With Christmas right around the corner I want to make myself available to my readers with suggestions for gifts. So For the next week (which will give you enough time for internet deals to ship to you) I will try to post frequently with deals I am finding throughout retail. If you have something you are searching for, feel free to use the

contact form located at the top of the page and I will be glad to find the best deals I can. Please, try not to send me more than a couple per person, this could get ugly. Here are the most recent deals I have found

College logo hats from American Eagle. Regularly 24.50 on sale 6.95 and use coupon code "64152219" to knock the price down to $5.91 with $5 for shipping (I added three hats to the bag and the shipping charge did not change).

Buy.com has a Refurbished Creative Zen Micro Phone 8GB MP3 player for $69.99. That is less than half the regular price for a new model and has no shipping charge.

Amazon Deals
I found six great deals on items for the Home all of them at least 50% off. The best being a 13 Piece Chicago Cutlery Bistro set for $30 regularly $100

Seven different deals on Toys and only one of them over $12

I found four deals on electronics. These are higher priced due to the nature of the products but all are at least 43% off.

Hope this helps and happy shopping!

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I joined

Joe Sangl this weekend on his crusade to help people with their finances. It really is fun to watch people realize that they can win with money after years of not understanding how to control their spending.

There was one uncomfortable moment when we went to fill up for gas. Joe drove right by the Race Way gas station and went to Shell instead and it was 2 cents more per gallon. He actually drove an extra 100 yard to get fuel at a higher priced gas station. Why? Because he didn’t like filling up next to the tanker truck that was refueling the stations gas tanks. He thought it might blow up or something. While this irrational fear cost him around 40 cents his next gas infraction came very quickly. After the tank was full, Joe didn’t turn the pump off and squeeze the trigger to allow the excess to drip into the tank. I was mortified!! I see this as the same as not picking up a penny as you pass it by on the street. Joe quickly called me a saving freak, we laughed and were on our way. I really do these things on a regular basis and though Joe doesn’t pinch the penny like I do he is pretty frugal on most things.

Joe is an excellent speaker and the tools on his web page are probably the best personal finance tools I have run across. If you want to have him come to your business, church, etc. you can contact him here.

The best deals on travel are never posted on any website and you cannot get them through direct contact with the companies themselves. The only way I have found to access the hidden deals is to bid using

Priceline[url/]. There are a few other sites that let you bi.... At this site you can see what prices other people are getting on their rates to a specific destination (arifare, hotel, and car rental). They also have bidding information on vacation packages.

After I have checked out biddingfortravel I go to Hotwire. Whatever rate I can get on Hotwire for a specific part of my trip I then go to Priceline and bid half of that rate. I will then move my bid up five dollars at a time until it is either accepted or it meets the Hotwire rate. In order to do this efficiently you will need more than one credit card since Priceline will only let you bid once per day per card without changing your options. I will usually save between 25%-50% off the Hotwire rate. Using this method I have gotten deals on a 4 star resort in Hilton Head (a resort city in SC) with an ocean view for $70 a night, a 3 star hotel in Savannah, GA for $42 a night, rented a mid size sedan for $5 a day, and many others. If you are willing to make the effort you can find amazing deals on anything that you can bid on with Priceline. This is by far the best way to go when it comes to travel.

Check Out my other two posts on travel:
Travel Troubles
Travel Websites

There seems to be a million websites where you can book travel these days. When it comes to searching for travel deals I only use three. The first is Travelocity. I like

Travelocity because it does list the details of the airline, hotel, time leaving, etc. with whom you are booking. They also have a great feature for booking airlines which is the flexible dates button. This allows you to search over a span of days and make a decision about when to travel as opposed to deciding when to travel and then making trying to bend the airlines flights around your plans. For international rates you have to use the international version of Travelocity which is called [ur=http://www.zuji.com/]Zuji[/url] (I don’t know where they got that name but it reminds me of how my stomach feels when I get sick on an airplane)

If you just want the best deal on a certain day, range of days, or quality level I use Hotwire. Hotwire does not tell you what company will be providing the service only what the rating is or the date range. So If I want to stay in Hilton Head I would only get to pick the number of stars of the hotel/resort not the actual hotel itself. Travelocity negotiates for lower prices and thus give you a better deal on average, especially on rental cars and hotels.

If I am going to be staying somewhere for an extended period of time (more than a weekend) I always check out VRBO.com. This stands for Vacation Rentals By Owner. This site connects people who rent out their property to people looking to rent a nice place. Every time we have used this site we have walked away with a deal. You get to negotiate directly with the property owner and if you go during the off season you can really steal a deal. These people are desperate to rent out the property when times are slow. As with any rental some money is better than nothing when your property is sitting there empty.

