Black Friday Deals and Cyber Monday

Hi All,

Thanksgiving has come and gone...and now the holiday season is upon for real!  Which, of course, means that holiday shopping has started!

So...here's a list of some Black Friday deals.
 The Verge - 24 Best Deals
Engadget - Best Black Friday Deals 2017
ABC News - Year's Can't Miss Black Friday Deals 
Walmart -  Best Black Friday.com 2017 Advertisement
BGR - Black Friday Deals 2017

Cnet - Cyber Monday Deals  
Fox News - Cyber Monday's Biggest Deals and Savings
CBS News MoneyWatch - 10 Stores Will Have the Best Cyber Monday Deals in 2017

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Black Friday - interesting read!  And, here's the Wikipedia entry for Cyber Monday - another interesting read!

Enjoy the shopping!

Regards,
Stu

CamelCamelCamel

Hi All,

It's Friday and I'm going to take it real simple and easy....
CamelCamelCamel.com is a free Amazon.com price tracker. It monitors  millions of products and alerts you when prices drop - which helps you decide when to buy.

CamelCamelCamel has a link for Amazon Price Drop Alerts - basically these are price watches you can get alerts via email and Twitter when prices drop.

There are also Amazon Price History Charts where users can view the price history of over 18 million Amazon products.

Users can also add the CamelCamelCamel Add-On to their internet browser.  There is an Add-On available for Mozilla Firefox and for Google Chrome.

Users can use this link to find Top Amazon Price Drops - very helpful.

Finally, this CamelCamelCamel page of tools has something very unique - Amazon.com Wishlist Synchronization.  This link will automatically create price watches for all of the unpurchased items on your Amazon.com Wishlist...awesome!

But before you can use the 'advanced features' on CamelCamelCamel, users will need to create a free CamelCamelCamel account - which you can do by clicking on this link.

Click on any of these three links to find reviews and comments about CamelCamelCamel...
1. Lifehacker - Five Best Price Tracking Tools
2. Square Pennies - Money Saving Tool: CamelCamelCamel
3. PC World - Tack Amazon Price Drops With CamelCamelCamel 

Enjoy the links - and let the savings roll in!

Regards,
Stu

Saving Money Is Where It's At!

Hi All,

Back in December 2014, Yahoo Finance! published an article with the title '11 Websites That Will Make You Smarter About Money'. 11 websites were mentioned, but I want to discuss the first one - heck, I might even revisit the article in the future and discuss other sites mentioned in the article - or not...I'll see.

Anyway the site in question is Wise Bread. It bills itself as 'personal finance and frugal living forums'. It also bills itself as 'Living Large on a Small Budget' on the masthead of the website. So if you want to learn how to save money from everyday people, this is the place to go.  Wise Bread writers share both their own experiences and tips...so the site is really, really good for advice on the everyday challenges of spending less and saving more.

Wise Bread has sections on Credit Cards, Personal Finance, Frugal Living, Career, Life Hacks, Best Deals, Top PF Blogs and more.  Note also that the site has a search box at the top right side of the screen.  Discussing each of these sections in detail would result in far more than a simple blog post. It has the makings of a chapter of book.  So I'll discuss just one section of the Wise Bread website: Frugal Living.  Readers can click this link to go to the main Wise Bread page and peruse the rest of the site on his or her own...besides, isn't that half the fun of the web?

The Frugal Living section of Wise Bread is broken up into sub-channels: Budgeting, DIY, Entertainment, Food and Drink, Green Living, Health and Beauty, Home, Lifestyle, Shopping, Style and Travel.

Under the various sub-channels are popular articles and the latest articles in budgeting.  As of 10/14/15 the top 3 articles on budgeting were:
1. How Much Engagement Ring Can You Actually Afford?
2. These 5 Apps Will Help You Finally Organized Your Money?
3. Best Money tips: Common Mistakes in Your Family Budget

And the list has at least a dozen other articles that readers might do well to read.  Readers can make comments on the various articles, share them via Facebook, Tweet them via Twitter and Pin them via Pinterest.

Finally, readers can subscribe to the site by clicking on this link.  Content is powered by Feedburner and users can subscribe using a variety of web-based news readers. 

So if you are interested in saving money, or learning about personal finance or getting career information or getting the inside scoop on credit cards, you might want to visit Wise Bread!

Regards,
Stu

Top Personal Finance Blogs

Hi All,

I've never discussed them before - but now is as good a time as any to discuss them.  What am I talking about you ask?  Personal Finance Blogs.

Doing a Google search for the phrase 'personal finance blog' gets you some ridiculous number of hits (actually 324,000,000 - that's 324 million....) which is utterly useless.

