Fructis sale

Went to Target today, and saw that they had Fructis (normally 13 oz @ $3.00 or so) for $2.49 with a special 17 oz bottle.

This applies to Shampoo, Conditioner, and 2n1.

Make sure you get the 17 oz bottle as the 13 oz bottles are also being stocked and selling for the same price.

Footlocker 30% off

Sorry have been out of the loop lately. Went up to South Lake Tahoe to utilize a free two nights stay at the Caesar's Tahoe. Got there and was told I was upgraded to a Premium room. Nice. I guess I'm big time now. Heh. (Note: Gambling isn't quite a frugal activity. However, if you must gamble, you can definitely squeeze it for all it's worth. re: Player's Card)

wallyts was looking for a deal on underarmour outfits. Well, that was a well timed question. Footlocker's Friends and Family 30% off sale is starting today!

Foot Locker 30%

Foot Action and Champs have similar savings.

Eastbay.com has a 30% off sale by using the code EM01LY25. Expires end of Thursday.

Save with Credit Cards!

This may turn out to be a long post, but it needs to be said that Credit Cards are an easy source of cash back.

Many credit cards offer some incentive to sign with them, but some of them are kinda lame (free jacket!). Instead, the ones I go for are the cashback cards. These are things like the Amazon Credit Card (3% back on Amazon, 1% back on everything else, redeemable every 2500 pts.)

Here's a list of really good cards that _everyone_ should have. =) (note, none of these have annual fees and they assume you pay off your balance in full)

1) Citibank Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard
5% back on Gas, Groceries, and Drugs; 1% on everything else. Max redemption $300/yr
Comment: I have this one and the only complaint is that for some rewards it takes 2-3 billing cycles to show up.

2) Chase Cash Plus Rewards Visa Card
5% back on Gas, Groceries, and Drugs; 1% on everything else. Max redemption $300/yr
Most Chase cards have Tiered rewards, meaning only after you spend $X, will you start earning 5%. There's no mention of tiered in this one. Though this one's also not a Platinum card, if you need one of those. I haven't tried this one out yet, but I am going to look into switching my current Chase/Bank One card to this one.

3) Discover Specialty Cards
The Restaurant Card gives you 5% back on the first $1500 spent, then 3% on the next $1500. This is a reverse tiered card, which is different from usual Discover cards.
The Gas Card gives you 5% back on gas with the same tiering as above.
The Home Improvement Card gives you 5% back on Hardware stores, using the same tiering as above.
I have the restaurant card and the only downside to this is that the number of places that take Discover is kinda limited.

With just these three cards, you should be pretty much golden.
One might ask, however, won't having too many cards affect my credit? To that I answer, it depends.
If you're trying to get a big mortgage/loan in the next few months, yes, you might want to refrain from applying for a bunch of credit cards, as your credit score will take a temporary dip. However, just having a lot of credit cards does not adversely affect your score. In the above situation, the negative factor is the length of time you've had your cards. The longer your average credit history is (length of credit card possession), the better your credit score. So in this way, NEVER close a credit card just because you're not using it anymore. Only close a credit card if it is becoming too much of a nuisance (annual fees, lost, etc). If you don't want to keep track of that credit card, just snip it. The credit card company won't know.

One advice to applying for more than one card. Do it on the same day. That way one credit card app does not see the other. If you wait more than 48 hours, the credit inquiry will have registered and the other company will be able to see it.

Oh yeah, one final thing. Where's the link for the Citibank card? Well, I just received an email that will reward me $25 for referals. So if you don't already have one, and you are planning on getting one, feel free to go through me and get a free meal or something. =) Just let me know, and I'll send you the link.

Next topic: How to maximize your credit cards.

Frozen treats!

So this one isn't as cheap as the 10 for $10 Albertson's Dreyers Fruit Bar sale, but it's not too shabby.

This is for Dreyers Fruit Bars, or Nestle Novelty Frozen Treats (like Drumsticks) or Nestle Kids Frozen Treats (like PushUps).

Safeway currently has the following sale:
Buy 2 for $5.

However, on the same page, they also have: Buy 6 of those items (listed above) and get a $5 Gift Card to Safeway (and some other places).
That means:

Buy 6 for $15, and get $5 off. That's 6 for $10 then! (if you keep back copies of sunday inserts, then you may also have some buy 2 get $1 off coupons) Add that all up and it's a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. ;)

Next week's specials

Well, it's another Tuesday. That means more circulars!

Looked through Albertson's. Bum deal. Nothing special.
Looked through Safeway...got a couple things.
For the Tropicana lover you have an average deal of BOGO Tropicana 64 oz OJ.
But the real good deal (if you live in CA) is they have ears of white corn, 6 for $0.96. That's much better than the usual 2 for $1.00 or even 4 for $1.00 that they often try to promote. So unless you're from TX where you can get 10 for $1.00, jump on this deal for some kernel action. Hmmmm, maybe I will buy some for my open house BBQ next next weekend (that's an early announcement to all you folks out there).

Note: these prices don't start until Wednesday.

Rainchecks are your friend

After practice today(Sunday) I went to Albertson's to pick up some more cheapo Gatorade. I had already bought 8, but one can never have enough. =)
Unfortunately, they did not have any left on the shelves. Or is that fortunately?
The thing with Albertson's (and Safeway and Walgreens) is that you can ask them to write you a raincheck for the current price. So I did, and got a raincheck for 10 more bottles of gatorade. This does not mean that I won't be going back tomorrow to another Albertson's to pick up some more Gatorade. ;)

So if you ever see a great deal at one of the above mentioned places, but they're not in stock, don't fret. Stall the checkout line and get a raincheck. Albertson's has no expiration date. Safeway is 90 days. I'm not sure about Walgreens.

