The Free Thrifty Thanksgiving eBook

When thinking about holiday spending, most people typically fast-forward to December’s big budget busting holidays. However, it pays to think thrifty all season long—starting with Thanksgiving. While a turkey alone might not tip your financial scale, holiday food, travel, decorations, and entertainment can really add up. Thankfully, Thrifty Thanksgiving includes a lot of ideas to help you trim the fat from your Thanksgiving budget. In addition to ideas on how to stretch your dinner and budget, Thrifty Thanksgiving covers:

• Step-by-step instructions for decorating on a dime
• 5 ways to keep tradition
• 5 ways to break tradition
• Travel tips
• Tips for staying in the black on Black Friday
• How to make the most of leftovers
• Ways to incorporate “thanks” into your Thanksgiving

Thrifty Thanksgiving also offers a holiday checklist to help you organize your plans. After all, a little planning can help you enjoy and tasteful and thrifty Thanksgiving.

What more could you ask for? It’s a free eBook that helps you plan out hosting Thanksgiving while saving money without compromising traditions. If you’re cooking the turkey this year, this eBook is a must read.

Download it for free: http://thanksgiving.moneymanagement.org/
Read more at: http://blog.moneymanagement.org/free-thrifty-thanksgiving-ebook/

It actually started last week. I get a Red Plum delivered each week and usually just throw it out considering it as junk mail. In fact, I’ve tried for months to get it to stop coming, but have given up on that. Finally, I looked through it last week and noticed there were 5-6 coupons in there for things I usually buy and for the first time in my life, I clipped some coupons.

The initial thought of saving money was good, finding out about coupon doubling was amazing, but nothing compared to when I found out you could buy coupons in bulk online. Now, I’m addicted and I hate myself for not even considering coupons in the past. Think of all the wasted savings!

Either way I’m a week in and have used dozens of coupons already with a big pile of coupons just waiting to be used. Here are some of my savings thus far:

$27.20 off Paper Towels
$22.50 off Toothpaste
$17.00 off Misc. Food
$5.00 off Tissues
$3.00 off Cleaning supplies

That’s nearly $75 in savings! I can’t believe I didn’t do this before! If you shop anywhere and don’t take the time to find deals, you’re just throwing money away.

Websites I Use for Coupons

Here’s where I’ve been getting coupons from lately.

• CouponsThingsByDede.com – This is the site where I buy all of my coupons. They have the best prices and the fastest shipping. Spend some time and look through what Dede has to offer. A $3.50 order here saved me over $50 on groceries. I guarantee you’ll place an order here by the end of the day.
• HotCouponWorld.com – God the people here are amazing at saving money. The sheer amount of saving information from deals to coupons to cashback is awesome. Be sure to register an account there and find the forum for your grocery store to find information on how to save the most money.
• Ebay.com – When all else fails, I turn to eBay to find coupons. They cost a little more here, but it still amounts to substantial savings. Be sure to deal with reputable sellers only!

Now, I’m new to this and I’m sure some of you out there are way more experienced than I am. Be sure to leave a comment or two below with any advice (where to find coupons, websites to watch, etc.) you can offer and if you aren’t already using coupons or shopping around for deals, well then get to it already!

We like the guide and think it’s pretty valuable, but we helped write the thing and are impartial to liking it. What we want is for one of you guys to read the guide, put its methods to the test, and write a review of it for I’ve Tried That. You get a free book and potentially cheaper insurance rates, and we get a testimonial.

What is the Florida Rate Cutter Process?

It is the process John Bernard has developed to lower his clients’ insurance premiums. It involves five simple steps that you and your insurance agent can follow to slash your rates by 25 percent, 50 percent, or more! The Rate Cutter Process will walk you through it and you can start saving money right away.

• You don’t have to change insurance companies.
• You don’t have to switch to a different agent.
• The Rate Cutter Process works no matter where in Florida you live.
• The Rate Cutter Process works on nearly every type of property you want to insure.
• No hidden fees.
• No gimmicks.
• No surprises.
• Just lower rates!

Here are a few other questions asked about The Rate Cutter Process.

How long will it take? I want to save money on this month’s budget, not next year’s!

