soon as these 73 prescription drugs start kicking in…

You people probably think I’ve really lost it this time. But it’s true! Baskin Robbins is giving away free ice cream to expectant women on May 21, 2008. Between 11am and 10pm, customers in select cities can pop by their BR for a free three-ounce soft serve cup or cone—but only if you’re preggers!

Now if you’re like me, you like free things. And if you’re like my wife, you like ice cream. So when Baskin Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s both had free or cheap ice cream events a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t hesitate to stand in line with a bunch of other cheap bastards to get some of that frozen milk stuff. This time, however, it’ll be much harder to claim our prize. That’s because my wife is not pregnant.

I don’t know about you, but I think this promotion is a little too sexist. For one, it excludes a really swell bunch of folks known as men. Plus it rewards rampant baby-making and overpopulation. Worst of all, it excludes the portion of the population most deserving of ice cream: adorable little girls. I can imagine poor seven-year-old Katie crying to her mom that Baskin Robbins wouldn’t give her free ice cream unless she had sex with a man and got knocked up. Also, unless they can finally figure out how to make their own sperm, lesbians are SOL on this deal too.

Notice that I said it will be much harder to claim our prize, not impossible. No no, I’m not going to impregnate my wife just to get her some free ice cream. (Try explaining that one to your future child. “You weren’t an accident, sweetie. You were a coupon!”) Because this promotion is so dastardly and devious, I feel it is my civic duty to find a way to take advantage of it! And if you’re like me and your wife won’t let you near her until this promotion is over is not with child, here are some tricks you can use to fool the folks behind the Baskin Robbins counter into thinking you’ve got a bun in your oven. (Note: All of these tips work best if you’re a woman.)

• Bump it up. BR is calling it “Bump Day” for a reason: you’ll need one on your belly to cash in on this deal. If you’re already fat in the right places, you should be able to pull this step off easily. If not, there are a variety of bump simulation devices (BSDs) available on the market today. Rolled-up t-shirts, zip-lock bags full of pudding, and hot water bottles are just a few items you can use to pull off the necessary look.
• Act pregnant. When you walk into Baskin Robbins, you should do all of the things a woman normally does when she is toting around a baby in her uterus. For instance, if you bring the baby’s “father” along, you can cuss him out for “making you that way.” Or you can ask the person behind the ice cream counter if you can get that order with a side of pickles and hot dogs.
• Get your glow on. You know how pregnant women have a sort of “glow” about them? Yeah, you can fake the glow pretty easily with various lotions and other things you probably have in your make-up box right now.
• Provide photographic evidence. A picture from “your recent ultrasound” (oh hey, what a coincidence: a Google image search for “ultrasound”) should be enough to prove that you’re with child, even if it doesn’t show yet.
• Bring a pregnancy test. If you’re not pregnant, it’s going to be very difficult to pass one of those over-the-counter do-it-yourself pee-on-a-stick tests, even if it’s for free ice cream. So get one of your pregnant gal pals to help you cheat by taking the test herself. Then bring the pre-completed test to your nearest Baskin Robbins, wave it around in the cashier’s face (it’ll be more convincing if it’s really dripping wet), and claim your prize.
• Break water. Step 1: Strap a plastic bag full of water to your upper thigh under a dress. Step 2: Go to Baskin Robbins. Step 3: Puncture the bag. Step 4: Scream, “My water just broke! Give me my ice cream so I can go to the hospital!” They’ll probably give you one of those 10-gallon buckets just to get you out the door.
• Just lie. If you’re not interested in any of the above ideas, you could just lie and say you’re pregnant. After all, pregnancy doesn’t really show until a few months in anyway. Of course, if they start equipping Baskin Robbins with ultrasounds, you might be in trouble.
• Free ice cream for sluts, too. Even if you don’t look or act pregnant, you might still be able to get your free ice cream simply by asking for it, especially if you dress like a whore. If the employees ask if you’re pregnant, simply wink and reply, “Why, are you offering?”

Fair warning: if you try to con your way into some free ice cream with a phony bump and you end up getting pregnant shortly after, you totally had it coming. That said, you might want to avoid Baskin Robbins’ experimental new flavor that it’s offering only during this event: Vanilla Sperm Explosion.

