Posts filed under 'Tips'
What? You actually pay full price for Christmas gifts and decorations at Target? Read on, then get ready to stock up in preparation for next year:
- All holiday merchandise at Target stores gets discounted to 50% right after Christmas, then 75%, then 90%. The exact days these discounts kick in varies by store, so expect to visit multiple stores on multiple days to hit them just right.
- Even though decorations and other obviously seasonal merchandise will be moved to a clearance area near the back of the store, the discounts apply on merchandise in every department. Toys are an obvious place to find leftovers, though they may get discounted on a separate schedule after the primary wave of holiday discounts. Also look for holiday discounts on paper goods, storage bins, food — just about everywhere. That expensive can of cashews may be 90% off just because the box is red and that dog bed may be on sale because there’s a holly leaf stitched onto it. Other items are included in clearance pricing for no apparent reason at all.
- In the toy area look for items marked “Only At Target” that are often included in clearance sales.
- The seasonal dollar bin items near the entrance also go on sale, though not always on the same schedule as the rest of the store. The colored dot near the bar code indicates the item’s age, more or less, so look for items with a color different from most others on the dollar shelves.
- Pay special attention to end caps (the display at the end of an aisle) facing the less popular outside walls. Clearance merchandise often gets dropped there but overlooked by shoppers.
- Don’t trust sale signage or shelf prices to be correct. The signs often lag behind automatic discounts.
- These same tricks apply to other holidays, too. Look for similar discounts after Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Easter, etc.
- When in doubt, carry items to a nearby price scanner and SCAN SCAN SCAN to discover hidden deals.
Good luck!
November 23rd, 2008
Do people really pay $100 monthly cable bills? We love TV as much as most folks do, but we’ve hit on some ways to save while still feeding our TV addictions.
How do we keep the bills small? First, we don’t subscribe to cable or satellite service. Instead, we pay about $12 per month for TiVo service and $9 per month for the lowest level of Netflix service that includes Instant Viewing, which is like unlimited Pay-Per-View with thousands of movies and TV shows to choose from. Taking advantage of these services required a $250 one-time outlay for the amazing TiVo HD box and $100 for the excellent Roku Digital Video Player, but both are a great value.
Update: The TivoHD and later models now include Netflix Watch Instantly support, so you can skip the Roku box, do it all from your TiVo, and save another $100.
The TiVo works silently queuing up our favorite shows from the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB, UPN, PBS, etc.) in perfect HD for free over a regular antenna. For movies there’s Netflix DVDs (just one at a time to keep the monthly fee low) and the steadily growing library of movies available via Netflix Watch Instantly.
Finally, there are still some shows from cable networks that The Missus can’t do without. In that case, there’s an automated BitTorrent downloading system I’ve set up using Torrent Episode Downloader, a free Windows application which lets you subscribe to shows almost as you do with TiVo, combined with uTorrent (also free) to run the actual downloads. Once the shows are on my PC (invariably in AVI format) I transfer them to the TiVo wirelessly using an amazingly powerful free application called pyTivo. You can also use the $30 official TiVo Desktop software to do the same job as pyTivo, but it’s far slower and less capable of handling some video file formats.
There you have it. With a moderate up-front outlay and very low monthly fees you have a great library of TV and movies ready whenever you want them. Give it a try. You may find you can live without cable or satellite too.
November 10th, 2008
Amazon now lets you expand your wish list beyond Amazon’s own inventory to include products from just about any online store. Once you install a bookmarklet in your web browser you’ll be able to quickly identify products in non-Amazon stores and add them to your Amazon list.
Amazon’s site walks you through the rest of the process — automatically pulling in product images when it can or asking you which one to use from those it found on the product page. The system works even better than you’d expect and is surprisingly useful for those of us with spouses who have trouble finding gift ideas. Just visit your wish list on Amazon (mine is linked below — hint, hint) and follow the simple instructions for adding it to your browser’s toolbar. And while Amazon doesn’t mention it, you can also just add it as a regular bookmark if you don’t want to clutter up your toolbar area.
August 2nd, 2008
Nearly every day I read an article on The Consumerist about massive late fees or talk to a friend about the hassles and fees associated with paying bills, and I’m consistently dumbfounded. How is it that so few people take advantage of the free, online bill-paying that their bank undoubtedly provides with their checking accounts?
Of course no payment system is likely to help much when you’re truly short on cash and falling behind on paying your bills, but it seems most of the time the headaches and exorbitant fees could have been easily avoided if something — disorganization, procrastination, or shady changes in terms or due dates — hadn’t caught the hapless bill-payer off guard.
