Marilynn Dawson money-saving tips, Products

Black Friday: When is a Deal a Deal?

On my author blog a few years ago, I shared a few articles on managing home finances where I didn’t merely discuss savings or budgeting, but when to tell a deal from a ruse.  Those three articles are as follows:

I shared two examples in Part 3 that had been major learning tools in my children’s lives as they were learning how to manage their own finances as teenagers.

A few years later, I ran across a blatant example this very Black Friday weekend!  Not everything touted as a sale, actually truly is a sale!  Sometimes stores will merely place things in a sale flyer to get your attention, rather than have any real correlation to the sale featured by that flyer.  Other times, sales may offer some reduction in price, but only because prices had risen a month or two prior.  Then there is the issue of research!  In today’s example, it must be understood that many Canadians actually go south of the border to go shopping on Black Friday weekend.  To prevent this loss of customers, Canadian stores have begun offering their own Black Friday deals, door crashers, etc.

Staples is one such store to try keeping Canadian shoppers in Canada!  Unfortunately, Staples did not check all potential competing sources for prices before putting their flyer together, because I made the following discovery:

Their photo products mousepad, ornament, blanket, and puzzle at supposedly “sale” prices, are equal to or just a dollar or two less than the same items in my Cafepress store!  Check out these images:

 

The image to the left is the local Staples flyer for Black Friday weekend.  The image to the right is my comparison drawn between Staples and my store at Cafepress.  This image is taken from a clickable PDF where you can visit the following links:

Mousepads $1 USD more than Black Friday pricing

Ornaments $3+ USD cheaper than Black Friday pricing

Quail Throw blanket $2+ USD more than Black Friday pricing

Quail puzzle similar price USD to Black Friday pricing

The lack of research really shows up when you also consider Cafepress regularly has their own coupon codes across their entire site.  The current site-wide offer: Black Friday Deals! 25% Off* Your Order! Use Code: BLKFRI25 So this makes the above price comparison even more of a goof on Staple’s part!  Canadians can still shop south of the border without ever leaving the comfort of their living rooms!

You’ll hear with various sources that its important to compare apples to apples.  Therefore, I will point out that these prices at these two sites, are using the same feature:  personalized items.  At Cafepress, I have uploaded photos I have taken around my area and turned them into useful products people buy every day in housewares and office supply stores everywhere.  I even have jewelry items personalized for purchase.  Staples doesn’t get into the jewelry, but their photo centre is where their offers on this flyer page are coming from.  You can visit any Staples store, or their online photo centre and create these items to purchase.  You are also able to do that at Cafepress too.  Other online sites also exist for this kind of thing with a friend of mine selling her wares on Zazzle, while I’ve seen local businesses use VistaPrint.

As a consumer in a widely-fluctuating economy, even your Christmas shopping should be shrewdly managed!  Always do your homework before settling on where you’ll spend your holiday budget.  Failure to do so will hoodwink you into believing you got a deal, when in fact the store you shopped at was not really offering a deal at all.

Marilynn Dawson money-saving tips, Products

What if a Simple Concept Called “Storage” Could save Money? Part 2: Your Clothes

Interesting question, huh? But the ramifications of what I’m about to share may just aid in putting you on the road to more savings. Let’s consider several types of storage that can aid in this endeavour:

Last week, we covered several types of food storage. This week we’ll cover clothing storage, beginning in your closet!

Closet
Many articles have been written about closet organization. Companies such as Canadian Tire sell DIY closet organizers that you can install and configure yourself. The goal is to arrange your clothing so you always have easy access to it. When it comes to saving money with your clothing, the other major reason for keeping an organized closet is to keep yourself from buying clothing you already have. You need roughly three changes of clothing for each season at a minimum. If you are the type to dress up for various occasions, you may want an additional three changes of dress clothes for each of the four seasons as well. Any more of this and you’re spending based on wants now and not needs.
When you can see at a glance what you have in your closet, you’ll reduce the impulse to run to the store to buy more. Being able to see what you have also means you have room to manage the freshness of your hanging clothes via mothball bags hung on hangers or placed on shelves to further ensure your clothing is not enjoyed by the local bug population. This too will reduce the need to head out and buy more clothing.

dresser storageDresser
Similar suggestions exist for managing your dresser drawers. Good clothing management begins with optimal folding techniques. You can find various folding instructions for everything from socks to shirts to pants and even linens for your linen closet that will not only keep your clothing looking nice, but allow you to pack more into smaller spaces. Just like your closet, you should organize your drawers so that you know what you have at a glance. Seasonal clothing gets stacked at the back of the drawers to make room for the current season’s outfits up front. Again, you only need a minimum of three changes of clothing to get through a week of showering roughly every other day or so. Only those who have incredibly dirty jobs need more clothing than this. Anything above this is in the want category. Wants cost money too and can eat away at your family budget. Knowing what you have available will, ideally, lower your perceived need to always get a new outfit, saving you money.

Proper care and storage of your clothing (see the hotwater article) will reduce how quickly your clothing breaks down and requires replacing. Clothes do age and reach a point of no repair. Only at that point should you consider going out to buy more clothing.

