Lazy Man and Money

Saving on Holiday Fashions

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[Editor’s Note: I’m a little late to the game in publishing this article. To make up for it, I’ll add an additional holiday tip myself. Last year, I found that Christmas sweaters (ugly and regular) get huge markdowns following the season. I picked up 3 at more than 50% off then, so this year I’m all set.]

With the holidays fast approaching, you’re probably being bombarded with party invites and family obligations. It’s exciting if you’re a social butterfly like some in my family. However, it can also quickly add up price wise when you’re factoring in all those new, fancy clothes you’ll need to get through the company party, Christmas card photos, or outings with grandma.

But spending on fashion doesn’t have to empty your wallet. In fact, it doesn’t even have to cost you a thing! From kid styles to ugly sweaters, there are tons of ways to save on getting dressed for the season. Here’s how to stay fashionable this holiday season without going broke.

4 Ways to Save on Holiday Clothing

Thrift and Resales

One of my guilty pleasures is hitting up resale popups for my daughter’s clothing. It can be a bad habit, but when you walk away with 10 new items of clothing for a dollar each, it’s easy to see how it can become an addiction fast!

My trick is to only go to sales on the last day or during the final few hours – when most resale shops do steep discounts, such as dollar-dashes or half-off everything. Don’t be afraid to negotiate, either. The longer the item stays on the shelf, the deeper the discounts get. Even saving $1 here and there can go a long way.

I also like to buy holiday clothing out of season when other sellers or thrift stores are desperate to get rid of them. It’s a great thing to remember come spring when everyone else is shopping for tank tops and shorts!

Borrow or Trade

Having a fancy company holiday party to attend can really eat at the budget, especially for those attending black tie affairs. Women, in particular, will most likely need to find a new gown as I don’t know many who keep a long, evening appropriate outfit in their closet year round!

Instead of making a trip to a designer or even a big box store such as Macy’s or Nordstrom, check around with your friends first. Because evening gowns are so distinct, most don’t want to wear them a second time. Even more so, a friend may have a daughter’s prom gown lying around or a discarded bridesmaids dress that will work. Offer a trade for your past evening gowns for theirs. Who knows, it may lead to an entire closet exchange!

Rent

In addition, if you do want something completely unique, you can also use online services such as Rent the Runway, which allow you to “rent” an evening gown at nearly half the price, then return it when you’re done. This service can be a savior if you have multiple parties to attend!

Men should consider doing the same thing with their suits and tuxes. Rental suits are relatively affordable, but booking way in advance is absolutely necessary if you want the best deals. Put your order in before Thanksgiving and score some great discounts.

Stick to the Basics

If your family style is more causal for the holidays, consider buying all year round. Simple, staple items such as a red sweater, a black dress, tights, etc. can all be re-worn during the holidays without looking out of place. And while buying holiday clothes and dresses for your kids are fun, they look just as adorable when wearing a cardigan and a pair of corduroy pants.

If you already have the staples in your closet, I suggest taking everything out and playing a matching game. Pair your red vest with a white button down and then replace the vest with a green sweater. Change up the pants from black slacks to brown… and suddenly you have three outfits with pieces you already own and love! Take pictures of each combination so you remember your options!

Saving money is hugely important during the holidays, especially when it comes to superficial things such as clothing or designer goods. You don’t have to buy up a store for your kids or hit up a shopping center for a party dress. By sticking to what you have, what your friends want to give, and the good deals out there, you can keep your holiday clothing costs to a minimum.

Kosmo’s Holiday Gift Guide 2015

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[Editor’s Note: Staff Writer Kosmo presents his own holiday gift guide below. In the spirit of Laziness, I might just get him a AAA membership (you’ll see what I mean).]

We’re quickly approaching Christmas.  Many of you are probably already done with your shopping, but I’m sure many of you will be finishing up on Dec 24.

Lazy Many posted his holiday guide, so I decided to write a holiday guide of my own.  It’s an eclectic guide, mostly because I’m a bit weird.

Safety

Hydraulic bottle jack – If you’ve ever needed to use the jack that comes as standard equipment in your car, you know that it sucks.  Grab a small hydraulic bottle jack and you’ll have a better time changing a tire.

Lug wrench – If you lug nuts have been machine-torqued, good luck loosening them with the crappy lug wrench that came with your car.  Spend a few bucks on a universal lug wrench.  This will give you much better leverage.

