The next step in finding the best deal is to take some time and call stores around your area. The rest is pretty simple - choose the best price for the product and buy it. Don’t forget that some of the coupons you’ve found will be able to be used at offline stores as well.
Couple of notes:
1. If you keep writing the wrong date on your check book - write 2009 on the date lines in all the checks in your current registry.
2. If you’ve already broken your New Years Resolution… don’t fret most people do. The trick is to try again. Each day is a new day… forget the past and focus on the future.
Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 22 December 20, 2008
++ News -
We would like to take a moment and thank you for visiting us and letting us be a part of your life. We consider it a privilege and want to say thank you.
We would also like to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas!
We’ll be taking some time off with our family to enjoy the holidays - we’ll resume normal posting after the New Year… we will have the occasional post if we dig up anything news worthy.
Gas news -
Gas prices fell slightly after climbing a little over the past week. Oil dropped to ~ $34 / barrel.
Comparison shopping online - Below is a video - which we hope will help you a bit in your product research.
If you like it please don’t hesitate to leave us a comment.
Step 1: Find your spreadsheet from the previous lessons. You can find those here.
Step 2: Open your browser – go to Amazon. Open another browser window and go to Amazon as well. If you have additional products open a new browser window for each product.
Step 3: We want to open three new tabs for each window. First – right click on any link – then select open in a new tab. Click on the tab – then Select new tab, then do that once again. So you should have four tabs total.
Step 6: Search for your product in each of the tabs. When you get the search results, click on the link for your product.
Step 7: Review your findings. Make sure to take into account reviews for the store you may be ordering from. Make sure to include possible shipping costs – and add that to your total.
Step 8: Compare your findings and list the total costs in your spreadsheet.
Step 9: Review your coupons – search for any coupons that may be applicable for the particular store. Make sure to add any freebies / bonuses that may come with the item.
Repeat steps 3 – 9 for any additional products that you have.
Make sure that you bookmark a couple of additional places. They have some pretty good deals.
Here are the tentative dates for the remaining articles.
- Comparison shopping Off line. January 3rd
- Buy it. January 10th
Ideas for last minute Stocking Stuffers (with a personal touch)
1. A magazine subscription. You can get the subscription and slip in a note. This will help them remember you all year long.
2. Some old photos - buy a small flip photo book and fill it with old photos… make sure to personalize it by adding captions.
3. Get a calendar - make sure to fill it with important dates (birthdays etc.)
4. Make a CD ‘mix’ with their favorite songs / bands (or put it on their MP3 player).
5. Gloves or a Scarf make a good choice as we head into winter.
You also want to make a note of the brand names of the products you’re interested in and make sure to check out their site. Usually they’ll have a link - Example - I go to the Canon website and in the top navigation bar is a “promotions” link.
Lots of wild weather around say we hope you stay safe, warm and dry.
Saving you Money - Below is a video - which we hope will help you a bit in your product research.
If you like it please don’t hesitate to leave us a comment.
We want to make sure to bookmark things as we go along. First make sure that we have a folder created within our bookmarks – that will make finding things much easier. As you open new pages you will want to open the new page in a tab – again that will make things much easier.
The first step in doing any product research is going to Google. What I’m going to be looking for / researching are camcorders…
There are a few different ways to approach this. If I have plenty of time the first thing you want to do is to check out some forums.
So I would search for camcorder forums. If you’re short on time you can search for
Camcorder reviews (just remember to insert the product you’re researching where I’ve put Camcorder).
Camcorder buying guide.
One thing you’ll want to do as well is to change your search preferences so you get more results on the page. To do that you click on preferences – then make the number of results 50 or 100.
After visiting a few flops – I found one that I liked. If you had the time you would post something that would detail what you were looking for. Or you could ask in the forums what are some good sites to learn about the item you’re researching. BUT before you ask you want to make sure to use the search function.. after all nothing is as aggravating to frequent forum goers, and that is a repeated question of a few days ago. You can find the search box here. It is usually a link or a big box. Don’t forget that if you’re having trouble finding something you can use your browser search function. For firefox that is ctrl – F .One thing I can tell by the number of posts, is that Canon and Sony are big sellers.
