Less Money and Enjoy More! Save Money on Groceries

Saving Money is one hard task. There are lots of things to be considered, primarily on how to budget your cash on hand that would somehow, if not manage to have excess left money, be exact of what it should be used for. Budgeting is really a pain in the neck. Allocation of electric bills, water bills, phone bills, etc. is just few of the many things being considered on how to utilize your cash wisely. Food is no exception. Being the most important of all house responsibility, we prioritize on how to budget our money, reducing the money spent without sacrificing the food allocation. We mainly buy necessities in groceries. It would be of help if you list down goods you have to buy together with their prices (if possible) so as to ensure yourself that the budget allotted for food is exact or there is a shortage. If so, you could trim down your list or think of a better replacement. To furthermore avoid shopping shortages, here are some tips.

List goods that should always be found in the kitchen. Examples of which are coffee, milk, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, onion, garlic. These goods are necessary, so they are always being bought.

Plan your weekly meals ahead of time. This would avoid you overspending on goods invaluable or missing some ingredients that are needed. This would not just clear your worries but it would also save your time.

Don’t buy branded goods; instead choose a product that has the same quality of those expensive goods. You’ll get the same benefit without spending more.

Buy goods that have dual purpose. A good example of which is mayonnaise. You can use it as a sandwich spread or make macaroni salad instead. In a way, you could enjoy eating both without spending too much.

Buy less expensive cuts of meat. List recipes that the cuts won’t matter. At least, you won’t be sacrificing the taste of the food and at the same time you’ll have the chance to buy a larger quantity.

Pay in cash. You might be tempted to buy unnecessary goods. This would avoid you from going over your card limit.

Try to be inventive and creative at the same time. Leftovers could be precooked in a way that it would look appealing again to your appetite.

Bring some snacks whenever you travel. This could be a good reliever for your hunger along the way and chances of being tempted to stop in a mini store; if not be impossible, at least be lessen.

Keep a list of prices of goods you always buy. At least, with those products you’re sure of how much you’ll be spending and you could do just a small amount on goods you wish to buy.

Shop only once or twice a month. In that way, less time will be spent on going to a grocery store and at the same time, chances of overspending will be minimized.

Visit http://www.zerolines.com as well to learn how to order grocery delivery online.

About Sylita Thomas and Free Recipes Download: Sylita Thomas is a professional athlete and writer, focusing mainly on health and nutrition ebooks. She is also the author of the Athlete Recipes, available to subscribers at http://www.athleterecipes.com Everyone is welcome to join her newsletter where she offers more free recipes.

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Unlike many guys I like to shop. And I like to shop online. I buy my computers, CDs, DVDs, books, digital camera and many other products over the Internet. I like this kind of shopping because I can sit down at my computer any time of day or night, have a coffee, wear your slippers and not waste time in traffic, I don’t have to worry about parking, I just click through store after store, product after product, and finally find what I keep for and buy it with few clicks of my mouse. I can even buy things from other countries without crossing borders. And thanks to courier companies you can get all your important purchases delivered right to your door.

I used to have all my favorite online stores and customer report sites bookmarked, categorized depending on what I look for, stored and backed up so they are handy every time I need to buy something.

Not long time ago my way of shopping was changed thanks to the discovery of comparison shopping search engines.

Comparison shopping search engines can be looked at as huge, well-stocked and organized online stores, except they have very important features that traditional "brick and mortar" stores don’t usually have: search and price comparison functionality, which literally bring the best deals of the day right to you. This is what makes them truly a unique power tool of online shopping.

This new type of search engines totally focus on customers and their buying habits or buying experience. They can make every savvy shopper’s dream comes true. After all, we all get the biggest satisfaction when we find a really good deal on things we have been looking for, for a long time, right? ut how often this happened to you? Ask yourself how much time do you have to spend on shopping, going from store to store or visiting online merchant web sites, one by one, checking prices, getting product information and reading reviews and customer testimonials?

Now the situation for shoppers and merchants has changed forever. The whole idea to save time and money while shopping for needed products is very appealing to a lot of people. With comparison shopping search engines you can compare specific products in the same category, and by many purchasing factors. Price, no doubts about it, is a very important one. Other important factors are being able to find product information, access to consumer buying reviews and reports that enable you to make a better buying decision.

Online merchants can’t ignore shopping search engines any more. They are eager to show their products to online shoppers and sell them, even when they loose money to gain your business. Merchants also know the fact that people who use comparison shopping search engines are savvy consumers and that they are ready in their buying cycle, and will probably make their purchase decision very soon.

