Posted by M.S. on August 27, 2009
Dollar stores can be a great economical source for a wide variety of items including food, household items, cleaning supplies, gadgets, school supplies,wrapping paper, greeting cards, and much much more.
Shop Smart Magazine , published by the editors of Consumer Reports, recently sent mystery shoppers into dollar stores across the country. What they found was somewhat shocking and something you should consider before your next trip to a dollar store!
First, what they discovered was that roughly 77% of the items in many dollar stores cost more than a dollar! It’s easy to get caught up in the buying frenzy, thinking you’re getting a super bargain, so you do need to practice restraint in the store.
One surprising fact that may influence your buying decision, is that many dollar stores will not accept coupons or returns. Many dollar stores also will not accept credit cards.
The mystery shoppers at ShopSmart Magazine compared the prices and quality of 11 household products and compared those same products with items purchased elsewhere.
Included in the pricing comparison was heavy duty aluminum foil, gift wrapping paper and supplies, and cotton rounds. Each of these items was found to be a good value for the money, based on the price and quality of the product.
Several items that the ShopSmart Magazine investigators tested, turned out to actually be more expensive or of a lesser quality than would be readily available at a Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens or CVS stores, particularly if you used coupons at the other stores.
Those items included tissue wrapping paper and birthday candles, which they noted were consistently cheaper at Wal-Mart. Of course, shopping the sales at the other superstores and using your coupons could wind up lowering your prices on those items dramatically!
Another interesting discovery by dollar store investigators, was the fact that there were some expired medicines and food products being sold, including items for children. Customers have reported incidences of expired or leaky batteries purchased at dollar stores.
Investigators also found numerous items that could be dangerous to children, including toys with small parts which could be choking hazards. According to investigators, be especially careful of older toy items being sold, which could possess high levels of lead paint. Customers also reported issues with lighters not turning off, and fire hazards with Tiki torches.
All in all great the dollar stores are a great place to get great bargains! But it does pay to be selective and careful when shopping.
Posted by M.S. on August 13, 2009
In this economic slowdown, would you like to make extra money or build a business selling on the Internet?
Take a look at the 10 simple steps to improve your chances of making money selling on eBay!
I have learned these techniques as a successful eBay Powerseller, selling on eBay since 1998, and I now have over 4,000 positive feedbacks.
Now, I am trained by eBay as an Education Specialist & I can help you be successful on eBay too!
The Top Ten Things You Can do to be Successful on eBay!
1. Research the item: Be sure you know everything you can about the item you are listing, so you can accurately describe it and determine an approximate value. Research the item by doing a Google search.
2. Start with a low starting price. I always start with a $9.99 starting price and have a no reserve auction. This means the item will sell to the highest bidder. Low starting prices encourages participation and bidding. You can protect yourself with a reserve auction for a valuable piece.
3. End auctions on Sunday evenings. I always start my auctions on a Sunday evening around 9 pm Eastern time. (That is 6 pm West Coast time.) That way, the auction will end 7 days later at the same time. That is prime time for people to be on their computers and bidding! eBay traffic proves that’s a great time!
4. Include Important Keywords in the Title. Did you know that your title is critically important to your eBay listing & is the main way people will find your item? For that reason, research all the important words that people associate with this item. Look at other eBay listings to see keywords others have included in their auction listings for similar items.
5. Write a catchy description and include all details. Write as if you were writing an ad—because you are! The description & photos are the only way buyers can learn about the item & decide to buy. Include all flaws or damage about the item. People get very upset & leave negative feedback if you are not honest about the condition.
6. Take great photos. Great photos in good lighting is crucial! Include as many photos as you need to show all the features of the item. Take close ups of significant features of the piece. Make it easy for prospective buyers to get excited about your item! Then they will bid more!
7. Keep Shipping Costs Low or Free. Set shipping prices low. Use the Paypal shipping feature that allows you to print US Post Office labels from home with free delivery confirmation included. The mail carrier picks them up from you for FREE- so no more trips to the post office.
8. Be available during the auction to answer questions. Check your e-mail often throughout the day and evening. People will have questions & they expect timely responses, so answer them promptly.
9. Ship the items as soon as you are paid. I love accepting Paypal, since they handle the entire financial portion of the transaction. Once a payment is in your Paypal account, you can ship, since it is considered cleared. Buyers LOVE it when you ship quickly. That helps encourage positive feedback!
10. Be generous with positive feedback. I leave glowing positive feedback as soon as I ship the item to a buyer. This sets a pleasant tone & the buyer is in a positive frame of mind when they receive their item. Then, they are much more likely to leave me positive feedback!
Go to InternetAuctionDiva.com for a schedule of eBay classes starting soon, so you can begin making money on the Internet!