Cubbies
If you are the type to store your clothing in cubbies, do the same thing you would do for drawer storage, keeping in mind the front is fully open. In either case, a well-organized and properly folded drawer or cubby will have room for mothball bags as well, so that critters getting into those areas won’t eat and prematurely wear out your clothing.

These concepts can be applied to other areas of the home as well, such as the gardening shed, the garage, Christmas storage, etc. The idea is to organize your home’s closets, cupboards, shelving, cubbies, etc, in such a manner that:

  • a) nothing spoils
  • b) things are used up before they go bad
  • c) clothing doesn’t wear out before its time
  • d) impulse buying is reduced to a minimum
  • e) items aren’t “replaced” because you can already see that you have them.
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Carrying on with Unlocked Training at Shoemoney.net

As time permits, I am carrying on with the unlocked video training content over at Shoemoney.net.

I watched the videos for copywriting where I learned that what I’ve done with formatting information on my writing courses is a good example of what Jeremy would call good copyrighting.  I now need to go through and confirm that HOW I’ve used the techniques actually has the desired result of allowing others to quickly scan the page and get the nuggets I want them to know about the courses.

After going through those videos, I watched the video tutorials on best practices for using Youtube.  As I wrapped up that course, updating videos in my training playlist and book trailer play list, I discovered something.

The following video has 330 views since it was shared in January 2015, as of the time I wrote this blog post.  It’s a 13 min video showing you how I use Pinterest as an author.  Pinterest drove sales of my grad gift, “Mom’s Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate” in 2015, being responsible for over 30 copies of this book being sold between May and June that year.

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This video actually got a thumbs down!  Most of the comments so far are all positive, but someone thought they’d help out a little with a thumbs down!  COOL!  Why does that excite me?  People want to see what the negative rating was all about!

Video marketing is an interesting animal.  For starters, you need a focus.  What do you want to accomplish?  Are you trying to send traffic to your site?  Are you trying to make sales of your product?  Are you trying to promote a cause or equip users for a certain task?

Whatever the focus is, you need to optimize your video’s title, description, and keywords to suit that purpose.  I learned a few things today from these unlocked Shoemoney training videos and put them into practice on my existing videos as the tutorials went along.

As usual, we shall see how it goes.  If you want to know what I’m learning since unlocking the initial paid levels of the Shoemoney system, then use my affiliate link to check it out!  It’s always nice to earn a little on the side while you’re at it.  You have to go through the levels and get paid for them before you can unlock content that I am doing now.

Marilynn Dawson Products, Reviews

What Have You Baked in Your Toaster?

In the first blog post here, I wrote about several things you can do with your toaster.  Our toaster oven died on my birthday this year after serving us well for many years!  It became a very good cost saver, allowing me to do many things with it that normally require the much larger 220V oven.

One of those cost/energy-saving tasks in the first article’s list, was that of baking.  Single-meal size baking tasks, or tasks to feed a small family, fit very well into our toaster oven.  From baking the last few scones that just wouldn’t fill a complete tray in the larger oven, to baking pies, small cakes, and small batches of baked pasta, this little oven became a staple in the kitchen!

A toaster oven typically only pulls 110V in North America, versus the 220V of the larger oven. 

While not all toaster ovens are built with the same depth and height available, they all have room for a small tray and can accept single-serving pasta dishes, some sizes of corning ware, and more.  The toaster oven that died could not accept a 9″ pie plate, but could accept a full-height long corning ware casserole dish!  Our newer toaster oven can accept a 9″ pie plate, but can’t accept a full-height casserole dish.  So you’ll have to experiment with what oven dishes your toaster oven can take.  Once you find them, use them in your toaster oven instead of your larger oven to save money on your electrical bill.

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Ode to a Toaster Oven

Today, on my 45th birthday, a toaster that came to live in our home from the Salvation Army Thrift store years ago, finally kicked the bucket!  It isn’t much to look at, but this little toaster oven was a real trooper.  We used it for far more than just making toast!

Did you know you can use toaster ovens to:

  • Make toast
  • Cook meat
  • Warm up pasta in pasta dishes just like the microwave but without wrecking the nutritional content of your food in the process
  • Bake fresh pasta dishes such as baked spaghetti
  • Bake Scalloped Potatoes
  • Bake scones or biscuits if you’re only doing a single batch
  • etc.

These handy little ovens are far more useful than most people give them credit for.  In our home, cooking the evening meal often involved cooking the meat in this toaster oven’s much smaller space rather than heat up the entire oven below the stove.

Not only did we get marinated steaks, breaded pork, sausages, meatballs, and other dishes cooked on time, but for far less electrical cost as well. When you’re on a tight budget, saving money on electricity is something that should be looked at with a critical eye.  Our little kitchen helper proved quite helpful in this regard.

It is important to realize that this toaster was used when we got it, meaning it is far older than the years it spent in our home.  We will be seeing if it’s possible to resuscitate it’s wiring system, but if not, we will be forced to say good bye to an awesome little kitchen helper!