Four of the five winners from yesterday have already gotten back to me so the last winner has another 24 hours to reply to my email or I will move onto the runners up. To be eligible to win prizes today and the rest of the week, sign up for my daily or weekly email list.
So far Wendy from Irvine, CA claimed the $20 Target gift card, Susanne from Redondo Beach, CA snagged the $10 Marie Callender’s gift card, Robin from Valley Village, CA will receive a hot pink Bargain Babe T-shirt, and Josha from Pensacola, FLA gets The 99 Cent only cookbook by Christiane Jory.
The only prize from yesterday that has not been claimed is Secrets of a stingy scoundrel by Phil Villarreal. Hilarious read.
- 8GB iPod Nano in your color choice courtesy of Savings.com
- $100 Sephora card courtesy of Friendgiftr.com
- $50 Amazon card
- $50 Goldstar.com card
- $25 Starbucks gift card (5 of them!)
- $20 Dollar Tree gift card
- $15 Quiznos gift card (5 of them!)
- $15 Save-a-Lot gift card
- 4 Bargain Babe hot pink T-shirts
- Savings.com red canvas reusable bag and water bottle, BargainBabe.com notepad, calculator and mouse pad, 4 Starbucks VIA mugs, 1 can of Starbucks instant VIA coffee, and five books.
- Five $15 Quiznos gift card (five winners)
- A woman’s guide to investing by Virginia Morris and Kenneth Morris
- One Bargain Babe hot pink T-shirt
To win, sign up for my daily or weekly email list by 5 p.m. PST today, Jan. 26, 2010.
If you don’t win one of the five Quiznos cards, consider entering their Choose 2 sweepstakes. Basically you enter your email, watch one of their commercials, and then answer questions about it. Every correct answer is worth one entry into a drawing for $4,000 in cash, kitchen appliances, electronics, 500 tree plantings, or $4,000 in Quiznos gift cards. That’s a lot of sandwiches!
If you live in Long Island, tune in tomorrow to hear me on KJOY 89.3 with Steve and Maria at 9 am EST. I’ll be on for about 5-10 minutes talking about bargains and how to save.
BargainBabe.com’s one-year anniversary is coming up and to celebrate I’m going to have a week of fabulous reader giveaways.
Every day we will give away at least one prize, including gift cards, books, and T-shirts. The daily prizes begin Monday, Jan. 25 and conclude Friday, Jan. 29, 2010.
Your feedback will help me decide what to giveaway!
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What are you cooking next Thursday for Thanksgiving – and how are you keeping costs low? My family splits up the cooking duties so no one has to foot the entire bill. I’m on appetizer duty.
Epicurious has an article on feeding eight people for less than $80 with a menu that includes butternut squash soup, roast turkey (of course), stuffing, Brussels sprouts with caramelized shallots, and pecan pumpkin pie. The story offers tips to reduce your bill, like making things from scratch, buying veggies that are in season, and asking others to pitch in.
Other tips to keep costs down:
- shop ahead of time
- scale back quantities
- nix unpopular side dishes (green bean casserole???)
- get a free turkey from the supermarket (by shopping their regularly leading up to the holiday)
- look for BOGO free sales
- check manufacturer sites for coupons for pumpkin pie, cranberries, and other items on your list
- use your regular dishes instead of buying paper plates
- make your own rolls for a few pennies instead of buying them
- make a centerpiece from fruit, a child’s artwork, candles, or your garden instead of buying a pricey floral arrangement
- stick to your list
- grocery shop the day after Thanksgiving for big sales
Plus: here are two comical dueling stories about whether the turkey is more important than all the side dishes. I’m leaning towards the sides – I can’t do without rolls and pie!
UPDATE: Reader Pam shared these turkey deals:
Right now Albertsons has a two for one deal on Butterball and/or $10 off of the store brand. You need to spend $25.
You can get a turkey at Vons for $5 if you spend $25.
I believe you need the store card for both of these.
Nic's events/Flickr
Hehehe, time to make trouble. Get into the holiday spirit by elfing yourself – or your friends – with OfficeMax’s free Elf Yourself program. Upload a picture and you’re good to go!
