Janie Parrish

We are all pinching pennies these days. The use of coupons is on the rise big time, online and off. I know I don’t pay full price for anything that I purchase, and that is the bottom line. There are deals out there, it pays to be a smart and educated consumer, the Internet has certainly made that a much easier task to take on. With online promotions, free shipping, coupon codes and the like, there is no reason not to take advantage of all that is out there just for the taking.

This will be an interesting Christmas season with the economy still in crisis and people still losing their jobs and homes. Retail will be cut throat to say the least this holiday shopping season. To make it even a harder pill to swallow, we are all hearing that we are in for a hard winter, so heating fuel bills are going to be outrageous soon I fear.

One thing that I do to save money is to order my personal checks online from Mypersonalchecks.com. My bank used to offer free checks with my current checking account, but times are changing and they are now charging for the checks and the deposit tickets as well. I still have to use a paper check at times, but not nearly as much as I used to a few years ago when I finally smarted up and started using my debit card for most things.