Make sure to save good sites that you find in your favorites – otherwise you’ll just have to find them again.
I have subscriptions to a ton of different magazines. During the past few months they’ve had camera reviews. Clip those pages and put them into a folder where you can find them. Also the magazines listed some good review sites. One thing with review sites is many of them are spammy and only want to make money from advertising… so there views can be prejudiced.
We’re going to go back to Google and search for camcorder buyers guide.
You want to find two or three sites to help you with your research.
Couple of notes –
1.Especially if you’re wanting recent technology, you’ll want recent information.
2.A few sites I’ve had good luck with are about.com / Yahoo / CNET / Consumer Reports.
After you plunder around in these sites you should have an idea of the features that you want.
Go back to the spreadsheet that you made and include those features.
After much browsing I really like the camcorder.info site. Now you want to find at least two or three models that you like.
I like the Sony HDR-S12 and the Canon HF 11.
On Tuesday we’ll work on Finding some coupons.
Here are the tentative dates for the remaining articles.
3. Finding Coupons - December 16th
4. Comparison shopping online. - December 20th
5. Comparison shopping Off line. January 3rd
6. Buy it. January 10th
The first thing we want to do in our search for finding a great deal online is to get ready.
The big thing we’ll want to do when searching for a deal is to be able to track the good deals that we find.
1. The first thing we want to do is create a spreadsheet. For the research spreadsheet I used the following headings -
Item
Feature A
B
C
D
E
Company URL
Base Price
Amazon Reviews
Other Reviews
Getting the best price I used these headings -
Store
URL
Cost
Ship
Coupon
Tax
Total
you can of course include any relevant headings.
2. Create a mail box in your email program called “Deals” or something similar. That will help you to keep track of any email offers that we want to get.
3. Create a favorites folder - again call it “Deals”. When we book mark sites that’s where they will go.
My Black Friday experience went well (if you have an experience you would like to share, please don’t hesitate to post a comment). I had a few things that I wanted after scouting the Wal-Mart Friday ad I had a list of things I wanted to get (after all when you can buy things for half price…. So I got up early on Friday. I had been checkings out on Amazon and decided to check it out. I found out that they had the items I wanted even cheaper than Wal-Mart and with the Super Saver shipping - the shipping was free. So I ordered the things on Friday and as of now have received all the boxes except for one, which is on the way. I still haven’t figured out exactly how much that I saved, but I’ll be sure to share that with you.
Here are a few sites I’ve stumbled on that you may enjoy as well as you’re looking for deals.
Realize first if you’re going to do Black Friday right then it will take some preparation, persistance, and patience. Also people will be cranky, and mean. The bright side is if you plan things you could save 30 to 50% off regular prices.
Here are some steps to make your day go smoother.
1. First you want to get the circulars and sales papers from all the major stores. Below are some links that you can use to find some stores that you may not have thought of.
2. Get out your Christmas list that we made earlier.
3. Using the circulars look for things that are on the list. You can use a sheet of paper or a spread sheet. Write all the stores across the top. If the store has the item you’re look for then write the item / price under the store list and make sure to note the quantity they have and the time they are available. You may not find all your items, for this trip though we’re only going for items in the sale paper. Some of the stores have earlier opening times, some give out tickets for items before the store opens.
4. Check out your list - make a list of the times putting them from top to bottom with the earliest first. This will be your attack list. Now write a schedule - with times you have to be at certain stores. Make a special note of the highest priced items. These you’ll want to make sure that you get these items (even if you have to skip out on some of the lower priced items).
5. Now you should know exactly when you’ll need to be in each store - exactly what you’ll need to get from each of the stores. If you want a few days before Black Friday you can scout out the store.