You can go through most of the steps over the phone with your agent in less than 15 minutes. One of the steps might take a day or two because it involves a third party. At the most, you should have a new, lower rate quote in two or three days. Your agent can then rewrite your policy and your next month’s payment will be reduced.

Do I need an agent? Can’t I just do the steps myself?

According to Florida law, only licensed insurance agents can make changes to a homeowners insurance policy. The Rate Cutter Process stresses the need for you to work with a knowledgable, well-informed agent when using this process. So, while you can do much of the legwork yourself, you will need an agent to make the changes for you.

Will my agent charge me to make changes to my policy?

No agent should ever charge you to make any of the changes you decide to make using the Rate Cutter Process.

Are there any hidden fees in your Rate Cutter Process?

No. Only one step involves a cost to you, but my Rate Cutter Process will show you how to save money on that step. You will pay less than you would for taking that step without my help.

Why should I pay for something that my agent will do for free?

You’re paying to arm yourself with information so that you know which questions to ask your agent. While he won’t charge you to make the changes I’ll teach you, you can’t tell him which changes to make if you don’t know them. If calling him up and saying, “Please lower my premiums” worked, you wouldn’t be here now.

Will I have to change insurance companies?

No. The simple steps in my Rate Cutter Process will work with nearly every company that provides insurance in Florida.

If you’re a Florida resident who owns a home and you’re interested in lowering your homeowner’s insurance rates, send an email to Steve@IveTriedThat.com and we’ll talk.

I’ve done a more extensive review on this program in the past, but if you want to learn more about BigCrumbs, then click here to learn how the program works. Instead, I want to use this post to show you how much money I’ve earned with the program since joining about six months ago.

My BigCrumbs Earnings

I joined BigCrumbs in October, but didn’t really start using it until the end of December. In those six months, I managed to get back $117.88 from my online purchases. Not bad at all! That’s free money I would have otherwise spent needlessly.

Take notice of both my referrals and my referral commissions. For every user I send to BigCrumbs, I get some money on their purchases as well. So far, I’ve managed to sign up 163 new members to BigCrumbs and I’ve made $74.33 off of their purchases as well. After you join, email your friends and family and let them know about BigCrumbs. They’ll be saving money too and you’ll get a nice little bonus for telling them about it.

BigCrumbs is an excellent program and I highly recommend it if you do any online shopping. Think of all the money you could be saving. Hell, you don’t even have to be an online shopper. If you know people who do any online shopping, register an account and have them sign up under you. It’s a rather easy way to make quite a few dollars while helping others save.

Click here to sign up for BigCrumbs.

Making money online isn’t something that happens overnight. You might be able to land a work at home job, but there isn’t an online program out there where you can join today and see substantial income tomorrow. These things take a lot of time to learn and develop. Time you probably don’t have if your children are hungry and you can’t provide for them. The best advice I can offer to anyone in this situation is to get a job, any job even if it means you’ll be greeting Walmart shoppers during the graveyard shift.

A few days ago, I read a thread on Reddit titled “World collapsing, and two kids (6 and 3) looking to me for everything they need. Cupboards bare. Fridge empty. I’m losing my mind and feel so lost. What am I supposed to do?” The response was astounding and I need to share one of the comments written by the user summermenot with you. Here is some of the best and simple advice I’ve seen for people in financial trouble.

