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!

If you’re like I am, you love listening to music. Even if you don’t always like music on, you might want to listen to music every once in a while while you’re at home, either while you are relaxing, cleaning, or reading a book.

As you know, CD’s can get expensive, and sometimes your radio just isn’t exactly what you’re looking for. Let’s face it, your radio only gives you a handful of stations you might be interested in, and you might be looking to hear a particular song, or a more particular genre then what the local radio stations play.

This is where Internet Radio comes in! There are so many different websites out there (all free), and many you can even listen to the song you want to – when you want to!

Here are just a few choices you have, and what makes them great. As you’ll quickly see, depending on your mood, you can listen to almost anything you want…even if you don’t know what you want!

Live365 – This Internet Radio station has hundreds of stations. For example, if you choose oldies, first you can choose if you want to listen to 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. After you choose that, you get tons of radio stations to choose from, so you’re sure to find a station with a style you’ll like. Since it’s a radio station, there are commercials, but there are only a few. They even have multiple stations that just play Disney songs! So you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

ShoutCast – This is another Internet Radio website, and they also have hundreds of stations to choose from. Similar to the one above, you can search to find almost exactly what you are looking for. Again, since it is a radio station, you’ll get a few commercials.

Pandora – This is an interesting website. You tell it a song you like, or an artist…and it will play songs that are similar. This is a great way to listen to music if you’re in a certain type of mood, since it will play songs similar to what you entered. It will also play songs that are less known, so you’ll get to hear different songs.

IMEEM – Have a song that you NEED to hear, right now? Go to IMEEM. You can type the song in, and listen to it right away. It’s great if you are in the mood to hear a certain song, since you can just enter the name of the song, and most likely you’ll find it and get to hear the whole song. You can even set up a playlist so you can listen to a whole bunch of songs that you want to at once.

As you can see, there are a ton of ways to listen to music online for free, so you have no excuse not to be listening to exactly what you want to! It’s great, because you don’t have to worry about buying the latest CD’s, or spending any money at all…but you can still listen to what you want, when you want.

The other day Scott mentioned that he’d like to start listening to audio books on the way to and from work. He figures he spends about an hour in the car each day, and never has any time to read…so this way he could listen to all the books he’s been meaning to read.

Without thinking, we headed over to Barnes & Noble to see if we could get a good audio book. Boy were we in for a surprise!! Each audio book was at least $30.00, and most were a lot more than that! There was no way we were going to get any audio books that way.

That’s when it finally hit both of us. We could get the audio books from the library. Not only that, but they’d bring them to our closest library, so we would only have to go a few blocks from our house to pick them up.

We were even able to do one better. By checking out the website for our library, we found out that NJ has a free online audio book rental system. Our county is affiliated with it, so we can just go find a book they have, download it, and listen to it right then. Many you can only listen to on your hard drive or mp3 player, but some you could even burn to cd to listen to it.

So now between the new website, and requesting audio books from our library, he can get all the audio books he wants, and we don’t have to spend a penny.

That made us very happy. It’s just funny that it took us so long to come up with it! I guess when we think of libraries, we just think about books, and forget that they have audio books, music cds, movie dvds, magazines, and more.

It seems that a lot of people come to this site looking for information on Ziploc Bag Coupons. I completely understand why. They can be pretty expensive, and it’s a product that almost everyone uses, and can sometimes go through quickly.

So I thought today I’d mention how I get my Ziploc Bags for less, going step by step. Sometimes I even get them for pennies, or for free!

• First I wait until there is a coupon out for Ziploc Bags in the Sunday Newspaper. (If you’re not sure if there was one recently that you might have missed, you can just skip this step.)
• Once I know there is a coupon out, I go to eBay to search for coupons. That link will take you right to all of the Ziploc Bag coupons that are for sale on eBay.
• You will notice that there are both auctions as well as “Buy it Now” items. I don’t want to wait for an auction to end and not be sure of the price, so I never bid on auction items and just look at the things I can buy now.
• I then look for the best coupons out there – and make sure the expiration date is still a little while away. Even if I only got a coupon for $0.25 off in my newspaper, somewhere else in the country they may have gotten a coupon for $0.75 off. Also note the number of items you have to buy to use the coupon. Different areas of the country will get different numbers as well. So I look for the coupon that best works for me.
• I then look for the best price. Make sure you add up both the price and shipping as well as how many coupons you’re getting. Some people only put the actual cost of shipping (which is usually just the cost of a stamp), but others sometimes add extra to it, so if you don’t pay attention, you could end up paying a lot more. Also, some people will only charge shipping for the first set of coupons, while others charge for each set, so you could save money if you end up buying more and read how they are charging for shipping.
• Then I wait for a sale. I have 6 supermarket chains within a 15 minute drive, so each week I look at 6 circulars, looking for a sale. Once I find a good sale, I use the coupon on top of the sale price, and usually get a great deal – if not get the item for free!
• If the coupon is about to expire, and you really are in need of Ziploc Bags and want to use the coupons, take a look at all of the prices at your local stores. You’d be surprised how each chain can have a completely different price on the same item…even if the stores are only a mile apart!