Portable car charger – It’s the dead of winter, you’re the last one to leave work, and your car battery goes dead.  You can call for help and wait for it to arrive – or you can charge the battery yourself and be on your way in minutes.  We have one of these in each car.  NOTE: These do need to be charged once a month.  Schedule a recurring calendar reminder.  If you buy only one item from my list, I urge you to buy this.  At some point, every battery dies.  Don’t be dependent on the kindness – or presence – of strangers.

 More power

3 port USB car charger.  When we’re in the car, we always have plenty of things to charge – phones and GPS in the front seat and Kindle Fire tablets in the back seat. A quiet back seat is a more pleasant (and safe) experience for the driver, and allowing the kids to watch Frozen or Inside Out on their tablets keeps them from getting bored on longer drives. I’m also trying to nudge them toward using the Kindle for reading, since I’m already paying for Kindle Unlimited and also have free access to a sizable library collection.

Portable USB charger – These come in a variety of colors and sizes.  For ten bucks, you can get a 3350 ma capacity charger to slip in your pocket.  Great for times when you’ll be outside for long periods of time.  These were great when we went to Disney World about a year ago – especially since we were using phones to research things as we were in the park.

Entertainment

We have five TVs in the house, but only three are connected to DirecTV.  There’s a charge for each connected TV, so the kids just have access to streaming media (and DVD/Blu-Ray) on their (small) TVs.  That’s a savings of $120 per year, and we haven’t heard any complaints.

Cheap TVs – For secondary uses like kids’ bedrooms, I’d personally recommend going cheap.  We got a TV similar to this one (but not this exact model) and it works just fine.  You plug stuff into the HDMI ports and it plays as expected on the TV.    It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it’s $88.  For the occasional Spongebob, it does the trick.

Cheap Blu Ray / streaming video player – likewise, you don’t need to spend a fortune on a Blu Ray player.  We got a refurb of the Samsung BD-5700 model for about $50 (it sell for $60 now).  It plays DVDs and Blu Ray discs and also supports streaming media services like Netflix.  Does a good job for the price.

Roku – we have a couple of Roku devices around the house.  Roku makes several different models, all that do the same basic thing – stream Netflix (and other services) to your TV.

Fire stick – we also have an Amazon Fire Stick on one TV.  I probably like the Roku slightly better, but the Fire Stick also works very well.  There’s now a model with a voice remote – I’m curious to see how well that works.

Bluetooth headphones – Easily my favorite purchase on 2015 was my pair of Air Fi Runaway headphones.  I listen to a lot of audio from my iPhone, and have always hated the corded aspect of most headphones.  These headphones have actually dropped quite a bit in price.  They’ve been well worth the $60 I paid for them, but they have dropped in price to $40.  I like the sound quality, and the setup was very simple.

(Yes, you’ll want to be sure to take some time to step outside and get some exercise after adding all this technology to your life.)

Lazy Man’s 2014 Holiday Gift Guide

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For years now I’ve done gift guides around this time of year. I always hope to get them out earlier, but much like my Christmas shopping, it seems to drag on until just about the last minute.

When I first started creating gift guides, I struggled with whether to recommend the $400 GPS or the $2000 42″ “flat-panel” television (remember when called them that?). It’s a lot of money. For a website focused on growing your money for financial freedom, buying technology is difficult to recommend. It’s an immediate step backwards towards the goal. However, I recommended them anyway, because I believed in the value.

I got every penny’s worth out of my GPS. It probably saved me hundreds in productivity as I can get lost on my own street (joking… a bit). I like to think that I got every penny’s worth out of my 42″ plasma as well. I used it for a few years until it failed and capitalized on a generous policy at Costco (which no longer exists) for a replacement, which lasted another few years.

Ahh, memories of the way things were.

Enough of that, let’s get today. My annual gift guide is always going to be skewed towards technology. It’s not like a fork is going change… unless you get the HAPIfork Bluetooth-Enabled Smart Fork. Short of that, the fork you have probably does its job reasonable well and there’s little need for me to recommend the gift of forks this year.

One could make a case that I could recommend fashionable items. Fashion changes every year, which would lead to new recommendations. I’m not big on fashion. There’s a lot of financial freedom to be gained by freeing your mind from the expense of keeping up with the latest fashion. If works for Macklemore it works for me.

I’ve struggled more with this year’s gift guide than previous years. Aside from the TV stick, there seemed to be fewer “innovative” new products my radar this year. Over the last couple of years tablets have gone from the $400 GPS that is exciting, to the low-priced commodity that is everywhere. Even my recommendation for Best Cell Phone/Plan Savings hasn’t changed in a year.