Generating Money

1. Post several specific jobs you can do on Craigslist. Ideas: helping people move, yard work, garage cleanup/organizing, painting, general home improvement help, babysitting, etc.
2. Lots of people here have suggested it… Foodbank. Church pantries is another great idea.
3. Flip burgers. Wait tables. Fold polo shirts. Be a Wal*mart greeter. These basic jobs are often available when no other jobs are.
4. Sell things: Books, CDs, DVDs to the used book/music stores, Clothes to resale shops, Furniture to consignment shops or Craigslist, Jewelry to estate jewelers, Electronics, yard equipment, tools, old toys to Craigslist
5. Seek help from family and friends (already mentioned): temporary housing, money, food, transportation, childcare (could Grandparents take the kids for a week or two while you work on getting everything sorted out?)
6. Seriously think about where you live. Should you move to a city that has better job prospects, a cheaper standard of living and easier means of getting around that would make expenses like a car unnecessary? There have been many articles published recently listing these kinds of cities.
7. Start to look for an alternative rental that you can more easily afford. Get ready to move. Pack up everything not being sold into boxes. Go ahead and give your 30 days’ notice and get the wheels in gear to move, once you have found a cheaper place. See if you can find an “All bills paid” place, so you don’t have to put down deposits on utilities. See about negotiating a discount on rent in exchange for doing work for the landlord.
8. If you haven’t canceled cable, give it the axe ASAP. If you’re not stuck in a contract on your cell phone, switch to prepaid and stop using it regularly.
9. Stagger the times you work so that you can minimize the need for daycare. This sucks, but it will save you a ton, and you’re not in a position to avoid things that suck.
10. Revamp your resume.
11. Network. Talk with school classmates and alums (both college and high school). Friends, family members. Mention you’re looking for a job. Referrals make a huge difference when applying, and if someone can put a word in for you, your resume is much more likely to get reviewed. An easy way to get the word out might be to send a note out to all your Facebook friends. Have your wife do the same. Have your parents talk to their friends. The grandma network can be thick.
12. When you’re out of the hole… Lessons learned: Live below your means. All vital expenses should be able to be covered under one income: rent, child care, food, transportation, healthcare, etc. Make choices on what you can afford based only on a single income. Choose the car that you can afford on the single income. Choose the housing that a single income can afford, even if it’s not as spiffy. The second income should be used for savings, supplemental insurance, college funds, retirement, modest entertainment (only after all essentials and savings have been taken care of), etc.
13. Don’t buy things: Cigarettes (duh), Designer clothes, Cable, Fancy electronics, Impractical cars, More than one meal out each week, Pre-prepared food (it’s bad for you, and it’s expensive. Make it yourself.), Gobs of gifts for kids’ birthdays and Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever, Beverages when going out to eat. Drink water or have a cocktail before going to the restaurant. (Obviously, the parent doing the driving shouldn’t have a cocktail.), Fast food. People think it’s cheap, but it’s really not — and it offers very little nutrition. Want a burrito? Cook up some beans and tortillas. Better for you, probably better tasting, and much cheaper. Plus, the kids can have fun with “make your own burrito night”.

Cheap Meal Ideas

• Spaghetti
• Burritos
• PBJ
• Grilled cheese
• Egg dishes: egg salad, omelets, egg in the hole (fried egg in a slice of bread with a hole cut out), etc
• Hot dogs
• 9 bean soup
• Baked Chicken (use the carcass for chicken noodle soup)
• Tuna casserole
• Tuna melts
• Mac-n-cheese with tuna
• Pizza on tortillas or slices of day-old bread
• Beans and rice
• Thin out ground beef with boiled wheat berries (bought from the bulk bins), use in spaghetti sauces, casseroles, etc
• Replace cereal with oatmeal (bought from the bulk bins) in the mornings
• Cheap snacks: celery with peanut butter, crackers with peanut butter, apples, bananas, popsicles made with fruit juice instead of ice cream or pre-packaged popsicles (the kids can help make them), carrots, nuts (bought from the bulk bins), raisins (bought from the bulk bins), etc
• Use half milk made from dried milk and half regular milk in cereal. Use milk made from dried milk only in dishes when it won’t make a difference.

Foods you can buy from bulk bins:

• Peanut butter
• Honey
• All dry goods: flour, sugar, oats, wheat berries, pasta, rice, beans, couscous, cornmeal, salt, pepper, etc
• Nuts
• Dried fruit
• Treats: cookies, candy (this can get expensive, even in bulk, so make it an occasional surprise for the kids, not a regular thing)
• Herbs
• Spices
• Tea
• Coffee
• Cereal
• Dried milk

Other ideas:

• Use gasbuddy.com to find the cheapest gas in your area
• Use washable instead of disposable whenever possible: lunch bags, plates, replace paper towels with washable towels, cloth napkins, etc
• Only use coupons for things that already on your grocery list
• Make a grocery list. don’t take kids grocery shopping with you if possible.
• Plan meals out for each week.
• Take your lunch to work
• Do free/nearly free activities with the kids: go to the park, go to the duck pond and have the kids paint, find out what days the museums have free admission, set up the sprinkler in the yard, game night at home, community service together (park cleanups, volunteering at animal shelters or the food bank, etc), kite flying, fishing, sidewalk chalk, make cars/dolls/spaceships out of scraps at home, puppet shows, tossing around a ball in the back yard, etc.
• Mend things. Patch the kids’ jeans when there are holes in the knees. Take shoes in to get the heels or soles replaced instead of buying a new pair. Make the kids cutoffs when they grow too tall for their pants and jeans. Learn to sew. Learn to knit. Learn to crochet. (Debbie Stoller’s Stitch n’ Bitch books are great for learning to knit and crochet!)
• Give homemade gifts for birthdays, Christmas, baby showers, etc. This is where the knitting and crocheting can come in. Baby booties or a baby hat can be made in a few hours or less and is a very touching gift for a new mom. Scarves can be knitted or crocheted while watching TV or listening to the radio and make great gifts during the holidays.

You can read the original comment and discussion here. There are hundreds of comments offering similar advice. There’s plenty of insightful comments to help you get inspired. Be sure to take a look at the Frugal subreddit while you’re there. It is updated constantly and contains thousands of links which will help you save money.

Do you have any money saving or generating advice? Leave a comment below. I intend to point those in desperation to this post and it would be great to have as much useful information here as possible.

We’ve been on the e-mealz.com plan now for about 8 weeks at the Joe household. Her hotness and I were looking at the food budget the other day and realized we are spending almost 10% less per month on groceries than we did before e-mealz. That’s for a family of seven!

How? Because we make fewer trips to the store, we know exactly what we’re buying when we go, and the e-mealz.com recipes are created with saving money in mind. AND there’s a cool coupons tips section that we haven’t used yet. We can probably save even more.

Not only that, but I’m happier because we don’t eat pizza and spaghetti any more. (Ok, maybe sometimes.) She’s happier because she always already knows what she’s going to make for dinner. And the kids are happier…no, that’s not true. They would eat cheese flavored cardboard if we gave it to them, so e-mealz has done nothing for them.

If you haven’t before, or if you have but didn’t make a decision, check out e-mealz.com now. For about 16 cents per day, you get a weekly meal plan and shopping list and recipes for delicious meals that are economical and easy to make. Your loved ones and your budget will thank you.

This review is a little outside our normal territory, but e-mealz.com is so awesome I just had to tell you about it. It has saved our grocery budget and slashed my wife’s dinner-time stress. And if you try it, too, I’ll send you a free copy of our Complete Guide to Telecommuting.

What Is E-mealz?

It’s a simple online meals planner. For $1.25/week you get weekly meals, recipes, and shopping lists delivered right to your computer screen. Click here to visit e-mealz.com

No more wondering what to make for dinner. No more complaints of “Spaghetti again?” With a membership, you get seven awesome weekly meals that will add variety and balance to your family’s diet.

Our Story
My wife (Her Hotness) is one of the busiest people I know. Kids’ sports, music lessons, parent-teacher conferences, and on and on. Before she signed up for e-mealz.com, she used to think about dinner at about, oh, 5:30. And by that time it was too late to be creative or inspired, so she would go to the old defaults. Spaghetti. Pancakes and scrambled eggs. Rice and beans. Hamburger hash. All with frozen corn or canned green beans.

Or on the flip side, she would run to the store for just a few things to throw dinner together. As a result, our grocery budget was running out when we still had month left.

E-mealz.com changed everything. She paid for three months up front. Fifteen bucks. For that small price, she has ended meal-time chaos, stopped the daily grocery shopping, and stretched our grocery budget. All of this has done wonders for her disposition.

Inside E-mealz.com

After you sign up for e-mealz, you get access to the members area. You choose the options you want, and then download and print your meal plan. It’s that simple.

Her Hotness signed up for the “any store plan.” It is not store-specific, which means you can buy the ingredients at any store. (If you sign up for a store-specific plan, e-mealz.com will plan your weekly menus based on what’s on sale at that store that week!) Here is a glimpse at one of our weekly meal plans (click the image for the full-sized, readable view). I’ve blacked out some of the details out to protect e-mealz.com’s business. On one page we have the menus, ingredients, and instructions. On another page, we have the shopping list. The system is so simple, even I can make great dinners.

