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Top Ways To Save Blog
05-06-2010 Well the Disney trip deal just got better. Disney just added a free dining plan to any 5 day or more vacation the month we're going. I just had to call AAA and they changed my plan lowering our bill from $1917 to $1533. If I hadn't have seen this ad or called I would have cost myself almost an extra $400. It goes to show you, that you always need to keep an eye when you make any big purchase. I've added a paid guest post in my articles sections from National Payday Loans. I can't say I'm 100 percent for pay day type loans, but I can see how people in a financial bind could possibly need one of these types of loans so I allowed it. I think its more of a last resort type of situation of course. Hope all is well with the loyal readers and as always I'd love to hear your saving stories, comments and opinions. I'm always open to guest post and contact me anytime. Jeff You can still vote below for me in the Pepsi Refresh Challenge. I've just missed two months in a row but I'm still in the running because I just missed out the past few months so closely. 03-05-2010 Big news this week. I got a great deal on our little girls birthday gift. We're taking her to Disneyworld and because we're checking in a day before she turns 3 we don't have to pay for the park tickets for her and she eats for free off of our plates for the dining pass. Got the AAA magical discount rate on the trip which gives us a free story time with a princess and special seating for the parade too. Got a free meet and greet and photo by having the Disney Visa. I even got some special Fast Passes by doing my Give a day, Get a day promotion. It's gonna be tough waiting for so long now. Also vote for me here so I can help make a difference in my area.
01-10-2010 Its hard to believe how fast 2009 went by. I'm really trying to resolve to update this site my frequently. I'm always looking for guest submissions so feel free to write and and give me some good stuff to post. If you found anything on the site and thought it helped you I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd also to hear other ideas for saving money I might have missed. I hope everyone had a terrific 2009 and Happy New Year and hope your 2010 goes great for all. 11-06-09 First let me start off by saying I hate FedEx for too many reasons to list here. On some brighter notes, I recently signed up for Chuck E Cheese alerts and have gotten coupons for 20 free tokens more than once now. We've gone a few times for free just to let the little one play some games and leave. What can I say. I'm cheap, but it's a great deal and if you have kids you should sign up. Also, from now until Christmas, Walmart appears to be having special in store only Saturday sales every weekend starting at 8 A.M.. I don't know how many of the items they will have, but this week they had some great bargains if you're lucky enough to get one. Thank you so much to couponsaver.org for telling me about some broken links I had and thank everyone who is reading this for visiting my site. 09-09-09 Just a few small points for today. There are lots of small deals out there if you have your eyes open for them. For example, when shopping for a bottle of wine for my little girls birthday party I noticed a coupon saying "Save $2 if you purchase anything from the bakery, meat or seafood section with your purchase of wine". Instead of ignoring the coupon I grabbed a $1 muffin on the way out to the check out isle. So I got a free muffin and another $1 off my wine. Don't settle for bad customer service and if you feel you weren't treated properly let it be known. I had a disaster when picking up a new TV I bought. I had gotten a text message, a phone call and an email saying my TV was ready for pickup. I went to pick it up and had to wait almost two hours. They said it wasn't there from the warehouse and was told just another 30 minutes three times. After complaining to the manager they gave me a $25 Gift card for my troubles. If I didn't speak up I wouldn't have gotten anything. I had recently signed up for the Smokey Bones restaurant email club and got a nice coupon sent the other day from them. $10 off a $20 purchase. So the wife and I got a nice salmon dinner takeout for her and bacon burger for me for only $13 total. Delicious and a great deal. Check out Smokey Bones and other restaurant email clubs by clicking here. The final thing I'd like to point out today is to always double check receipts. Even a quick glance is better than nothing. This weekend I went to a local grocery store having a sale on cereal for 2 for $3. I had $1 off coupon so I figured 2 for $2 was a good deal. On the way out I was reviewing my receipt and saw one came out as $1.50 and the other cereal, which should have also been $1.50, came out to $4.99. I turned around, went to customer service and they corrected the price. If I hadn't quickly reviewed the receipt I