Car Buying Resources

Looking to buy a car? Here's a list of resources for you to consult before stepping foot at a car showroom:

• 10 Ways to Buy A Car Without Getting Ripped Off (OutOfYourRut.com)
  
  
• Car Dealer Scams to Avoid (Forbes). What to watch out for the next time you're in a car dealer's showroom. See also In Pictures: Car Dealer Scams to Avoid and Tech Options To Forgo.
  


• Beat the "Four Square" Dealer Rip Off (Consumerist). A very detailed breakdown of how a car dealership manipulates buyers with the four-square worksheet.


• Showroom Turncoat Comes Clean (Car & Driver Magazine). Learn the tricks that car salesmen use on unsuspecting customers.
  


• Car Dealers' Tricks to Watch Out For (Car & Driver Magazine). More car salesmen's tricks of the trade.
  


• Car Shopping on the Offensive: 8 Aggressive Buying Tactics (Car & Driver Magazine). How to outsmart the car salesman.
  


• Deceptive Car Salesman Tactics For Popular Cars (My Money Blog)


• Fueleconomy.gov - useful site to check out how thirsty your new car is going to be.


• More than you ever wanted to know about buying a car (Broward College) - a Car Buying 101 site. Great for the newbie.


• Car Shopping Generates Many Questions (Washington Post)


• Smart Car Shoppers Ask to See Invoice (Washington Post)
  


• Dealing and Wheeling (Washington Post)


• CarBuyingTips.com


• TrueCar.com


• US News & World Reports' Rankings of Cars & Trucks
  


• 2010 Cars: Where the Deals Are (Kiplinger.com). Kiplinger Magazine's advice for finding deals for cars in 2010.


• Guide to Getting the Best Value (Kiplinger.com). Kiplinger Magazine's rankings of the best values in cars.

My Frugal Living Tip #8: Useful Resources for the Frugal Consumer

Roundup of useful resources for the frugal consumer:

• Amazon.com's Textbooks Trade-In
  No-hassle way of unloading unwanted textbooks and getting some money for it.


• Freecycle.org
  The granddaddy of recycling stuff you no longer need by giving them away to others within your community. Read my earlier blog post about Freecycling.
  


• Kashless.org
  Takes the Freecycle idea one step further to provide a one-stop site for getting free stuff. Besides member submitted offerings, it also aggregates postings from the "free stuff" section of Craigslist and also partners with Recycle Bank to offer a rewards program.
  


• Measy.com
  Excellent one-stop online search tool for researching products before you buy. Allows you to limit by price, brands, needs, etc.
  


• Toolzdo.com
  Allows you to swap, exchange or give away stuff with other folks in your community.
  


• Groupon.com
  Social networking meets bargain hunting. Lets you hunt for deals with a twist: you must find enough friends/strangers to join you in order to meet the deal's minimum number of folks who sign up for it. Great way to make friends, renew friendship and save money in the process.
  

Read the other entries in my Frugal Living Tips Series.

When Is The Best Time To Buy Something You Want?

Want to know when is the best time to buy something you want?

Lifehacker has posted a helpful guide on the best times to buy anything: The Best Times to Buy Anything, All Year Round.

How to Search For Bargain Deals on Amazon

Amazon lists lots of deals every day. How do you find out what they are? Boston Gal has posted a helpful guide on searching for bargain deals on Amazon.

Happy bargain hunting!

Pottery Barn Unstuffed

As I was weeding my growing collection of old magazines over this Thanksgiving break, I came across an interesting article in the October 2006 issue of Smart Money: Pottery Barn Unstuffed by Smart Money's investigative reporter, Ann Kadet. (Thanks to the power of google search, I discovered that folks have helpfully scanned and uploaded this article online. See links below.)

This article reminds me why I have, and continue to resist buying furniture from Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and Crate & Barrel. Are their products worth their high prices? Apparently not.

As Anne Kadet's article Pottery Barn Unstuffed reveals interesting discoveries. A $400 Pottery Barn coffee table has a very thin one-fortieth of an inch veneer. A $900 Crate & Barrel chair has hollow plastic legs, and a $1,200 Crate and Barrel bed has a heart of particle board and is held together by screws.

Links to the Smart Money article:

• Web version
• PDF version
  

Bargain Hunting at Target

Missed out on Black Friday deals? Looking to pick up bargains at Target after Christmas? You can pick up holiday and other merchandise at fantastic discount after Christmas.

