Lazy Man and Money

Emergency Deals: Electronic Piano and Gimbal (Wed. Only)

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The internet has a lot of deals every day. There are only a few each year that I feel are worth sharing. This is one of those times and unfortunately you’ll have to act quickly. They are both today only. I’ll be typing quick to maximize the last few remaining hours of this deal.

FYI: I purchased both of these items myself today.

Electric Piano

I have been looking at an electric piano for quite awhile. I used to think they were like the synthesizers in the 80s. It seems like all the current reviews have them comparable to real pianos with professional standing by their quality.

I don’t know how to play a real piano and we don’t have room for a piano. However, I do have a 4 and 5 year old and piano lessons are in the future. However, here’s the deal:

Amazon has the Yamaha P71 88-Key Weighted Action Digital Piano as its Prime member Deal of the Day for $299. (Yes, you have to be Prime.) This is an Amazon exclusive product that is supposedly the same as the Yamaha P45 which seems to sell between $449 and $500.

So that’s a savings of around $150-$200 just to start. Next there’s a section on the Amazon page that says, “Speak with an Amazon Harmony associate to learn more and for discount codes on most brands excluding Bose.” I called them and they gave another 10% off of the regular price (a savings of $41). (Other people in internet forums did this as well, so it should be reliable). In addition, if you pay with an Amazon Prime card (which I think most Prime people should have), you’ll get an additional 10% cash back.

By the time all is said and done, it was $299-41, which is $258 and another $25 off due to cash back. It all comes to around $225, plus tax.

When all is said and done, it is about 50% off. The best price I’ve seen on any of these types of pianos is $300. I think this is a higher quality product at a nicely discounted price.

Gimbal

I didn’t know what a gimbal was until last Black Friday when I saw a lot of people freak out about a deal at Best Buy. It turns out this is a device that keeps cameras steady for making films. It has motors that balance and stabilize the camera. I need this because my hands are terrible in taking video.

This deal is on a gimbal for cell phones. A hat tip goes to the Cheapskate for finding this gimbal for $90:

YI Phone Gimbal 3-Axis Handheld Stabilizer

To get the price, you need to use promo code “YIGIMBAL” at checkout, which will take the price down by $40.

It still seems to me like $90 is a lot of money for what it is, but everywhere I look it seems that prices are usually more than $125.

There’s another kid-based angle with this one. While I’ll probably be using this more than anyone else in the family, there’s nothing that says my kids couldn’t give it a shot and make some movies themselves. Who knows, maybe one of them becomes the next Adam Goldberg.

We have an affiliate relationship with one or more of the companies linked in this article.

LED Light Bulbs Are Now a STEAL!

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I’ve been on solar power for a whole 10 days now and it is amazing how it makes you think about energy use. The inverters I have are from Enphase and they come with a website that allows you track how much power you are producing at any given time. It produces a bar chart with production ever 15 minutes.

In the last 15 minutes (8:30AM local time) as I write this, the panels produced 497 watt-hours, enough power for 166 AA batteries.

In doing my regular reading of news stories and deals, I came across by far the cheapest LED light bulbs I’ve ever seen. Before I get to the deal, I feel like it’s worth taking a stroll down Light Bulb Memory lane…

I feel like I’ve been writing about light bulbs forever now. Back in 2007, I wrote about how CFLs save the environment by using less power. This was back before the concerns about mercury in them was widespread. No one even called me out in the comments… and quite a few people said that they switched their whole house to them.

In any case, they saved people a lot of money. As long as they disposed of them properly, they were good.

A little more than 3 years ago, the idea of a $50 affordable LED light bulb was bandied about on The Soap Boxers (the author, Kosmo, contributes here from time to time). He made a great case that the total cost of ownership of the light bulb, when accounting for electricity favors LEDs over incandescent light bulbs. And while those compact fluorescent light bulbs still had low cost and high efficiency some people don’t like how they require “warming-up” and the mercury issue with them.