would have been out of luck. 07-23-09 Well it's been a little while since my last blog update, but I'd rather wait and say something more important than just come her more often and fill up this space with fluff. A couple of ads I saw this week bugged me and I thought I would vent a little about them. The first one was for our local grocery store. They were running a special if you buy 4 packages of specially marked meat you get it $19.99. "No matter what the original price buy 4 of a wide variety of meats and get it for $19.99". I thought this could be a great deal since every one knows meat can be expensive. Well when I got there and started looking at all the meats I noticed most were only originally priced at $5.00-5.50. So buying 4 was barely a savings. Especially since I normally don't buy 4 packages. To make it worse I saw some meat like chicken wings priced at $3 to $4 with the buy 4 for $20 deal. Once again do your math or you might not be getting such a hot deal with certain sales. The other deal that bothers me is how they advertise the price on some new cars. You will see a great price on a car and it will list the breakdown of how they came to that price. The car could be a $20,000 car and after discounts $13000. The breakdown looks like this. Brand new 2009 Car $20,000 MSRP minus$1000 rebate minus $500 college grad program minus $1000 loyalty program minus $2300 local dealership discount minus $2200 your cash or trade equals YOUR PRICE OF $13,000. Wow amazing. You can get this car for only $13,000. That is if you qualify for the recent college grad discount and you owned that manufacturers car and bought it new and you come up with $2200 of your own money. Readers just get suckered in with the $13,000 price tag many don't realize that even if they qualify for the college grad and loyalty discount that $2200 is still their own money down to get that price. So the car is really costing them $15,200. The ads bring the people to the dealerships though and of course that's the dealers goal. The car dealers might as well say get this $20,000 car FREE (with $20,000 cash or trade)!!! 06-17-09 The winner of the $20 Home depot card was Pupkake. I'd like the thank the more than 400 people who entered. Everyone had great comments about the site and my daughters side contest. Sadly she didn't win her contest, but it was fun for us and the Jimmy Fund is going to get a $100 donation from us so things still worked out good. 05-20-09 Just leave any comment on my site by clicking on the contact section and I will pick a winner for a $20 Home Depot gift June 16th. contest rules While you're here if you could click on the baby first tv link below it would be a huge help too. My daughter is in a contest for a trip to DisneyWorld and I really want to win for her. If she does win I will also donate $500 to the Jimmy Fund, which my company also matches.
05-18-09 Okay for the first time I'm calling for a favor from my viewers. If you could click on the box below it would really help me a lot. There is a contest going on for people who subscribe to Baby First Tv and I could really use some help. The way to win is by getting the most hits so just by clicking on the link and watching the little dance would be help me tremendously. I don't even think it matter ifs you watch the whole thing which is only 30 seconds anyway. Thanks to all in advance. Click on the logo to see my little girl dancing for a
Baby First Tv contest 05-15-09 Well I've had a bit of writers block lately and the little one has been sick so I apologize for not making any updates recently. I have had some very encouraging emails and I'm thankful for the loyal site followers. Today I finally had something happen that made me want to run to the computer and say something. I was at McDonalds, with the family, and my little one loves their chicken nuggets. I was going to get her a 6 piece which popped up on the little screen at 2.99. Then I realized my wife usually buys her a 4 piece so I asked how much the 4 piece was. She said $1.49. So i ordered two 4 piece nuggets for a total of 8 nuggets so I could have a couple for myself, but the point is, I bet there are plenty of people who order the 6 piece without thinking. My question is why pay $2.99 for 6 when for $2.98 they could get 8? Of course your local McDonalds may have different prices, but my point is it pays to think once in a while when spending the money you work so hard for. Companies aren't going to help you do it. In fact most are gonna do everything they can to take more of it. Get educated. Do your homework and keep the money in your own pocket instead of putting it in theirs. 