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The Top Ten Ebay Bargains of 2007, Part One

December 18th 2006 03:39
What are unwise people doing with their money this year?

Hunting down the Top 10 toys of 2006. Forbes has the list. I have the antidote. Common sense.

If you bought a Tickle Me Elmo when they first came out in the store, you’re sitting on a gold mine. People will pay absurd amounts on Ebay to get their hands on this cute little red guy. I love Ebay in general, but now is not the time to shopping there for these hot gifts because the market is going nuts. Ebay is a bargain when it’s a Buyer’s market (i.e. lots of sellers selling to fewer buyers.) What we have right now is a crazy scarcity principle playing out. More demand, less supply, equals a big payday for those who were wise enough to buy hot toys at the start of the season.


Don’t you be the one who gives them an extra holly jolly Christmas by paying an absurd amount for a toy that’s really not worth it. I’ve written before that the meaning of Christmas can’t be found in toys, but let me reiterate it again. You can find perfectly nice presents that won’t cost you the absurd amount you’re going to pay for these toys.

Let me start with the two worst possible Toys you could purchase: a Nintendo Wii or a Play Station III. WII or III, it matters not to me. Either are financially stupid gifts.

Other toys you can argue might come back. Tickle Me Elmo has been a hit for several years, so it’s not as bad a deal.

What happens with Video Game systems over time is that the price for them drops like a rock. What these means is that you buy it and you’re most likely stuck with it. The kid gets tired of it after a couple years and they’re not going to be able to resell it.


The big names in Video Game Consoles drop like a rock. You can get a nice Nintendo 64 on Half.com for $25, when it was around $200 when it came out. That’s not such a bad beating if you have fun with it, but these consoles are going for three times their value on Ebay. Think about that. You buy a Play Station III for $1,500 online and in ten years, it’s worth $25. That’s insane. Just don’t do it.

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American Thanksgiving Time

November 18th 2006 07:03
As you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, remember this is an important opportunity to be thankful for all the things you have that work. The household appliances, CD players, and cars that all are still in running order and serving you well.

Call it providential that the American Thanksgiving occurs before Christmas, as after we’ve counted our blessings advertisers barrage us with ads telling us what we need and make us hunger for more than we can afford. This year, keep the spirit, remember Thanksgiving blessings and don’t get sucked in to poor Christmas spending patterns.

Next week, we’ll have more details on Smart Christmas shopping so that you have a Merry Christmas not one beset by unnecessary spending and debt.

But for now, be thankful and get ready for a great Thanksgiving holiday. In shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, remember:

1) Buy enough turkey to meet your family’s needs and not much more. Nobody likes having turkey for days on end. Try to make it a goal to have no more than one day of leftovers, three max. Oftentimes, people end up tossing the excess as the meat goes bad and no one wants to eat it.

2) The more work you put in, the cheaper the meal. But also if you’re not particularly fond of cooking, working extra hard to cook a Thanksgiving meal becomes a matter of lost time and it may not be a bargain to get a good deal that causes a lot of unnecessary hassle.

3) Make sure you have everything you need before Thanksgiving. Most grocery stores, with the exception of some Walmarts, are closed on Thanksgiving day. If you want something, you’ll have to scramble for a convenience store, which may not have what you need and if it does will cost you much more than you would have paid had you gotten it right the first time.
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Eat Out Less

October 6th 2006 04:14
Eating out is a luxury, but an expensive one. When my wife and I go out to eat, it’s a treat. We do it generally just 2-3 times a month. It’s a nice break. For some families, it’s practically a way of life.

Thus a trip to a restaurant rather than being a fun treat can begun utterly mundane. But it’s an expensive type of mundane that costs hundreds of dollars a month!

I’m not a fan of miserliness, as I detailed in my last post. Unless you’re under severe financial pressure, I won’t urge you to stop going out to eat. The key is balance and moderation. If you go out every now and again, it will be a special treat that you will enjoy, not a drain on your budget.

However, it’s not easy. In single families or families where both parents work preparing home cooked meals can be a challenge. Here are a few tips that can help.

First, share the burden in a house with multiple workers.

Second, is the secret of leftovers. If your family has Sundays off have a big Sunday dinner at the house that’s sure leave to leftovers for Monday and Tuesday (let’s try not to pull it beyond Tuesday, because we all need a change of pace.)

Three, use pre-prepared foods. These are not as thrifty as homemaking foods, but are generally going to be less expensive than eating out. Take a family of four eating on Banquet TV dinners. The larger portion meals cost $1.38 and the smaller are 88 cents. So for two adults and two kids, you’d be looking at $4.52 to feed the whole family. How far would that go at McDonald’s?

Now pre-prepared foods can only go so far. Most people can only stand so many nights of fried chicken and potato like substances before they say, “Enough.”

The best cure for that is my fourth recommendation: buy an indoor plug-in grill. I use and therefore recommend the George Foreman grills. They do excellent job cooking meat, particularly steak and hamburger patties. The device is one of the most simple concepts ever invented. You don’t have to be Julia Child to figure it out:

1) Plug grill in.

2) Put Meat on Grill

3) Wait a few minutes.

4) Enjoy your meat.

These are available at Wal-Mart and most retailers, as well as many discount stores. While I recommend the George Foreman grill as I personally use it, that’s not to say another machine might not work just as well. If you can’t find an inexpensive one in your area, you can certainly try E-bay.

You can get individual patties or filets that are already precut and in some cases wrapped so you don’t have to mess with cutting the meat. These individualized patties are going to be a little more expensive than uncut meat, but much cheaper than eating out.

Along with the grilled meat, you can fix sides such as canned, frozen, or even fresh vegetables that require little preparation (such as tomatoes.) Other good quick sides include instant rice and Stove Stop (preferably the generic equivalent) stuffing. Thus, you can get a quick, easy meal prepared in minutes without spending large amounts of money at a restaurant.

Finally, anything you can do from scratch is going to be less expensive. If you can do a quick baked potato, that’s going to be less expensive than buying a bag of them.

Save those trips to the restaurant and make them special, while at the same time saving money.
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Your Secret Benefits

September 26th 2006 01:28
At most jobs, you’ve got benefits that everyone knows about: the 401 (k) plan, medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. Beyond that are little-discussed benefits that you may have to dig for to find. If you work for a decent-sized company, you’d be surprised how many companies will line up to give you a deal.

If you work for a small company, the list of benefits might fit on a neat sheet of paper. But if you work for a company of any large size, they’ll often purchase benefit packages for their employees. At my work, an employee of our HR Service Center couldn’t keep track of all the businesses that discounts are available from. If in your employee manual you just see a URL for employee discounts, take a look; you may be surprised at what you find


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The Bargain Hunter’s Snare

September 21st 2006 04:53
An indelible memory of my childhood involves a box of half-used bars of soap. It was a revolting sight, but what was worse was that it was for sale and in fact sold for $2.00. When I think of the pitfalls of auction houses, I think of that box of half-used soap.

In recent years, the popularity of traditional auction houses has declined due to the emergence of Ebay, but there are still quite a few in the United States. Many people will tell of the bargains they’ve gotten at auctions. But remember in my first post, I wrote that a bargains had to be a purchase that was not only at a low price, but also advantageous. Many people get a deal, but they don’t get a bargain


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