You can also make your elf dance (I chose disco and it was extremely entertaining). After you make 1-5 elves, click on the dance button. Then you can either watch them dance or email the elves to a friend. You can also post the elves to Facebook and Twitter. Here’s the country video I made with four of my favorite elves. They don’t let you embed it, unfortunately.
If you want to download your elf dance it costs $5. You can also buy your elf face on a coffee mug. Riiiiiight.
Folks, I’m in New York City for work and pleasure so I’m taking today off. See you Monday.
~Julia
aka Bargain Babe
Get 40 percent off the list price of one book at Borders now through Monday, Oct. 12, 2009. Print the coupon here. Online use code BSA1671X. Good at Waldenbooks, too. Some caveats.
Get 80 percent off restaurant gift certificates at Restaurant.com through Monday, Oct. 12, 2009. Use code FOUR. The $25 certs are $10-$15 so this code makes them $2-$3 each. Until now the certs have always been so it looks like the website is gaining steam. Read redemption rules carefully before you purchase.
Save up to $25 on select outerwear at Gap.com and get free shipping on $75 orders with the code GAPSHIP75.
Torrid is having a weekend sale on their plus-size clothing with prices up to 50 percent off clearance prices at Torrid.com through Monday. You can also take 10 percent off your entire order with any Breast Cancer Awareness donation when you use code POWEROFPINK, good through October 31.
REI members can get 20 percent off one full priced item with coupon code FALLDEAL through Oct. 18, 2009.
Get $5 off a purchase of $50 or more at Sears with coupon code SEARS5OFF50. Unclear when this expires.
Shop online through eBates, an automatic cash rebate site, and get double rebates for a limited time including, 3 percent back at Dell, 4 percent back at Sears, 4 percent back at White House Black Market, 5 percent back at Ann Taylor, 6 percent back at HP, 8 percent at SmartBargains, .
Thanks to Corrinne at Search by Inseam for a heads up about sales at the Gap, Torrid and REI.
Get $5 off a purchase of $20 or more at Borders through Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009. Print the coupon here. In store only. Some caveats. If you shop online without the coupon, Borders has more than 1 million items that qualify for free shipping through Oct. 4, 2009.
The online cash-back rebate site eBates has pumped up a few of their cash back offers, including 3 percent at Dell, 4 percent at Sears, 5 percent at Ann Taylor, 6 percent at HP, and 8 percent at SmartBargains.com. To get these discounts, join eBates (free) and click on merchant sites from eBates.com.
Get 20 percent off orders of $50 or more and 40 percent off orders of $100 or more at MyPublisher, a site where you can turn digital photos into photobooks. Use coupon code HOLSAVE40 at checkout. Expires Nov. 4, 2009.
This post originally appeared on the Bargain Hunter blog, which I wrote at the LA Daily News.
A lot has changed in the past eight years, but when it comes to finding bargains on September 11, I feel the same way I did last year. I cannot do my job. A few years ago I told you why and here’s that story again.
Forgive me for not posting any bargains today, the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Trying to save $3 on a sandwich or find a shoe sale seems silly and out of place today. Instead, I’m going to try to give blood, something I wasn’t able to do that day in New York.
So many people tried to donate on September 11 – we expected waves of injured people to flood the hospitals – that the blood bank was full. They turned us away.
Walking to and from the hospital everyone we passed was talking about the twin towers, you could see it on their faces and hear snips of the awful truth in their conversations.
I was stunned, like so many other people. Was it really possible those two massive buildings that stood almost twice as tall as any other building on Manhattan could collapse? But they did. I saw it from my kitchen window.
We lived on the third floor of a brick building adjacent to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. One of the things we loved about the apartment was its three large windows that looked onto lower Manhattan.
We had a picture perfect view. On days when the air was crisp and the sun bright under a brilliant sky – almost impossible to imagine in hazy LA – I ate my breakfast cereal in front of the window, just staring at the buildings. My own New York postcard.
