personal finance in a coupon blog

When it comes to holiday spending, you've got two choices. You can throw caution to the wind, go all out, and worry about paying for everything when the credit cards bills hit next year. Or, you could introduce some prudent frugality into your purchases and set yourself up for a successful 2014. I highly recommend the latter. Believe it or not there are ways to give your loved ones great gifts and have an entertaining holiday season without crushing your bank account. Read on to learn more.

1. Plan Remaining Purchases Effectively
Hopefully you took advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but even if you did you probably still have a few gifts to purchase. For those that remain, keep your eye on the ball. In-store and Internet specials continue through the holiday season so be sure to take advantage of them. And, although it's not for the faint of heart, shopping the day before Christmas can also net you some excellent deals. If you don't want to stress about missing out on a gift because it's out of stock, sign up at a deal sharing website like FatWallet and cross check your remaining gifts through a search on that site. Read More »

From clothing to electronics, there are tons of holiday gift options. The downside of having lots of choices is that people get lost and ultimately buy something that's just "okay".

In order to cut the research time for you, I found 12 excellent gift choices that you'll be confident in giving and on top of that, they all come in at under $120.

(All items were hand selected. Some were sent by stores for final review and others I purchased).

1. Blush Mystery Beauty Box. I recently wrote about The untraditional holiday gift? A guide to your top snack, beauty and kid's subscription boxes and one thing that was missing from the guide was this subscription box.


The box is a mix of full and travel-size products worth at least $100. It is filled with a variety of high quality products for your skin and nail. The selections change from month to month, so if you order this month, you'll get the December box. From the choices, I completely fell in love the Deborah Lippmann nail polish. Price: $34.95 for one-time purchase or as low as $24.95 with subscription. With this coupon from Blush.com, you can save $5 off the December Blush Mystery Beauty Box and get free shipping. Read More »

There's nothing more exciting than anticipating your gift for months, only to open it and find socks or underwear. Am I right?

With all the possible gifts out there, Mom is most likely to purchase you some socks and underwear. That's cool. But for the rest of us getting a gift for the men in our lives, let's stay clear of the sock drawer, shall we?

Here are 10 gift ideas that are significantly better than socks... Read More »

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, you'd think that all the spectacular deals would have also come and gone. This holiday season, retailers are playing it a little bit different.

It seems that this year marks a new direction in holiday shopping. Starting from Black Friday, deals were being released weeks in advance. More stores opened on Thanksgiving, and sales were being extended through the weekend. And now that 2 of the biggest shopping days have gone, retailers are still fighting it out to get customers into their store, hence the continuation of amazing deals.

This week, I have some incredible deals that will help you shop last-minute or even stock up on goods you need for the new year:

Deal #1: You can't get enough of body care. It's almost winter which means a lot of dry skin, so stock up now! With this coupon from The Body Shop, save 50% on your entire purchase. Expires 12/23/2013. Read More »