Be sure to check out my blog posts on TheDealDivas on the Charlotte Observer’s online website for lots of frugal tips and easy ways to save & make lots of money!
Posted by M.S. on July 15, 2009
Is the Summer heat starting to get to you?
How about a little diversion, where you can be entertained, for very little, or no money?
Would you be interested to know how you can watch television shows & movies & listen to music for free?
Check out this marvelous totally free website for listening to music on your computer: Pandora.com
You can build your own playlists, called stations, on Pandora.com to listen to music based on artist, style, or a particular song.
It is described as the “Music Genome Project” because they make recommendations of music based on the artist or song that you choose.
Pandora.com is totally free and worth a look!
Another terrific website for your Summer viewing pleasure is called www.Hulu.com
Their website describes Hulu.com as a free online video service that offers access to hit TV shows anytime, including Family Guy, 30 Rock, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc.
Current and vintage movies and documentaries are also available for viewing, including National Geographic specials.
And it’s all free! How can you not like that?
Of course, most people are familiar with www.YouTube.com where people share their videos with the world!
You can watch everything from classic Michael Jackson music videos to current news, politics and sports.
There are even how to videos showing everything from hanging wallpaper to applying makeup.
Check it out! www.YouTube.com
One of my absolute favorite frugal places to rent current movies is www.Redbox.com
Redbox vending machines are typically found in grocery stores and drugstores, which makes it perfect for grabbing a movie when you are out running errands.
The price is right too! Movies can be rented for only $1 a night. You can even go online to the Redbox website and reserve a movie, so you know it’s available when you get to the vending machine.
Relax–you deserve it!
Check out my posts on the DealDivas blog in the Charlotte Observer newspaper for more great frugal tips!
Posted by M.S. on July 1, 2009
Want to have lots of fun this 4th of July and save some money at the same time?
Be sure and check out the guest posts I have been writing for the Charlotte Observer Newspaper in a series called “Hot Summer Savings, 2 Weeks to Save You Money”.
Read about lots of money savings ideas including how to get free money through coupons and discounts, travel the world without breaking the bank, and undertake a fabulous and frugal home makeover.
Read about the terrific items I found on a recent visit to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
Included is this brand new pedestal sink for $ 22! Wow!
It’s time to get going on that bathroom project!
I LOVE this fabulous Black chest of drawers I found for $ 25!
Give a room a whole new look for very little money!
Read much more at the Charlotte Observer.
Posted by M.S. on June 22, 2009
Did you know for most people, their single largest investment is their home?
Would it surprise you to know the 2 areas that home buyers focus on most when searching for real estate are the kitchen and the master suite, which includes the master bedroom and the bathroom?
Don’t you think you have a better chance to sell or rent your home if you have a spa bathroom? Of course you do!
Come along as I show you step by step how I recently achieved that spa feeling for very little money!
Creating the drama of a spa bathroom is simple when you use the same techniques that fancy resort spas and hotels use when furnishing their spaces.
Every elegant spa bathroom must have a beautiful bench beside the tub for holding a luxurious bathrobe or your pjs. That’s a great place to start!
If you are going to have a spa bathroom, you simply must have candles and warm fluffy towels. Add some dramatic candles in rich candlesticks to cast a warm romantic glow. Place the fluffy towels right beside the tub to complete the look.
Green plants give that touch of nature and you are on your way to creating a peaceful oasis! It is the details that really make the difference!
Not only is your fantastic spa bathroom a restful retreat, it will add to the value of your home since everyone loves a gorgeous bathroom!
Take a look at the frugal yet fabulous ways you can furnish your bathroom retreat!
I started with this dramatic 3-tiered rack that came from Ross Stores and was only $19.99. Place on the corner of the tub for extra storage and load it up with all the goodies!
The height of the piece gives additional space, allowing you to add everything you might need!
The plants are from Michael’s at $2.99 a piece and the designer towels were purchased on closeout at one of my favorite stores, TJ Maxx for $3.99 each!
No spa bathroom would be complete without a terrific vanity with a comfortable seat! What a terrific addition to the space!
This upholstered bench looks totally custom but was actually found at TJ Maxx, for only $24.99! You can’t beat that!
This gorgeous wrought iron bench looks just like one I saw at the luxury store, Frontgate! But this one was only $19.99 at a local Ross Store.
You have to love that!
Give your bathroom a professionally decorated look by creating an elegant yet simple window treatment.
Simply drape a neutral length of fabric over elegant decorative brackets, and Voila! You are in business!
It’s great to have a
tiered shelf to hold all the supplies you would find in a spa bathroom.
This one was located at Ross Stores for only $39.99.
The wrought iron with wicker design adds texture to the space, something interior designers know adds to the luxury!
