Groupon Summer Offers

This summer check out Groupon for exclusive deals on everything from international travel to summer snacks.

Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website which gives discounts for local, national and international companies. Groupon was launched in November 2008, and by October 2010 served more than 250 markets in North America and the rest of the world, with 35 million registered users.

It works by offering a deal each day that users must sign-up for. Providing the quota is met that deal can then be purchased, offering fantastic discounts. Groupon contacts customers by daily emails for offers they may be interested in. The site has also recently launched a mobile app available on Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7. It allows users to buy deals on their phones and retrieve them by using the screen as a coupon.

With all this why not sign up today and start saving!

Basic Personal Budgeting

Money Saving Man was reading the introduction to a book today that really piqued his interest. It was on the question of personal finance and how to handle money. One of the key ways to save money is actually down to how you handle your money in the first place, so being a blog dedicated to ways to save money, we had to weigh-in with something.

This is a basic plan that will help you with your monthly finances, based upon receiving a monthly salary. It is just a skeleton and needs to be fleshed out with your own personal preferences and circumstance, but is a useful guide for all those wishing to take control of their personal finances.

Budget Structure


This is made up of your income, expenditure and savings. An obvious rule is that expenditure and savings cannot equal more than your income.

1. Income
This is the money you received from an employer, customer/s or any other income on a monthly basis. This can only be considered after tax and minus any other automatic deductions for a pension or loan repayments to your employer etc.

2. Expenditure
This is what you spend from your income each month. It is made up of bills, repayments, spending money, food etc. Most importantly it includes the buffer!

3. Savings
This is what you put away each month

First note down how much your income in total is

Walmart Coupons

No need to spend time looking through papers or magazines for those all important shopping coupons - Walmart has on-line coupons that can be printed off directly.


Current savings include $1 savings on purchases of two Big G cereals such as Cheerios or Chex, $1 savings on purchases of two S C Johnson cleaning products and $2 off any L'Oreal Healthy Look Creme Gloss Hair Colour.


Other savings can be found on DVDs, magazines, toys, personal care and fragrances. 


http://coupons.walmart.com/


Please consider clicking an ad or link to support Money Saving Central!

MoneySavingExpert Website Sells for £87m

The inspiration behind this blog, MoneySavingExpert.com, has just sold to MoneySupermarket for the huge sum of £87 million. 

Pending agreement from MoneySupermarket shareholders, Martin Lewis, the creator of the MoneySavingExpert brand will receive £60 million upfront, made up of cash and shares, and a further £27 million conditional on meeting targets over the next three years. Martin has already pledged to give £10 million to charity, including £1 million to Citizens Advice. Martin has stood over the years as not so much the anti-capitalist but the leading figure in how to play the system and stand up for consumer rights.

He will retain control over the website, staying on as editor-in-chief for the next three years with a view to reduced working hours thereafter. Martin paid an obscure company £100 to set up his website in 2003, which in nine years has seen an incredible leap in value owing to its nearly 40 million unique visitors a year and  five million email subscribers. Recent years of recession have simply served to further his popularity as he has appeared on several television shows as a pundit on money matters.

Money Saving Man wishes MoneySavingExpert all the best and is thankful for the inspiration!

Cheap Alternative to the New iPad

In the world of tablet PCs there has long been one king - Apple's unique iPad. But as more and more companies have jumped on the tablet bandwagon, can the iPad retain its unblemished crown?

The secret to subverting the jewel in the crown of Steve Job's legacy could never lie in challenging the technology or design of the ubiquitous gadget, but in offering something that does a similar job for a very different price. While prestige has allowed the iPad's price to creep up to £649 ($899) for the top of the range model, serious development work from Android tablet producers has allowed for good quality products to be sold at much more pocket-friendly prices.

