So this has clearly been a coincidental week of books for me, but I was thrilled about my recent savings on textbooks for the next upcoming school year. Both my husband and I are students, he is part-time while I am full-time, and his school comes out with textbook lists much earlier than mine fortunately for the one of us.
After gathering his list for 3 classes, the books would cost roughly $375 with taxes. After searching on Amazon.com (which you probably would think I am working for by now, but no), I began to shop using the feature where you could buy the books new from other sellers. You could also buy used from other sellers for even cheaper, but with used books you never know what you'll get until you see them, so we went for new. From this method I got all of his books for $227. Since these items are not taxed, it also makes it much easier for the wallet. So for the same quality of books delivered to my door, I got them for $150 cheaper, which is something that even Amazon.com as a retailer could not beat.
There are many great textbook sites out there, half.com is another one of my favorites. The issue is, you have to have your list of books ready a great deal ahead of time, otherwise, you won't be able to get them on time. With half.com, all books are generally shipped through Media Mail, which can take up to 3 weeks to get to you. Buying books from independent sellers may also prove a similar route, with standard shipping ranging up to 15 business days.
Keep sending your entries for a free copy of "The Penny Pincher's Club" to frugalgreengirl@gmail.com!
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Book Giveaway
After my entry on the Amazon Kindle below, I also realized I have an offer for my loyal readers at Frugal Green Girl!
"The Penny Pincher's Club" by Sarah Strohmeyer, a new chick lit type book was
released earlier this month, and I have two copies to give away to readers of Frugal Green Girl. Like "Confessions of a Shopaholic", it follows the story of a woman going through a financial strain and is forced to give up her material possessions to get her life back in order. Along they way, you'll learn some tips yourself on how to save money. I'm happy to trade one of my boring personal finance books for an adventure, and I hope to post more information on this book in the future as I find opportunities for it.
In the mean time, I will give readers until August 15th at midnight (Central time) to enter in the drawing for a copy of "The Penny Pincher's Club". Email me your name and a way to contact you (email address is fine) to frugalgreengirl@gmail.com. Join along with us, even if you don't get a free copy, and share the tips you find helpful.
"The Penny Pincher's Club" by Sarah Strohmeyer, a new chick lit type book was
released earlier this month, and I have two copies to give away to readers of Frugal Green Girl. Like "Confessions of a Shopaholic", it follows the story of a woman going through a financial strain and is forced to give up her material possessions to get her life back in order. Along they way, you'll learn some tips yourself on how to save money. I'm happy to trade one of my boring personal finance books for an adventure, and I hope to post more information on this book in the future as I find opportunities for it.In the mean time, I will give readers until August 15th at midnight (Central time) to enter in the drawing for a copy of "The Penny Pincher's Club". Email me your name and a way to contact you (email address is fine) to frugalgreengirl@gmail.com. Join along with us, even if you don't get a free copy, and share the tips you find helpful.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Paper is so last year
For my husband's birthday this year, I decided to get him a not-so-frugal, but what I would consider a very "green" gift - an Amazon Kindle. They have recently dropped in price, but are still at a quite outrageous $299.
My big thing with gifts is that I want them to be practical. While this gift costs a lot of money, I think it will pay itself off in the long run. I spend a lot of time researching more expensive purchases and finding customer reviews, which is something I would advise to anyone. At first, I didnt think buying a Kindle would be worth it, but after learning more about it, I saw how practical and useful it could be for him. My husband really loves to read classic novels, ones written quite a long time ago. For a while, he was collecting the anthology books by famous classic authors from Barnes & Noble, which tend to take up a lot of space in our apartment (soon-to-be house this weekend). The great part about these books is that the copyright has expired on them for quite some time, and now you can get all of these books for free on an electronic book, like the Kindle. This is also the reason why they are so cheap in stores, you are merely paying for the paper and ink the book was printed with. There are also websites like freekindlebooks.org that have lists and lists of free books to read. So far, he has only really purchased one book (Eragon, for $6.99), which costs half price than buying a hard copy since you aren't paying for the components of the hard copy version of the book.
Additionally, this device provides a form of "free internet". By that, I mean you can search the Amazon.com Kindle store at anytime, anywhere. It utilizes Verizon wireless's "whispernet", but there is no data plan to pay. My husband was out with his parents this weekend driving in a large city and looking for a local store. He pulled out the Kindle to find what they were looking for. Be warned, this is a version of the internet that would look like what you would get on your mobile phone. Basically, it can do the job you are looking for, but is not a computer. You can search google or wikipedia, but don't look for YouTube videos on there.
Plus, and my favorite part, you are saving paper and saving space in your home! The Kindle can hold roughly 1,500 books, which I would think is very hard to fill (But I wouldn't put it past my husband). It also can give you your subscriptions to newspapers or magazines too. Another thing we loved is one of the newest features of the lastest version of the Amazon Kindle, it's text-to-speech function, which will read your newspaper, magazine, or book to you. While it is a somewhat creepy electronic voice, it does its job quite nicely. Publishers are also given the choice to not offer the text-to-speech feature, since this would likely hurt the audiobook sales.
There are other versions of "electronic books" available at other book stores, like Borders sells a version from Sony, however, I don't know if the features would even come close to the Kindle. Amazon.com also carries such great deals on books, that I don't know where you would get a better price.
If you have a special someone in your life who loves to read, a Kindle or similar product might be a more practical purchase than you think, and convenient! Books download to your Kindle in 60 seconds!