Following the steps above, I usually end up getting really great prices on items I use coupons for. Sometimes no good sale will come up while the coupon is good…but unless I really need the item, I just let the coupons go bad. Yes, I will have wasted $1-$2 for buying them, but when I actually find a sale and get to use the coupons, I save a LOT more than that, since I buy 15-30 coupons at a time…so it’s worth it to me to “waste” a coupon every now and then.

Hope that helps people who are trying to save money using coupons, whether it is for Ziploc Bag coupons, or any other kind! If you have any questions, just leave a comment and I’ll be happy to try to answer.

On Friday morning we picked up our brand new cat, Halley! We got the name from Halley’s Comet, which was named after Edmond Halley.

She’s a 6-month old kitten, so she has a LOT of energy, and is a lot of fun! She’s the sweetest cat too, so we’re very happy with her. Except for trying to get on the kitchen table, she’s usually well behaved!

Now that we have a kitten, we have been learning how to get cat products for less. So far we’ve noticed that you can’t always assume that the grocery store is cheaper or more expensive than the big pet stores (such as Petco or PetSmart) as the prices go back and forth, and sometimes one is cheaper, and sometimes the other is cheaper.

Comparison shopping has really been helping us so far, especially since we know so little about cat products! We are quickly learning though, and have found that it is not a big expense to have a cat…and it is also a lot of fun!

As time goes on and we learn more about the prices of different pet products, we’ll be sure to share our findings.  For now, we’re just having fun with Halley, and are enjoying watching her explore the house!

Now that April 15th has passed, hopefully you’ve finished your taxes and have sent them in. If you’re expecting a refund, what are your plans for them?

While it may seem like an unexpected windfall, we all know that we just overpaid our taxes before, and are getting the money back now. So what should you do with the refund? Well, first off, if you have any credit card debt, it would be great if you use at least some of the refund to put towards that! You’ll end up paying less interest, and will be able to get rid of your debt sooner!

Don’t have any debt? Well, you can use your refund to start (or add to) a savings account, so you’ll have an emergency fund, or you can start saving up for something!

I’ve personally found that a place like ING Direct is a great place to have a savings account. It’s still very easy to get your money, but it’s not as quick as going to your ATM machine down the street, so you actually have to spend a few minutes thinking about what you want to buy with money in that account, before you transfer it to your bank. This has made it a great place for me to put savings away that I know I won’t touch for a while.

If you want to vacation, using part of your refund towards a nice frugal trip is a great option as well, especially if there never seems to be any money left in the budget for a vacation. Just make sure that you still find the best deals you can…then you can go on vacation, and add to your savings account!

Lately I’ve seen a bunch of people talking against using coupons. They have nothing against saving money, but say that it isn’t worth the time that you have to put into it.

While I understand that someone might not want to put hours and hours into using coupons to save a few dollars (I feel the same way), I don’t understand why someone would just throw out a blanket statement like that.

I use coupons, and enjoy using them to save money…but really don’t have the time to put my all into it. Because of that, I only spend maybe 10-15 minutes a week getting coupons, and only take advantage of the deals that I am really interested in. But I am still able to save quite a bit, even with just a little bit of work.

Here are some tips I would give the people that are against using coupons because it takes too much time for too little gain:

• While you’re going through the Sunday paper, have a pair of scissors with you. As you look at the coupon section, just cut out anything that you think you’d use, or would be interested in. You’re already going through the paper, so this will only add a few extra minutes of time.
• Go through the store circulars. Even if you don’t use coupons, you should be going through the circulars to look for loss leaders and other items on sale so that you can save money.
• If you see a good deal, go over to ebay, and order a bunch of that coupon. Most likely it will cost you under $2.00, and will take less than 5 minutes total.  I only use the “Buy it Now” for coupons.  I’m not going to wait to see if I won them.  I just want to buy them, know they will be coming to my house, and then move on.
• I understand not wanting to go out of your way to take advantage of deals…but if it’s something you would get if you were already at the store, keep those coupons in your car. If you happen to be in the area, or stopping at the next store, then you can spend the few extra minutes to get the deal.
• Be picky. At first I would try to take advantage of every deal I could. But that took a lot of time. Now I only take advantage of a deal if it’s something I really want (or need), or if I’ll be going to that store anyway.  You’d be surprised at how many deals you can still take advantage of without spending too much extra time.

