Today only, Groupon is offering a special Gap Deal of the Day, where you will get $50 worth of GAP apparel and accessories including sale items for only $25! You can use this now through November 20th…and there is a limit of 1 per person.

You can only use these in GAP stores…but what an awesome deal. You get 50% off without even having to look for a sale! Definitely take advantage of it while you can!

Get $50 for $25 at GAP!

Sorry it’s so late in the day already, but the Discovery Channel Store has some great coupon codes that are good for today only:

• Get $10 off $60 orders with code SAVE10 at DiscoveryStore.com
• Get $15 off $75 orders with code SAVE15 at DiscoveryStore.com
• Get $25 off $100 orders with code SAVE25 at DiscoveryStore.com

Jos. A. Bank has a great deal going on through tomorrow, October 21st. On select items, when you buy one, you’ll get two free. This makes for some great deals. For example, you can get a short sleeve polo shirt for $19.00. This means that through tomorrow you can get >3< polo shirts for $19.00, making them $6.33 each. Not bad, right? There are some other great prices as well, such as a sweater for $29.98, meaning that you can get three of them, and they’ll each end up being just under $10.00 each. They also have some other really nice items that will be great if you want to stock up!

JoS. A. Bank has an extra 25% off all clearance items right now. Here are just a few examples of some of the prices after the 25% discount.  You will also get free 2-day shipping if you spend at least $175.00.

• Sportshirts for $22.49, regularly $59.50.
• Dress Shirts for $29.99, regularly $59.50 – $99.50.
• Silk Ties for $22.49, regularly $59.50 – $79.50
• Suits for $199.00, regularly $550.00
• …and more

Restaurant.com has 70% off all gift cards now through the end of January. This means that a $25.00 gift card will only cost you $3.00 when you use code SUPER. You will also get a free $15.00 Dale and Thomas Gift Card with your order.

I enjoy using Restaurant.com gift certificates. You end up getting a great meal and don’t have to spend a lot of money. I’ve also tried a few new restaurants that way, while getting to visit some of my favorites more often.

With all of the stores that have announced they are going out of business – such as Circuit City, Linens N’ Things, and more, you might be wondering how you can make sure you get the best prices. The second that a store announces that it’s going out of sale, you start seeing signs like “everything 20% off”…and then as time goes on, that percent goes higher and higher, until right before the store closes when everything is 75% – 90% off.

The question is, are you always getting a good deal when you go to one of these “Going out of business” sales? Well, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts such as my recent post on Circuit City going out of business, you aren’t always getting a great deal. To further prove this, here is a YouTube video where ABC News is at a Linens N’ Things showing how prices have gone HIGHER since the store announced that it’s going out of business. The video is a little under 5 min. long, but I think really goes to show you have to be careful:

Am I saying that you should stay far away from “Going out of business” sales? Of course not. Eventually these stores will lower prices enough that you can get some great bargains. You just need to remember that just because a store says something is “on sale” that it doesn’t mean it’s a great price. Have fun hunting for great bargains though, which can be found!

Last night, we decided to go to a town near us that has not one, but two stores that are closing. Both chains have totally different circumstances, but what is happening at each store is the same. The first is of course, Linens N’ Things, which is completely going out of businesses – so all stores are liquidating as well as their website. The second store is Circuit City, and while they aren’t going out of business, they are closing a lot of their stores. Either way, both locations we went to had huge “Everything Must Go” signs, and a lot of sale signs all over.

Before I tell you about what we found, I will say that I didn’t plan on buying anything. What happens when a store liquidates is that another company takes it over, and takes care of the actual liquidation. So another company comes in, (usually) inflates all of the prices, and then slowly puts things on sale. So when the first “Everything Must Go” signs go up, things are 10% off, maybe 20% off…and then slowly as time goes on, it gets more and more until either there is nothing left to sell, or the store is going to close in a day or two, and then things are finally 80% or 90% off.

Well, Linens N’ Things had announced over a month ago that they were closing, so we did have some hopes that things would have some lower prices, figuring it would be closing soon. Circuit City on the other hand didn’t announce that long ago, so we expected higher prices.

What we found was that both stores pretty much had 20% off of everything. What did that mean to actual prices of items? Well, at Linens N’ Things, with a coupon you can get 20% off of everything any day of the week. Plus, some of these prices were higher than when Linens N’ Things was in charge, so it wasn’t that great of a deal. As for Circuit City? We weren’t excited there either. Just to give you an example, we had looked at some DVDs, and they were $24.00 each. We’re talking about movies that had been on DVD for a few months already. So even with the 20% off, it was still more than we would pay for a DVD almost anywhere else.

Don’t get me wrong. You can definitely find good deals when stores are going out of business, you just have to wait until the price is actually lower than you can find somewhere else. Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re getting a great price just because everything is marked down and “Everything Must Go”. As time goes on, the prices of the items left will drop, and they will be good deals. In another few weeks, we might take another trip over to see how things are going, and to see if there are any good deals yet.

If you like Amazon as much as we do, one thing you’ll know is that you can get free shipping if you spend at least $25.00. That’s great, but sometimes the item you want isn’t quite $25.00, and you don’t want to have to buy something else just to get over the limit. What you might not know, is that Amazon has a program called “Amazon Prime” that will give you free shipping no matter how big or small your order is.