Look at the dramatic effect a little effort can give you on your largest appreciating asset– your home!
As you soak in the tub in your new spa bathroom, think of all the money you will make from your elegant bathroom makeover!
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Check out my guest posts in the Hot Summer Savings series in the Charlotte Observer newspaper.
Posted by M.S. on June 12, 2009
Do you work from home or want to jazz up your commercial office space? Would you like to have a fashionable office space but don’t want to spend a lot of money?
If you are like most people, you have computer equipment, printers and storage that you would like to disguise in your office. You do not need to spend alot to accomplish that! Take a look at what I did to create a fabulous yet frugal office, for very little money!
I built this neat table from wood I obtained FREE, then I sewed a very easy & inexpensive tablecloth to hide all the stuff underneath it.
The wood was FREE from a construction site near my house. It is amazing how much perfectly good wood is throw into the junk pile when a new home or office is constructed.
I stopped at the site and asked the workers if I could take some of the scrap wood and they said “Take all you want–It’s going to the landfill otherwise!“ Man–I hate to think of all this terrific lumber going to waste.
Remember when you do things like this, you are not only saving lots of money, you are actually helping the environment, because you reuse and recycle items! How cool is that?
The long skinny pieces were the perfect size, so I grabbed those and made myself a table.
Ok, my husband actually did the hammering, but I gave him the dimensions.
Inexpensive neutral colored fabric, similar to the color of the walls, was purchased and used to make a quick slipcover type tablecloth. Easy breezy!
The 2 drawer cabinet underneath the table was acquired at a garage sale for $1. It’s perfect for holding printer paper and other goodies for the office.
The next area that needed to be addressed was the carpeting. We had beautiful wood floors in that room, so I wanted a room rug that accented the colors in there.
I found this indoor/outdoor type rug at a local home center for only $40! It looks very similar to one I saw at Pottery Barn for much less money!
There needed to be a chair in the office and we had one that didn’t match the colors in the room, so I found an inexpensive slipcover online & covered it in a classic white canvas.
Nice and neutral and it works in the room beautifully.
Now we can get busy in the beautifully decorated office working and making money!
Posted by M.S. on June 9, 2009
Would you be interested to learn exactly how to make up to $500,000 TAX FREE doing makeovers on real estate?
I thought so!
Did you know that since 1997, up to $250,000 in profit ($500,000 for a married couple) on the sale of a home, is exempt from taxation if you have lived in the home as your principal residence for two out of the last five years?
A friend of mine told me several years ago she and her husband have done this exact thing many times and she showed me step by step exactly how they accomplished this. These ideas have been incorporated into my own homes and I will showcase the process I used over the next several weeks.
Basically, the right house must meet specific criteria. The property must have great potential as a primary residence, be in a terrific location and need a makeover. Increase the market value of the real estate by adding character & value through improvements, landscaping and decorating. In essence, make it look like a model home.
Live in it for 2 years, market the heck out of it, sell it and repeat the process! You can do this too! Especially in the current real estate market where there are fabulous deals!
Today, we demonstrate great ways to add value to your home with inexpensive & easy to do custom window treatments and blinds.
We purchased these faux wood blinds that fit on the inside of each window segment and are very easy to install. The length of the blind is adjustable by removing slats from the bottom that are not needed . This creates the custom look, since they fit exactly.
The US Post Office sent us a packet of coupons when we moved into our new home that included a 10% coupon good at Home Depot, which Lowe’s will also honor. We purchased all of the blinds with this coupon!
Our front door has a fan shaped window above the door and 2 very thin side windows. Custom blinds would have been required for this configuration and there was NO WAY I was going to pay $1,200, which is the quote I received from a blind company.
Instead, I bought 2 queen sized white bed sheets for $ 9 total, perfect because they are large with no seams, and I made simple pockets in each end.
I cut a wooden dowel rod to make tiny custom curtain rods and held them in place with 10¢ cup hooks from the hardware store.
The curved fan window treatment was very simple to make, using the same design with a bedsheet and sewing a rod pocket at each end. I measured the distance between the top edge of the window to the bottom edge and simply pieced together one long rectangle that I made pockets at each end and threaded through a $ 3 plastic drainage tube.
I used tubing because it’s pliable and it will curve. Pretty clever huh? I found this tubing in the garden department of the hardware store.
Voila a custom window treatment!
That would cost $500 to have a designer create that for you!
A door that leads to the patio has a long slender window. This time I used an aluminum blind purchased on sale at Wal-Mart, removed the extra slats at the bottom and it looks totally custom!
Home buyers love to be able to walk right into a property that looks like a Model Home and not do a thing!
They don’t know that you used inexpensive techniques to enhance and stage the property, so the value of your improvements goes right into your selling price!
