I stopped by a Wendy’s hamburger joint today, and discovered that their kids meals at this point come with Peanuts toys. Theres a stuffed Snoopy backpack clip, a stuffed Woodstock keychain, a frame with comic strips so you can mix-and-match panels, a Snoopy bobblehead, and then something called the Peanuts Holiday Gift Kit. And that sets me up for today.
The holidays are right around the corner. Not just holidays, the holidays. You know the ones I mean. Gifts are to be bought. And some folks are talking about how this year we’re supposed to be frugal, which sounds a little silly to me on two levels. One: I’m always frugal. Really. Doesn’t mean that I don’t spend the money, but if I can find a way to get the same thing for less, don’t stand in my way. Two: it’s a great time to be extra cheap if you’re going through hard times or if you have specific concerns about the coming year, but if you haven’t been hit and your job is secure, now is not the time to cheap out. One of the key things that hurts the economy is people cutting back spending over general uncertainty.
So I’ll go into my annual reminders of Why Ordering Through Amazon Works Well For Gifts (those of you who remember it from past years can hum along.) You’ve got the selection, you’ve got some very good prices, but the thing that always makes it work for me is the shipping. Take advantage of Amazon’s gift wrapping, have them ship it to the recipient, and you avoid finding the right box, finding filler material, standing in line at the post office, and if you’re buying gifts that cost you over $25 and order early, you can get in on the free super saver shipping. That’s a major saving of time, effort, and expense. Even if you’re flying home for the holidays – have you seen the price of taking an extra suitcase on the airplane these days? Have Amazon ship the gifts to your destination.
And if you’re planning on ordering through Amazon, please start by coming here to AAUGH.com and clicking on one of the links. Even if you aren’t ordering Schulz goods, it still helps AAUGH.com, still helps keep me adding books to the AAUGH.com references library and digging up bargains for you. (And I hope no one minds if I tack a few non-Schulz bargains onto upcoming otherwise-Schulzy posts. A few of you ordered the Buffy DVD set I linked to when it was on one-day sale, suggesting that a bargain that I can get excited about is worth sharing. But don’t worry, that tail won’t wag the dog here.)
Want another way to be frugal dealing with Amazon? Here’s a deal. Now, if you’re like me, you’re dashingly handsome, an international secret agent traveling to strange, distant lands on the pretense of finding foreign language Peanuts books. No, wait, that’s not what I mean to say. If you’re like me, you have a pile of coins laying around the house. You empty change out of your pocket at the end of the day, and you never get around to dealing with it. So eventually, you take a big jar to the supermarket where they have a Coinstar machine, and they count out your coins and then give you a receipt for 91.1% of what you put in, and you turn that into cash at the register. And if you do that, you may already know about one frugal trick: some (not all) Coinstar machines let you take payment in Amazon credit (they say “gift certificate”, but it’s not a nice certificate, just a receipt with a code you have to enter online to get an Amazon credit code). Take that option, and you get 100% of the value of the coins. That’s good, that’s smart. But now there’s another little trick that only works for another couple weeks. Take in at least $40 worth of coins, choose Amazon credit, get your receipt, go online, get 100% of the value immediately. Then you can mail in the receipt and get another $10 in Amazon credit! Details here.
(If you’re looking for a gift idea for someone who really doesn’t need or want anything: donate to a food bank in their area. During the current crunch, demand at food banks is running much higher than normal but donations are running lower than normal. That donation will go right back into the economy, buying food and feeding people, and it will help your recipient’s community immensely. The food bank locator here can help you find a local food bank based on the ZIP code.)