Laptop 4th option

The 4th option would be to buy a barebones X32 and beef it up with stuff.

For example, buy an entry X32 that costs $1100, and then replace the 40GB drive with a 100GB drive ($200), and then add 512MB of RAM to the 512 already there ($75) + 3 year warranty ($118) = $1500 for a machine that has 100GB memory, and 1 GB of RAM. However, no optical drive. But I guess the question may be "how many times do I use a CD or DVD anyway?

Compare that to option #3 which would have a slower processor, only 60GB, and only 512 MB of RAM. Hmmm...

Searching for a laptop

For the last week, I have wasted about 1 hour a day researching for a laptop. I am going to get an IBM/Lenovo that's for sure. The feel and customer service is second to none. And they have a trackpt which is WAY better than the touchpad (I hate the touchpad).
So after days and days of research, I am down to the following:
1) T43 (266876U), 14.1" 1400x1050, 2Ghz, 512 MB, 80 GB, CDRW/DVD-ROM, 5 lbs
2) X41 Tablet, 12.1" 1024x768, 1.5Ghz, 256 MB, 40 GB, no drive, 3.6 lbs
3) X41 12.1" 1024x768, the rest, I'm not really sure. Probably at least 40-60GB drive and weighing in at less than 4 lbs.

Reasons for 1. It's all inclusive. Has a little of everything and yet still, not too heavy
2) It's a tablet. That's just cool. And it's less than 4 lbs
3) Super portable. Same footprint as a sheet of paper. Barely above 3 lbs.

So no good decision yet, and I may waste some more hours.

However, I recently saw that the T43 is now only $1399 with EPP. The tablet is at least $1709, and the X41...the one I'd want would start at $1500.

Anyway, feel free to weigh in with what I should get. =)

Supermarket Circular Tuesdays!

The Supermarket Circulars for the next week come out on Tuesdays. More importantly the occasional KFC coupon sheet comes out too. I was in the front lobby of my office building today and noticed that there was not only a KFC coupon sheet, but also a BK coupon sheet. I quickly snatched those up. =) BK has something called Chicken Fries now, which you can get free with any extra value meal order (+coupon).

Edit: Doh! Went to BK, and couldn't find the Chicken Fries on their menu. Then took another look at the coupon sheet. "Begins 7/20". Doh!

The Thirst Quencher

Just saw in the Sunday ads that Albertsons' is having a HOT Gatorade sale.

69 cents for a 32 oz bottle. That's a pretty darn HOT deal.

Usually, I don't buy gatorade at anything worse than $1 per 32 oz (usual price is like $1.69 for 32 oz). So this deal is quite nice. I think it might top the Albertsons weekend special of $3.99 for 8 20oz bottles. Let's see...
$3.99 / 160 oz = $7.98 per 320oz. vs $6.90 per 320Oz. Yup, definitely a HOT deal.

Not sure about the dates though, so I'll have to update that later.

Edit: The ad says the prices are good from July 10th - 19th.

Savings of the Day

If any of you are a Comcast High Speed Internet user (with cable tv), then you might want to try this out.

I called Comcast to see if I could lower my Comcast HSI rate, which was something like $45.99 or 42.99 or something per month. I got a customer rep on the line and basically did the following:
"Hi, I was wondering if there were any Comcast High Speed promotions? I saw that Yahoo DSL has a $14.99 offer"
"Yes we do. I had a $14.99 offer that just expired, but I do have a $19.99 one."
"Great, can I add that onto my service?"
"Sure" and then proceeded to get my account information.

She also tried to see if i wanted to upgrade to a Digital Cable promotion (since I accidentally mentioned cable TV first), but even though the digital cable deal wasn't too bad: 3 months at $39.99, and then back to $9.95 + Basic Cable cost (BC currently is about $45). I'll have to consider this a little more.

Anyway, end result, without very much hassle, I now have a $19.99 price for 6 months.

I tried this tactic about 3 weeks ago, but the guy at the time said he had no promotions for my account. My guess is either he was:
a) telling the truth
b) had no reason to give me a promotion and thus my mention of the $14.99 promotion this time around was key
c) had no power.

I've also done this in the past (calling up comcast to see if there are any promotions). It doesn't hurt, and takes all of 5 minutes to save a bundle.

Inauguration

A certain resident of Seattle/Michigan has instructed me to start a blog on my bargain hunting activities. This could be an interesting topic...or it could be quite horrific. We'll see.

Let's see...what have I been up to today in the ways of bargain hunting.
Well, I guess I should start from the top. My daily exercise...

Everyday, I'll hit the following sites up for frugal inspiration.

For gas prices:
San Jose Gas Prices, a GasBuddy.com site.

For all other deals, I'll hit:
Slick Deals and
Fatwallet where they have forums for:
Hot Deals
Free Stuff
Finance
Occasionally I'll hit up TechBargains if I'm focusing on some tech purchase.

Anyway, thus far today, I haven't seen anything along my tastes.
Amazon is having their weekly Friday sale, but actual good deals are few and far between.

I did just give my alter ego Magnus a try at some free sunglasses, but I think the 500 person limit may have been reached, and this site also seems decidedly female. Oh well, if I end up with the "bronzing powder", I know exactly whom to give it to *ahem*EYC*ahem*.

More on my alter ego at a later time.