However - the top result is the one I'd like to discuss today.  The link goes to a site called Wisebread.  That site has a ranking - always changing, always updated - of 100 Most Popular Personal Finance Blogs.  Bingo! Score! Ka'ching!

So, what exactly is Wisebread? It is a site that compiles ranking for the 100 Most Popular Personal Finance Sites.  And it compiles the rankings based on other websites popularity.  Other sites included are: mozRank, Linking Domains, Klout Score, Twitter Followers, Alexa rank and Facebook Likes.  All in all this is a fairly accurate to guage the popularity of these personal finance blogs.

So, what are the top 10 sites? Starting with number one and working down to the tenth most popular site they are....

1. Consumerist
2. Wise Bread
3. The Krazy Coupon Lady
4. Money Saving Mom
5. Get Rich Slowly
6. I Will Teach You to Be Rich
7. Deal Seeking Mom
8. The Simple Dollar
9. Money Crashers
10. Hey, It's Free!

Enjoy the sites - I hope they are interesting to you!
Stu

Top Personal Finance Blogs

Hi All,

I don't regularly blog about finance topics - they are too complicated and rife with possible pratfalls and mistakes.  But....some time ago I came across a site called Wise Bread.  The Wise Bread FAQ describes the site 'as a community of bloggers...to help you live large on a small budget.'

Readers can subscribe to Wise Bread, become a fan on Facebook or visit the Wise Bread website.

One of the more impressive sections of the website is the 'Top Personal Finance Blogs' section. What is fairly unique about the site is that they rank personal finance blogs.  How do they do this you ask?  Excellent question. 

The ranking of the 'Top Personal Finance Blogs' is calculated sing six third party measurements that measure a blogger's influence and reach. Issues such as social media influence, link profile and traffic rank are addresed by the Wise Bread 'Wise Score'. 

That all being said, essentially the Wise Bread 'Wise Score' ranking can be thought of as 'the percentage of the Personal Finance blogosphere that a particular blog outranks'.  Click here for even more information.

So, what are the top 5 personal finance blogs according to Wise Bread?  Click on the link and you'll go to the summary page from Wise Bread for the particular personal finance blog.

1. Consumerist
2. Wise Bread (self serving - I'll go to number 6)
3. Money Saving Mom
4. The Krazy Coupon Lady
5. Get Rich Slowly
6. I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Enjoy the sites - hope they are helpful.

Stu

Coupon Websites

Hi All,

Just a quickie blog post today - but I think it might cover one of the most popular topics around currently. I'm talking about coupons and couponing.

The internet is a vast resource for this type of activity. There are dozens and dozens of websites that offer up coupons and advice on saving money.

Some issues to consider when signing up for coupon websites:
1. Try to make sure that they are legitimate. Consider sending the owners an email. If the site has a bulletin board or blog, follow it for a few days or a week to make sure the site isn't just trying to poach your email address.

2. Don't give out personal information like phone number or address. Likewise, don't include a social security number or a credit card number. That is just way too much information to give out to a coupon website.

3. You might want to consider creating a separate email account for when you sign in to the various coupon websites so that the emails are separated from your regular email.

Now, on to the coupon sites.

Coupons.com - possibly the mother of all coupon sites....Similar to the other sites listed below - Coupons.com has a comprehensive list of topics on the left side of the screen. For example, there are automotive coupons, beverage, flowers and gifts, foods, health care, household, entertainment, office supplies, personal care, pet care, restaurants and more topics for coupons. One different with Coupons.com is that you can see the coupons on the first page - you just click on the coupon you are interested in and then scroll down to the next page of coupons. When you are finished you need to click on the print icon and you will be prompted to download the Coupon Printer installer. Essentially this downloads software to your computer to download the software...fyi, you only have to do the download once.

CouponMom.com
CouponMom is a well organized coupon site that has been seen on the Today Show, CNN, and Oprah's television show. The site has categories like grocery deals, drugstore deals, restaurant deals, online coupons, free samples, and a blog. Don't miss this site!

CouponCabin.com
Site has links to coupons by vendor or store name and by coupon type (food, clothing, category, printable, online coupons, etc...) The thing that I never understood about these various coupons sites is that they have categories that encompass two categories. For example, when a user goes on to these sites, they are, by definition, looking for printable coupons. In addition,all of these coupons are online - so why do these sites have these two categories? Beats me - but the real interesting thing about these sites are the coupons themselves.

Users can download software the first time they visit the site and then they'll be able to print out the various coupons that they check off on the site. Pretty simple and easy to do - even the download is fairly easy. Users can search the site using the search box at the top right side of the homepage. There is also a section on 'Extreme Couponing Made Easy' - click here for that link.

Enjoy and hopefully the sites will save you time and money!

Regards,
Stu