From my past experiences, Target's typical post-holiday discounting schedule is as follows:

• 50% off on day 1-3 after holiday
• 75% off on day 4-6 after holiday
• 90% off on day 7-9 after holiday

You should confirm with your local Target, as local managers have some leeway to set their own timetable.

In the past, I have picked up Christmas trees at 50% off (I wanted a fabulous tree), as well as Christmas cards, decorations and wrappings at 90% off.

When I enter my local Target, I often head straight to the markdown sections where the clearance items (with red price tags) are found. Target regularly mark down items with red tags at 30%, 50%, and finally 75% off. I normally wait until 50% or 75% before I buy.

Shopping with Coupons

New to using coupons? Wonder how is it like to start using coupons without prior experience? Slate.com's Alicia Barney has written about her experiences as a coupon newbie using coupons in a post entitled Supermarket Sweep: Using Coupons to Get Free Groceries. This article has links to useful coupon blogs and resources, as well as her own experiences.

Link: Supermarket Sweep: Using Coupons to Get Free Groceries

Target beats Walmart at cheap grocery prices

Everyone knows that Aldi's has rock bottom grocery prices, but Target beating Walmart at grocery prices?

Walletpop's grocery pricing survey suggests that Target beats Walmart by a small margin: Comparing grocery prices, Aldi wins overall, but Target beats Walmart. Not surprisingly, traditional full service supermarkets like Safeway, Kroger, Albertsons didn't fare as well as Walmart and Target in Walletpop's study, which also finds that Aldi has the lowest prices, but as anyone who has shopped there would know, selection is limited.

My own admittedly unscientific study, borne from my own weekly grocery routine, suggests that Target and Walmart are extemely close in pricing, especially if they are near to each other. Both Target and Walmart give the managers of their local stores some flexibility in pricing to compete with neighboring stores. Where I live, there is a Walmart, Target and Aldi within a one-mile radius and you can see my local Target and Walmart competing on the pricing of groceries and household items. In fact, prices on many household and grocery items are lower at my local Target than at Target in other neighborhoods.

My personal preference is to do my grocery shopping at my local Trader Joe's, which is about 5 miles away. Both Trader Joe's and Aldi's are owned by the same German parent company and they reflect that German ethos of frugal pricing. I shop for household necessities at Target, which gives me the opportunity to browse their close-outs and clearances too.

Link: Comparing grocery prices, Aldi wins overall, but Target beats Walmart
.

Saving Money When Buying Software

Are you looking for tips on how to save money when buying software? This online article, How to buy genuine software online for less gives excellent advice on how buying software without paying retail, from comparison shopping for discounts, searching for coupon codes, and buying software at academic prices.

It would still cost you some money, but at least it is legit.

Link: How to buy genuine software online
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How to Save Money When Buying College Textbooks

It's that time of the year again when college begins and there is a mad scramble to buy textbooks for courses. Suffering from first time sticker shock when you look at the astronomical textbooks, whether as a parent of a freshman or a neophyte freshman wandering into the college bookstore for the first time? You're not alone.

Cosumerist has two recent blog postings that you might be interested in. The first post warns you about how textbook publishers are fighting the used book market by pushing high-priced "textbook packets." The second post, College Textbooks: Shop Around, Ask Yor Professor, And Save offers tips and strategies on saving money when buying college textbooks.

Here are my tips for saving money on textbooks, from my own experiences many years ago as a perpetually broke graduate student:

1. If you're on campus, head over to the campus bookstore, look up the textbooks assigned for your courses, take note of the ISBNs, and then hit the web (Amazon, etc) to see whether you can find a used edition at a lower price. In particular, Amazon Marketplace is filled with students flooding the market with textbooks they don't want to keep.
   


2. If it is a bundled package, try e-mailing your professor or TA to find out what exactly is in the bundle, and what you really need for the course.


3. If the current edition is too expensive, you could buy an older edition but check with your professor or TA before doing so. I doubt that there are major changes in Philosophy or Literature textbooks, but you might need the latest information for your engineering or psychology courses.


4. Look up your college bulletin boards, textbook exchanges, etc. There might be students who are looking to sell off their previously used textbooks.

