I’ve written before about cash-back shopping sites, which offer rebates for buying through the stores you always use. If you use Amazon, certain deals just got a little better.
gift cards
A vacation giveaway.
Nope, not giving away a trip somewhere. I’m on vacation, and forgot to plan my giveaway.
But that works in your favor.
Giveaway: $20 Amazon gift card.
I had planned to put up a book for this week’s giveaway, but two days of computer glitches have left me unfit for rational thought. I’m so frustrated that I’m ready to fling myself out a window.
Of course, since I live on the first floor it would be a largely ceremonial gesture.
Since I can’t write up an interesting screed about the book, a $20 Amazon gift card it is.
8 personal finance lessons from “Gotterdammerung.”
I spent six butt-numbing hours at the movies on Saturday, watching the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcast of “Gotterdammerung.” Spectacle, pageantry, a buff and bitchin’ Siegfried who turned out to have a down-home Texas accent – it was a very successful day.
The only thing better than opera is frugal opera. In fact, the show didn’t cost me anything:
Get free gift cards and build a bank account.
These two goals are the subjects of my recent work at MSN Money and Get Rich Slowly — and they complement each other.
Selling unwanted gift cards.
Here’s my feeling about presents: Once they’re yours, you get to use them any way you like. If you want to regift it, donate it to charity, sell it in a yard sale or run over it with a steamroller, that’s your business.
Which is why I sold two of the gift cards I got during the holidays. They morphed from $75 worth of might-not-get-used promissory plastic into $63.79 worth of Amazon.com gift cards.
Some would look at this as an $11.21 loss. Not me. I look at it as being that much closer to the crib I need to buy.
Why gift cards work.
My friend and former fellow MSN Money columnist Liz Weston really, really dislikes gift cards. She despairs of a world in which a shopper grabs a dozen plastic rectangles from the supermarket’s “gift card mall” and does a mental butt dance: Woo hoo! I’m all done my holiday shopping!
That image bothers me, too. Gift-giving should not come down to, “How fast can I get this over with?
Yes, I know you’re busy. So are a lot of people. But must generosity be reduced to a time trial?
That said, I think that gift cards can make good presents. It’s the intention that matters.
Last chance for the $100 Amazon card. Plus: William Shatner and deep-fried turkeys.
If you’re looking for a $100 head start on holiday shopping, be sure to enter the giveaway sponsored by Consumerism Commentary. The deadline to enter is 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19. You can enter up to five different ways.
Christmas 2011: Ho-ho-homemade sweets.
Since getting my candy/jelly thermometer from Amazon.com recently I have learned a new and entirely dangerous skill: making caramels for Christmas gifts.
I know they are dangerous because:
- Somebody had to scrape out all candy that stuck to the saucepan, right?
- I couldn’t in good conscience give a gift without making sure it tasted OK.
Win a $100 Amazon card for Black Friday 2011.
Yesterday I went into a drugstore and found several aisles completely stocked for Christmas: lights, ornaments, wrapping paper, toys, candy and, of course, traditional sacred images such as Mickey Mouse wearing a Santa hat. Sigh.
While too-early Christmas marketing and commercialism in general both bug me, I am also practical enough to acknowledge they exist — and to help a reader stretch his/her dollars to the utmost. That’s why I’m happy to announce a giveaway sponsored by the Consumerism Commentary blog: a $100 Amazon gift card, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.