6. The night before make sure you get a good nights sleep. And then start your adventure… go for it and most of all have FUN!!
This idea will work if - you enjoy books - the people who will be getting the gifts enjoy books.
Join a book club. You can find clubs online or if you’ve ever been in a club before then you’ll have plenty of flyers. Some I’ve gotten over the past week have had 7 or 8 books, some had free shipping. The one thing to realize is that you’ll need to buy some more books. Although some offers you’ll only need to buy one or two in a year.
Do a search on Google for Book clubs and you’ll find plenty resources.
We thought since Christmas was less than 2 months away and holiday decorations are already up in many stores, we would begin a series on some different ways that you can save this holiday season.
Creating a Christmas Budget
Think of everyone that you will need to buy a present for this year.
Categorize them into -
Immediate Family (Son, daughter, wife, hubby)-
Relatives (In-laws, out-laws, sisters, brothers… you get the idea)-
Others - People you draw names with at work, school. People that you’ve given gifts to forever.
The goal here is to downsize the list first. Everyone on your list you don’t have to buy a gift for.. I know some may thing Grinch - but we’ll come to why we aren’t one later. Those that you’ve culled from the list write down on a new list. These are people that you’re going to give either food to or give some of your time to. Not this Saturday but next Saturday we’ll give you some ideas for these presents.
Before you approach the others list, see if you can’t draw names with some of them or agree to have a big party without bringing gifts. At first I was kind of shy about doing this, but usually when I brought up the subject, I would hear a huge sigh and I knew that they really didn’t have the extra cash to spend on me either.
Now think of the maximum amount that you’re going to spend on Christmas this year. Now reduce that number by 10 or 20%.
Now comes dividing the amount into individual presents. This is where that no two people are the same, and I have no way of knowing how many people are on your list. What I do is put 50% of the budget toward the immediate family, 30% toward the outlaws (we draw names as well), 15% for the Others and 5% for gift wrap and things like that.
This wouldn’t work very well though if you have 1 kid, 20 close relatives and 50 others… give it some thought. If your kid got a whole room full of presents now would be a great time to explain to the entire family that you’re scaling back on presents this year. Now would also be a great time to get a list together of things that your kids are wanting.
Saving Money for Christmas
It is a little late to begin saving money for Christmas this year but it is definitely not too late to think about it for next year. Here’s the way I save, but there are many different ways that you can do it.
Take the budget that you created. Divide the final budget number by how many times you will be paid during the year.
Example -
My budget was $850.00
I get paid weekly.
So my weekly savings goal would be about $17.00 (round up). 850 divided by 52. So I started saving $20 out of my payday each week. After 52 weeks I had $1040.00.
Sticking to the Budget
This is probably the hardest thing to do. When you do your shopping stick strictly to the budget. You’ve made your list (and checked it twice). You’ve broken things down and you know what you can spend. Now follow your list. Sometime it will be hard because at the last minute Susie Q asks for a new Barbie doll house or you son wants a new game that you had no idea that the game even existed. That is one reason why, when you created your budget you talked to the kiddos about what they were wanting for Christmas. If it’s the little one, just explain to them that you’ve already sent the list to Santa and that the elves are really behind schedule this year. If it’s an older kid, just explain to them that you’ve already bought a game for him and he can save his allowance to get the new one.
I am the world’s worst at sticking to a budget. I think mainly because I’m a big kid at heart. But if I can do it, so can you… and the real present for you comes in March, April, May when you aren’t paying off the presents and interest.
Next Tuesday we’ll talk about a way to get five or six (nice) presents for less than 20 bucks.
Saturday the 8th of Nov - Turkey Leftovers
Nov. 11th - Creativity and the gift of your time and talents.
Nov. 15th - Black Friday and You
We’ll be talking some in our newsletter on Saturday about saving money on your Thanksgiving day dinner. Since you have a whole bunch of people together anyway, why not have some fun. Below are some links to pages that have ideas for Fall partys.