Save More At The Supermarket

Looking for tips on saving money at the supermarket? How do you balance your frugal sensibilities with healthy living? Shopsmart has an informative PDF filled with tips and suggestions that you might find useful: Save More At The Supermarket.

Link: Save More At The Supermarket (PDF)

Choosing Affordable yet Safe Baby Products

Buying baby products isn't for the faint hearted. One gets bombarded with ads for all kinds of gizmos and contraceptions with often unproven claims. Not only that, these gizmos can such the cash from your wallets if you aren't watching. The Consumerist Blog has come out with their latest Guides For Choosing Safe, Affordable Baby Products that you would want to consult before parting with your hard earned cash on baby stuff.

Coupons For Nestle Products

Coupons for Nestle Products

via: Walmart.com

How Outlet Malls Have Convinced Shoppers into Thinking They're Getting a Sweet Deal

Outlet malls seem to be proliferating all over the place, offering deals to attract customers. But are their deals really as great as they advertise? Personally, I haven't been to an outlet malls for more than 10 years. The few that I've visited didn't offer anything that I couldn't get a better price at discounters such as TJ Maxx, Ross or even Big Lots. Anyway, if you have a nagging feeling of being snookered at outlet malls, this article from AlterNet would validate those feelings: How Outlet Malls Have Convinced Shoppers into Thinking They're Getting a Sweet Deal.

What are your outlet mall experiences?

How Supermarkets Lure You To Buy More

Consumer Reports retail expert Tod Marks explains to Susan Koeppen of CBS's The Early Show that supermarkets exist to make a profit for their shareholders. Hence, everything from product placement to lighting is designed to lure you to buy a product. What can you, as an aspiring frugal shopper, do? Mark outlines 5 key steps:

1. The first thing to do when you go to the store is pick up the flyer.
   
   My take: I go one step further and visit the store's website to see what's on sale before I leave my home. I find that the best way to avoid the temptation of impulse buying, which is how supermarkets maximize their profits, is to visit the websites of my favorite stores, see what's on sale and plan accordingly.
   
   Mark further explains:
   

   "But just because something is featured in a flyer doesn't mean it's on sale. It may not mean it's a great deal at all ... It may mean a manufacturer paid advertising dollars toward the mention of that product."

   My take: I have experienced this firsthand. Burt's Bees (my favorite brand of personal care products) pays for product placement in Target and Walgreens weekly flyers. I notice that the Burt's Bees product placement in these flyers conveniently avoid mentioning the world "Sale Price" - a clear indication that the price is full retail price, and sure enough it is.
   


2. The End of the Aisle -- The "End Cap" -- Is the Single Hottest Selling Spot in the Entire Store
   My take: You can sometimes find clearance items or bargains of slow moving items at the "end cap" but always check the expiry date or condition of the product before buying.


3. Product Placement Is Key
   Mark says: "Prime selling space is right in the center, eye-level if you will ... The lower level and the high-on-top level, they're kind of the low-rent districts..."
   My take: You can find bargains if you are willing to bend down and look at the price. Supermarkets often capitalize on our laziness: we grab things at eye level and don't want to bother bending down or craning our necks to search for less expensive products.


4. Convenience Will Cost You
   My take: How true, when you compare, e.g., the price of prepackaged salads with that of a head of lettuce.


5. Saving Money Is in the Bag"
   Generally speaking," Marks says, "the better deal is almost always to be had when you buy the bag versus the loose produce."
   My take: You pay for the privilege of selecting your produce. While it is true that in a bag of apples there may be one or two that might be bruised, it's still cheaper per pound than selecting your own apples.

Trader Joe's Fan Sites

As a frugal connoisseur, I am eternally grateful for Trader Joe's, my favorite food destination for amazing, delectable yet cheap private label gourmet treats. Unlike other grocery stores and supermarkets, Trader Joe's website is very spartan. Enter fan sites, which can be a useful source of information:

• Trader Joe's Twitter: Tweets by and for Trader Joe's aficionados. This is a very active tweet community. I find it especially useful to get daily fix/updates about new products, reviews, etc.


• Trader Joe's Fan: An active fan site with reviews, recipes, etc. Unfortunately, its twitter page isn't updated as reguarly :-(
  


• Tracking Trader Joe's: Outdated: This blog started out well but is no longer maintained/updated. What a pity.