The antidote, for me, is the online bill-pay. My run-of-the-mill Chase checking account includes free, unlimited bill-paying, and yours most likely does, too.
This is not to be confused with expensive wire transfers, e-checks via phone, or other fee-heavy bill payment “services” credit card companies like to push. Don’t fall into that pit of fees masquerading as convenience.
Note that I’m also definitely not talking about the much less desirable automatic debits offered by most monthly billers. Those are fraught with potential problems since once you go through the pain of signing up using a completely independent system for every bill payee, you’ve given each of them unlimited access to debit your bank account or credit card at will. You also have to manage umpteen different logins, taking pains to log into each site monthly and find out whether they made any errors when they yanked money out of your account. And don’t get me started on checking account direct debits for places like health clubs. Avoid these arrangements like the plague.
Instead, we’re going to let all these companies think we’re living in the stone age. Just arrange to have them all bill you monthly via old-fashioned mail. Some companies are starting to charge for paper bills, so it may not be worth it in every occasion, but the system works best when there’s a nice, orderly paper stack of bills to deal with.
Here’s the system that works for me:
- Throughout the month, bills arrive via mail and they’re placed in a (hopefully) short stack next to the computer — sorted in order by due date if I’m so motivated.
- If any payee is new, I first create a new payee in the bill payment system by entering the company’s mailing address, phone number, and my account number for that payee. This takes only a minute and doesn’t require you to contact the payee at all. If they normally accept checks via the mail, they’ll have no problem accepting payment this way — I promise.
- Then, two or three times a month, I spend literally a few minutes paying a manageable group of bills — without stamps, without writing checks, and without paying a single penny in fees. Pick the payee, enter the amount to pay, enter the due date, and you’re done. The bank decides whether to pay the bill electronically or via a check on your behalf, but you don’t have to worry about that. The bill will be paid, and the money will have stayed in your checking account until the last possible day.
It’s painless, efficient, and free. It also makes unexpected fees nearly extinct as long as you have money in your bank account.
Now why isn’t everybody doing this?
June 23rd, 2008
It should be an embarrassment to the TV industry that so few folks fully understand what HD television is, how to get it, or why they should care. Do I need a new TV? Do I have HD already and not know it? Or do I mistakenly think I’m already watching HD because I bought a new TV but didn’t upgrade my cable box?
The answers are different for different folks, but if you’re one of the millions of homes that’s not fully HD-ified, don’t fret. There are cheap options that may make you perfectly happy even though the cable and satellite companies might say otherwise.
First Scenario: You have a modern HD-ready TV (most often plasma or LCD with what’s called an ATSC tuner) purchased in the last 4 or 5 years and you subscribe to cable or satellite service. To get HD channels you’ll generally want to ask your provider for a new HD-capable box, which could also mean a new dish if you’re a satellite customer. This will usually bump up your monthly fee, but not by much. And this is the kind of situation where satellite customers should hold out for free upgrades of all hardware since you’ll be paying more monthly in the long term and making the satellite provider happy. Also note that while the major networks and some of the cable networks will then be arriving in HD, many if not most of them will still be the same old channels until every channel is available in HD.
Second Scenario: You have a modern HD-ready TV but don’t want to pay any more monthly or are ready to give up pay service entirely. This is actually a better option than ever now that crystal clear HD signals are being broadcast in every major city. It may seem antiquated, but if you live within about 30 miles of your local TV towers you can usually use an inexpensive indoor antenna to pull in full HD broadcasts of the major networks (NBC, CBS, etc). With zero monthly fee you’ll be watching full HD that exceeds the signal quality of most satellite and cable HD signals. There won’t be any Comedy Central or MTV unless you also pay for standard cable/satellite, but you can’t beat free.
Third Scenario: You have an old TV, no interest in HD, and don’t subscribe to cable or satellite service. Starting in February 2009 (unless they delay it again, which is always a possibility), you’ll need a small analog/digital converter box connected to your TV since the old signals TV stations have been sending for 50+ years will be turned off. This box will probably cost around $50 and the price can be offset by coupons the government is handing out here. You may also want a slightly fancier antenna, but if you get clear over the air signals now you may not need it.
See? That wasn’t so bad.
Helpful Links:
AntennaWeb.org – Type in your street address (you can leave all the other fields blank) and get a detailed survey of digital (HD) broadcasters in your area. They’ll also recommend an antenna type and tell you which way to point it.
Phillips HD Antenna – This cheap antenna at Amazon.com is highly recommended and will pull in beautiful HD signals for folks in most U.S. metropolitan areas.
Update: It’s often out of stock at amazon. Here another decent option by Philips.