04-01-09 This months contest had a little less than normal turnout. The main reason of course is the contest really didn't start until March 8th since I didn't get the site updated because of my vacation. In the end the contest had over 400 entries and I'd like to thank all those who entered. There were a lot of touching good deeds submitted and I enjoy reading them all. There can only be one winner of course so thanks and congratulations to LKArambo for winning the March contest. Unfortunately there will be no contest this month. In May I might come up with another type of contest to replace the good deed contest. Of course if you can think of any good ideas for a contest please write me. I really want to take as much advice from the sites visitors as I can and use it to update and improve the site. 03-14-09 I just wanted to start today by saying there is a really good deal out there on Huggies products if anyone has kids like me. On Moneysavingmom.com they have a link right now that lets you print Huggies Diaper products for $5 off. They have wipes at Target where I shop and I'm sure Walmart and other places too that go for $5.99. After the coupon you get the giant wipes for only 99 cents!!! The March contest is still going strong and I love reading all the good deeds submitted. However, because of the economy I'm really thinking I might have to change it up in April. So before the month is over get what could be those last good deeds in. I was reading some good money saving tips today at Penny-pinching.blogspot.com. They had a lot of interesting information on there. The most recent update had to do with how long food will last frozen which is good information on both saving money and health wise. He has a few other good articles on the left hand side I would definitely suggest checking out as well. Finally if you're planning on doing any traveling this year, there are a lot of great bargains right now. I had been checking out many different airlines, packages,different weeks and they were running anywhere between $2500 and $3000 most weeks to Hawaii. Since we were flexible we went last week and it only cost us $1400 for 6 nights and 2 round trip tickets through United Vacations. Combining the flight and hotel usually gets you the best deal by packaging vacations and United had some great deals. I also Googled United Vacations promos and then coupons and also found a code for an additional 2000 miles per Mileage Plus member and $50 more off. 03-07-09 I'm home from Hawaii and thanks to all the February contest submitters. The winner was lf58 and her good dead was to share her food with a friend. Simple enough and it got and entry and won $20 at either Best Buy or Home Depot. Thanks to Sweepsadvantage.com for putting up my contest this month. For March I'm mixing it up and offering a Walmart gift card. Get your good deed in and good luck. It's been a tough call about whether or not to continue the good deed contest into April so please spread the word out there about the site to try and help me get a little traffic boost. 02-27-09 This months contest is coming to an end and I need to apologize but I will be on vacation from the 28th of February till March 6th. I will send out the winner as soon as I get back. There are over 500 good deeds done this month and I know the 28th is always a big day for entries. I'm running the good deed contest again in March so at least one more month to get your entries in. After that we'll see.With money being tight everywhere and no sponsor yet its tough to keep coming up with $20 gift cards. I do love rewarding the hard work and good deeds I read every day though and yes I do read every entry. Keep up the good work and submitting your good deeds and for at least one more month I'll keep rewarding them. Thanks for stopping by. Jeff 02-21-09 GUEST BLOG by Marilyns Money Way Ask
and You Shall Receive I have
found this to be true of other situations as well. Need a coffee table?
Just ask a few friends, before you know it you'll probably end up with
a whole room full of furniture. It seems people are more than willing
to get rid of things. Many
times people are unaware anyone has a need for there unwanted items.
A few rules. Always be gracious and take anything given to you. You
can always give it away later. Be willing to pay for services. Most
people will charge you well below the retail value. Always provide some
perks for labor, besides money, food and drinks would be nice too. This
could be even a simple pot of sloppy Joes. If you are happy with the
work refer them to your friends. In
today's economy we cannot overlook are resources that are available
to us. Trading services is another resource. Plow your neighbor's snow
and maybe you neighbor is skilled enough to supply a haircut. Just remember
