Sales, Specials, Deals, and Items worth Mentioning

First, for all you PF blog­gers and Emer­gency Fund savers out there, here’s a shirt for you!  The link’s only good for 24 hours so after today you won’t see the money-loving piggy bank.

~ o o o O o o o ~

Next, Barnes & Noble is hav­ing a 40–50% sale on DVD’s.  I’m not big on buy­ing DVDs since I watch very few movies more than once.  My kids are more into own­ing their favorite movies and there are some that they’ve watched over again.  I’d say it’s a gen­er­a­tional thing but I know of a lot of peo­ple who buy movies so I think it’s some­thing I don’t get but lots of peo­ple do.  If you’re a movie-buyer, be sure to check out their sale — they sup­pos­edly have 1,000s of titles on sale.

~ o o o O o o o ~

One of my absolutely most favorite prod­ucts and one of the best pur­chases I’ve ever made is the Chicobag reusable nylon bag.  Greenfeet.com cur­rently has the Chicobag on sale — they’re usu­ally $5 ea but right now if you buy any 5 in the same color/design the price is $20 (for all five).  That brings the price down to $4/ea.  Of course, you do have to pay ship­ping but the cost to ship 5 bags is about $5 so you’re only back up to $5 per bag again.  If you’ve got a cou­ple of earth-conscious friends, get every­one together to make a group order and you can prob­a­bly bring the per item price down.

~ o o o O o o o ~

Swap­tree  is an inter­est­ing site I heard about recently.  The con­cept is a blend between Craigslist, eBay, and Net­flix.  The site facil­i­tates trades between peo­ple who have books, CDs, DVDs, and games they no longer need or want.  The con­cept is fas­ci­nat­ing and the site seems to be extremely well-designed.  What makes Swap­tree par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing and poten­tially use­ful is that the pro­gram uses an algo­rithm that fig­ures out com­plex trades — from sim­ple 2-person swaps to 4-way trades.  That means you don’t have to wait for some­one who has a title you want to want some­thing you have.  Let’s say you want a book offered by some­one in CA.  Swap­tree can look through everyone’s wants and haves and fig­ure out how you can send a CD to some­one in NY who sends a movie to some­one in TX who sends a book to CA who, in turn, sends you the book of your dreams.

The site is com­pletely free to use.  The only expense involved is the postage to ship your traded items.  Since you’re pay­ing ship­ping costs on your shipments, there’s no issue of inflated ship­ping costs (a pet peeve of mine).

I’ve only started play­ing around with the site but already worked out a three-way trade.  If all goes well, in a cou­ple of days The Daugh­ter will receive a copy of a movie she’s been want­ing and some­one else will receive a copy of a book they’ve been want­ing to read.

I’ll be sure to post some follow-up thoughts, impres­sions, and reviews of Swap­tree.  I see great poten­tial here — but also a few poten­tial pit­falls.  Only time will tell whether it will prove use­ful for us or not.

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