Other sites I recommend but do not use regularly:
Airfare
Kayak
Sidestep
Travelzoo
Mobissmo — International
Lodging
Venere
Vacation home rentals

Info
City 3-letter Code
airplane seating (find the best seat)

Check Out My other two posts on travel:
Travel Troubles
Getting the Best Travel Deals

Traveling long distances is never fun and rarely inexpensive. It used to be there was too little information for the common man to get a good deal, so he would employ the help of a travel agent. Now, with the internet, there is so much info weeding through it all is hard to comprehend. Which site do I use? What info sites can I trust? Why do these guys have all the access to information and not me? The reality is the info is available for us all we just have to know where to get it and how to use it. I originally planned to have two posts on travel, but after reviewing the information I want to share with you it is going to take three. Today we are going to look at the list I look at every time I need to travel. It reminds me how things need to be done if I can help it.

* Is your passport up to date? If not get a new one NOW!!
* Airlines will give you last minute deals so If you cannot get a deal ahead of time be patient
* Hotels hate last minute deals so make sure you get your hotel booked early afor a lower price.
* Rental car places run their deals at random times. Just keep trying and you will find one.
* NEVER NEVER NEVER ACCEPT A 2 STAR HOTEL!
* Get your hotel near the airport on the weekend and away from it during the week. The business travelers always stay near the airport so they are almost empty on weekends
* If you can get a discount airline for the same price take it. They are better at taking care of their customers. That is why they are taking over the market.
* Be prepared to pay 20% more than whatever price you get online. Local governments have figured out that taxation without representation works in the favor of those who govern.
* NEVER NEVER NEVER ACCEPT A 2 STAR HOTEL!!!
* Do you know someone near the are you are traveling to? See if they can get you a deal
* Always think off season for travel. Beach when it is colder, mountains when it is warmer, and anywhere you want in the first two weeks of December.
* Never buy a timeshare from a timeshare company (repeat in head three times).
* NEVER NEVER NEVER ACCEPT A 2 STAR HOTEL!!!!!!
* Traveling is expensive but it is one of the reasons we put forth so much effort to save money every day.

Check Out my other two posts on travel:

Travel Websites
Getting the Best Travel Deals

Lazy Man and Money was kind enough to include my post on Mattress Myths in the Festival of Frugality. This is a weekly blog carnival that highlights some of the better personal finance posts on frugality. Some of my favorites are:

AskDong breaks down the cost of toilet paper.

My Money Thinks chimes in with some gifts for hard to shop for people.

This wasn’t in the plan shares some ideas on a frugal Christmas.

And Paid twice gives a great update on Using your Turkey

I have been hounded by some friends to explain how I get such great travel deals. With so many people traveling in the next couple of weeks I think it is a good time to reveal my secrets. Check back tomorrow so you never over pay for travel again.

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The Grocery Game is a website set up to help people with buying groceries. For the last four weeks I have been trying it out to get a feel for how it works. At first glance this is one of the best ideas I have come across, however I came in completely unprepared so I ran into some pitfalls. The site goes out into the world and gathers information about coupons as well as weekly specials run at your local grocery stores. It compiles this information into a ready to read sheet that allows you to shop in a very inexpensive and efficient manner.

The service is relatively inexpensive. You pay $10 for two months of service for one grocery store and $5 for each additional grocery store and you get a trial period of 4 weeks for $1. I would risk a buck to try most things that may save me money.

The downside to the site is you really need to be collecting coupons for about a month before you are ready to use the service effectively. You also should consider having a large stand alone freezer for buying in bulk. My wife and I had neither of these so I started out bare and was not able to take advantage of the best deals. Also, since we have not ventured down the path of children yet, we do not really like having a bunch of one item since it usually goes bad before we can get around to using it (yes, even in the freezer). I personally found the site informative but relatively useless for my family.

Now I know that I have a limited perspective so I employed the help of my older sister (the one who broke rule #1 on Mattress Myths) since she has three children in her family. She really likes the site. For her it cuts down the time she is in the grocery store, helps her save on groceries every week, and lets her know when to stock up on a specific item. And somwhere out there there is a single person happy that she is not spending as much time in the grocery store with her three children.

So overall I think this is a pretty good site and would recommend anyone try it to see if it works for their family.

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I saw a comment on a post at

Joe Sangl’s blog by Tina. In this comments she talks about getting a cheaper price on spices by purchasing the spices from the international section of the grocery store. So while I was down at my local grocer shopping for food I checked it out. As I went down the international foods isle I noticed that the spices in the Mexican/Latino food section were all $1.39 (the labels were all in spanish and english). When I found the spice rack on the baking I made sure that I was looking at the exact same spices and was amazed at the difference in price. The least expensive one I could find, that had a spanish language equivalent, was 1.98 and that one spice was the odd ball. Most of them were upwards of three dollars and some were over five. Even the ones that were on special were twice as much as the spanish language spices. The great news is these are not off the wall spices but spices my wife and I use all the time (garlic powder, paprika, cloves, etc.). From now on I will be spicing up my life in spanish. Thanks Tina!

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Apparently there are a lot of women who love the free samples I find so I thought I would have a clip of freebies for them.

Garnie Fructis has another sample going

Take a survey from the Village Co. and choose from four samples.

I don’t know what Healthy Cell Serum is but is sounds nice.

A free sample of Clean and Clear Morning Burst.

I’m feeling more attractive already. Have a great Sunday!