The end is near for my five-year-old laptop computer. I built this thing myself from parts just before my last semester of college. I’ve replaced just about every part since then at least once except for the casing and screen. Unfortunately I’ve just about reached the end of the line for what upgrades and repairs can do to keep it going. The keyboard is missing several key caps (I pulled off one of the “Ctrl” keys and put it where the “E” was), the power supply jack is wiggly, the memory capacity has been maxed out at 2GB, and the hard-to-reach internal Wi-Fi died long ago. Still, the laptop is capable of performing as well as a laptop you’d pay $800 for today, but it’s only a matter of time until a major component fails or more of the casing starts to fall apart and I’ll replace it altogether. My laptop is at Stage 3: Wait and See.

For a few years now, I’ve used a system of assigning ratings to expensive items I own in order to track where they are in their useful lifespan and make budgetary plans for items I may soon need to replace. For instance, a brand new item at the peak of its performance is in Stage 1: Good As New while that same item that just broke in half and no longer works probably belongs in Stage 5: End of Life (though it might only be in Stage 4: Obsolescence).

What exactly do these ratings mean, and how can they save you money? Let’s look at each rating and consider the circumstances under which you would use each of them.

Stage 1: Good As New

If you just went to the store and bought a product off the shelf, it should fall into this category. And if you properly use and maintain that item, it should stay in this category for a long time to come. Items that are Good As New are in flawless or nearly flawless condition and are as good as or even better than similar items currently on the market. Every feature of the item still performs as well as the day is was built. Good As New is obviously the best category of products to own, but it certainly isn’t the cheapest.

Product Examples:

• A new car fresh off the dealer’s lot.
• A refrigerator you just bought new at the appliance store.
• A refurbished DVD player you bought for $100 less than a brand new model.
• Your grandmother’s set of cookware, painstakingly maintained and better than anything you can buy on the market today.

Notice that Good As New doesn’t necessarily mean “brand new.” In fact, the age of a product is often irrelevant to its life stage. What matters is the condition. Some items, including many appliances and tools, can be kept in Good As New condition for decades with careful maintenance. (Others, like pretty much any consumer technology product or gadget, can be in perfect condition yet still fall out of Good As New status. More on that later.)

When to Replace: Items in the Good As New stage should almost never be replaced. Instead, money that would have been spent replacing the item can be used to repair and maintain the item to keep it in Good As New condition. If you’re in the habit of replacing items that are Good As New, you might as well take your existing products to the store, give them to the store for free, and then buy the items back from the store. Yes, replacing Good As New items is that dumb.

Less than 1% of new products you buy should be to replace items in the Good As New stage.

Stage 2: In Working Order

You probably think most of the items in your household right now fall into this product life stage. (And you might be right.) Products In Working Order still do the job they were originally tasked to do. They work well, they might be a little old, but there’s something newer or better out there. If you had an infinite supply of time and money, you would throw these items in the trash and buy some Good As New ones instead.

Product Examples:

• A 12-speed whatchamacallit when they just came out with a 15-speed.
• A fairly-equipped five-year-old car with no mechanical problems.
• A basic toaster that still toasts toast.
• Any functioning iPod that’s more than six months old.

Even without much maintenance or care, many products will stay in the In Working Order stage virtually forever. Unless something malfunctions or degrades due to wear and tear, that basic two-slice toaster could very well toast your great-grandchildren’s toast. Don’t try to tell them that though, because they’ll be using their 30-slice laser toaster while you’re still using Old Toasty.

When to Replace: If a product in your house is In Working Order, you should try to hold off replacing it for as long as possible. The toaster still toasts your bread like it did when you got it ten years ago; it just doesn’t toast the face of your child’s favorite Sesame Street characters into it like some of the new ones do. Or maybe it toasts 99 slices out of 100 properly, but it turns that unlucky one slice into charcoal. Instead of replacing In Working Order items with Good As New ones, you may be able to repair it or even enhance it with replacement parts (like I’ve done with my laptop).

Sometimes, though, it does make sense to replace In Working Items simply because newer versions with useful features or lower maintenance and operation costs exist. Since the current item is still doing the job, you should take your time to research newer versions and wait for a really good deal to come along. But only 5% of products you buy should be to replace items In Working Order.

Stage 3: Wait and See

Items that fall in the Wait and See stage of life are still quite useful and typically in fairly good condition, but they may have some problems or may be moderately out-of-date. You may be able to hold out for some time with an item that is Wait and See, but there are certainly a growing number of advantages to finding a replacement in Good As New or In Working Order condition.

Product Examples:

• My good old 1991 Nissan Sentra.
• A low-efficiency but working furnace that still keeps you warm during the winter.
• VHS tapes, or any other entertainment medium for which players are becoming rarer.
• My cell phone; it calls people and that’s about it.

