Lazy Man and Money

Some of My Favorite Deals Now…

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Earlier today I wrote about how I felt weird about this deep post on payday loans on a Monday… especially because my core audience (those pursuing financial independence) probably doesn’t care.

I’m always on the look-out for good deals… and I thought I’d share a few to balance that deeper article. Consider this my version of “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!” … except that I’m going to give this pudding even if you don’t eat your meat.

Let’s dig in:

  • Amazon Fire 7″ tablet for $40 – It’s almost getting to the point where a tablet is cheaper than a Frisbee. You aren’t going to get cutting edge for $40, but it does have a couple of nice features such as the ability to take an microSD card to expand the storage (and you’ll probably want one with this).

    Less than a year ago, I thought that Amazon made tablets disposable when pricing these at $50. I thought it was a good deal then, but now you save another 20%. If only my investments did the same.

  • Omelets and Egg Salad – I have no fancy link to egg salad, but I’ve noticed that eggs are crazy cheap nowadays. Maybe it’s just Rhode Island, but Aldi has had a dozen eggs at 95 cents for awhile. The other local grocery stores have started to fight back with 88 cent dozens. Last fall it was around $2.50 for the cheapest dozen eggs I could find. There’s a big difference between less than 8 cents and egg and more than 20 cents an egg. I’m capitalizing on the cheap eggs with omelets and egg salad.

    I hope that eggs are just as cheap where you live. If they aren’t, why not use this as motivation to look for a similar savings opportunity in your area?

  • Amazon Tap at 20% off – This is a portable Bluetooth speaker with Amazon’s great Alexa service. I previously wrote why I wouldn’t buy an Amazon Tap, but I’ve started to reconsider it. It’s very rare that Amazon puts Alexa hardware on sale. I read recently that Amazon Echo was on sale exactly twice since it was created. The Echo Dot hasn’t ever been on sale… and this is the first sale on the Amazon Tap.

    If you aren’t familiar with the Amazon Echo and the Alexa service, analysts are calling it Amazon’s next billion dollar business. Google (and reportedly Apple) are rushing to catch-up.

  • The Black Stallion for free (Prime Members) – About a month ago, my family was watching the Kentucky Derby and the toddlers were interested in the horses. It reminded me of when I read all The Black Stallion books as a kid. I think it was the first time that I actually wanted to read something. My kids are too young to read, so I went to see where I could watch the movie produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Amazon had it available to rent for $3.99. I procrastinated because it was hard for me to justify spending $4 to rent a 1979 movie when I can find Shawshank at almost any time for free.

    Imagine my surprise when I got an email newsletter from Amazon Prime about a few things they added… highlighting The Black Stallion for free. At first, I thought this was next-level targeted marketing, but the email greatly pushed the last season of Downton Abbey and another show they have that is similar. That would be a complete fail at marketing if they were customizing messages. Also, I don’t think Amazon is making some movies available via Prime for free for some members… and it would be very weird if Amazon is using my browsing habits to determine its marketing decisions.

    What a coincidence! Good things come to those who wait, right?

Get a 7″ Amazon Fire for $40!

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I’m running around with dogs and kids today, so I was thinking about doing some smaller quicker posts. Of course, I want them to still be useful, so I’m going to start off on this one.

This may be a today-only deal, but Amazon has a $40 Fire tablet available.

Now it’s obviously not going to be the best tablet out there. The processor is slow and the screen’s resolution is not full HD. There’s only 8GB of memory. That sounds like the worst tablet out there, right? Well it can take a microSD to expand the memory. There’s also front and back cameras. The battery life is decent.

My point is that this tablet can be good for some things. As a parent of a 2 and 3 year old, I often view things through that prism. I am sometimes worried about trusting them with my good tablet, but I have no problems with giving them a $40 tablet and saying, “Have at it.” They don’t know any better to complain about the screen resolution or speed… and hopefully won’t for a few more years.

I often also look at a deal as how much money I’m saving off the normal price. After all, if I can get it for a similar price in a few days, there’s no need to rush in, right?

The price of the tablet is usually $50. So getting it for $40 is only going to save you $10. That said, it is a low-priced product to begin with… and it’s 20% off.

Of course this comes with Amazon’s version of Android. That has it’s pros and cons. For Prime members like myself, it means being able to share a lot of quality content with the kids (Tumbleleaf and Go Diego Go are favorites). The biggest con is being limited to Amazon’s store for apps, but I found the Amazon store to have everything I wanted.

I feel like for $40 it’s hard to go too far wrong with this, right? Let me know in the comments.

Amazon Makes Tablets “Disposable”

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I always get a kick when I look back at technology pricing. In a world where everything seems to get more expensive due to inflation, technology has a way of making things cheaper. (The only problem is that we tend to buy more and more technology, which eats up the savings. Ask my wife, she’ll tell you that I’m not immune to this.)

Last week, while I was at FinCon, Amazon released a few new tablets. There are some different sizes and specifications, but the one that deserves the most press is the Amazon Fire that broke the $50 price point. It’s so cheap that a case that they sell for it is 50% of the price of the tablet.

Before we get into whether this tablet is any good, let’s hop into our time capsule to May 28th, 2008. That was the day that I published the following article: Amazon Kindle: Buy or Not? Amazon had released their an eReader for $350 and the market was excited by it. I felt it was a legitimate question of whether you should buy it or not.

It’s worth taking a minute to realize how far we’ve come in a little more than 7 years. I can’t help but wonder what my 3 year old son will bring to 2nd grade in a few years. Is there a chance that an automated car service (perhaps an Uber in a driverless car) takes him to soccer practices? The sky is the limit.

Now that’s we’ve gone in the past and the future, let’s get back to the present. This new Amazon Fire isn’t the greatest of tablets. You don’t get a full 1080P high-definition screen. However, it is an IPS screen, which is pretty good at this price point. You also get expansion via an microSD card, which makes Apple’s memory price-gouging look silly.

I’m not going to waste too much time picking apart the specs, because quite honestly, this is the most “computer” you’ve ever been able to buy for $50. I know there are places with extreme poverty and hunger, but aside from that there’s no excuse for anyone to not own a tablet. Here’s another thought, why would anyone ever buy an expensive car overhead entertainment system, when each kid can have their own shows and games for $50?

While on the topic of kids, Amazon also released an Kids Edition Fire for $100. In comparison to the basic fire, it sounds really expensive, right? You do get a little more. There’s a 2-year “worry-free” warranty and rugged packaging. This alone wouldn’t justify the premium for me, but there’s something else. In includes a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, which gives you a ton of kid-friendly content and settings (parental controls to limit time and things like that). If you are Prime member, a year’s worth would be $36. If you are not, it would be $60. That’s a nice little add-on. Presuming you were going to get FreeTime Unlimited anyway, it seems like the Kids Edition Fire would be the way to go.

Since we already have two tablets, we’re probably not going to jump on this. There comes a time when you have to step back and realize that you only have two eyes and two ears. There’s more than enough computers for the family right now.