there are many low cut and free items out there just for the asking. 02-16-09 I just want to start by thanking shebecameabutterfly.net. She was nice enough to write in and explain to me what a site "button" is and even created one for my site you'll see on the left hand side of my site. If you like my site you can ad the html into the code on your site linking back to my site. If you have a button on your site and would like to have me check out your site let me know and I'll check it out and possibly link back to it. The contest is up to 330 entries which is a little lower than I was hoping for, but of course I'd always want more entries and hits. There have been a lot of interesting good deeds people have done to help others out there which of course is incredible to see. After watching a very interesting video on 2createawebsite i think adding a survey could be very helpful to determine some ways to improve the site. I just need to find out a little more about adding a survey to the site. I'm also think about a newsletter and possibly an RSS feed as well. Thanks for stopping by and hope you find some helpful hints to help you save some money. 02-01-09 Thanks to all the visitors to the site in the month of January. The hits for the month hit a record. The total entries for my good deed contest hit a record 868 entries. The last few days alone the entries spiked. I could still use a sponsor for the monthly contest so if you're interested contact me. If anyone has any suggestions for improvements or would like to even leave a guest blog or write and article let me know and I'd love to post it and give you credit. If you also have a money saving website and would like to exchange links feel free to contact me. Thanks for stopping by and hopefully you'll look around and find some new ways to save money. With all the bad news in the media about how bad the economy is I'm sure we could all use a few new ways to save. 01-27-09 With only a few days to go in January there are now over 725 contest entries. So the record has been crushed and I know the 31st always has a big surge in entries. I'm hoping this months contest will soon be up over 800 entries. That's an incredible amount of good deeds done. As of the past few days on Google and Yahoo if you search "top ways to save" we now come up first. That's a definite sign the site is going strong and I'm very proud of that. If you have a CVS extra care card and purchase 3 hallmark cards you can get $3 in extra care bucks from Feb.. 8th-14th. If you purchase 3 of the 99 cent cards its like getting them free so definitely take advantage of that great deal next week. Thanks also to marilynsmoneyway.blogspot.com for recommending my site and I love your savings ideas. 01-16-09 I love freebies and I love helping others. Starbucks right now has a promo going on where you get a free coffee for agreeing to spend 5 hours helping others. Just click here to go to the site and check out the details. Moneysavingmom and swapsavers both had a great link for a free two year subscription to Parents. I've read parents since my little girl was born and its filled with great parenting tips and helpful ways to save money on bringing up kids. The January contest is up over 460 entries and this month definitely looks headed for a record. I'm still looking for a sponsor for next months contest so if any one is interested make sure to contact me. 01-12-09 So far the January good deed contest is up over 330 entries with less than half the month gone. That's almost all of last months entries already. Hopefully this months total will pass the 600 mark, breaking the November record. Googling "top ways to save" shows the site back up to number 3 on that search which is great. Just a month ago it was coming at the bottom of the first page and now its right up at the top. I'm looking for guest bloggers so if anyone would like to get a little more publicity for their site let me know and I'd love to hear what you might have to ad to the site. 01-07-09 There must be a lot of people out there looking to find new ways to save money. This year so far the site hits have really started to take off. The January Good Deed contest has over 200 entries in just 7 days. That's incredible. Thanks to all those who entered and remember you can come back daily and enter again. For those who go for the CVS Extracare bucks I noticed two great deals I haven't really seen listed anywhere else yet. I don't know if all stores are doing it, but I have seen them in two of my local stores. They were offering a 6 pack of Soy Joy bars for $6 with $6 in extra care bucks. I got Mango Coconut and they're weren't bad for health food. CVS also had a 2 pack for Cheerios for $8 with $4 in Extra Care bucks. I needed to use some expiring extra care bucks and I had a $3 off a $15 purchase so that worked out nicely too. If you have an Express near you, there were some great red line sales. I love Express jeans and shorts and I got great deals on both. I was mailed a $15 off $30 for being on their mailing list. I used it to get two pairs of shorts normally $40 each marked down to $19.99 with an extra 20 % percent off for a total of $15.99 each. So I spent $31.98 then used my $15 off coupon. So I got two pairs of their shorts for $15.98 total. Great deal. I later picked up a pair of their jeans I love which normally went for $69.99 marked down to $19.99 with an additional 20 percent off for a total of $15.99. Can't beat that either.