  • Anker 5-Port USB Charger – If you have a lot of USB gadgets like I do, this is a must have. You can charge multiple phones, tablets, bluetooth speakers and more. Last year I recommended a very similar product. In that
  • Urge Basics Soundbrick Ultra Portable Bluetooth Stereo Speaker – Did I mention a Bluetooth speaker above? Yep. I got one of these a couple of years ago and it is perfect for streaming Pandora, or any music around the home. Since it includes its own battery, it is good for outdoors (beach, picnics) too.
  • Online Subscriptions – This is a dangerous one for me to recommend. It’s very easy to have a ton of subscription services that you don’t use and have it drain your wallet. Netflix, HBO, Spotify, Amazon Prime… the list doesn’t end. So giving someone one of these services may lead them to lifestyle inflation. On the other hand, if you know that a friend uses Netflix, perhaps getting him a few months free is a smart way to give something that amounts to cash.

    While on this topic, I want to mention LastPass, a password manager. In the last 24 hours I’ve signed up for it. I started with the free version and it is very good. I noticed some advanced tools that I could use on the subscription version so I upgraded. This is my first experience using a password manager like this, so I don’t want to say that LastPass is better than the others (it might be), but I want to say that even the free version is worth using.

    In my world of dorkdom, I would have appreciated the gift of a subscription to protected passwords. I think I’m probably alone on this one, so unless you are Amy Farrah Fowler don’t get this for your significant other.

  • SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player – Stop checking your calendar, yes, I’m recommending an MP3 player in 2014. This is ideal for those who work out as it is very small like an iPod Shuffle. However, it takes memory cards, so you can scale it to hold huge amounts of music for very little money. There are a still a lot of phones that cost hundreds of dollars that can’t say that.
  • TV Sticks – You remember my article from a couple of days ago, right? If not here you go: Things I Like: Amazon Fire TV Stick.
  • Fitbit – I have to include my Product of the Year from 2012 the Fitbit. I still like the original Fitbit Ultra that is very cheap on Ebay. The newer models have a few bells and whistles but at nearly double the price, I’ll go old school. And then there’s the thing about earning a bit of free money with it. I just got my first $50 check earlier this week!
  • SodaStream – I have written about it enough. I love the product. It saves me money and makes me healthier. I even bought the company’s stock.
  • Cheap ASUS X205TA Laptop – I got one of these for $100 at Staples’ Black Friday sale. I had very low expectations, but it’s been a very good, light-weight, long-battery laptop. The reviews on Amazon are very good. I don’t know if I’d pay $200 for it because it’s been around on many sites for $150, but that’s a good price for spare/travel laptop. If my kids were a little older, I’d give it to them, but with the oldest being 26 months he’s not quite composing masterpieces with the keyboard, yet.
  • Shark Tank Products – Everyone loves Shark Tank, right? I have bought the Plate Topper and Scrub Daddy. We use them both almost every day. This year, I’m thinking of adding the Drop Stop. Seems like $20 is too much for it, but everyone else seems to find great value in it. I certainly feel like I have a need for it.
  • LED Desk Lamp – A desk lamp doesn’t seem that amazing, but collectively nearly 300 people have giving this 4.8 stars on Amazon. That’s a decisively amazing product. Originally priced at $120, it is currently $38. I’ll even say that it is gasp fashionable. Also, I need a desk lamp, so this is on my Christmas wishlist.

So what are your favorite gifts/gadgets to give this year? Let me know in the comments.

Lazy Man’s 2013 Holiday Gift Guide

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It’s that time of year again… time for my gift guide. I was looking through my archives and I had one every year going back to 2007. The exception was last year where I was a little preoccupied with driving across the country with my wife in two separate cars, with a newborn and huge dog. The nightmares of use being packed in a hotel room with just essentials are finally starting to fade.

It’s interesting to go back and look at my guides (like this one from 2007) and see me recommending GPS navigation as a “bargain” at $150 because I used to pay $400-$500 for it… and that was a big klunky box. I also mentioned that a flat-screen television can be a good purchase. I had to be apologetic because they were so expensive at the time.

As usual, I hope you’ll find these products add a lot of value to your life.

For the Technology Lover

My background in computer science dictates that I love all things technology. So I figure it’s best to start here.