DTV2009.gov – Request free coupons that will get you a cheaper converter box for old TVs that aren’t HD ready and won’t be connected to cable or satellite service.
January 24th, 2008
Update: The article below was written in July 2007. As of late 2008 Prosper has suspended most lending activity and seems to be struggling. I would no longer recommended them for borrowing or lending.
The Original Article:
I recently read about person-to-person lending site Prosper and was immediately fascinated with the idea. We’d already experienced the similar but non-profit microloan site Kiva.org, but Prosper has a different angle. They solicit requests for loans from average folks — many of whom are overwhelmed by credit card debt — and then take bids from other regular folk willing to lend that person some money. Loan amounts are generally in the $5000 to $15,000 range and the actual funds are provided not by Prosper but by people willing to pony up as little as $50 each. The result is that people with non-stellar credit get out from under their personal debt with simple, moderately-priced loans and lenders make a nice profit over the loan’s 3-year term.
Prosper handles all the details and even sends out the debt collectors if borrowers fall behind in their payments. And best of all, you get to read the prospective borrowers’ life stories and decide based on their details and credit history whether you’d like to help them out by bidding at a specific interest rate. Your personal risk as a lender stays relatively low since the money you invest is spread across multiple borrowers in small increments. You can also increase your profits as a lender by re-loaning money to someone else as it’s paid back just like the banks do.
I’m just now getting my feet wet as a lender, but so far I’m hooked. Whether you’re looking for financial help or can afford to invest some money to help folks get back on their feet, I say give it a try.
July 15th, 2007
I planned to write about the many “free” credit report scams, but MSNBC did it for me. The short version: Don’t ever pay for credit reports. You’re legally entitled to a free report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies once per year, but that doesn’t stop the sleazeballs from running TV commercials hoping to convince you otherwise. The one and only place to request your free reports is AnnualCreditReport.com. They’ll ask for a lot of personal information, but in this case (and only this case) it’s a legitimate free service run by the credit agencies and mandated by the government.
Also, if you discover anything incorrect in any of the three reports don’t hesitate to follow the company’s instructions for disputing it (usually possible entirely via their web sites). The burden is then on the creditor to prove that the item is correct, and if they can’t do so the error will eventually disappear from your credit report.
September 13th, 2006
May 2009 Update: Albertsons just announced the end of home delivery service. If you have Vons delivery in your area, try code SAVE447 for free delivery through May 27, 2009.
January 2009 Update: The Albertsons HCC33 code in the original article below is now dead, but try HOLIDAYSHIPPING (free shipping) or EMAILSAVINGS ($10, $15, and $20 off your next three order) instead.
Update: First-time Albertsons/ACME customers can contact us and ask for a referral that gives you free delivery your first order.
I fall in love again with grocery delivery every time the truck pulls up in front of our house. Yet when I recommend it to friends they seem frightened of the idea — having decided in advance that it’s some sort of overpriced luxury for people rich enough to have other people do their shopping. The truth is that grocery delivery is available from at least one major chain in pretty much all major cities in the US even after the high profile death of dotcom flame-out HomeGrocer. As far back as 1996 when I lived in Boston I discovered grocery delivery from a company called Homeruns, and lugging my own crap home from the store has seemed an unnecessary chore ever since.
So how does it work? Here in LA several chains deliver — including our largest local chain Albertsons. Strangely, these services are very poorly advertised. It’s possible the chains fear cannibalizing too much of their in-store revenue. In any case, Albertsons has become our favorite even though all the services work about the same: You just create an account online and add items to your cart like you would at any online store. They also let you add your regular purchases to a saved list so that subsequent orders will go even faster. Produce, meat, frozen food, and everything else they carry in the regular stores can be ordered online. Everything but hot deli food, that is. Then you pick a 1 1/2-hour delivery window the next day or anytime thereafter (including Sundays) and at the appointed time a truck pulls up to your door. They even carry it into your kitchen if you like with no tipping.
So is it more expensive than going to the store? Delivery from HomeGrocer was always free, but that’s not usually the case now. Albertsons charges $12.95 per delivery, but they often offer discount codes for online orders so delivery can still be effectively free. “HCC33″ is the code I’ve used for Albertsons.com for over a year now and it’s still good as of yesterday [see Update above]. And what about the prices? They’re always identical to those in the store — including loyalty card discounts. I hear they even accept coupons that you hand to your driver on delivery, but I’ve yet to try this.
So if you’re not yet a convert, give it a try. Once you let someone else carry your cases of soda, canned goods, and 50-pound bags of dog food into your kitchen you’ll never want to go back.
August 14th, 2006
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