Have you heard of Groupon yet?

Very interesting concept! I love that it has a lot of cities- sometimes it's hard to be a frugal blogger because I only know my own region well. Groupon is in most major cities and it's free to sign up! Here's a short video that explains it better than I can:



Go here to sign up! I am very interested it it for traveling purposes. We travel a lot, so it will be nice to get deals in a town that we're visiting that we may have not been aware of otherwise.

Finding Savings Online

I don't know where I'd be in my frugality journey if the internet did not exist. Being able to pop over to frugality blogs or find other savings online make getting a good deal (or at least spotting a bad one!) ridiculously easy!

I've been pretty good at hitting up Google when I order things online to attempt to find coupon codes. There are also some awesome coupon sites. I'm particularly impressed with this one, because it is fairly easy to use. Some of those sites are impossible, but Find Savings has categories for new coupons, expiring coupons, popular coupons, and a search. You can also look at specific store coupons, such as Target or Wal-Mart. There were free shipping offers, but this site also calls attention to things like clearance sales and free gifts with order. With the handy the search feature, it won't take very long to check to see if a deal that you're you're going to order online anyway can be made a little sweeter. All this without the hassle of going through pages of Google listings to make sure that you have found the most recent deal!

Since I do a large portion of my Christmas shopping online, I will be checking out coupon sites like this often. I also noticed that Clinique is among the stores listed- my sister no longer works for them, so my free Clinique days are over. It's good to know that there are places I can go to find potential deals on the products that I love.

Do you use coupon sites like Find Savings? If so, what are you favorites?

Joyful Holidays: Holiday Sanity Keeping Tools

My new Holiday time best friends are the United States Postal Service website and Amazon.com.

Since I've started working outside the home, I've lost the incredible luxury of being able to go places when the rest of the world is typically at work. I've either been a stay at home wife or had jobs with insanely flexible schedules until this year, and I had been taking going places at unusual daytime hours for granted! This does not mean that I'm doomed to be stuck in a never ending line of stressed, hungry, cranky,hurried people. The post office website lets me packing materials, stamps, and arrange carrier pickup minus the insanity. It does not take more than a few minutes, and it's a productive use of my lunch hour and break times. Many of the items (Flat rate boxes and envelopes, carrier pick up) are FREE. Three days ago I ordered stamps and paid $1 shipping. A whole dollar seemed steep for three books of stamps, but knowing what the lines are like after 5 PM, I decided that my time and sanity were worth far more than that single dollar.

Amazon delivers orders over $25 for free, and I get almost all of the items that I did not thrift, find a bargain on, or see and buy long before December. I wait and place one order all at once. If I'm traveling home for the holidays, I have it sent to my parent's house- one less thing to cram in the car! They also have little known price guarantee- if the price falls in the next 30 days, you can request the difference. I've saved quite a bit of money on kid presents with this feature alone.

Anything that keeps me out of the mall parking lot this time of year is a bonus to me. It helps keep my holidays simple and joyful. What are you favorite sanity savers?

Sponsered Review Me Review: 100 Big Coupons

I do not usually do paid reviews, because most of the things I could review would be completely out of place on a frugality blog, I made an exception for 100 Big Coupons. On the rare occasion that I actually buy something new online, I usually do a google search for coupon codes. This has saved me a bit of money here and there, but I had always wished there were an easy, and more important, reliable source that I could turn to, without having to fill in lots of information. I hate any source where I have to enter my e-mail address or any other information about myself to use the service. I also hate any page that is not fairly easy to navigate. I was impressed with 100 Big Coupons! You do not have to enter any information about yourself to use the information. They have a ton of retailers and the information is organized. If you want to, you can enter your e-mail address on specific retailers to be notified when that particular business has new offers, which could be useful if you were looking for something specific. I also liked that they listed several Amazon deals, instead of just the free shipping for orders over 25 dollars, which pretty much everybody already knows about, and if they do not know, will be informed of on the Amazon.com site. If you are already planning to buy something from an online source, or are researching prices, it would be worth a visit to 100 Big Coupons!

This has been a paid Review Me review.