September 11, 2001 was one of those gorgeous fall days. I had just started grad school at Rutgers in New Jersey and had planned to go into campus that morning. But as it turned out the CDs I needed to listen to had arrived the day before in the mail. Otherwise I would have taken the subway into Manhattan, transferring to the NJ PATH train at the World Trade Center. With the CDs at home, I slept in.
The sound of sirens finally woke me up. I got out of bed at about 9 a.m. and I remember thinking there were more sirens than usual that morning. You get used to a lot of noise living in New York City. Then I saw a trail of smoke from the first tower. I went back into the bedroom and woke up Hubby, who was then my boyfriend.
“There’s something going on,” I told him, nudging him awake.
I turned on the TV and one of the people being interviewed on the BBC was declaring this was an act of war. That seemed drastic. Maybe this was just an accident?
When the second plane hit my gut told me it wasn’t. From my window I saw the terrible gash the second plane created on the side of the building. There was a lot of smoke. You could see flames.
We tried to guess how many people might work in the two buildings. Tens of thousands, we decided.
Then the buildings collapsed. Dark, smokey clouds billowed.
I bristle when people ask me what it was like to watch. What do you think it’s like seeing thousands of people die in a few minutes? It is terrible.
But there was one part that was beautiful. After the towers collapsed – but before the wind blew a blanket of smoke and debris over Brooklyn – the brilliant sky glittered.
A sparkling arc reached like a hand over the bay from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It was incredible and I watched it for a few minutes before closing the windows so the dark air would not foul our apartment. Later I found out it was reams of freed office paper catching the sunlight.
The air cleared and we went to the hospital. We wanted to give blood, to do our part, but we couldn’t. Today I am going to try again.
Join me in giving blood today. You can find a donation center through the Red Cross by clicking here.
This is a guest blog post by bargain hubby.
Keeping your tires inflated saves you money – and you don’t even have to pay for the air! For every 3 PSI your car tires are low, you burn 1 percent more fuel and add 10 percent more wear to your tires, claims an article at Edmunds.com! The article also includes instructions and a video on how to pump up your car tires.
This doesn’t just apply to your car. Yesterday I was biking (in a hurry of course) and realized my tires were way too flat. The flat tires were slowing me down and tiring me out. I decided to pull into a gas station and pump up my tires, begrudgingly willing to spend seventy five cents to do it.
I lucked out. There was someone topping off the air in his car. It was clear he does this frequently as he jumped quickly from tire to tire with his digital air gauge. He finished well before the timer ran out and handed the hose to me to work on my tires.
“You know, they’ll often turn if on for free if you go ask, ” he told me. After I’d finished with my tires, I thanked him again for sharing his air. That’s when he said, “They have to provide the air for free to customers. You could go in and [lie to] tell them you got gas. But stealing air just doesn’t seem right.”
I biked off to my appointment, and arrived on time. The time spent adding the air was offset by my increased speed going up the mile long hill to my destination.
Later I checked his facts. AB-531 was passed in California in 1999, which requires that gas stations must provide the air and water machines free to customers. Since they can still charge “non-customers”, they’re unlikely to tell you that you have free access. This is one time it pays to ask!
Here are links to interesting stories that are an alternative to what I write about on BargainBabe.com.
Should student debt be forgiven? It could stimulate the economy. (Smart Spending)
Furry friends know no recession – fido gets a new leash! (NPR)
11 things you can do to fall behind – things we learn from failing (The Simple Dollar)
Consumers are trading in cars for cappuccinos – cheap luxuries we are spending our money on (The Wallet)
Get 10% off most items at Staples during their customer appreciate week Aug. 9 – 15, 2009. Print the coupon here.
Caveats: excludes personal computers, stamps, gift cards, and phone cards. No price matching, one per person, no credit/cash back, cannot be used in conjunction with Staples Rewards.
A reader named Ann pointed out a trick that warrants special attention. It stands to save us all a lot of money!
After reading your comment Ann I’m trying to track down the coupon policies of all the grocers and major retailers I shop at. So far I’m not finding too many of these policies online, perhaps because individual stores have their own policies.