Money Saving Man's recommendation is the Gemini JoyTAB. Not only is Gemini a British company, which assures build quality and reinvestment into a local market, but it has also managed to produce a budget Android tablet of remarkable quality. Available in 7", 8" or 10" offerings, and running the latest tablet-specific Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, customers wanting a decent everyday tablet without worrying about having the top-notch quality and prestige of the iPad will find a very interesting prospect in the affordable Gemini range.

Prices are £129.99 for the 7", £149.99 for the 8" and £199.99 for the 10" inch. You may not be getting a Retina display for those sort of prices, but you are getting solid design, including aluminium back covers to match the iPad and decent 1GHZ to 1.2GHZ processors with 512MB RAM. Memory is of course limited for the price, but upgradeable to 32GB by way of a Micro SD card.

The problem with many cheap Android tablets is that they run unofficial versions of Google's Android operating system and thus don't offer access to Google Playstore (formally Android Market). There is no such problem with the JoyTAB - you also get Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube and an Ebook reader out of the box; the 8" and 10" models even support Adobe Flash.

So does the iPad have a challenger to its crown? Probably not the crown of technology and prestige, but there may just be room for another ruler - that of value - and the Gemini series seems to be headed to the throne without opposition within the coming months. See the links below:

http://geminidevices.com/products.html
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Search/searchTerms/JOYTAB.htm

As always, please consider clicking an ad to support the fight for the consumer!

Is it a Tablet, is it a Phone..or is it a Money Saving Trade-off?

Samsung have recently weighed in with a unique product that could save you money.  By offering the features of both a smartphone and a tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note could save you time and money as your gadgets are centralised into one device.

By Offering a huge 5.3 inch, Super AMOLED screen, an 8 mega-pixel camera, 1080p full HD video recording & playback and the multi-touch input of both a full touch screen and advanced smart pen stylus, the Galaxy Note beats all comers on the phone market for quality of pictures, videos and display. Surfing the web is also as close to that on a tablet as you could want, and due to the huge screen also beats all other smartphones hands down.

The drawer backs of tablets have traditionally been their size and lack of features that you can't find on any high-end smartphone - who remembers the accusations of the iPad simply being a blown up iPhone you couldn't make calls on when it first came out? Well, the same is still true that, beyond Skype, you cannot use tablets as phones (the idea of trying to hold it to your ear is ridiculous enough). The Note successfully gives the best of both worlds, being a device that has tablet functionality and quality while still offering phone functions. Some reviewers have been rather negative about its size, but if you don't fancy holding it your ear then you can simply invest in a good Bluetooth headset.

Samsung have been brave in launching a hybrid between smartphones and tablets, and Apple are very unlikely to follow suit due to the desire and prestige surrounding their products that has consumers clambering over each other to own the iPhone 4S AND the iPad 3. If you have more sense than money, you might just want to invest in Samsung's vision.

Please consider clicking an ad to support the fight for the consumer!

Free Car a Reality?

It may sound far-fetched to be given a car for free, but there is a chance that you could indeed be handed the keys to a shiny new motor, or at least be paid to drive your own.

This media saturated generation is obsessed with visual advertising, and a way of making a company's advertising as ubiquitous as possible is by slapping it on the side of a car. Many of us would be familiar with those garish Red Bull cars hurtling around the place with a giant can on the back.

If you are patient and willing to drive a car that may look unusual then you could stand a chance to receive a free car as part of an advertising contract - you simply pay the petrol and insurance. Minimum contracts are normally 12 months and you may be expected to drive the car for a set amount of miles; you also stand a better chance of being selected if you regularly drive through high visibility areas such as city centres or motorways.

The other option is to have advertising put on your own car. This could see you making as much as £1500 a month for attaching vinyl or magnetic advertising to your motor. If you are a regular driver and are looking for an additional source of income over a free car then this could be the option for you.

The best site for either of these options is listed below. There is a small one-off fee for joining and receiving access to their database of advertising companies, but this may prove a small investment for a sizeable return:

http://www.drivefreecar.co.uk/

Please consider clicking an ad to support the fight for the consumer!