To see more samples and meal options, go to e-mealz and click “See Samples.” The link is about 1/3 of the way down the center column.

Will It Fit My Needs?

Probably. You can choose from a variety of meal plan options, including 2-person plans, vegetarian, low fat and low carb.

Start Today and Get a Free Telecommuting Guide

I’m a big fan of eliminating clutter and busy-ness whenever possible. E-mealz.com is one of the easiest ways to do that, especially if you’re a busy parent with mouths to feed. Click here to check it out and start simplifying your life today.

After you sign up, send send me the receipt you got in e-mail as proof, and I’ll send you a free I’ve Tried That Guide to Telecommuting, a $10 value.

Follow-up Posts

Read our follow-up posts about e-mealz.com:
We cut our grocery bill by almost 10%
Chicken cranberry bleu cheese salad. Yum.

There are five main chapters to the book and each chapter is broken down into specific ways you can spend less, earn more, and simply save money. I consistently found myself saying, “I can’t believe I’m not doing this already!” while reading the book and I suspect many of you will do the same. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed while you’re over there. The Simple Dollar is hands down one of the best online resources when it comes to personal finance.

Take a few minutes today and stop to read this book. After all, it is Friday and I’m sure you’re looking for something other to do than work. I know I am.

Download the eBook for free now from [The Simple Dollar]

For example, we learned that rebate processing isn’t processing rebates at all the way a normal person would understand that term. It’s putting up ads and hoping someone clicks on them and then makes a purchase.

Same with “data entry jobs.” You fill out forms, yes, but they’re forms that create ads and more forms to post the ads on various sites. Then, if someone makes a purchase after clicking on your ad, you get paid.

And in fact, the sales pages and tactics we have warned you about (the pictures of yachts, shiny [invariably white] people holding wads of cash) are very often selling something as an affiliate.

So we’ve touched on different aspects of affiliate marketing indirectly, but have never given a clear picture of what it is and whether you can make money doing it.

This post changes that. It is written for people who are new to the make-money-online scene. In other words, if you’re looking for a way to make some $$ from the Internet and don’t know what affiliate marketing is, this post is for you.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

It’s very simple: you own a web site (or maybe just an ad on a site) where you sell other people’s or companies’ products and make a commission on each sale.

It’s not exactly like an online store, though you could set up something like that.

It’s more like you telling a friend about something, and then, if she buys it, you get a little bonus.

How Does It Work?

The selling is done through affiliate links—little bits of Web language that contain a code linking the sale to you.

When someone clicks on your link and then makes a purchase, the original seller or clearing house gives you credit for the sale and you receive money.

For example, this post about Scott Ritter’s recruitment training program contains an I’ve Tried That affiliate link. (If you’re really curious, the link looks like this: http://manthem.aecorp.hop.clickbank.net/ )

Now click on the link right above this line (it will open in a new tab or window). The I’ve Tried That affiliate link takes you to Scott’s sales page where he tries to convince you to buy his product. Pretend that you do. How does Scott say thanks to I’ve Tried That for sending you his way? He pays us a commission.

Slick, huh?

The Slick About Affiliate Marketing

Here is some of what makes it an attractive way to generate income:

• You have no inventory to manage.
• You don’t have to deal with customer service or handle refunds or exchanges.
• You have an unlimited supply of products to promote.
• Your web sites (containing your affiliate links) work 24×7.

The Gritty About Affiliate Marketing

Don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s super fast or super easy. It takes consistent work and there is a lot to learn.

• You have to have a web site, and preferably several.
• Your web site has to attract a lot of visitors.
• You have to get those visitors to click your affiliate links.
• They then have to buy something.

If you spend any time at all looking at the list above, you’ll soon see that each step involves a lot of potential for problems. It’s kind of like marriage. There’s a lot more to it than (1) Finding your soul mate, (2) Tying the knot, and (3) Living happily ever after. Every one of those seemingly simple steps is in reality very difficult.

That’s why I laugh in the face of those scammy programs that say you can make money within minutes of signing up for Affiliate Millions or whatever the program calls itself.

Affiliate marketing just doesn’t work that way.

