Kileab's Blog

I used to live just south of Charlotte, NC (SC has lower taxes). I would commute to the north side of Charlotte for work driving about 30 miles one way. It was at this point in time that I became fascinated with autowrapping. You have probably seen cars that have advertising that completely covers the car. Many of these vehicles are owned by the company that is being advertised, but some of them are just private citizens that are being paid to advertise with their vehicle. My problem was that my cars have always been so old that no one wanted to advertise on them. Now that I have a new enough car I don’t drive far enough to entice an advertiser (plus I live in the country so not enough possible customers either).

Now I am sure some are curious as to why I would want to do this. The reason is they pay you somewhere between $200-$400 per month. That could pay off your car!! It could cover the rising cost of gasoline. I mean that is a significant chunk of change for letting someone advertise on your vehicle. The contracts vary in length but I found two companies that still do this type of advertising. They are

AutoWrapped and Ad-Wraps. There are some others but they want you to pay a membership fee so that seems like a scam. If you live in a heavily populated are this might be a nice source of income for you.

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Here are a few free samples for you to enjoy:

Free sample of

Nestle Crunch Crisp Bar

For the coffee drinkers free samples of Shelbourne falls Coffee and Coffeemate Creamer

Health conscious? Try and Ensure Nutrition Shake

And if you need to take the edge off here’s a sample of Pravda Vodka

Here’s a couple freebies that are great for your kids:

Free ticket for baby’s first circus from Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Free Sesame Street Fire Safety Station Stories & Songs Casse...

For those of you who think your pets are your childrent:

Free online pet training videos and lots of coupons.

$8 off Iams dog food

Ever get that feeling that an offer was too good to be true? I get mail and e-mail all the time where the business or deal seems like it could be legitimate but something just doesn’t smell right. I recently ran across a great site for testing these waters,

RipoffReport.com. This site allows people to post all the scams they have run across. So far there are more than 275,000 reports and the search feature on the site is pretty accurate. Best of all it’s FREE!! So you can take advantage of all this consumer knowledge at no cost. Have a happy weekend. I will be posting a few more freebies on Saturday and Sunday.

Microsoft office is too expensive and the Monopoly that Microsoft has on the development of quality documents is ridiculous. There are reasonable alternatives out there. The most popular is

open office. Open office was developed by Sun Microsystems a direct competitor with Microsoft on large servers and business systems. This software is distributed free of charge and works almost exactly like all of the office suite.

The second alternative is actually web based and called thinkfree.com. I have not used this platform as much as open office but what I have seen is pretty impressive. They provide you with a Gigabyte of online space to store information and their online applications work just as advertised. Once again the service is free, all you do is sign up online.

Both of these applications work with the files that are produced by the Microsoft Office suite so you can send them to anyone and they will be able to open them. For most people this is a great alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on the Microsoft product. They both have support for Word, Power Point, and Excel documents and will work in a way that is familiar to anyone that has used the Microsoft products. So the question now becomes, do you really want to pay for Microsoft’s overpriced product?

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I love teachers. Well mostly because my wife is one. Teachers deserve a lot of credit for the work that they do. For this reason I present

Tech Trekers freebie section for teachers. This site has not been updated for a while but in clicking around I found that almost all of the links work. Overall a great site for teachers and home school parents.

Do you ever get tired of the constant barrage of credit card offers? I know I do. I just learned about a website that can help. It is called [url=https://www.optoutprescreen.com/]optoutpreescreen.com[url]. The site is pretty simple and gives you the pros and cons of receiving unsolicited offers for credit and insurance. You can opt out of these offers for five years right from the website or you can use snail mail and opt out forever. Doesn’t seem like a bad idea for people who no longer want 6 tons of junk mail a week.

