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 deep-discounted leftovers, but also look for discounts on paper goods, storage bins, food — just about everywhere. That expensive can of cashews, for instance, may be 90% off just because the box is red or there’s a tiny holly leaf on the packaging. 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.
People are ditching land line phone service in droves, but for those of us who still need it there are a few things you can do to reduce the monthly charges.
First, make sure you’re not overbuying service. If your local phone company is like ours (Verizon), then their default plan includes unlimited local phone calls. This is usually more than folks need, but don’t count on the phone company to mention that they probably offer cheaper metered plans that include a parcel of local minutes for a lower monthly fee. As with many things in the land of Cheap, it can’t hurt to call and ask if you can downgrade.
Also, be sure you’ve ditched any add-on services that can push up your monthly bill quite a bit. We find caller ID indispensable at nearly any price, but can do without annoying call waiting, which is only a service to those calling you. And if you’re paying the phone company for overpriced voice mail service, consider getting a modern cordless phone system with digital answering for the same features and no monthly fee.
Finally, for those long distance calls you’re not making with a cell phone, look into a cheap alternative long distance provider. Their rates are almost certainly cheaper than your local phone company’s rates for both in-state and interstate calls.
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 unlimited Instant Viewing. Taking advantage of these services required a $250 one-time outlay for the amazing TiVo HD box and $100 for the excellent Roku Netflix Player box, but both are a great value.
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 Instant Viewing on the Roku box (unlimited streaming straight to your TV).
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 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 various video file types.
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.