It’s interesting to note that a good case was made for a $50 light bulb three years ago, because you can buy two of them for $5 at Home Depot. At $2.50 a bulb that’s 1/20th the cost back then. Instead of blowing $600 on a dozen to put throughout the house, you can spend $30.

There are a few minor catches, but I don’t think they should be too concerning:

  1. They are back-ordered until June. This tells me that people are snapping up this deal.
  2. They are rated to last “only” 10 years while other LEDs are rated to last 20+ years.
  3. They aren’t rated as dimmable, so you’ll have to get a slightly more expensive LED for those fixtures.

There’s a longer review of these at CNET’s website, but they stack up well to competitors in performance.

Now some people may balk at the shorter lifespan of these light bulbs. I actually think it is an advantage. The shorter lifespan is the result of the cheaper materials and cheaper cost to you. We get LED technology at a price that’s much closer to CFLs than they have ever been.

If they only last for 10 years, I won’t feel bad about throwing them away for the next technology. When I think about how far we’ve come from 2007, it’s fascinating to think about 2025. Maybe we will have OLED lighting then.

Am I really going to want to hang onto LEDs from 2015 in 2035? Light is light, so I probably won’t mind too much, but my guess is technology is going to do what it always done… march forward.

Personally, I’ve transitioned almost entirely to LEDs and I still have some CFLs that I’d like to use up (not sure how), so I’m probably not going to jump on this deal. However, if you haven’t jumped on LEDs, this is probably the best time to do it.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

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Like your typical Thanksgiving leftovers, this post is a bit of a mix of many small items. I wish I could make it as great as real Thanksgiving leftovers, but that’s a goal too lofty.

Music Deal of the Century

Let’s start with dessert first. What if you could build an entire music collection of hundreds of albums for free? Well Microsoft is giving you that. There are no strings attached with the exception of having Windows 8 or a Windows Phone. The deal is 50 free albums. It includes some top albums like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream and U2’s Joshua Tree.

While it requires spending a little money, but Microsoft also has entire box sets for $1.99. You can dozens of songs by the Doors (almost everything they recorded in a studio) for a one-time $1.99. The music comes in basic MP3, so take them everywhere, even your iDevices. For less than $10, you could build yourself a very good collection of music… saving you from having to rent music from services like Spotify.

This deal comes from Liliputing which is a website about portable computers that I’m loving lately.

Get this Ebay Gift Card

It’s not a huge savings, but you can get a $50 Ebay Gift Card for $45. If you are like me you’ll find a way to use $50 on Ebay in the next month. Why not save yourself $5? Or buy a few and save more.

Giving Thanks

I don’t know about you, but my RSS reader was clogged with thousands of bloggers writing about what they were thankful for this Thanksgiving. I question if readers really care to about it. I imagine some readers are having difficult times and reading about blogger’s success might not come off well. And if that blogger wrote about difficulties themselves… well who wants to read Debbie Downer?

For that reason, I’ve decided to skip sharing what I’m thankful for, but you people know it’s you, right?

Anyone Know of any Discounted Deals?

Is it just me or is there a deal on everything nowadays? It seems like every company and organization needs to have a Black Friday special. They start early and continue through Cyber Monday. It seems like most deals are A) saving $20 when you spend $150 on something that I don’t need or B) deals when you have to trample 7,000 people to get to. Neither one are very interesting to me.

Perhaps worse, it seems like everything I read is pushing these deals.

The reason the Ebay deal above is interesting to me is that I know I’m going to use it anyway. There’s no fighting with people as the deal is quickly delivered and instantly ready to use via email. The Microsoft music deal is similar… just a lot of value without much spending or work.

Deal: Top All-time Blu-Ray Movies for $3.99

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Every now and again I see a deal that I just can’t pass up. I usually don’t write about them, because I don’t think they will interest most people. Today is different. If you like movies, which I feel is almost everyone, you’ll probably enjoy this.

