personal finance in a coupon blog

For this week's Featured Store we here at Savings.com would like to kick up our heels in joy and thanks to the ever-fabulous FootSmart. Through bunions and backaches, in fitness and in stealth, the footloose and frolicsome employees at FootSmart have been in the business of saving our soles since 1989.

Amen!

If you missed out on cashing in on that clunker in your driveway, now is your chance to cash in on that clunker in your kitchen. The question is, will the program be ultimately worthwhile for our environment and your wallet?

While some travelers simply can't live without their yearly beach vacation, others can't wait for an autumn getaway to the mountains or ski chalet rental in winter! As summer winds down, travel discounts are just getting started. Individuals or families looking to travel this fall have a great array of choice destinations to choose from.

Below are five of the most popular adventures for autumn travelers.

Yesterday I blogged about saving with coupons and talked about the different kind of deals (site-wide, category and product) and discounts (percent off, dollar off and free shipping). Today I'm going to explain which deals save you the most money and why--as well as how to find them.

So of the three types of deals, which kinds work the best?

It's 3:00 in the afternoon and you're sitting behind your computer at work with a slight tension headache mounting and tight, sore shoulders screaming for release. Who hasn't felt this way sitting in the same position for long periods of time? You've hit the late afternoon wall.

What do you do?

If weekly chiropractic sessions or massages aren't in your budget, there are many good habits to adopt to alleviate that knot between your shoulders.

Here are some suggestions:

The health care debate isn't the only thing in the news these days. In a recent radio address, President Obama talking about retirement savings and how people can best prepare for the future. The Obama plan has two pretty significant proposals that will help people save who might be avoiding the issue.

In the Obama proposal, employees will be able to add unused sick days and vacation days into a retirement account--something that's normally lost if remained unused. Another proposal is to allow people to deposit their tax refund into savings bonds. This is a kind of forced savings proposal because you can't borrow off a savings bond for five years without a penalty, meaning those savings will be locked tight from people who don't have the willpower.

Now that tried and true investments are not as solid as they used to be, and people lost a significant amount of value in 401(k)s and other investments, retirees need to look into other areas. What it comes down to is that good old-fashioned saving is more important than ever.

Here are some of the basic steps you should take and how the new national initiatives should help people struggling to save.

Happy Monday, fellow couponeers! Here at Savings.com we are gearing up for a new week of--well, savings--and we are pleased as pie (as we always are) to roll out the red carpet of discounts with this weeks Top 10 Deals.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, wipe the sleep from your eyes and maybe stretch a little because this week's Top 10 are sure to have you jumping for joy!

Since our website has thousands of different coupons and discounts people are always asking: "How can I save the most money?" "What types of coupons work the best?"

So here are some suggestions to help you save the most while using the coupons and deals at Savings.com.

In honor of Sara's post on school bands, I decided to post a collection of blog posts that dealt with the topic of school or...uh, bands. Or music. How does this have anything to do with finance? Patience, grasshopper, patience!

We may be stretching it a bit here, but here's this week's round-up of band geek inspired finance stories:

Band geeks. Every high school has them. You all know who they were in your school, and there's a pretty good chance a lot of you were band geeks yourselves. And if you were, I'm sure you've got a story or two that begins, "One time at band camp..."

When we told Woodwind & Brasswind (one of the stores on Savings.com) about this post, they decided to ask their Facebook fans to share their band camp stories with us.

Here are a couple of snippets:

Just because I think Macs are a colossal waste of money doesn't mean I wasn't paying close attention to yesterday's Apple announcements--because I pretty much worship everything else this company makes. My iPod, an original video model (I guess it's an "iPod Classic" now), is still going strong after its fourth birthday, and I'll be buying an iPhone the instant AT&T extends or lets go of their exclusivity (just in case Verizon joins the party and saves me the trouble of switching networks).

Steve Jobs announced a video camera for the 5th-generation iPod nano and a software update for the iPhone 3GS, but my focus was definitely on the new features of iTunes 9:

Last week we posted about how we are already loading up with Halloween deals. It's not surprising that Halloween is now celebrated year-round given our current fascination with all things vampire (Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries). Even zombies have risen from the undead with recent flicks like 28 Weeks Later, Quarantine and Planet Terror swarming the multiplexes.

MainStreet recently posted about the vampire and zombie craze saying:

"In case you've been too busy playing with troll dolls and collecting angels to notice, vampires and zombies have been locked in a pop culture death match lately -- with corporations and Hollywood studios struggling to catch up. It's not just your brains and blood they want, but every dollar and waking minute you have left."

With all of the Halloween movies and TV shows coming up in the next two months, you're bound to get into the Halloween spirit. Movies like Zombieland, Halloween 2, and Jennifer's Body will definitely send chills down your spine and, in some cases, make you laugh.

But enough about movies, let's talk video games. Why watch Will Smith battle zombie mutants when you can experience the vicarious thrill of annihilating the undead via a video game?

Here are my picks for three of the best zombie/vampire games series out there.