The Frugal Goose

So you want to take a trip.  You have several options: drive or fly or if you’re really extreme, you do both.  You do some research and take some factors into consideration. 

Let’s take drive first.  You have to think about the cost of gas, the cost of mileage on a car whether you own or lease.  And perhaps most importantly of all, you have to think about the time it will take and the cost of your sanity. 

Now let’s take fly for some thoughts.  If you’re flying within the next few days, you might as well be prepared to pay an arm and a leg and have very limited choices in terms of seats and flight times.  If you plan ahead, you may have some more flexibility on those issues.  With the flying choice you have something else to consider…long security lines, wait times, possibility of delays and even cancelled flights.  Oh the joy of airports. 

So we come back to the original question…when it comes to travel, is it better to drive or fly?     

Came across a pretty good About.com article with tips on being a better haggler. When it comes to negociating I think doing the research is one of the most important practices you should implement. What’s the point of haggling if you don’t know anything about what you’re haggling for? Most people try to go in and just haggle aggressively to get the price down thinking its normal and easy. The problem is, they might not know everything they should about the item and therefore may just be digging themself into a hole or leaving unsatisfied for the wrong reasons.

CLICK HERE for the full article

I ran accross this article from SmartMoney.com not too long ago and found some very useful and practical common sense advice here on when to shop for things. I thought the car buying and electronics advice was especially useful because I think most people try to look for the best time to buy these things but don’t exactly know. This article has been getting a lot of exposure online, so if you haven’t seen it yet I suggest checking it out!

 Click Here to read the full article

This article says it all. I won’t summerize too much but there is some really useful info here. Some of it is kind of common sense and just used for filler I think.

“47. Try to carry lunch from home to work. This will prevent you from going out every day during lunch time to grab a bite. Trust me this is a much cheaper and healthier option. ”

     - I’ve been doing that for years!

“58. If you are a book lover, why not join a library instead of buying all those books? This way you can read more for less. ”

     - The library? Whats that?

” 79. Invest in regular car checkups and tune-ups. This helps the engine to be more fuel efficient and makes you spend less.”

     - This is a common sense but one of the best tips here. Definately do a seasonal check up before winter and summer time.

Click Here for the full article.

There are a ton of sites online that either post a deal themself or rely on their forum or community to bring deals into the atmosphere. A number of these sites run like a business where if you’re clicking on their links, they will get referal bonuses for purchases you’ve made. It seems like an even trade as some of these can have some seriously good deals, especially for tech items. There are probably many more discussion forums or areas of forums that deal with deals (no pun )… Here are some that I frequent almost daily:

http://bensbargains.net/ : I’m not sure how long they’ve been around but they seem to have a pretty active community posting comments for interesting items. Sometimes humorous debates arise about a product. I’ve gotten a number of things through deals I found here including my computer from Dell and random items off Amazon.
http://slickdeals.net/ : This place doesn’t post as many deals daily but has a huge and extremely active forum area. You’re more likely to find something useful there. Even if you can’t, post a request and someone can probably help. http://forums.slickdeals.net/

http://spoofee.com/: Kind of a quirky fun site seems to have a following. Sometimes posts good stuff no one else has posted.

http://www.gottadeal.com/: Well organized and structured. Updated on a consistant schedule. Has some average deals, doesn’t seem to have a lot of discussion or community behind it. Also has some subdomain sites as part of its network.

http://dealspl.us/ : A pretty good deal aggregator similar to bensbargains. Seems to be run by user submissions.

http://dealmac.com/ : Another pretty good site, usually lists a number of mac related posts but has a lot of every other kind of tech item. I check it daily.

The frugal goose goes quack! More to come!