a little effort can save you money

Like it or not, a car gets us places and for those of us with families, owning a car has become a necessary expense. Luckily there’s now the convenience of being able to get cheap auto insurance quotes online from the comfort of our own home.

All it takes is a little effort on our part to surf around a little bit and compare rates. In fact, some of the better insurance sites will provide auto insurance comparisons between their own and their competitors’ rates, which makes it even easier for us to compare since everything is on one page.

The problem though is that most times, we tend to stick with the same insurance company and it doesn’t strike us that there may be cheaper options out there that could save us money. Chances are, with a little research, we can always find a better rate and more savings.

shopping everything all in one place

Sure the shopping frenzy might be over for now but don’t tell me you won’t shop again till Christmas. Between now and then, there are still the birthdays, anniversaries, school breaks and lots of reasons to shop! Well, we still have to eat, don’t we?

So yeah, being the busy mom that I am, I’m constantly on the lookout for easy ways to shop. Between home, business and kids, I honestly don’t have a lot of time to be shuttling between stores looking for stuff that I need and comparing prices. Do you have any idea how time-consuming that is?

If there’s a site like Offers.com that gives me an organized list of the best offers around, all in one place, and saves me money and the hard labor of sorting through thousands of promos and deals, then I say, let me at it!

I have only 24 hours a day and quite frankly, most days it seems like those 24 hours go in the blink of an eye. And sometimes when kids need something for school or a birthday party, they don’t tell you till the last minute and then where am I going to find that stuff at a moment’s notice.

12 days of funky holiday deals

Say yay to funky colors and mismatches that will make your eyeballs spin round twice in their sockets !

Zany – set of 3 you can mix and match any which way you like

Starting November 30, 2009, Miss Matched will feature a different holiday deal every day. How cool is that! Be sure you check in every day. Deals end December 11, 2009.

The Black Friday, Cyber Monday mood continues with free shipping on orders of $75 & above. Offer is valid for orders within the continental US and ends December 11, 2009.

if you’re planning a party this summer…

… and I mean, any kind of party, I know a place where you can find an incredible amount of fun and themed personalized party products from party boxes,

Summer Fun Birthday Box which is a basic party package for 8 guests includes Summer Fun plates, cups, napkins, a table cover, cutlery, streamers, and candles

… to party favor sets you can give out to your guests

Garden Party Deluxe Favor Set – $6.99 which consists of one set of Garden Party deluxe favors, favor bag, crinkle paper and twist tie

… to personalized invitations and pinatas, kids love pinatas . Birthday in a Box is having a sale right now on invitations, banners, favors, decorations, themes, balloons… so go check them out.

Tags: Birthday in a Box

not a smart policy

Lately we’ve been buying quite a number of T-shirts from Brand’s Outlet. They have a special price if you buy 3 T-shirts and we kinda like that since my son needs lots of T-shirts now that he’s in college.

Seeing their brother buying so many new shirts, my 2 daughters naturally wanted to buy some too. Since the men’s and women’s sections are both having the same promo, I figured we could mix and match the T-shirts.

That means as long as we buy 3 shirts in total, we should enjoy the special pricing. Actually that’s what we’ve been doing the last few times we were there. But this time, they wouldn’t allow us to do that.

Times are bad so if they’re smart, they should relax the business policy rather than tighten it. Anyways I reckon we have more than enough T-shirts and won’t be buying any more for a while. Besides there are lots of other stores on sale now which are offering equally good deals.

break the impulse buying habit

I’ve barely done any ‘real’ shopping since Chinese New Year. Not bad, eh, for my efforts at cutting back and spending less in the face of this recession that’s just beginning to hit us!

I remember those times when I’d come back with a carload of shopping bags after having spent a day at the mall and eating so much that my diet pills were never very far away.

Now I’m more careful when deciding what I need to buy and what’s nice to buy. Impulse buying is a hard habit to kick if you’re a shopaholic like me.

But it can be conquered if you just step out of the shop for a few minutes and tell yourself you’ll come back if you can’t find a similar item for less at another store.

When I use this trick on myself, chances are I will either forget about the item or I will no longer feel the urgency to buy the item. It works for me. Try it!