01-01-09 First let me say Happy New Year to everyone. Hopefully this year will be a great one for everybody. According to websiteoutlook.com, Topwaystosave.com has an estimated worth of $1715.5 USD. Thank you so much to all my viewers for helping to contribute towards exceeding my goal of an estimated $1000 by December 31st. Every viewers suggestion and searching through the site helped to achieve my goal. Thank you all so much. I'm aiming for $2500 by July 1st. That's seems good for 6 months away. Hopefully its reachable and around that time we'll see what we can come up with for an end of 2009 goal. This months contest was a tad lower entry wise compared to last month. That's mostly my fault of course for only being able to put up a $10 gift card. Even with the reduced gift card the December contest still ended up having almost 400 entries. I'm going to try and boost the entries back up by offering a $20 card at least one more month and see how it goes. It's expensive hosting a site, paying for a web domain and giving away gift cards without any advertisements, sponsors or donations. If anyone has any ideas on ways to build up the site, I'm once again always listening. Congratulations to Ladydsb for winning the December contest. I love the responses people submit. It's my small way to make people think about what good they put into the world on any given day. Maybe it encourages a good deed or two a day here or there. Maybe my $10 or $20 gift card encourages someone to reach out and really help someone in a meaningful way. That's at least my goal. Even if the contest only helps a few people in a tiny way, then that makes me happy as well. 12-27-08 Well Christmas is over and we're coming up on the new year. Hopefully everyone's holiday was great and hopefully everyone's 2009 will be awesome too. There are so many deals out there if you're a shopper. Stores are so empty compared to holidays of the past. I remember even last year I couldn't find a parking spot. Now it's not easy, but it is possible. Just remember to save those receipts in case you find items cheaper. Also make sure you check the receipts of items you already bought in case you see the price drop. I've already gone back to the stores a few times to have items lowered since the prices have dropped. For 2009 I'm already starting to think of my resolutions. One of the top things I need to work on is making sure I get on here and write more often. I'm still always looking for ideas on how to improve the site so don't worry about hurting my feelings. If you have a site of your own and you'd like me to check it out and possibly recommend feel free to write me as well. Happy New year every body. 12-01-08 The November contest is over and I consider it a huge success. There were 620 contest entries and I expected a lot of people to not come up with something to write and just move on. I was so thrilled by all the good deeds people wrote in. There were a lot of touching acts of kindness and I wish I could reward every one of them. For December it was tough thinking of another contest to put up. Since it's xmas time and a time for giving I'm going to keep the contest and rules the same. However, since I have no ads or revenue coming in from the site, and it's Xmas, the prize for this month is being reduced to $10. Hopefully if the hits pick up a little maybe I can get an ad or sponsor to cover a months contest and I can increase the prize back to $20 or even more. My cousin informed me today of a great new deal. It's through Live.com. If you you search certain items that have a link to Buy It Now from Ebay there is a cash back program. A gold $ will come back back with the search results. From what I have read the percent back does vary. As of today it's at a staggering 30 % cash back. My cousin has used it, but I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds incredible. I Googled about it and this is what I came up. Ebay Cash Back Rules. Hope everyone's Xmas shopping is going well and hope you found some good deals out there. Use your coupons, look for specials and learn about the various programs different stores offer. For example, I ordered a web cam and some other things as Xmas gifts yesterday at Circuit City. They called me to let me know some of items I purchased were in, but the web cam was back ordered. I picked up most of the items today and after my purchase I asked since my item wasn't available in 24 minutes wasn't I supposed to get a $24 gift card (Circuit City says if you order online and 24 minutes passes and your item is not ready for in store pick up, you get a $24 gift card. Certain restrictions apply of course). When I asked the Clerk about the program he was very nice about giving me my gift card, but definitely wasn't proactive about it. If I hadn't said anything I wasn't getting that gift card. So read the rules and learn about these types of programs so you'll know what you're entitled too so you can speak up. 11-24-08 The contest is up over 470 entries so far this month. That's a big jump from last months number and there is still one more week to go. Incredible. There are a ton of good deals for those who love shopping on Black Friday. The best link I've found so far is Blackfriday.info. A lot of stores are even open on Thanksgiving day for those looking for some deals. Some stores will be having 9 or 10 PM openings. Some like CVS will be open all day. Walmart's commercials say they are matching other companies deals including Friday deals. The big issue I'm sure is will be limited supply. So get yourselves a buddy and plan your attack the night before. Good luck and hope you all get the bargains you're after. 11-13-08 The response to this months contest has been incredible. Last months contest had about 400 total entries. This months contest is already at 285 entries and it's only been 13 days. I really thought since the rules were a little more strict this month it would really slow down the entries too. I guess there are just a lot of people out there doing good deeds, which is awesome. I'm looking forward to Black Friday and can't wait for Thanksgiving day so I can start mapping out my plan of attack. I think I look forward to that day almost as much as most holidays. There are a lot of deals out there already this year, so I can't wait to see how good they get on November 28th!!! 11-03-08 Everyone