Can You Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?

Probably. A lot of people do. Some make gobs and gobs of money, while some just supplement their household income.

The trick is learning how to do it well. And the truth is, you can learn everything you need to know about it by searching online for free information and just jumping in.

But you would need half a lifetime to learn what you need to know to do it well enough to make real money. That’s why we believe it is better to pay an expert for that training. With the right program, you can learn what you need in a fraction of the time and have access to those who have already done what you want to do.

We’ve been looking for some time for an affiliate marketing training program that we like. Millions of them are available. Okay, maybe not millions, but a LOT. We were just about to create one ourselves when we found one that we like.

I’ll tell you about it in upcoming posts.

I am; a born skeptic, and a poor one at that.

I was laid off five months ago. One of the happiest days of my life, truth be told. I’d escaped the corporate-America cube farm with my skin! My supervisor, bless her heart, was traumatized by having to let go some of her staff, so I did what I could to comfort her; but, by the time I got back home, I skipped with glee up the walk to the front door.

I was also very fortunate to receive a substantial severance package, so could take my time deciding what to do next.

I started down a dozen blind alleys, struggled back out, and finally found the nexus of my skills, experience, and passion: I can write! That’s great, but it’s notorious for not paying the rent. So, next up was to find market niches and sub-niches that would pay me to do what I love. Check.

Rubber Meets Road.

And that’s where the proverbial rubber met the road. Several months later, I’m still struggling with my web site and with developing a client base. I’m not the only writer who’s learned the hard way how much easier it is to develop business plans and write copy for other people than for yourself. It’s sort of like cleaning the kitchen: darn hard to clean your own but pretty easy to clean somebody else’s (that’s probably the principle behind home-cleaning services).

Are you scratching your head yet, wondering what all this has to do with “I’ve Tried That?”

Well, in desperation, I started looking into all those sites that promise easy money: data entry at home, surveys, product assembly, MLM, follow the marketing guru, buy this book, enter that contest, apply for government grants, find sellers for buyers, warm market, make a killing in real estate. The list is nearly endless, isn’t it?

And that’s where the writer and skeptic converge. I started seeing the same words, the same styles, P.S.es and P.P.S.es, disbelief-suspension strategies, get-it-NOW, and sales tactics used in those too-good-to-pass-up junk-mail offers that constipate our mail boxes in real life.

Running That Offer to Ground

So, I decided to see what I could find out about these offers – I tried to run them to ground. For each and every site I found, I did three things.

First, I read just far enough to figure out the offer and then scrolled to the bottom of the page to skip the rest of the blabber-jabber. I even continued through the multiple pages of the really annoying sites to get to the sign-up part. I clicked either Back or Close when asked for credit-card information, and about half the time a pop-up begged me to stay and offered a lower price or free shipping or some other enticement. Sometimes, I followed the enticement a little further, but was still eventually asked for a credit card, so bagged it. But before giving up, I always looked for phone numbers anywhere on the site or the pop-ups, and wrote them down.

Second, I Googled the name of the offer and appended words like ‘review,’ ’scam,’ ‘report,’ ’secretary of state,’ ‘FTC,’ ‘ripoff,’ or ‘opinion.’ Without fail, every single offer turned up in scam-report files, disgruntled discussion threads, complaints, or other forms of warning. To be fair, some also showed up in glowing reviews. But who ya gonna believe – the couple mentions of high praise or a couple hundred people complaining they’d been ripped off?

Third, if I’d found any phone numbers, I Googled them directly. (Enter any land-line phone in the search field in 999-999-9999 format, and Google will try to find it. (Do your own home phone and see what happens.) Guess what turned up? Usually, the number appeared on a call-complaint site. It might be reported to send you to voice-mail purgatory, or manned by rude or non-English-speaking salespeople, or even to be disconnected. In a few cases, Google couldn’t find the number at all.

I’m still a poor struggling writer and born skeptic, but I’m less poor than I might be if I hadn’t run those offers to ground before “investing” in them.

This article was written by Christine Rauckis who also owns and operates Clarity Communications. Be sure to give her website a visit. This is also our very first post in our series of guest postings. Get your articles featured here at I’ve Tried That. Click here for more information.