Skipping Christmas Gifts And Other Ways I Save At Christmas

Posted by The Happy Rock on December 17, 2008

Here are a 5 ways that I have saved money over the last few Christmas seasons :

Skip the Gifts - Don’t try and buy significance and meaning, it doesn’t come from gifts. Talk to family and friends and see who is open to cutting back on gifts amounts or even take the plunge and see if they are willing to skip gifts altogether. I would recommend trying to replace the gifts with something significant that deepens your relationships: a heartfelt card, special dinner or get together, a family day. Here is my Christmas gift journey from the last few years, and we have even cut back even further in positive ways this year.
Physical Labor Coupon – Just print or hand draw a coupon for things like car washes, lawn mowing, dishes, back rubs, and cleaning. Simple as that.
Buy Used- Not every relationship or person can handle this one, especially without prior warning, but it is a great way to save money and recycle. Who needs to buy a CD new, when they can get it from eBay in mint condition for half the price. DVD, CDs, and Legos/Toys are all good examples of things you can be used.
Use eBay – You can not only by used on eBay, but you can also get new items on eBay at deep discounts. Don’t forget to use your live.com 8% rebate too. I was able to get brand new copies of Seasons 3 and 4 of The Office for a friend for about $40 after rebates with shipping included. This would have cost me about $66 on Amazon, Season 3($36.99) and Season 4($29.99).
Rebate and Cash back Websites – I have gotten over $60 back from Mr. Rebates. Just go to the site, sign up, search for the store and click through to the store on their link make the purchases. The credit will show up in the account in a few days. Ebates provides an almost identical service too. They even offer 3% on eBay purchases. The one drawback is it may take a little while to reach the full cash out limit to get your check, although when I did the check arrived without incident.
Use Coupon Sites – RetailMeNot is my favorite, but there are a ton out there. Just do a search for something like ‘Macy’s Coupon” and weed through the links. Often the codes are out dated, so it might take a little patience. RetailMeNot usually is the most up to date in my experience and provides community feedback as to whether the coupons are working for others or not.
Google Shopping Search - I often use the Google Shopping Search for price checking and sometimes purchases, just be sure to stick to rated stores as cheap prices often(not always) means bad service. I used it to find a good deal a unique clothing item and I even made sure the website had a 6% rebate from Mr. Rebates.

» Filed Under Frugal Tool Chest, Frugality, Money Savers

Frugal Tool Chest Tip #2: The Dynamics Of Finding The Item You Want Cheaper

Posted by The Happy Rock on May 23, 2008

The Frugal Tool Chest is a recurring series covering practical tips and tools that will arm you to save even more money on your online purchases. Frugal Chest Tip #1 covered using Price Protectr to save money by getting post purchase refunds on price drops.

This tip will walk you through some of the tips and tricks to find an item that you have decided to buy at the cheapest price. The article will use my most recent online purchase as a case study: La Crosse BC-900 Battery Charger.

A few weeks ago I was reading The Simple Dollar’s rechargeable battery analysis when he enlightened me to the fact that I was ruining my rechargeable batteries. I have been using NIHM rechargeables for almost two years, but I was seeing the actual life of the battery slowly shorten after each recharge. After a little more reading I realized that I was using a junky free charger that was charging the batteries to quickly. The cheaper the equipment the faster they will break down. For chargers, the faster they recharge the shorter the life span of the batteries and the less charge they will hold. Batteries are usually meant to take 7 or 8 hours to charge depending on the setting.

Here is a list of features that made me at least willing to pay $70 on Amazon:

Comes with 4 AA and AAA batteries
Heat sensor to prevent overheating
Multiple charge currents
Drain charge mode which fully drains the battery before recharging
Capacity Test Mode
Most recommended charger on the market
C and D battery adapters*

So now that I had knew which charger I wanted and had a base price of $69.95 with free shipping, I could start looking for a better deal. The first stop was a search on eBay. I could see that I could get one for about $51 if no one else was bidding, but only one was going off a day. I did bid on one, but it went for 6 dollars over my asking price. I decided to look elsewhere.

My next stop is usually Google Product Search. The nice thing about a google product search is that they gather prices from a wide variety of smaller online stores and display seller ratings to help you make informed decisions. There were a few cheaper prices there, but they weren’t from sellers that had quality histories. This is often the case. The lower the price, the lower the quality seller and I wasn’t willing to risk it.