Hanging on to items that are just Wait and See can sometimes be painful. Your neighbor certainly isn’t helping when he brings home a 10-speaker surround-sound entertainment system while you’re still watching TV on your 19-inch Sorny-brand tube.

When to Replace: Wait and See items belong on your Christmas list, even if Christmas isn’t for another six months. That said, you may want to replace the item yourself, especially if a newer item comes with great features that’ll save you time or money. But before you zip on down to the nearest big-box store, you’ll need to do your homework. Can your current product be repaired at a reasonable cost? (And if so, is there a good chance it will break again before long?) If repairs are out of the question, shop in-store and online for a replacement, comparing a variety of items and feature sets. Since your current item is still doing (most of) its job, you can afford to take your time here. Once you’ve found the right replacement product, consider selling the old one on your favorite internet market place or at a yard sale to help recoup some of the cost of your new purchase.

No more than 15% of products you buy should be to replace items at the Wait and See stage.

Stage 4: Obsolescence

You probably don’t have too many items in this category lying around the house; if you do, they’re probably gathering dust in the attic and you may have a bit of a pack-rat problem. Items in the Obsolescence stage suffer either from moderate to major mechanical failures that would be expensive to repair, very high maintenance or operation costs compared to newer versions, or incredibly outdated feature sets. Even if they still perform some of their original functions, you’re almost embarrassed to still own these products.

Product Examples:

• The car you spend $4,000 to repair every year. And there goes the transmission…
• Your desktop computer that can run Windows 98. Barely.
• A two-slice toaster that only toasts one slice at a time, and it takes 15 minutes to do it.
• Your 30-year-old vacuum that still sucks up 99% of dirt in your carpet… and redeposits 40% of it on your hardwood floors.

When to Replace: The typical item that has reached the Obsolescence stage in your average American household will get replaced inside of a week. That’s not always a bad thing, but it does mean that most people don’t shop around first for a good deal. Just because your washer and dryer are on their last legs doesn’t mean you have to replace them today. You might be able to bum a couple of loads off of neighbors, or you could always hit up your friendly local laundrymatista. For entertainment or convenience products, you may be able to wait quite a while for a bargain price to come along before pulling the trigger.

Still, you may not be in a position to wait months or even weeks to replace items you use frequently such as major appliances, automobiles, or computers. As usual, consider the repair cost and frequency before dropping a wad of cash for a Good As New replacement. If fixing the product isn’t possible and its days are numbered, start frequenting internet deal sites, keeping a close eye out for prices that are “good enough.” You might not be able to score the deal of the year based on your timetable, but you don’t need to settle for the first new item you see.

30-50% of products you buy should be to replace items at the Obsolescence stage.

Stage 5: End of Life

It’s over. Finito. Kaput. Your product has gone to that great junkyard in the sky. You might as well not even own the item anymore. (It might be cheaper that way for some things, since large appliances can be difficult to haul away.) If it’s a product you absolutely need right now, then you better hit the road (assuming it isn’t your car that bit the bullet) and do some serious shopping. Hopefully you saw the untimely demise of your product coming (i.e. it didn’t just jump from Stage 1 to Stage 5 overnight) so you’re already looking around for a replacement.

Product Examples:

• The only thing coming out of your toaster toasted is itself.
• Your car just exploded. A lot.
• You now have two whole-house heaters: your furnace and your air conditioner.
• You just burnt dinner, your whole house is smokey, and the smoke detector with the new battery just sat there silently.

When to Replace: As with items in the other stages, consider if repairs are possible and economical. If they’re not, determine your timeline for replacement. Much like items in Obsolescence, End of Life items may not need to be replaced right away if they’re products you don’t use all that often. If your portable MP3 player just played its last tune, you’re certainly not going to die if you wait a week or two for a good deal on a new one unless you have some sort of strange disease where you need to hear music all of the time or else your brain implodes, which you don’t. Even items you think you need to replace today—dishwashers, microwaves, televisions—can probably wait a bit… at least until you have a chance to scour the internet for a baseline of prices.

And if the idea of dropping a ton of money on a Good As New item makes your stomach turn, you could always look for an item In Working Order or Wait and See condition. Some products, like cars and electronics, are easy to find used at a good price and in good shape.

50% or more of products you buy should be to replace items at the End of Life stage.

