$100 at Boxed at Livingsocial for About $60 Net

Right now Livingsocial has a deal to buy Boxed.com credits at a discount.   You can get $100 credit for $75 or a $175 credit for $125.   You can also get 15% off at Livingsocial.

details : You have to use the entire credit value in one purchase.   SO you can't use your $100 or $175 in multiple orders and if you don't use it all up in one order you'd lose the remainder.   You need to use the credit by Nov. 7th.    The livingsocial 15% deal expires 9/29.

For the $100 credit:
1. Go to Ebates*  and look up livingsocial and follow link to livingsocial to get 6% back
2. At Livingsocial find the Boxed.com deal for $100 for $75
3. Apply the promo code for 15% : 15SMOREOFF, that brings the price down to $63.75
4. once you get the Ebates*  cashback you ought to get another $3.82 back bring the net cost down to about $59.93

So that gets you $100 at Boxed.com for just under $60 total.    Or the $175 deal for about $105.

If you're new to Livingsocial then you can get 15% cash back by using the TopCashBack* portal and signing up as a new customer at Livingsocial.   That would make the net cost about $54.19

I'd of course recommend you first go to Boxed and review their inventory pretty closely to make sure you can really get good value out of $100 or $175 of credit in one buy.
Boxed.com actually seems to have pretty good prices for some stuff.    They beat Costco prices on two items we buy regularly.     Getting a 40% discount on top of their prices is a great deal for me.
The minimum order quantity at Boxed is $35 and you get free shipping at $75.  


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*This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Simple and Easy Ways to Save Money That Most People Don't Do

If you're looking for some easy'ish ways to save some money that are likely to cause most of you little pain, then I've made up a list below.   By my reckoning, most people don't do most of this stuff so this could be easy money for a lot of people.   Before each idea I gave an estimate of the typical monthly savings people could see.   I'm not giving a full explanation of how to do each suggestion as there is tons of information about these elsewhere.


$50 : Cut cable -   This is a totally unique idea and I'm the first financial blogger to write about it.   But did you know that you can actually save money by NOT paying for cable TV?    Its true.   I personally think this is an extreme measure only for people who hate themselves.  Ok thats just a joke since I personally value our cable but paid TV is very expensive and you can save a lot of money by cutting cable and switching to Netflix, Hulu and a good old antennae.    Of course you won't be able to watch 700 channels of nothing anytime you want 24/7 like Americans have every right to do.

$40 : Drop your landline phone -    Around 50-60% of people still have a landline phone.   Many homes can live without a landline at all.   But if you have a need for a landline you can use an Obihai OBi200* and Google voice to get free VOIP phone service.   The Obihai will cost you ~$45 up front but there are no ongoing fees afterwards.

$40 : Use a rewards credit card -  Citibank's double cash card and the Fidelity Amex both give 2% cash back on purchases.   I've discussed before that a typical family could net about $800 a year by using cash back cards.    But if all you do is start using a 2% cash back card you could easily get around $40 a month in rewards.   You can do even better by juggling the 5% promotional deals and signing up for new cards with bonuses.

$20 : Use a discount cell phone service - I'm paying $15 a month for my cell service right now.   Many people can slash their cell phone bills by going to discount providers.   The plan that is best for you will depend on your usage, but its a safe bet you can save money over the major carriers.

$10 : Shop around for Car insurance - People pay around $100 a month on average for car insurance.  You can quite likely save 10% if you shop around rates.

$2 :   Use online shopping portals :    I'm just throwing out a wild guess that the average household could get about $2 back a month by using portals like Ebates* when they do their online shopping.

$0.02 :  Start your own Blog :   Its the road to riches!!


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*This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Jet.com Review

I used Jet.com a little while ago for the first time.    If you haven't heard of Jet they are a new online merchant.   To shop at Jet you have to have a membership similar to clubs like Costco or Sams club. So they seem to be a mix of Costco and Amazon.

 Jet has been offering a number of different promotions for memberships and discounts.   Here's one list of promo codes or try the Retailme.not list   You can find codes for 1 year or 6 month memberships and $10 or $15 off first purchase.    Now through September 30th they are offering free shipping with no minimum.

For my first purchase at Jet I used one of the discount codes to get $10 off.    I also got a large enough order for free shipping.

At first it was a little hard to see exactly how the discounts at Jet worked.   But basically if you buy more stuff you get a larger discount.   You see the final total discount in your shopping cart.

I normally buy several items on Amazon's subscribe and save deal which gets me the 15% discount rate for buying 5 items at a time.    To make my Jet purchase I looked up each item side by side on Amazon and on Jet to compare prices.   In my case I found two specific items on Jet that were a good discount compared to the price on Amazon so I bought those items.

I also found that if you increase your order quantity for items on Jet then you get a better discount.

As an example lets look at Brawny paper towels at Jet.

The 6 pack of towels is $9.99.   However it says "Add more than 1 item to cart
to get additional savings"    If I increase to 2 packs then it says "$1.20 extra off when you add to cart" which is 60¢ each.   Going to a 3rd pack it goes up to "$2.10 extra off" or 70¢ each.   The discount per roll keeps going up as you add more items.   It hits the limit at 10 items with a $13.90 discount or $1.39 per 6 pack.

But if you're looking for Brawny then you'd do better getting a subscribe & save purchase on Amazon for the Brawny Pick A Size 24 Giant Roll Paper Towel* which is just $28.49 or $1.19 per roll.

If you buy multiple different items on Jet then you also get a better discount.    As a test I added 10 quantity of a bottle of conditioner to the existing order of 10 x 6 packs of Brawny.   The discount for the conditioner was $10.90.    However if I then deleted the Brawny product and just left the conditioner the discount on the conditioner drops down to $10.60.   In this case you save another 30¢ if you buy both products together.   Now thats not a huge discount but its additional savings all the same.


For my order I paid $35.95 total for my order on Jet including the $10 promo credit.    On Amazon the same purchase would cost me $63 and change.     I saved about $27 on these items by buying a higher quantity of them on Jet versus an Amazon subscribe and save deal.

I honestly don't recall how long the items took to arrive from Jet but it wasn't too long.   It seemed the products were drop shipped but I'm not sure on that.  I've also seen people reporting getting drop shipped deliveries from Jet.    I think this is Jets business model.

Here's the basic steps I used to make my purchase and maximize the value at Jet : 

1. get a promo code

2. shop Jet for specific well priced items versus Amazon and other merchants

3. increase quantity of items on Jet order to increase discount

Bottom Line:   Jet can give you a good deal on specific items if you shop around and even better discounts if you buy a larger quantity.  Throw in one of their promo codes and its even better.
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*This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Best of Blogs for Week of September 25th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

The Big Picture shares Housing Highlights From the 2014 ACS

TheSimpleDollar answers What Is a Reverse Mortgage and How Does It Work?

MyMoneyBlog talks about Raise.me: Build Your Own College Scholarship with Small Achievements which looks like a good way to get some college money for students
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