Amazon Prime actually has another benefit as well. Not only does it not matter how small your order is, but your free shipping will be free 2-day shipping! So now not only will you save money on almost everything (since Amazon usually has the lowest prices…) but you’ll also get your items a lot faster, and you won’t have to pay for anything.

This will come in handy if you need to buy something, but need it that week. Before you’d have to either pay more and go to a store nearby, or pay more to have Amazon ship it out sooner. Now you can pay less, and still get it sooner! If you have Amazon Prime and 2-day shipping isn’t good enough, for $3.99 you can get overnight shipping. This is still less than regular shipping for most places.

The best part about Amazon Prime is that right now you can get a free trial. You’ll get 1-month of Amazon Prime for free, where you’ll be able to get free 2-day shipping no matter how small your order is! I recommend trying it. You’ll really enjoy how quickly you’ll get your products!

I recently got the book “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois out of the library, and decided to try it. I had tried making bread once before, but it was such a pain and was so time consuming, I didn’t think I would ever try it again. Once I heard about this book though, I knew I had to try it.

First off, there is no kneading, or anything else complicated. It took me less than 5 minutes to mix up the ingredients with a wooden spoon, and put it in the fridge overnight. The next day all I had to do was take some of the dough out of the fridge, let it sit for 40 min, and then cook it. It couldn’t have been easier.

One of the big questions is…was it any good? I was shocked. It tasted REALLY good. I was really excited! I loved having the bread, and to know that I have enough dough for 3 more loaves sitting in my fridge makes me happy!

The next question is – how does the cost compare with buying a loaf of bread at the store? Well, I can’t exactly compare it since this is more of a nice bread you’d get at a bread store instead of a loaf of white bread, but let’s try to compare them anyway. At the store, you can spend anywhere from $1.00 – $4.00 for a loaf of bread. With the ingredients used in this loaf, a plain regular loaf of bread cost me about $0.55 a loaf. Granted, the loaf is a little bit smaller than a regular loaf..but it tasted really great. Plus, you know exactly what is in it since you made it yourself. Which also means you can add additional ingredients if you like a special type of bread.

Also, that was just me buying the ingredients at my local grocery store.  If I decide I’m going to start making bread more (which I probably will), I might get the yeast and flour at Costco, which I’m sure will save me a lot  more money.

One of the things I really liked was the size of the bread. Every single time I buy a loaf of bread, I always end up wasting at least part of it. There is no way 2 of us can go through a whole loaf before it goes bad. Here, I have up to 2 weeks to make and the 4 loaves, and this way it works out perfectly.

I will note that depending on what you have in your house, you will need to buy a few items if you don’t bake often.  You’ll need a pizza peel and a baking stone.  I got both of them together for $15.00 and then 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond, and it worked well for me.

So from an economical standpoint…is it better to make your own bread, or just buy it? I’d say there really isn’t too much of a difference, especially if you just buy what’s cheapest. But if you like being able to control exactly what is in your bread, and you enjoy making homemade items, then this book is really for you! I really can’t stress enough how easy it was. I look forward to trying a few of the other recipes before I return the book.

Sometimes, buying the floor model can save you a LOT of money. I can understand why for certain things you would want to make sure the item you buy is in the box, has all of the manuals, is brand new, and has no scratches or dents, but sometimes that just isn’t important.

Take for example a small stereo. We were looking to buy one for our house. Our house was built with speakers in the ceiling of each room, and was set up so that all we needed was a portable stereo that we could hook up, and we would get great music in each room.

The problem is, with the one we had since we moved into the house, you could only play the radio or 1 cd at a time. Since the stereo is kept high up in our laundry room, it was very inconvenient to get to, so we decided to get a new one that would play mp3′s, and have a better remote than ours did.

Since this was definitely a want, and not a need, we weren’t willing to spend more than $100.00 on it. So, we went to Best Buy to take a look at what they had. They had a few different choices, but one in particular caught our eye. The Panasonic SC-EN37 Micro System had side speakers that we could easily take off and connect the wires to our system, so that was most important to us. It plays mp3′s, so that was great as well. It even would play an iPod, so although we don’t have one now, if we got one in the future, it would be perfect.

What was even better, was that it was normally $129.99, but was on clearance for $79.99. That was a great price, so we were excited. Of course, because we like to shop around, we then went home and did some research online, finding out that first – it is a good product, and second – that WAS indeed the best price around. So this past weekend, we went back to Best Buy to pick it up.

Guess what? They were all sold out, and only had the floor model left. Since it looked in good shape, and we could see that it worked, that didn’t bother us. We did ask if we took the floor model, what kind of discount we could get off of it…and this is where I was shocked. The sales woman told us we would get it for $39.99. Talk about excited! We were told that there was no box or instructions, but let’s face it…it’s a simple stereo, we didn’t need instructions, and if we really did, I’m sure we could find them online. We didn’t care about not having a box. It was worth the $40.00 savings not to get a box!

So we ended up getting a really nice new sound system for our house for $39.99, regularly $129.99.

So while getting the floor model might not sound ideal, if you really want a certain model, but don’t want to pay the full price, it’s a great way to save a little bit of money! Usually the store will be willing to negotiate as well, so you might get an even better deal. It’s definitely worth checking out!