shoppingonabudget

DVD movies make great Christmas gifts. If you are looking for good deals, you can find them on Black Friday. But, if you want to avoid the long longs and overall chaos, I recommend checking out BestBuy.com.

Best Buy has a number of great sales on DVDs. They have number of DVDs for $3.99, more for $4.99 and up. This is a sale on these movies. I am not sure how long the sale lasts, so you may want to buy up these DVDs now.

As of November 24, 2008, these were some of the DVDs you would buy on sale:

$3.99 DVDS

First Sunday
Miami Vice
Reign Over Me
Breach
Memoirs of a Geisha
Children of Men
Because I Said So
Stranger than Fiction
The Da Vinci Code
A Beautiful Mind
Inside Man
X-Men The Last Stand
Robots
Kicking and Screaming
Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat

In my last post, I highlighted a Buy Two, Get One Free Sale that Amazon.com had on select Nerf toys. How did I find this sale? By browsing the Amazon.com website and here is how you can do so:

1 – Visit the Amazon.com website.

2 – Click on the “Today’s Deals,” link. This link appears next to a small gold box right near the Amazon.com image in the upper left-hand corner of your page.

3 – Scroll down until you see a Best Deals section with a box of items pictured inside. This is where you fill find deals on Amazon.com. You can also click on the links below to get targeted deals on toys, home improvement items, apparel, and more.

Whether you are looking for cheap Christmas presents or always trying to save money, always check this sale section first. Otherwise, you may miss out on a great deal.

Do you need to buy Christmas gifts for a small child, tween, or a family in general? If so, I recommend visiting the Amazon.com website. By clicking on the “Toys and Games,” department you will see that select Hasbro games are up to 60% off. According to the Amazon website, this sale goes until October 17, 2008.

As great as it is to hear that select games are on sale, why should you buy them as Christmas gifts? Board games make great gifts. Speaking from the perspective of a parent, they are something you can’t go wrong with. Most are fun and educational. My only recommendation is to first review the recommended age range.

Today, I purchased the new Twister Hopscotch and Mousetrap games for my daughter as Christmas gifts.

If you are looking for ways to save money on your groceries, you likely already look for the meat that is on sale, but what about the meat that is being offered at a discounted price? If your grocery store is like mine, they may occasionally offer meat for a discounted price. This price is separate from the traditional sale price or what you would receive with a shopper’s card.

Of course, discounted meat doesn’t sound too tempting for some (I was included at first too). There are a number of factors that are taken into consideration when meat is offered at an extra discounted price. This includes the date. Always check the sell by date. Never purchase meat with a date that has expired. I also avoid those for the day in question.

This past weekend, our local grocery store had reduced almost half of their sausage packages. The prices where cut in half from the already on sale price. The sell by date wasn’t for two more days, so I bought some. Along as the meat is used or freezed by the sell by date, you should be good to go.

Have you ever found a really great sale at your grocery store only to later see the shelf completely empty? If so, what have you done? In the past, I would have kept on moving or grabbed another brand. Now, I request a rain check and you should do so too.

Rain checks, as you likely already know, are little tickets or pieces of paper that state you are entitled to receive the advertised sale price at a later date, even after the price has changed. Your grocery store may place an expiration date on that rain check, but not always.

Although rain checks can seem like a pain, as you often have to visit the customer service department to get them, they are still a great way to save money on groceries.

While you will find some variances, most full sized grocery stores do offer rain checks, even if they aren’t advertised. Department stores and convenience stores, on the other hand, typically just operate on a “we have it until it is gone,” basis.

A personal experience today at one of my local grocery stores has lead to a great moneysaving tip. It is important to know what sales your store has going on. You can do this by reading store sale fliers or by looking out for signs.

After a nice trip to the zoo with our family, we stopped at the grocery store to pickup some hamburger meat for Memorial Day tomorrow. The sign said $1.99 a pound for the larger packages. So, I was shocked when the packages that are normally $7 to $10 on sale were marked as being $14-$20. The gentleman standing next to me was just as shocked.

As I leave to approach a store employee, he says that he found them. The packages of meat that were on sale were underneath the regular priced meat. Nothing about the two products were different, same lean ratio and everything. The only differences were the price labels and the barcodes were different.

I don’t know if it was because they were trying to make extra money for Memorial Day or what, but I was shocked. That is why it is always important to know what items are on sale and be sure to ask if you have any questions. You should always receive the advertised sale price.

If you are looking to save money on groceries, the stock up sales that many stores have may sound attractive. These are the sales where you can buy say 10 jars of spaghetti sauce for $10. The only problem is what if you don’t have the money to buy 10 jars?

Does your store still allow you to get the sale price on these types of items? If not, you should consider finding a grocery store that does.

In my area, most grocery stores will allow you to get the special sale price, even if you only buy a small amount of the product. For example, instead of spending $10 on 10 jars of spaghetti sauce, I can get 4 for $4. There are, however, a couple of stores in the area that do not operate this way. If I were only able to purchase 4 jars of spaghetti sauce, I would be charged full price for each one.

Stocking up is a great way to save money on groceries, but it is something that not all of us can do.

If you are looking to become a smart shopper, there is a good chance that you will be on the lookout for great grocery store sales. One grocery sale that attracts shoppers is Buy One Get One Free deals, but are you really getting a good deal?

When it comes to Buy One Get One Free sales, you are typically getting a good deal, but it is also important that you proceed with caution.

For example, one of my local grocery sales regularly has Buy One Get One Free sales on a large number of their products. Most of the time, you are saving money, but there is something that I have noticed with their chicken. Almost every week, the chicken is on sale for $1.99 a pound. However, whenever they have a Buy One Get One Free sale, the prices rises to almost $4 a pound. So, in reality, the price is about the same, if not a little bit more expensive.

Does this happen at your grocery store? If you do not know, you may want to keep your eyes open. Most of the time, great grocery store sales can save you money, but always be sure to use your best judgment.