The Coupons.com Savings Index listed San Francisco as 2014’s most frugal city in America. The nation’s capital, Washington D.C., took second place, while two Florida cities (Orlando and Tampa) followed closely behind. Several other cities in the South, such as Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, and Virginia Beach, made the Top 10 alongside Cleveland and Denver.
San Francisco’s notoriety for its skyrocketing cost of living could be the reason why it reached the top spot for frugality. According to one report, one would have to earn almost $30 a hour — over four times the federal minimum wage and almost triple the local minimum wage — to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city. Many people in the city take in roommates or live with their partners in order to alleviate the cost of housing (and living in general).
“The top 10 frugal cities collectively saved more than $252 million by using Coupons.com, which demonstrates the powerful savings coupons can offer shoppers who are looking for ways to be financially smart,” said Jeanette Pavini, Coupons.com Savings Expert.
“Perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s list is San Francisco — known for wealthy tech entrepreneurs and off-the-chart housing prices — as being the capital of couponing,” Pavini added. “We also saw that San Franciscans were three times more likely to use coupons than residents from other U.S. Metros.” A notable exclusion from the list was New York City — even though the Big Apple features its own high cost of living.
Of course, San Francisco is also known for its high cost of doing business. To stay profitable, businesses often pass costs onto the consumer, such as in 2012 when Subway discontinued $5 footlongs in San Francisco. However, San Francisco residents also enjoy an average household income of $75,604, beating all cities in the Top 10 by almost $10,000. This could give San Franciscans more disposable income to buy products and services, though they clearly prefer to use coupons for them as well.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
A stocked computer cache may be convenient for logging into and out of go-to sites in seconds flat, but a major buildup of these tracking codes could significantly impact your PC’s performance. If you’ve noticed that your PC has been running rather slow of late, or you’re using a new browser and don’t know how to clear its cache, we’ve got you covered with the following guide.
If you’re looking to clean up your Gmail inbox, but you don’t want to delete anything permanently, then choosing the archive option is your best bet. Whenever you archive an email, it is removed from your inbox folder while still remaining accessible. Here’s how to access any emails you have archived previously, as well as how to move such messages back to your regular inbox for fast access.