knows tomorrow is election day. No matter who you plan on voting for,
make sure you vote. My wife got a great deal at swaggrabber.com this week. If you shop at Victoria Secrets and have one of their store cards, click on their link I just posted. My wife got two bras and two panties for $23 including S&H. If you ever shop there then you know that's a great deal. Because this month is Thanksgiving, the November contest is all about giving. If you do anything to give back in some way to the community, you get an entry. If you touch some ones life by doing something positive, you get an entry. You can enter daily. So hopefully that's a little more motivation for you do do one more positive thing that day. 10-26-08 Tomorrow will be one year since I purchased my web domain. It took me about 7 months to finally learn enough to get my site up and active. In the last 5 months though the site has grown a great deal. Thanks to all the viewers who have written in with their tips to improve my site and their tips to help save money. 10-17-08 The market has been a crazy roller coaster ride the past few weeks. Of course everyone needs to do what they think is right for them, but Warren Buffet had a great quote today on CNN. "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful," I think that is great advice from a man who's forgotten more about money then most people will ever accumulate in their own live time. Buffett speaks and most people who know money listen. There's a reason he is the richest man in the US now. Stocks will bounce back, it's just a matter of time. Keep your money going into your 401k and take advantage that you can buy low right now. Years down the road it's going to pay off. 10-05-08 2createawebsite.com had another great weekly newsletter last week. It gave great advice on running blogs and pointed out a few things I now know I need to work on. A mistake I see that I make, is I only try and make my updates on Mondays. From now on that's going to be a little more random. I find myself with lots of things to say on Friday sometimes and by Monday I forget my points. Also on some Mondays I feel like I really don't have anything to say, but type out something trivial just because it's Monday. From now on when a good idea pops into my head it goes on the blog. If nothing pops into my head nothing gets written down. It's better that way for both me and you since you're the one who has to read it. :-) This months contest has been a tremendous success and I'm very thankful to all the new viewers. The winner of last months contest has been emailed and updated on the home page. Congratulations to Bargainhuntingwife. This week I have also been checking out Swapsavers.com. I've been talking with the site creator who seems extremely nice and wants to help people save more just like me. It's a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace specifically designed for people who want to find new ways to save money. The site is loaded with deals, freebies, forums and more. If you have time check it out. I highly recommend it. 09-30-08 This week is gonna be a big week for the site. On October 1st the new contest will be posted. I am working on a new section with tons of great links to companies rewards programs and email newsletters that you can sign up for. Some of these companies newsletters notify you of great sales, special offers and coupons. Most are places I already shop at, but a lot of them were submitted by readers across the country. I'm trying to research more about the programs countywide that way I'm not including just New England stores. If you know of any good store or product newsletters or rewards programs in the US or even Canada please write in letting me know what they offer and their links. You'll see the new section updated on the left hand side. 09-22-08 There has been a lot of small changes this week. I've added some photos here and there to add a little more graphics. I've updated the tip of the week and a new article as well. I was having a conversation about GI Joe action figures with a cousin and about them possibly being collectors items down the road. Based on that conversation I've decided to write "What is a collectors item?" This months contest has really increased the amount of traffic coming into the site and I definitely think there will be a repeat performance next month. If you have any ideas on which gift cards I should have for a prize let me know. Also for any friends or family reading the blog this week, or if you're in the Northern Ma/Southern NH area, check out Eli's new web site too. My wife is finally going to start offering her incredible cakes for purchase at eli's cakes.
09-15-08 I'm on vacation this week, but I wanted to make sure I also took care of updating the site. The contact form has been a huge success. You wouldn't think it would make so much of a difference, but i guess people don't want to have to go through Outlook or pull up a whole separate site like Yahoo just to send a comment. I have got a lot of responses by having my contest put on moneysavingmom.com. Also my contest was added to online-sweepstakes.com. There have been a lot of great responses and it's been difficult picking a pick of the week, but I did and the site is updated. Keep sending in the great ideas and if you even want to take the time to write an article send it and I'll post that too. I'm off to enjoy my vacation and thanks for reading this. I'm also debating on what my next section should be. I'm debating on a section dedicated to grocery saving tips. Any other ideas you may have write me and let me know your opinion. Entries from Blog Entries from 09-08-08 to 05-18-08
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