Go Broke Saving Money

While we're still basking in the afterglow of post-holiday purchases, I thought I might highlight a few blog bargain tips.

First off, found via Digg: apparently Amazon.com has a Price Drop Policy, where if the price of something drops within 30 days of purchase, you can get the difference back -- you just have to ask them for it.

The article is on bargaineering.com, which one example of the many bargains Web sites out there, dedicated to squeezing the most of out your pennies by highlighting deals, unadvertised specials, coupons and rebates -- both offline and online.

Community is very important to these kinds of sites, not only because they rely on submitted tips, but also provide feedback on what works, ways to improve on deals, etc.

Some of these sites are blogs, but most are at least blog-like: The new stuff gets published on top; readers can comment on specific deals; and they typically also provide RSS feeds, which let you subscribe to content that you can then read in a newsreader program (it's a convenient way to read items from lots of different sources).

Anyway, as I said, there are lots of these kinds of bargain sites; a few that I check out from time to time are SlickDeals.net, BensBargains.net and Dealnews.com (which is where I stole this blog entry's title from -- their motto is "How to go broke saving money.")

A lot of these sites are techie focused, so you can usually find good deals on memory cards for your digital camera, USB flash keychain drives, peripherals (like USB hubs), refurbished computers, etc.

Some of the recent items I've bought after reading about them at sites like these include:

• A few 512 MB flash drives
• Season 1 of '24' on DVD for $15
• A 250 GB external hard drive
• The three 'Lord of the Rings' movie DVDs for $17 total
• My Canon SD200 camera (it's already obsolete, but I like it) and 1 GB memory card

I pretty much would have bought all of these anyway, but you know how it is: "It was such a great deal, how could I pass it up?!" Therein lies peril, so please exercise self-control when visiting these so-called bargain sites.

A bargain site of another kind is Woot.com, which features one deal per day, posted every day at midnight, central time. I haven't used it, but people seem to like it. They also have a blog, podcast, forums, etc.

(I'd been meaning to write about this one for some time, but I'd forgotten the name and I guess I hadn't been using the right search terms.)

One other thing I've found is that, given a choice, you should almost always buy your batteries online.  For example, lithium CR-123 batteries, that are used in cameras and high-end flashlights and electronics, can go upwards of 7 bucks a pop in a brick-and-mortar store. The same goes for the little button cell batteries, as well as the batteries that go in your car's remote, too.

It even applies to regular batteries -- depending on your tolerance for non-name brands, you can find your basic AA alkaline battery for less than 30 cents per, which is a lot less than in the grocery store.

One area where it may pay to stick with the brand-name, though, is rechargeable batteries, especially for cell phones, cameras, camcorders, etc -- you read every once in a while of someone getting burned (literally) because their aftermarket rechargeable battery overheated and/or exploded.

Thanks. -- Joe