This particular tip has saved me hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Target is the second largest retailer in the world. They are priced slightly higher than Wal-Mart but have managed to grab the public perception that they offer higher quality products. What most people do not know is that they are the king of clearance. The way the clearance at Target works on regular items is that once an item is marked clearance it will usually be marked down 30%. After two weeks it will go to 50% off. And then it will finally be marked down to 75% off. I have used these clearance deals to purchase bikes, linens, shampoo, electronics, etc. Most of them at 75% off the regular price. Now seasonal (holiday items) go through this clearance cycle much faster, meaning days instead of weeks, and the seasonal items go up to 90% off. You will see the clearance items marked with a small red tag. You always have to scan the bar codes because the prices will update before the employees will remark the items.

The mar down schedule for Target goes like this:

Monday–kids clothing, infants dept. and electronics (maybe food also)

Tuesday–women’s clothing (maybe food also)

Wednesday–men’s clothing,garden, health and beauty

Thursday–lingerie, shoes, house wares, sporting goods, luggage, toys

Friday–cosmetics, hardware, auto, domestics, home improvement and jewelry

Be aware not all stores follow this schedule. It is more like a guideline. Just to give you a few recent examples of clearance items small appliances just went on 75% clearance less than a week ago. I saw a KitchenAid K45SS Classic 250-Watt 4-1/2-Quart Stand Mixer which retails on Amazon.com for $170.00, but it was on clearance at Target for $60. A four slice toaster that is regularly $70 was $16.24. This is a great way to save money on everyday needs as well as some big ticket items.

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The Washington Post released a story yesterday that KB Stores will be closing 156 stores at locations across the country. They only listed the six stores in the DC area that will be closing and the message boards also listed the Milpitas store in the bay area of California. All these store are scheduled to close by Jan. 8. This may be a great way to get some last second deals for Christmas. If you don’t know if there is a store near you they have a

store locater on their website.

Here are a few freebies I found that help you take care of yourself:

Shampoo and Conditioner from

Vive Pro

Skin care from Garnier Nutritioniste

If you need to quit smoking I found a 20 piece sample of Nicorette Gum

And a free weeks supply of DanActive, a probiotic dairy drink from Dannon

It is the Friday after Halloween so it is time to buy your decorations for next year. Most general retailers carry Halloween supplies but once Halloween is over these items become an albatross around their neck because they are taking up space for Christmas items. Thus, Halloween supplies go on Clearance fast. I was in Wal-Mart yesterday and all the Halloweens stuff was 50% off. This amount will increase over the weekend. Target will eventually cut all seasonal (aka holiday) items up to 90% off.

Since I mentioned Christmas. Wal-Mart has decided to hold a secret sale. This means they are releasing some of their Black Friday Deals early. The three major items they have slashed prices on are a 50″ plasma tv, an HD dvd player, and a laptop. There are a couple more deals you can check them all out

here. I do not recommend the HD DVD player. I will be talking about why in a post next week. Keep checking in this weekend for some more freebies!

Ever look at something on the shelf and think, “man, I could really use that but am I getting a good deal?” That question can now be answered as long as the item you are looking at has a bar code. Introducing

Frucall, an online company that offers three ways to compare prices from your mobile phone. You can call the toll free number 1-888-363-7822 and enter the bar code, text message the bar code to 37811 and they will text you back, or you can use your mobile web browser to go to http://frucall.com/m and use the mobile version of their website. This is a great way to make sure you are at least getting a fair price.

Seems Nestle never intended for this to get out on the Internet so they have shut it down and threatened criminal prosecution. Sorry Folks

I love searching for freebies on the weekend. I found a great coupon for free Juicy Juice. It is one of the few products that is actually 100% juice. Click here to view the brochure, but make sure you only print the first page with the coupon on it or you will print a four page brochure.

There was a distinct fall chill in the air last night and it got me thinking about my lips chapping. So, I went out and found a free sample from

Carmex. Unfortunately it will take two to three weeks to get here. By that time my lips may no longer be kissably soft.

There was a time when wine connoseurs would not purchase a wine that was less than $15 a bottle. That time has passed with the emergence of Charles Shaw Wine. The wine, better known as Two Buck Chuck, is only $1.99 a bottle and is available at

Trader Joes Grocery Stores. Two buck chuck beats out $15+ bottles in blind taste tests and has become legendary among the wine communities where it is available. Check for a location near you here.