Stephanie Gallagher - Fabulous Bargains!: Great Deals You Can Get for

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Please note: Some of the links in this eBook are no longer active.

Contents

For Mark and Peanut

A WORD OF THANKS

My sincerest thanks to Agnes Birnbaum and George Witte for working as hard as they did to make this book happen.

A heartfelt thanks to Veronica Saydee, without whom this book wouldnt have happened.

INTRODUCTION

I guess Ive always been a bargain hunter. It must be in my genes. My mother swears I sprang from the womb shouting, I can get it for you wholesale. Or maybe its just because I heard my grandmother utter those words so often.

To her, shopping was a competitive sport, and the stores were the enemy. If you could find something on sale or at a discount, buy it with a coupon or get a rebate, you won. If not, the store got the best of you, and you were destined to hang your head in shame and never enter that establishment again.

Okay, maybe thats exaggerating a bit. But it is true that if you complimented my grandmother on a blouse or a dress, the first thing shed tell you was how much she saved when she bought iteven if she bought it in 1942. When it came to bargains, my grandmother didnt forget.

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE

With a background like that, it shouldnt surprise you that Ive made a career out of writing about personal finance. But it wasnt until recently that I found myself in search of a better way to save moneyone that didnt require so much effort. Not long ago, my husband decided to go back to graduate school full time. I knew wed have to cut costs, but frankly, I was just too lazy to do all the things the cheapskate/tightwad gurus were suggesting in order to save money. Things like making your own baby food, doing your own household repairs, hanging your own window treatments. Heck, I cant even be bothered making my own coffee, let alone tackling a home improvement project. Just turning into the parking lot of Home Depot gives me hives. I knew there had to be a better way to save money. Thankfully, Ive found it: the lazy way. And because Im just a generous person by nature, Ive decided to share it with you in the form of this book.

Now, let me tell you what you can and cannot expect to find on the following pages. You can expect to find oodles and oodles of easy, money-saving secrets that can be accessed with little more than a phone call or a few clicks of a computer mouse. You will also find a lot of opinionsmy ownon matters ranging from the use of fine china at informal dinner parties to golf. These you should take with a grain of salt. Most of the stories I tell are entirely true, and those that arent are highly exaggerated. In other words, you can believe my tales if you want to, but dont say I didnt warn you.

What you wont find in this book is a whole bunch of advice that tells you not to do something you like doing. Not to buy juice for your kids because its expensive. Not to buy coffee at Starbucks because its cheaper to make it at home. Not to buy Wheaties because it only costs two cents to make the cereal and the rest of the money goes to celebrity basketball players who endorse the product and probably dont eat it anyway.

Even though all of that is probably true, so what? So now you know that of the $2.56 you pay for a box of Wheaties, $2.54 goes to hiring Michael Jordan. Does that make you want to eat cornflakes? I mean, why do these consumer advocates tell us this stuff? Are we supposed to abandon every aspect of our lives that has a shred of waste attached to it? I imagine this Ralph Nadar clone swooping down on me in my laundry room just as I reach for a box of Tide.

You do realize that 47 percent of the cost of that product is packaging and advertising, he warns, sternly.

Gee, Im sorry, I say sheepishly. All I wanted was whiter whites.

In this book, youll hear no such advice. If you want whiter whites, by golly, you shall have them. As God is my witness, I will not succumb to the consumer advocates and tightwad gurus preaching the gospel of austerity as the path to eternal financial bliss. I will not recommend suffering as the route to substantial savings. I will only reveal bargainstrue bargainsthat can be taken advantage of without sweat or abstinence or self-denial.

And while were on the subject of self-denial, let me just say a word about this whole Voluntary Simplicity movement. You know what Im talking about, right? Theres this whole group of people who gave up their high-powered, high-pressure, high-falutin jobs in order to live the simple life in the wilds of Seattle or some other back-to-nature, back-to-the-womb type of environment (as if Seattle meets that description), and they want everybody else to do the same thing. They got rid of all their wordly possessions, and now they live on whatever they can make selling pottery or tofu or some other such thing and devote their time to worthy causes, such as promoting Buy Nothing Day.

Now dont get me wrong. Im not against the whole earth-mother-granola-organic thing. I mean, geez, I was buying organic before organic was cool. What bothers me is this rejection of consumerism. I mean, this is America, after all. Conspicuous consumption is our national pastime. We have a rich history of fighting for the rights of the individual and the power to live our own lives, practice our own religions, and pursue a Lexus if we want to. Were a country of buyers. We spend more on McDonalds french fries than we do on investing in our future. Our national savings rate is less than the combined total credit card debt of the people of Texas. (Im making this up. I have no idea whether or not its true, but dont stop me now. Im on a roll.)

The point is sometimes its okay to accumulate stuff. Really. If you want a sweater, go ahead and buy the sweater. I just want to make sure you dont overpay for it. That is what this book is designed to do: To show you a way to have your cake (or sweater) and save money too!

YOUR HOME

I love the idea of moving . Its all about hope and promise and, if youre lucky, more closet space. Unfortunately, its also about hiring a mover, packing boxes, changing your address with every organization known to man, and, oh yeah, selling your old home if you have one. Not to worry. In this chapter, Ill not only give you tips that will save you money at every turn, but Ill share ideas that will make the whole process easier.

Not moving? Dont worry. Theres plenty in this chapter for you, too. The most important thing for you to know is that your main goal in life right now should be to avoid all friends and relatives who are likely to move within the next six months. Thats because all of their old, worn, crusty, not-even-good-enough-for-Goodwill stuff will end up in your basement if you arent careful. Since you arent the one getting more closet space, it hardly seems fair, but its like one of those laws of physics: Static bodies within a fifty-square-mile range of moving bodies take on all the old junk of the moving bodies. Or something like that. Anyway, read on because the rest of this chapter is jam-packed with oodles of ways to save money on everything from furniture to kitchen utensils, carpeting, interior decorating, gardening, and more.