My big thing with gifts is that I want them to be practical. While this gift costs a lot of money, I think it will pay itself off in the long run. I spend a lot of time researching more expensive purchases and finding customer reviews, which is something I would advise to anyone. At first, I didnt think buying a Kindle would be worth it, but after learning more about it, I saw how practical and useful it could be for him. My husband really loves to read classic novels, ones written quite a long time ago. For a while, he was collecting the anthology books by famous classic authors from Barnes & Noble, which tend to take up a lot of space in our apartment (soon-to-be house this weekend). The great part about these books is that the copyright has expired on them for quite some time, and now you can get all of these books for free on an electronic book, like the Kindle. This is also the reason why they are so cheap in stores, you are merely paying for the paper and ink the book was printed with. There are also websites like freekindlebooks.org that have lists and lists of free books to read. So far, he has only really purchased one book (Eragon, for $6.99), which costs half price than buying a hard copy since you aren't paying for the components of the hard copy version of the book.
Additionally, this device provides a form of "free internet". By that, I mean you can search the Amazon.com Kindle store at anytime, anywhere. It utilizes Verizon wireless's "whispernet", but there is no data plan to pay. My husband was out with his parents this weekend driving in a large city and looking for a local store. He pulled out the Kindle to find what they were looking for. Be warned, this is a version of the internet that would look like what you would get on your mobile phone. Basically, it can do the job you are looking for, but is not a computer. You can search google or wikipedia, but don't look for YouTube videos on there.
Plus, and my favorite part, you are saving paper and saving space in your home! The Kindle can hold roughly 1,500 books, which I would think is very hard to fill (But I wouldn't put it past my husband). It also can give you your subscriptions to newspapers or magazines too. Another thing we loved is one of the newest features of the lastest version of the Amazon Kindle, it's text-to-speech function, which will read your newspaper, magazine, or book to you. While it is a somewhat creepy electronic voice, it does its job quite nicely. Publishers are also given the choice to not offer the text-to-speech feature, since this would likely hurt the audiobook sales.
There are other versions of "electronic books" available at other book stores, like Borders sells a version from Sony, however, I don't know if the features would even come close to the Kindle. Amazon.com also carries such great deals on books, that I don't know where you would get a better price.
If you have a special someone in your life who loves to read, a Kindle or similar product might be a more practical purchase than you think, and convenient! Books download to your Kindle in 60 seconds!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
My adventure at Plato's Closet
First off, my apologies for being a while since my last post. Life has gotten chaotic recently and my internet connection has been bipolar lately.
Anyways, with our upcoming move into our new home in two weeks, I began going through all of my old clothes and deciding what I could get rid of. While I know we all like to hoard clothes, a good rule of thumb is, if you have not worn it in the past two years, you probably can get along without it. I ended up with a very large box of clothes to take over to Plato's Closet, a store that specializes in buying and selling used clothes for the young crowd. You may have something similar near you as well, that will pay you for your used clothing.
After giving them all of my items and doing some looking myself for about 30 minutes, they had my offer for me. They showed me the basket of clothes they wanted to buy, which out of the 30-35 items I probably had in there, they only took about 5-7 I would say. I'm not going to lie, they are pretty picky since the trends change so quickly. They told me they will typically not buy anything more than a year old, and do not take higher than a size 15 (for women). However, it was something that I was expecting to hear. They aren't going to buy things from you they cannot sell. I was happy to get whatever money out of this that I could, since they likely would give me as much at a rummage sale or from donations to Goodwill. I ended up getting about $15 from what they wanted, and I used some of it towards some clearance tank tops they had for $2 each. I got one American Eagle Outfitters top, one from Hollister, and another top I could use for my work, all for $6. Can't beat that!
Although it is tough to sell stuff to them, I think they offer a lot of good deals in stores like this. It was a weird experience for me because you are used to seeing racks with the same item in different sizes. Here, everything is categorized by size, then color. I remember last year wanting to find a specific color of blouse to go with a pair of pants I had, and going to a place like this would have been a lot easier than searching a typical store. If you have clothes that you should get rid of, or you haven't gone through your closet in a while, consider minimalizing your wardrobe and get some money for it.
Anyways, with our upcoming move into our new home in two weeks, I began going through all of my old clothes and deciding what I could get rid of. While I know we all like to hoard clothes, a good rule of thumb is, if you have not worn it in the past two years, you probably can get along without it. I ended up with a very large box of clothes to take over to Plato's Closet, a store that specializes in buying and selling used clothes for the young crowd. You may have something similar near you as well, that will pay you for your used clothing.
After giving them all of my items and doing some looking myself for about 30 minutes, they had my offer for me. They showed me the basket of clothes they wanted to buy, which out of the 30-35 items I probably had in there, they only took about 5-7 I would say. I'm not going to lie, they are pretty picky since the trends change so quickly. They told me they will typically not buy anything more than a year old, and do not take higher than a size 15 (for women). However, it was something that I was expecting to hear. They aren't going to buy things from you they cannot sell. I was happy to get whatever money out of this that I could, since they likely would give me as much at a rummage sale or from donations to Goodwill. I ended up getting about $15 from what they wanted, and I used some of it towards some clearance tank tops they had for $2 each. I got one American Eagle Outfitters top, one from Hollister, and another top I could use for my work, all for $6. Can't beat that!
Although it is tough to sell stuff to them, I think they offer a lot of good deals in stores like this. It was a weird experience for me because you are used to seeing racks with the same item in different sizes. Here, everything is categorized by size, then color. I remember last year wanting to find a specific color of blouse to go with a pair of pants I had, and going to a place like this would have been a lot easier than searching a typical store. If you have clothes that you should get rid of, or you haven't gone through your closet in a while, consider minimalizing your wardrobe and get some money for it.
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