Amazon has a bunch of Blu-Ray movies available for $3.99. I could never see paying $20 for the Blu-Ray version of a movie that I can for $3-4 on DVD, but for $4, I’m in. They aren’t terrible movies either. Here’s the three that I picked up:

I’d like to say that those three are in my top ten, but that list gets crowded when you start adding Serenity, Shawshank, and a bunch of others. Fight Club probably still is in my top 10, with Usual Suspects in the top 15 (maybe top ten) and Darko probably in my top 25. Overall, the three movies tell you a little bit about my taste in movies, don’t they?

There are plenty of other great movies. Some of the ones that were $3.99 have already gone back up to their $12+ prices. So if you like it pull the trigger quickly.

Some examples of those expired deals are the X-Men and Bourne series, and Something About Mary. Actually, there are still some of the X-Men movies available at the $3.99 price as I write this, but not all of them. However, you can still nab The Terminator and Spaceballs (25th Anniversary Edition).

Browse all Blu-Ray Movies for $3.99. Some may be slow to ship, so they might not be ripe for gift giving.

Taking Advantage of Fleming’s Steak House

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I was initially hesitant to post this deal because I thought that Fleming’s Steak House was just a regional chain in the California area. To my surprise, it is in 28 states across the country including southern states like Florida and Alabama and northern ones like Massachusetts. (If there isn’t a Fleming’s near you or you are not a Costco member, this article might not be right for you.)

My wife and I were in Costco about a year ago and found that there was a deal for $100 worth of Fleming’s gift certificates for the price of $80. We figured we’d pick them up for a special occasion, like a birthday or an anniversary. When our anniversary rolled around last year we used them and had a very good meal. Our only complaint was that the dinning room was too dark… so dark that I’m bringing a lantern with me next time.

Alas, by the time we finally realized that Flemings was good, Costco stopped carrying the discounted gift certificates. That was the end of that deal. We ended up going back a couple of months ago for a similar occasion and ended up paying full price. That was unfortunate, but at the end of the dinner they gave us a receipt that promised $25 off our next dinner if we complete the survey. Typically these surveys are a contest with no guaranteed payoff… The gamble usually isn’t worth it for a national chain with many customers. However, for the guaranteed $25 savings, I was in. The $25 savings have a couple of restrictions the typical “not valid with other offers or special deals.” However, it’s good to have options.

I went to Costco last week and much to my surprise they brought back the Fleming’s gift certificates deal. The good thing about these gift certificates is that they don’t count as an “offer” or a “special deal”, it’s more or less straight cash homey. The next time we go to Fleming’s we’ll stack the $25 survey savings on a $50 gift card (that we paid $40 for) and get a $75 dinner for $40. Perhaps it’s not complete highway robbery, but it’s as good as some Groupon’s out there.

I know what you might be thinking… wait, I have to go to Fleming’s and pay for a full price meal before I can get the $25 in survey savings. You’d be right. However, I’ve got you covered. In July and August Flemings is doing a $30 3-course prime rib special. Use one of the $50 Costco Gift Cards (a $40 cost to you) and pay the $10 remainder of the bill (plus tax, tip, etc.) and have two prime ribs for a little over $50. It’s a pretty good deal at what I consider a good steakhouse. If you are thinking of using survey savings, plus the gift card on the 3-course prime rib deal, I think you’ll be told that the prime rib is a special offer and not eligible for the survey savings.

I’m sure this might sound like a lot of work, but throwing gift certificates in the cart at Costco is extremely the easy. The survey wasn’t difficult either. It’s a very Lazy friendly deal.

Finally, remember that going to steak houses is hardly recommended as a path to financial freedom. Budget for it accordingly and use these tips to save money at restaurants.

Update: I almost forgot that you can use Open Table to make reservations and earn points towards a free meal as well. Every little bit helps, right?