While all kinds of reports show growth of e-commerce and consumer confidence, shopping online for many people still seems risky and they are not willing to risk sending their credit card or personal information because of fear that it would be stolen in transit and used by an unauthorized persons. Another fear factor is to be ripped off by disreputable merchants or having trouble to return purchases in case they were damaged during shipping and get their money back. Many shopping search engines have addressed this problem with their rating systems for participating merchants and even money-back guarantee, ability for consumers to share their experience, submit reviews and testimonials for each online store and each product sold online.

So now the question is what comparison shopping search engines you should use?

There are plenty of them, but I will discuss only the most important of them.

You can separate all comparison shopping search engines into two categories: major general comparison shopping sites with hundreds of categories and tons of products, and smaller shopping search engines focused on specific groups of products.

Major Comparison Shopping Search Engines

Here is a list of major comparison shopping search engines that can offer you millions of products categorized into many departments or categories. All you need to do is to browse through department, find the product you are looking for and then click on button "Compare prices" or "Details".

Yahoo Shopping ( shopping.yahoo.com) is one of the biggest engines that provides connection to thousands of online stores: traditional retail stores, catalog sales sites, small online boutiques and specialty stores. You should also visit Google’s Froogle (www.froogle.com), MSN Shopping (shopping.msn.com) and CNet Shopper (shopper.cnet.com).

E.W. Scripps’ BizRate (www.bizrate.com) and Shopzilla (www.shopzilla.com) are basically the same engines, with slightly different design, so you can use one or another for your search. Both engines provide nice feature Smart Choice that based on lowest price from trusted online merchant.

Owned by EBay, Shopping.com will provide comparison shoppers with auction’s listings as well, so it gives more options for buyers to make purchase online.

NexTag (www.nextag.com) has a nice feature called "True Prices" that shows final price after tax and shipping charges depending on Zip code.

PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com ) is another good comparison shopping engine that is available in English and Spanish, with member ratings of products.

PriceRunner (www.pricerunner.com ) can be really helpful to get price comparison on many products with ratings that include reviews from both experts and end users.

MySimon (www.mysimon.com) is one of the oldest shopping search engines on the Web, so do not forget to use it as well. It shows you final price including taxes and shipping charges, product reviews and rating system for merchants.

Specialized Comparison Shopping Search Engines

For price comparison on computers, computer parts and peripherals, software and electronics I would recommend to visit PriceWatch (www.pricewatch.com)

If you are looking for health products like prescription drugs or nutritional supplements, then probably you can’t find better place to shop than HealthPricer (www.healthpricer.com). While some of major comparison shopping engines do have prescription drugs and supplements listed, they usually can’t show you more than very few price comparisons for each product and doesn’t include price per tablet which depends on how many pills you are going to buy. At HealthPricer you can find and compare prices for drugs from more than 50 eTailers, check information about trusted licensed online pharmacies (mostly Canadian) and compare their ratings. Most of the listed drugs are 100% FDA approved. Try to use it and you will see that price difference can be huge, especially on expensive drugs.

Another good site to compare drug prices is www.pharmacychecker.com. This site has its own rating system and online verification program that let consumers know that they buy prescription drugs from a pharmacy in good standing. It also has a lot of information about personal importation of drugs into USA and legal issues related to that.

Contact lens prices should be checked again at www.healthpricer.com , where you can get comparison for more than 500 products and prices based on how many boxes of contacts you are going to buy.

To shop for the books you should visit AddAll (http://www.addall.com/) book search and price comparison engine that brings you results from more than 40 online books stores, 200 sellers and millions of new, used and out of print books. It also lists magazines, CDs, movies on DVD and VHS.

Good comparison shopping for books, electronics and sporting goods can be done at PriceScan site (http://www.pricescan.com/) which claims that they don’t accept money from vendors to be listed.

Are you interested in ordering some wine or wine gift baskets online? Then do not forget to visit 800wine.com or Allwinebaskets.com sites. (sorry, but there is no online testing provided)

To find special offers, coupons, freebies and free trials available online you should visit SpecialOffers.com. It has many categories not just for products but services as well like loans and mortgages.

Nine Rules of Cost Effective and Safe Online Shopping

1. Know the product you are looking for by learning about it. Read expert and end customer’s reviews for the product.
2. Find products and check their prices by using different comparison shopping search engines. Find the lowest price or use "Best Deal" label attached to the listing. It is better to pay a little bit more but to deal with trusted merchant that’s more security-conscious and customer-friendly.
3. Check taxes, shipping and handling fees to get final cost.
4. Check the refund and return policy. Review warranties. Read the fine print. Check seller’s Privacy Policy.
5. Be careful with retailers you don’t know. Check customer testimonials for retailer you are going to buy from. While user feedbacks and rating systems are helpful, please check the Better Business Bureau before buying from small online merchants.
6. Keep your login information safe. Use credit cards for payment because of better fraudulent protection. Make sure that ordering and payment go on a secured server. Look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL for a website that begins "https:" (the "s" stands for "secure").
7. Track your purchases and keep receipts and website printouts like product description and price. Check your credit card statements as you receive them to be on the lookout for unauthorized charges.
8. Inspect your purchase carefully as soon as you receive it. Contact the seller as soon as possible if you discover a problem with it. Tell the seller in writing about any problem that you are concerned with, ask for a repair or refund, and keep a copy of your correspondence.
9. After you get your purchase please submit your testimonial and share your experience with other customers. It will help customers to make their buying decision and will improve or lower merchant rating.