You are making it easy for buyers to LOVE your property and thanks to a little effort, you are on your way to making great tax free money!
Posted by M.S. on June 8, 2009
There was a great personal finance article in today’s Wall Street Journal called “When I was Your Age“.
The article features prominent people recalling the best—and worst— financial advice they received as new college graduates.
I believe you can learn almost everything you want to know from people that have already done it successfully!
Included in the survey were David Bach, author of the best-selling FinishRich books, Paula Deen, restaurant owner, author and Food Network host, and Robert Kiyosaki, businessman and author of the best-selling “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books.
David Bach told how he had learned the value of hard work and purchasing a home while in his 20’s. I agree wholeheartedly with what he said regarding how hard work and saving in your 20s and 30s can determine your future! Amen to that!
Ask all the broke 50 and 60 year old people if they regret not saving and investing when they were young, now that they are running out of time to build their wealth!
Paula Deen learned the value of heeding the advice to do what you love–which was cooking! Look at what a fabulous success she has made of that!
Mary L. Schapiro, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said her parents warned her about getting into debt. She listened to them on that point, but regrets not getting into the habit of saving right away. Her advice to grads is to fully understand the implications of debt and what it will take to repay the loan.
Probably my favorite is from Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, president of the Charles Schwab Foundation. She said the best advice she heard was to live frugally and save for a rainy day. She suggests living off 90% of your income and save the other 10%. I would aim for saving more than that!
Look at how compounding interest on your saved money grows over time so you get wealthy.
You will be SO glad you saved, when you are fishing, while your friends are still working!
Posted by M.S. on June 5, 2009
Do you want to build wealth and have financial independence? Well, do you?
Then every day, with every financial decision you make, remind yourself that there are 2 main methods to achieving that goal.
It is a simple concept: Make more (revenue) and spend less (costs). The more money you accumulate, the more you have to invest, which increases your wealth and helps you get rich.
We learned a long time ago, that with some effort, we could save 50% of our meager incomes in order to save money for a down payment on an investment property or to add to our investment accounts.
You may ask, what does that have to do with this great bread machine?
As regular readers of this blog know, I LOVE bargains and believe you can get pretty much everything at reduced prices if you search for them.
The less you spend- the more you have to save and invest!
Long ago, I discovered the gold mine of estate sales and garage sales! I have been amazed at what people have sold and the fantastic stuff I have been able to buy for a song.
Recently, I spotted this brand new, never used Williams-Sonoma bread machine at a garage sale.
The woman running the sale said her husband had given it to her as a Christmas gift several years ago and she had never used it! She no longer had the box or the instruction book, and that’s why she had it priced at $10!
I asked her if she would take $5 and she happily said Yes! This terrific Williams-Sonoma item probably sells for $100 or more!
After I paid her, I asked her “If you didn’t want it, why didn’t you take it back, get the money and buy something else?” She said, “Oh I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
I said “The money he spent belonged to both of you–doesn’t that seem nuts to basically throw away $100?” She said “Yeah, I guess so.”
So, thanks to her and her husband I now have a brand new bread machine! There are bargains like this everywhere!
At another yard sale, all books were priced at 50¢ and I found this terrific Bread Machine book!
So now for the cost of one loaf of gourmet bread--I have a terrific machine that will make me countless loaves of fresh bread!
The money I save will be invested in appreciating assets that will build wealth!
The savings all add up!
A loaf is baking right now! Yummm!
Posted by M.S. on June 4, 2009
If there were 8 simple rules you could follow that would help you build a fortune and a satisfying life, would you be interested to learn about them?
Just in time for Summer reading, I recently came across a very inspiring book written by Dwight R Lee and Richard B McKenzie called “Getting Rich in America“.
I highly recommend this book because the focus of the book is on “ordinary people” like you and me, people of modest means and talents and how they “made it” through simple steps taken without sacrificing their quality of life.
I believe wholeheartedly in the idea that if you want to accomplish something, model someone that has already done it. This book uses real life examples of people that have accumulated enough money to be financially independent and tells you how to do that too!
They went from Frugal to Rich!
Here are the 8 Simple Rules featured in the book:
1. Think of America as the Land of Choices
2. Take Compound Interest Seriously
3. Resist Temptation
4. Get a Good Education
5. Get Married and Stay Married
6. Take Care of Yourself
7. Take Prudent Risks
8. Strive for Balance
The quote from Ben Franklin at the front of the book explains it well. “The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on 2 words, industry and frugality: that is neither waste time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; and with them-everything!”
So basically, that means work hard and be frugal! If you save your money and invest, it will build wealth!
Look at these thought provoking questions the authors pose to help you on your way to getting rich!
Buy it used on Amazon.com or request it for FREE at your local library!
It is well worth your time!