By keeping your product replacement habits in line with the suggested budget percentages listed in this article, and by taking care of the things you already own, you can help control the natural consumer impulses to buy the newest, biggest, and best items available. And if following this advice means that you end up with a house full of items in Stages 2 to 5, don’t be embarrassed; be proud that you’ve resisted the urge to splurge needlessly.

As for me, I’m still on the lookout for a new laptop, so hopefully no more keyboard letters fall off until I can find one at a dcnt pric. Oh crp.

It’s no secret that I make a few bucks off running Punny Money. Most of it comes through unobtrusive means that nobody really objects to, like advertising and stealing your bank account information. But there is one slightly evil way that many websites, including this one, line their e-pockets with iGold—affiliate marketing.

Webster’s defines affiliate marketing as “scamming silly internet people into buying all sorts of worthless garbage so that you can make a few extra pennies while helping to drive the country into the poorhouse.” It’s really simple to set up, and today I’m going to share the secrets of affiliate marketing with you:

1. Get a website. There are websites on the internet. They are sort of like carrots in a field; you harvest one, but you add your own spices before you serve it. Unlike carrots, however, orange websites are not very popular.
2. Sign up for an affiliate marketer thingy. There are a lot of affiliate marketing services around. We’ll talk about one in particular in a minute.
3. Retire. Congratulations! You just made 50 million dollars with no work.

I may have left out a step and any sense of reality, but you get the picture.

The only affiliate marketing program you’ll find on Punny Money belongs to Amazon.com, seller of virtually anything that can be shipped in little brown packages. Amazon’s affiliate program lets you link to its products catalog, and every time someone makes a purchase from Amazon.com through one of your links, you’ll receive a small commission. For example, if you purchase this $400 needlepoint kit, I’ll make $16. But that $16 of mine comes at a grave price—your $400. Sure, you get a lovely needlepoint kit, but it’s really not lovely at all—it’s $400 you don’t have anymore. Now Amazon has $386, I have $16, and you have a needlepoint kit you’ll work on for a few hours and then throw in the closet.

Amazon also lets you sell its products with fancy 21st-century internet picture links like the one you see on the right for its top-selling Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank. If you had a website and your visitors bought just 25 of these babies, you’d have enough money to buy all sorts of stuff, like a better life for your family or a Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank.

Partly because I don’t want the monetary basis of this website to influence its content, and partly because I feel a bit guilty trying to con random internet people into buying stuff, I don’t really use that many Amazon affiliate links around here. In fact, I’ve only used them two or three times in the last year and about a dozen times total during the entire life of Punny Money. But since lots of visitors to this website arrive here through links to older articles, there are still plenty of people who end up clicking through those rare Amazon affiliate links, and occasionally someone will make a purchase. Sadly, nobody’s ponied up for a Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank, but I’ve referred plenty of other sales for smaller items.

The best thing about Amazon affiliate links is that, even if someone clicks through your link for a Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank and they end up wandering around Amazon.com and buying a $400 needlepoint kit instead, you still get credit. In fact, about 90% of the product sales I’ve referred have been for items to which I’ve never linked. For instance, when I linked to this Toro Electric Leaf Blower/Vac (an item I actually own and love and highly recommend), two people bought the blower/vac, but someone else bought a cordless drill instead because it was featured as a “recommended item” on the same page as the blower/vac.

Remember when I said that 90% of my Amazon.com sales are for items I didn’t suggest myself? No? I just said it in the last paragraph. Are you skimming articles again??? Anyway, since Amazon provides detailed reports on every single item someone purchases from my referral account, I can see just what you crazy people are buying (but don’t worry, I can’t tell who’s buying what). And I have to say, you guys are buying some weird stuff. Here’s just a sample of the wacky crap that people have bought from Amazon.com who visited via Punny Money over the years.

High School Musical 2 (Extended Edition) Not satisfied with the regular, unextended edition of this movie, somebody shelled out 16 bucks to see a bunch of high school kids dance around and sing about serious issues like why Disney is stomping on Walt’s grave with crappy sequel after crappy sequel. I made 96 cents!

Seventh Generation Baby Wipes Refills, Chlorine Free and Unscented, 80-Count Packs (Pack of 12) (960 Wipes) What ever happened to the old days when people would just take their babies out back and hose them down after a diaper change? At least the person who purchased this product is giving some consideration to the environment as it is made only from natural ingredients like Polysorbate 20, tocopherol acetate, and other things with totally natural-sounding names. Now baby will be clean and less toxic than the other children on the playground.