Then I happened to stumble upon Thomas Distributing ads in two places at about the same time. One was in the sponsored link section under my eBay search and the other was in the sponsored link section of a BC-900 google search. They were offering the charger for $38.97 with about $8.00 shipping. Sounds great, but can I trust the seller offering something that far below retail?

The next step is to google for “Reseller rating Thomas Distributing” which quickly brings you to ResellerRatings.com store rating section. To my surprise Thomas Distributing has a wonderful rating with lots of glowing reviews. Considering Amazon has a 5.1 rating and Thomas has a 9.7 I was ready to buy. You can use the “Store Finder” search on reseller ratings to research most of the stores that are worth buying from on the net.

The final step was to see if I could dig for a “Thomas Distributing coupon code”. Just by typing the simple google search a plethora of 5% coupons could be found. I was able to do a little more digging using some different word variations to dig up a 10% off credit / coupon code for Thomas Distributing. The code is GCNE10.

That brought the total down to $42.88, a savings of 39% from the listed price on Amazon. A great deal and a strong sense of satisfaction. I am not sure why it feels like you are cheating the system, but it does provide an overactive sense of accomplishment when you finalize a great deal. The charger arrived yesterday with no problems!

*Note : I misunderstood what the C and D adapters were. I thought they were adapters that let you charge C and D batteries in this charger. They are not; the BC-900 only charges AA and AAA. The adapters let you use AA batteries in C and D battery slots. I am not sure how well this will work, but it is worth a try.

» Filed Under Frugal Tool Chest, Frugality, Money Savers

Frugal Tool Chest Tip #1: Get Money Back On Your Purchases With Price Protectr

Posted by The Happy Rock on March 15, 2008

The Frugal Tool Chest is a recurring series covering practical tips and tools that will arm you to save even more money on your online purchases. I

The first frugal tips involves a website that will notify you when the price drops on any of your recent purchases. How does this help? Well, most stores have a price protection policy that allow you to receive a refund if the price of the item you purchased dropped before X number of days post purchase.

For example Amazon’s policy is currently this :

Post-Order Price Guarantee

Amazon.com’s prices for released items will change from time to time based on a variety of factors. If Amazon.com’s price for an already-released item decreases within 30 days after we ship the item to you, we’ll be glad to refund the difference in price if you contact us. Please click the Customer Service button on the right side of this page, and be sure to have your order number handy so we can assist you.

So how do you protect your purchases. Going back to the item listing for the next 30 days is just not feasible, so you let a site like Price Protectr do it for you. Here is my review…

All you do is supply the link to the item you purchased, verify the when you purchased it, verify the purchase price, supply your email, and click submit. That’s it! Price Protectr will snotify you that the item is being protected and then send another email if the price drops before the price protection policy expires for the site. It really is that easy. The have a large list of sellers that they support, but they don’t support every site.

Since I was reminded of the site a week ago by a co-worker, Ray of Taco Man and Burrito Boy fame, I have saved about$5. One item dropped on Amazon twice for a total of about $4.35.

A sample Price Protectr alert email looks like this :

Price Protectr saw a price drop on the Pinzon 400-Thread-Count 100% Egyptian Cotton Hemstitch Queen Sheet Set, Sand you submitted for price protection at www.priceprotectr.com.

You purchased the item for $42.34 and it’s now $39.99! The item URL is:

Pinzon 400-Thread-Count 100% Egyptian Cotton Hemstitch Queen Sheet Set, Sand

Please verify the item and price, and review the retailer’s price protection policy before requesting a refund.

To claim your refund: Visit their contact page, click the ‘e-mail’ tab, and choose ‘Refund Inquiry’ from the dropdown list. Or contact their customer service department at 1-800-201-7575. Hitting 7 should get you to a customer service rep right away.

If you collect your refund (or try to), don’t forget to log into your My Stuff account and leave a retailer review!

To change your notification settings, go to the account setting of your My Stuff account.

Thanks for using Price Protectr!

Following the instructions in the email, I sent a brief two sentence email to Amazon and had a refund back on my card in about 24-48 hours. The email doesn’t have to be anything special either…here is what I put in the email contact page :

The price of the sheets i recently purchased dropped a $2.35 cents since I bought them, I would like a refund for the difference as the price protection policy states.

Thank you for the great service and products.

Done! It is really quite gratifying to receive a Price Protectr alert! Give a try, you bank account will probably notice.

» Filed Under Frugal Tool Chest, Frugality, Money Savers, Personal Finance Systems, Spending