This year I noticed for a lot of back to school advertisement sales there are so many stores mentioning that certain products are environmentally friendly. Usually most of the green items are a little more expensive which makes some people a little weary in buying them.

These are one of those things that I usually don’t mind spending some extra money for as I guess I feel the need to contribute in being green friendly. The only bad thing about it is that I am usually not too knowledgeable about what exactly is so green about every product compared to others and so I would be more susceptible to paying extra for something that I am not really sure about.

I guess it is like buying these food items that say they are packed with things that are suppose to be good for you and so you are simply going by what the front label says. Example, if I see a electronic equipment with some kind of green friendly label I can usually assume it has something to do with power consumption. Start getting into things like a shoe and I wouldn’t know the specifics as to what makes that one “green friendly”.

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There was this report I was watching on how some people are already trying to find the right Christmas gifts for their kids and that stores are already pre-telling customers what they think the hot items are. As a result, there are apparently a lot of people buying those items.

For myself, I usually don’t pay too much attention to top ten lists if it was published from say the retailer themselves as most likely they are trying to bundle up items that while may be good, it usually means a lot of profit too.

I usually trust consumer reviews personally as I guess the opinions are usually a bit more genuine and not to mention it will help you save money as oppose to buying purely on some hype.

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So I was told that for some odd reason certain online stores have this Kodak EASYSHARE Z710 - Digital camera - 7.1 Mpix for a price of under $12.

To me, the first thing that came to my mind was that this must be a price error which won’t be honored. I was looking at the official Kodak page at http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-locale=en_US&pq-path=10000 which lists this product at over $200.

Now the fact that multiple vendors list this camera model at such a low price makes me wonder if it is indeed legitimate.

As crazy as it may be too, for the fun of it to see if it goes through I ordered 5 of them as I had to go over a certain quota to get free shipping. Maybe that will be my Christmas shopping for the year? Real big long shot though at this point.

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I saw a commercial that was advertising for some cereal and the theme of it was to inform people of a new guarantee that the company had in place for people who bought the product. Essentially, if you are someone who bought the cereal and for whatever reason you did not like it then you can mail something in to get a full refund of your purchase price.

I was just thinking too how that box of cereal probably costs between $2 to $5. How many people are honestly going to go through the effort to actually mail something in to take advantage of that guarantee assuming they did not like it? I’m willing to bet not many and companies know that too as it is almost like mail in rebates where most people are simply too lazy to redeem them.

Having things as part of an in-store guarantee is a little different as you are more likely to drop by the store again for other things. Imagine if for that cereal they allowed in-store refunds for that guarantee.

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I was reading about this financial strategy that some families implement to save a lot of money. Essentially, most people for things like grocery shopping determine what they want first and then try to adjust their budget accordingly. Instead, what these people do is they look at what’s on sale and then create their plans based on that.

For example, instead of saying this week you feel like eating a steak and then saving money to buy one, if you see that there is a crazy deal on angus beef you would then create a meal around that instead. They would do something similar with trips or activities too such as they see if there are any deals to take advantage of first.

I don’t do that for everything personally, but for many things I do. It started when I was kid as when I went with my parents grocery shopping they would always ask me to go choose a box of cereal that I wanted. The thing was I didn’t care too much which one I chose, well aside from the “healthy ones”, and would base my decision mainly on the price. I didn’t want my parents to spend more than they had to.

If you are not very picky and can discipline yourself to do this, it can be a great way to start piling up the savings.

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