Motomco #33475 Black Rodent Station Great, now I’m an accessory to animal murder, even if it is of the creepy crawly hairy variety. At least I can rest at night knowing that the purchaser got a pretty good deal on this—and I even managed to make 46 cents in the process.

Lg Chocolate Vx8500 Chocolate, Vx9900 Env, Vx8600, Ax8600, Lx150, Vx9400, Vx8700, Ax275, Vx8550, Vx8350, Rumor, Cu575 Trax, Lx160, Lx570 Muziq, Vx5400, Vx8800 Venus, Cu515, CU720 Shine Accessory Bundle Kit- Rapid Car Charger with Ic Chip + USB Data Cable I’m not even sure what this is. From the title, it’s either cell phone accessories, candy, or a hard math problem. Strangely enough, Amazon sells all three.

25 Opera Favorites I guess I shouldn’t say anything bad about opera music or I’ll come off as an uncultured jerk. Still, five bucks would’ve made for a great down payment on a Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank.

Shen Min Advanced Formula for Woman, 60 Tabs Apparently this product features “vital co-factor hair growth nutrients” which is industry code for “easy money from bald people.” Sadly, if my hairline and heredity have their way, I’ll one day be joining the ranks of the shiny-domes; but I’ll be employing a much more practical measure to deal with it—traffic cones hats.

Hopefully my exposé of people’s bizarre Amazon purchases won’t discourage you from shopping there in the future. And if you’re planning to take a stroll over there anytime soon—say, to pick up a Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank with your massive tax refund or rebate—don’t hesitate to do so through one of the many blatant affiliate links scattered throughout this article.

This post sponsored by the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank: the most fun you can have driving around the desert of a foreign planet for under $20,000.

I haven’t been chasing savings account rates as much as I used to lately, mostly because the bulk of our savings is sitting in a nice 9%+ APY 7-month CD that still has a few months left on it. We have since picked up a few more liquid bucks that have been bouncing back and forth between savings accounts averaging only 4.5% to 5% APY, waiting for the next wild deal to appear.

It looks like Wachovia, my banking arch-nemesis, has decided to issue that deal.

I used to have all of my accounts at Wachovia—checking, savings, CDs, safe deposit boxes. Then I realized they were shafting me with sub-1% interest rates and horrendous customer service, so I jumped ship and took all of my loot with me. Now it seems they’re offering a crazy savings account promotion that may even be too much for this hardcore Wachovia-hater to pass up.

More details are available on this FatWallet discussion and this Bank Deals post, but I will summarize:

1. Open a Wachovia checking account and the new Way-2-Save savings account. You need both. Existing checking accounts are fine (including their Free Checking option).
2. The base yield on the Way-2-Save savings account is 5.00% APY.
3. You get an end-of-year bonus of 5% of your balance, up to $300. (Second- and third-year bonuses are 2%.)
4. You can’t just deposit money at will into the Way-2-Save savings account. In order to get money into it, you can: (1) deposit up to $100 a month directly, (2) automatically have $1 moved from your attached checking account into the Way-2-Save account for each debit card purchase, online billpay transaction, or other debit deductions.

So say you have 100 qualifying purchases or billpays or other debits on your checking account each year, and you put $100 into the savings each month. That would be $100 x 12 plus $1 x 100, or $1300. The 5% bonus on that would be just $65, but that’s still a very nice bonus. Even if you don’t do any debit transactions or billpays, you’d still get a $60 bonus just doing the maximum $100 monthly transfers. And don’t forget the 5% APY that $100 a month earns, though that rate could change at any time, in theory.

Just how good is this deal? Well, on a scale of 1 to 50 million, I’d give it a 39,194,942, which is pretty good! I deducted 10 points off the top just because it’s Wachovia, but the rest of my deductions are because of Wachovia’s attempt to get you to use your debit card more. As everyone knows, debit cards are evil and should not be used, even for what works out to be a 5-cent bonus on each transaction.

Wachovia does give you one extra option that could allow you to make up to $300 a year just doing the $100-a-month transfers: you can have up to 5 Way-2-Save savings accounts at once, each hooked up to a separate Wachovia checking account. I don’t know what kind of weirdo has five Wachovia checking accounts, but I’m told it’s possible.

The deal officially starts on January 15, 2008, but some people have reported success opening the Way-2-Save account already by calling their local branch and getting transfered to a call center operator who helped them open the account. I might give this a try with one or two checking accounts to put some miscellaneous funds to good use. I’m just hoping I don’t get the customer service runaround from Wachovia as they were so fond of doing to me.