Never, Ever Pay Full Retail for Anything!

Something my mom always taughtme from the beginning of time....Never, ever pay full retail!

This is truly a mindset. It is so hard to see all the nice new things that come out each season and not "WANT" it all.

But here is what my mom taught me:

When all the new things come....we would go "wish" shopping.

we would go and look at everything, the new fashions and decide what we liked and what we didn't, try on and really got a feel for what we truly liked....then...here comes the tricky part.

We would walk out and leave all of it at the store.

No impulse buying here. lol

Then when the stores started their sales. We would ...................you guessed it............stay home.lol

Then when the stores would have a really good sale, like the one I went to yesterday...90% off.

We would go and buy.

Now the downside is there was not always what we picked out the first day. But we did always do well. I was always clothed very well.

My dad still does this to this day. He visits the big department stores in our area and chooses what he will want when the sales get good. Usually he will buy when the item is 50% off and take another 50% off.....He is frugal too!

The key here is to always buy at the end of the season for the next year. Those of you who have small children....you will get good at guessing growth rate of your child..it can be done.

My girls always were a year behind the styles...

If there was an item that came out that was very trendy and I knew would only last for one season...If it was something they really wanted......Then it might become a Christmas Present.

You get the basic principle...........no impulse buying.........wait for sales.........buy end of season!

You will save thousands of dollars using this method.

The cool thing is, after a year or so, you realize that you are learning the sales patterns of your favorite stores and you know how long to hold out for that favorite item.
Best Shopping!

Frugal Free Movies

Hulu.com is offering free movies on demand through the browser. This is made possible by the efforts of NBC and News Corp. Here now a quick look at how Hulu changes the online video-on-demand picture:

Not too long ago, I would have told you that video over the Internet was a little more than a dream. Grainy, postage stamp-sized windows, endless rebuffering, and choppy, out-of-sync audio was the typical experience–given that there was another electronic box in the living room called a “television,” Internet video hardly seemed worth the effort.

With todays technology-- Hulu joins Apple’s iTunes Music Store, Netflix, ABC.go.com, Amazon Unboxed and others in actually providing a viable alternative to the TV Set for watching television shows and movies on your computer.

Hulu is different from paid online video like Apple and Amazon in that it’s free, obviously. The programs have what Hulu calls “limited” commericial interruptions, and to be fair, unlike regular TV, the commercial breaks that I saw were limited to one 30-second ad, inserted at the usual place you might find them while watching a TV program. You can pause, go back, and skip ahead to other parts of the program–it seems likely that one might be able to avoid the ads if you were determined to do so, but I found that the advantage of watching a TV show with ads on my computer over watching on TV was that I could simply pop open another browser window and listen for the end of the ad while I checked my email or caught up on my blogs. For now, to a lazy person like me, hacking my way around the ads seems like it might not be worth the bother.

Picture quality, while not high-def, is certainly acceptable on my 15-inch laptop screen, and you can open the window to full screen if you like, or pop the video out into a separate window.

To save money, we have canceled out cable TV. Because of this hulu.com has really given us a frugal way to watch movies. We love it and hope you will go see the wide range of videos available.

Spend $8.00 for $40.00 Groceries!!!!

I always saw the ads from local pharmacies for a free gift card with a transfered or new perscription. I was really doing good to get to Walmart and get the thing filled and get home.

But now I have really found out how great these offers can be.

Right now Walgreens has a coupon out $25.00 gift card with a transfered perscription.

Rite Aid had one for a $30.00 gift card for a transfered perscription.

Krogers is $20.00 for a new or transfered.

I have been racking up on these.......I had two antibiotic perscriptions for my daughter that has an abcess tooth....bummer. The perscriptions were $4.00 each and Kroger gave me $40.00 worth Free Groceries!!!!!

This is something that if you are not doing to help make ends meet....you really need to look into it.

I have one perscription that cost $50.00 out of pocket. I went to Rite Aid.....with coupon in hand and got the $30.00 gift card back....making my perscription cost $20.00....Next month...I will look for another coupon and transfere again.....It all helps in the end.

So Play the perscription game....It is fun and pays off for sure