Following these tips, you can easily save a lot of money, and not have to spend much extra time. Even by just cutting out coupons from your Sunday paper (5 minutes max), you can still easily save $10+ dollars each week assuming your grocery store doubles coupons. For people who like to say that they are worth $x.xx an hour, don’t you think that a savings of $120 for an hours worth of work is definitely worth trying at least once?

Here are a few items that were in the Dreamline Savings Newsletter today. If you want to get emails with these deals, along with many more (including some cool freebies each time), make sure you sign up for our newsletter before we send the next one out, on Friday morning.

• Footlocker has 15% off your order when you use code LKS18M15 now through May 3rd. They are also having a Shoe Event with 50% – 70% off.
• Through April 12th, Toys ‘R US is having a clearance blowout with up to 70% off clearance items. This is going on both online and in store.
• T.G.I. Fridays has a new rewards card you can sign up for (for free). When you sign up, you get a free appetizer/dessert, as well as a “skip to the front of the line” pass.
• Buy has the iRobot Roomba 510 Vacuum Cleaning Robot for $159.99, regularly $399.99. Shipping is free.

If you feel like “hunting” for some good deals, Target is definitely the way to go. Target (both online and in store) has some great clearance items at really low prices.
In Target stores, you know the end-caps that are on each aisle? Well, some of them have regular merchandise, but others have a nice big sign on them that say “Clearance” at the top. The items on these end-caps have not only been reduced, but are sometimes even lower than the clearance price on the item!

Yesterday, I was at a Target that I don’t normally go to, so I walked all around the store, looking at the ends of the aisles to see what I could find on clearance. Note that you won’t always find clearance items matching the section you are in!

Yesterday I was lucky, and found a few items that I ended up buying. One was a set that had a round brush (which I had been looking to buy) that also came with 2 bottles of Nexxus shampoo. The set of three was only $5.5x so I was really happy about that, since I would have paid that for the hair brush alone. Once I got home, I looked up the prices of the shampoo, and the smaller one in the set was $4.24, and the bigger bottle that it came with was selling for $8.99. Even the round hairbrush I bought was being sold for $6.99 and up. So I got a great deal.

The second item I found was for a Burt’s Bees set. It included 2 medicated chap sticks, as well as a medicated lip balm. Their original price was $9.99, and it was on clearance for $5.xx. But this was an even better deal. I put it under the price checker that they have all over the store, and saw that it was really being sold for $2.4x! So I ended up getting the 2 I saw, and would have bought a third if I had seen one. But talk about a great deal!

You can find all types of things on clearance…and if you do see something, I suggest you find a close by price checker so that you can just put the item underneath it to see what the final price is!

If you aren’t going to your local target anytime soon, but still want to have fun hunting for bargains, you can do that on their website. If you go to their Clearance Category, you can search for a specific type of clearance. Or, if you just want to see what the best prices are, choose “Save 75% or more” and you can see what the really cheap bargains are!

You’ll see what the most discounted items are on their website. So while it might not be as fun as walking around the store looking for bargains, you won’t have to leave your house to do it!

Of course, don’t just buy it because it’s a great deal. If you won’t use it, then you’re not saving money at all!  But if it’s something you wanted, and will use…then it’s a great way to save some money.

Here are just a few deals from today’s newsletter. If you like what you see, make sure you sign up to get the whole newsletter, twice a week!

Besides all of the great deals you get with each issue, you’ll also see many freebies you can sign up for, as well as tips to save money.

• American Eagle Outfitters has a few promotions going on right now. First, all of their T’s are buy one, get the second for 50% off. To make it even better, now through April 2nd, you can get 15% off your entire order when you use code 36984522.
• At Spring Hill Nursery, you will get $25.00 off your order when you spend at least $50.00. They have a 1-cent event going on right now, where you can get double the amount of flowers/plants for 1 cent more on a selection of items.
• Amazon has the Fisher-Price T.M.X. Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster for $10.00, regularly $33.99. Shipping is free if you spend at least $25.00. If you weren’t planning on buying anything else at Amazon, instead you can get the Fisher-Price TMX Cookie Monster at Wal-Mart’s web site, where it is also $10.00, and shipping is $0.97.
• The Discovery Channel Store has up to 40% off many items. Just click on “up to 40% off” on the top right hand side of the page to be brought to the items. Some include the Planet Earth HD DVD set for $29.99, regularly $99.99, Sunrise Earth for $9.99, regularly $24.95, and a lot more.
• The History Channel has The Universe Complete Seasons 1 & 2 for pre-order at 40% off, making it $53.94, regularly $89.90.
• CBS.com has added some classic TV shows to their website that you can watch for free. They have the entire original series of Star Trek, as well as some seasons of The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, and more.