Mrs. Pinchpenny’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays on a Budget
With the holidays around the corner, people are starting to think about ways that they can get gifts for their families and friends without breaking the budget (assuming that they even have a holiday spending budget in the first place!).
A recent survey from COUPON CABIN of almost 2,500 people asked how people were going to afford the holidays this year, and this is some of what they found:
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The longest daily commute to work that Web Watch has ever had to do regularly involved a car, two trains, and a 4-block walk. Surprisingly, under the best conditions, this 60+ mile one-way trek could be done door-to-door in an hour.
It wasn’t an hour trip very often.
And let’s face it – long commutes kind of suck. No wonder people often decide to move their living situation to be closer to work.
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How much water can a waterless urinal save a home or organization?
Well, it mostly depends on how many times it ends up being flushed.
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If there’s one piece of advice that Web Watch is always trying to give to our younger acquaintances, it’s that it’s always better in the long run to save as much money as you can for the future. A while back, we recommended to try to have $10000 in the bank by the time you’re 30 years old, and that’s still a good rule of thumb to live by (call it your “emergency fund”, it still represents about 3-to-6 months take home pay for the average young adult that financial experts recommend keeping available for emergency purposes).
And Krystal felt the same way when she found herself a 20-something with over $20,000 in debt that she decided she wanted to get rid of. It was an albatross keeping her from future successes.
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Web Watch went to a charity auction a few years ago and won a silent auction for a handful of restaurant gift cards, for restaurants that we would actually go to.
We used three of the four cards, which more than made up for the overall cost paid at the auction. Yet we have one card left that we just haven’t gotten around to using.
And this week we found out that the restaurant it was for just closed. We know we could travel around the country and use the gift card at one of their other locations, but we really doubt we’ll be visiting one of those cities anytime soon. Just saying.
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Buy the KILL-A-WATT ENERGY USAGE MONITOR
How much energy costs the average homeowner differs from house-to-house, as well as from state-to-state.
Some states have abundant energy resources, and the cost to deliver that energy to one’s home can be very inexpensive.
Some states have higher energy taxes or infrastructure issues that make providing electricity more expensive than other places.
It should come as no surprise that the US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION collects and analyzes things like this, and makes that information available to us – the American public.
Pick Another Checkout Lane, Honey: Save Big Money & Make the Grocery Aisle your Catwalk!
If you’re like Web Watch, you watch a lot of television. And one of the more recent interesting series we’ve caught is TLC’s EXTREME COUPONING.
You know the show – it features shopping trips by couponing fanatics who are able to save 90% or more on their supermarket bill by careful planning and using coupons.
TLC’s cameras follow these proud hoarders around the store as they fill their shopping carts with hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise that they’ll pay just cents on the dollar for – and then show us their “mini-marts” of storage at home, where they have enough cereal, bathroom supplies, and diapers to last for months or years without returning to the store ever again.
While Web Watch admires some of these coupon folks for using their shopping knowledge to supply charities or care packages for overseas troops, it’s those featured on the show that end up buying products that they’ll never use that really concerns us. One show featured a woman who had almost a year’s worth of diapers in her storage area – she’s not married, pregnant, or has any children of her own. She did this so she’ll be ready when that time comes.
Just what every baby needs to wear – disposable diapers that are five years older than they are.
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Want to save money?
Well, you have to ask yourself about what is one of your biggest expenses that you can’t live without.
That’s right – it’s your liquor and beer. What’s life if you can’t have a decent drink once in a while?
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Urinal
$25 iTunes Gift Card