  • Tablets – Back in 2011, I suggested you wait to buy tablets. I felt that the iPad was too expensive and there was a new version coming out in the spring of 2012. The Kindle Fire had just come out and it was a low-end device trying to be a value play at $199. Nowadays you can get a Nexus 7 (16GB) for under $200. With a full 1080P HD screen and one of the fastest processors on the market, it’s not low-end at all. If you need a little more space get the Nexus 7 (32GB) for under $240.

    I’m an Apple shareholder, so please feel free to ignore this, but these are slightly less than half the price of an iPad Mini Retina. If you were to outfit a family of 3 or 4 you’ll save hundreds going with the Nexus 7.

  • Cell Phones – I was at a dinner last week and my wife friend was saying that he’s buying iPhones for his daughters for Christmas. He lamanted that it was about $2000 for each considering the cell phone plans. I didn’t have time to go into it in the conversation because it moved too fast, but I wished I could have pointed him to this article on the best cell phone and plans. (There are some very good notes in the comments too.) He could have cut his bill nearly in half. (Again, you didn’t read this from this Apple shareholder.)

While this may appear to be an advertisement for Google, the phone and tablet really are some of the hottest, and best priced technology products. If you don’t believe me, see the CNET 100 where they are #5 and #1 respectively this month.

For the Health Nut

  • True Orange – I got a lot of comments about whether using True Orange at a restaurant was frugal or cheap, but one thing no one challenged me on – replacing soda with it. My wife has been pregnant or breastfeeding for about two years now (and rarely a day goes by that she doesn’t remind me) with our second child due soon now. She’s been trying to avoid chemicals during that time. She’s mostly been limited to drinks with True Orange (or True Lemon), iced tea, and a small amount of coffee (trying to limit the caffeine as well). With our SodaStream we add it carbonated water making a refreshing flavored beverage for under 10 cents.
  • NutriBullet – So readers might be surprised that I included this on the list after NutriBullet threatening to sue me when I wrote a positive review on their product. It takes a lot for me to hold a grudge (ahem MonaVie) and the truth is that I really like the product. Some fresh fruit, Greek yogurt, and a little whey protein and you have something that competes quite well with Jamba Juice at a fraction of the cost. Lately, I’ve even been sneaking in some almond milk.
  • Anker USB Wall Charger – It seems like more and more of my gadgets recharge from USB: tablets, phones, Awesome SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 Players, battery chargers for power on the go. This gadget allows you to charge them all with one plug (you may need to order a pack of USB cords). It’s great to travel with this one charger and not have to find a bunch of plugs in a hotel room. To keep everything neat, grab a Quirky Cordies Cable Management

For New Parents and their Baby

Here is some of the best baby gear I’ve Found and the best frugal baby toys I’ve Found

For the Handyman

  • Fiber Fix – Fiber Fix is a little like duct tape, but put on steroids. I first saw this product on Shark Tank (you can see the impressive video here). The day after that appearance, they sold out of stock on QVC in 6 minutes. Their media team reached out to me to see if I would review it. They overnighted me the product… very cool of them. The only problem is that I can’t think of anything to fix.

For the Man in Your Life

  • Underwear – I’m serious… not joking a bit. I’m usually not one to pay $15-20 for a pair of underwear, but I’ve found the exception – ExOfficio Men’s Give-N-Go Boxer Briefs. With over 1200 reviews and a 4.6 rating on Amazon, you know it’s a real deal. The reviews were so good that I picked up a couple of pairs when I saw a sale. In many of the reviews, men switched their underwear out to just wear these. I can see why. They take up very little space and you really can wash and wear them pretty quickly. This makes them ideal for travel. There were many stories of people who bring just two pairs to travel for weeks, one is washed and hung to dry while the other is worn. With our expanding family, suitcase space is going to be at a premium. The plan is to put these to the test along with their shirt, ExOfficio Men’s Give-N-Go Tee, which I can confirm is just as good.

For the Woman in Your Life

I’m going to ask the readers for help on this one. I know what my wife likes, but I don’t feel strongly about recommending Uggs at $150 a pair on a personal finance website. We got a great deal on Black Friday at the military commissary, but that isn’t going help you. She also loves these KIND Nutrition Bars (I do too).

Finally, she got a cold recently and didn’t feel like leaving bed for 36 hours. The savior was a Netflix streaming account. She watched the whole first season of Orange is the New Black. My favorite comment of hers was, “I wonder who is going to play me.” (She worked at the same prison that the show is based on.)

Is there was one product that you wish you could share with the world (and don’t tell me a Coke? Let me know in the comments.

(You may want to check back in a few days, because I have the feeling I forgot a few things.)