Conclusion

Knowledge is power, and comparison shopping search engines can be a real power tools for savvy shoppers to make informative buying decisions. Save time and money during the coming holiday shopping season and have the best possible shopping experience by finding great deals quick and easy. Happy shopping!

Dmitriy Minenko is working as a Sr. SEO Specialist for One Person Health Inc., developer of price comparison engine for health products such as prescription drugs, contact lenses, nutritional supplements and vitamins. He has many years of expertise in e-commerce and online price comparison shopping techniques that allows people to use power of Internet to make informed buying decisions.

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Shhh I’m going to let you in on a secret. eBay does not always have the best deals on-line. It’s true. Many shop at eBay thinking they are getting the best deal around. Are they?

Let’s take a look at a basic economy rules. Rule - They higher the overhead, the higher the price of the product. eBay has continued to increase it’s prices on merchants. Recently they announced a 500% increase on store listing fees. Although Bill Cobb President of eBay north America claims that the increase will amount to 6%. The actual increase from .02 cents per store listing to .10 cents per store listing for listing prices of $25.00 or more is a 500% increase.

What’s the big deal, 8 cents pffftt.. ? I know that doesn’t sound like much if you are a buyer. Let’s take a look at what it means to a merchant, and then what that really means to a shopper on eBay.
First eBay does not allow options in their listings. If I want to sell leather pants that come in black, red, and white and sizes small, medium, large, x-large, 1X, 2X, and 3X. I can’t do that in one listing and let the buyer pick one. I have to list each size and color in a separate listing. In other words to sell this one item means I have to create 21 listings. That’s only $2.10 right? Wrong, I also have a store fee, that fee for a basic store is $15.00 per month. Still not bad, but wait, we still have more fees. If I want a gallery picture so you can see the product before you click it, that’s an additional fee of .01 cent. Then, when you buy it, eBay will charge me a final value fee of anywhere from 3 to 10% of the final cost. If the item was sold for $99.00 then that is another 7% or $6.93 add in the Pay Pal fees of another $6.93. Already the have taken more than 50% of my total profit for that one item (remember I have to buy the item too). Not all my listings are going to sell each month.

If I want to offer a large selection then I will have to have many listings that don’t sell each month. So, if I have 700 listings and sell $1,000.00 worth of merchandise, I will be lucky to walk away with $100.00 in my pocket for the month. If I sell that well.

The competition on eBay is steep. Most months I am not going to do that well if I am selling something like new clothing. The only way for me to make up for this overhead is to increase the price of my goods.
If I sell on a web site my overhead is much lower. I have a hosting fee, you can get a good sized web site for about $5.00 per month. I don’t have listing fees, I can include more information, have a more attractive listing, and sell for LESS.

Why sell on eBay? Because of traffic. I sell more often on eBay than I do on my site because of the traffic eBay pulls in. They pull the traffic because people have the assumption they are getting a better deal on eBay, or that eBay sellers are some how more legitimate. The truth is far from this.

Many of you have already experienced the .01 cent auction only to find out the shipping was outrageous. The seller resorted to making the price up in his shipping tricking you to bid on an item. Granted, there are a lot of honest hard working merchants on eBay, as well as selling on their own web sites.

Here is another eBay trick I do a search on Google or another search engine for hot items, let’s say digital camera’s I find a great price, maybe 25 to 30% off retail. I copy the picture, copy the information, and put it up on auction for the same price plus 10%, add an additional 5 dollars in the shipping, and start taking bids. If it is a hot item I may sell it at or above retail. I take the order, go back to the site, make the purchase and send have them send it to you. You could have purchased the item at the same price the seller did if you had just done a search and found the web site.

Even my site sells on eBay, although I sell for less at my site. Do yourself a favor before you make your next eBay purchase, do a search and see if you can find it for less. Most on-line merchants sell through Pay-Pal, so you still have the same protection. Plus your credit cards and debit cards have plenty of protection too. To the point where you really no longer have to worry about purchasing on-line any longer.

Jim lives in Augusta Ga, where he and his wife sell lingerie, sexy costumes, clubwear and biker gear, called Hot Stuff Leather and Lace. He also enjoy’s writting about romance, relationships, and fashion. You can read his other articles or see him on his forums at http://www.hotstuffleatherandlace.com Come by and say hi, or browse our catalog today.

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