This is a guest post from Ann Smarty

I strongly believe that being thrifty is not about counting pennies - it is more about developing a smart spending strategy. If you take time to consider your every purchase, if you thoroughly research every product you are willing to buy, chances are your money won't be wasted.

Nowadays, the Internet provides for a wealth of opportunities to find useful, impartial information on anything you need. And "social media" tools are the best ones to start with:

• Web 2.0 sites feature discussions from real people;
• Web 2.0 sites feature most recent (even real-time) news and updates;
• Web 2.0 is hard to control and manipulate, thus the users' feedback is impartial and fair.

Use Twitter Search

Twitter Advanced search provides for a number of really great options you may want to try to see people talk about anything:

• Find Tweets asking question: use question mark (?) within the search query, e.g. [godaddy ?];
• Find Tweets nearby: sample search [near:"New York" within:15mi iphone];
• Find negative reviews (those expressing dissatisfaction): use :( within the search query, e.g. [godaddy :(].

Try Shopping Social Communities

Topical web 2.0 communities are great places to find experienced people share thoughts and help each other. So if you are serious about making good choices, be sure to choose a few social shopping sites to join.

How to choose is really up to you. My criteria are as follows:

• The shopping community should be clutter-free;
• The shopping community should be spam-free;
• The shopping community should be focused and targeted.

Buxr is my personal choice because it only offers quality updates and is attentively moderated to ensure there is no spam or self-promotion:



But then again, I welcome you to share your favorites in the comments.

See What Your Facebook Friends Have to Say

For me Facebook has long been a place where all my friends from all my stages of life are connected. It is quite natural, there are many people who I can trust - and who can help me by advising for or against any product you plan to buy.

SideStripe is a handy gadget that connects your facebook search with Google search: so each time you search Google, you know what your friends have to say:


What I Want Facebook application is another way to connect your friends to your shopping and saving activities. The app offers to add items to your wishlist from any store and notify your friends for them to come and share their opinion:

Use Product Reviews Aggregators

I don't recommend focusing to much effort on investigating product reviews because they are much abused and manipulated by the sellers but checking a few sites is not bad idea. Here is a good list of sites aggregating expert and user reviews from a number of sites. PriceGrabber and BizRate are two possible options to try:


Do you leverage social media for product research? What are your tricks?
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The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a blogger and stay-at-home mom and entrepreneur.

Labels: guest post, money hacks, saving, tools and resources, twitter

I flipped through an Inc. Magazine from Feb, 2007 the other day and BOY were things different! The cover headline read "How Philip Rosedale Created Second Life. The Coolest New Marketplace in the World" Second what? Are they still around anymore?

Oh man, this thing was filled w/ memories of the past. There was even talk about how awesome it would be to grow as popular as MySpace ;) Hah! That was nice, but now we've got Facebook and Twitter ruling the social media landscape. And don'f forget about the iPhone - it hadn't even hit stores yet (how did we ever manage?).

Then, of course, we've got the Economy. You don't have to be reminded that the money was flowing all over the place and deals were happening left and right. In fact, I specifically recall thinking that I have to hurry up and buy a place so I can get in on it before it was too late! Well, I def. got that last part correct.

That brings us to our finances. 2 years ago I was bopping around in la-la land w/out a care in the world! Great for the mindset, but not so great for the wallet. I wasn't getting into any debt or anything, but I surely wasn't saving all that much either. Needless to say, I'm glad I've wised up and started tracking where it all goes now ;) This way, when we look back 2 years from now again, I'll be bloogeeing* & skonjering** while my money is working FOR me instead of against me. Here's to a happy 2011!

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*Bloogeeing; verb: To blog via thinking. Brain waves alone activate keystrokes on the computer.
**Skonjering; verb: To Tweet/IM/Text/Blog and pen old school letters at the exact same time.

Labels: life, money management, randomness 3000, twitter

That's right kiddies, there's a new site in town just begging for your attention! I picked it up from Almost Frugal on a tweet this morning (see, twitter is awesome!), and i've already spent 20+ mins of my employer's time on it ;) It's called financialconfessions.net and it's freakin' awesome. People anonymously leave confessions and then you let them know how you feel about it by either slappin' them or huggin' them! haha...you gotta love them internets.

Labels: awesomely awesome, link lovin, twitter

And boy can you learn a lot from it! I've only been a twitterer (tweeter?) for a few months now, but i gotta say that i sometimes learn more in those quick little words than i do reading an entire blog post!

I think it has something to do w/ the conciseness of it all, and the fact you can read/skim them much faster, thus allowing more information into my little brain factory :)

And the best part is that once you get excited about a certain topic or headline there, you can usually click on the tinyurl provided for a more in-depth look! Of course, some say this all just perpetuates laziness and evil vocabulary (think lol, omg, lmfao), but i prefer to think of it as pretty tech savvy and another way of injecting some "cool" in ya. Those who don't adapt, fail right?

So yeah, twitter can be pretty helpful in finding some great personal finance advice and/or current news going on in our economy these days. Or even getting to know your favorite bloggers better! There's a billion other things happening over there too, but i tend to only stick w/ the pf gang...you know, to "fit in" and all ;) Check out some of the stuff going on there just in the past 24 hour or so:

• sincitysavings Does anyone know someone selling a soul?
• FrugalDad Frugal Dad Giveaway! Win a $100 Home Depot Gift Card http://tinyurl.com/5t8rgm
• thatonegirl Will just said, "Judging from the smell in the bathroom - there are some very unhealthy people in the building..."... It wasn't me.
• doctor_s I wish I was a teacher, so much more of a real impact than working in the business world.
• ThatFilipinoGuy My kids just saw Budgetsaresexy.com logo and said that's gross. Now they're covering their eyes. Grossed out by the word sexy. (me: wait, what?! haha...)

Okay, so maybe there's a bit more going on than just LEARNING all the time, but i promise you that does happen on there :) In fact, some people like to post a preview to every post they're about to have, or even coupons they just found out about. Def. not my style (i like to tweet about random nonsense), but it sure can be helpful. Here's a few examples of the more "helpful" ones so you'll believe me:

• BrunetteOnABudg Excess is *so* three seasons ago. Don't believe me? Just ask these rich people who want to fit in by acting broke http://tinyurl.com/66hcnb
• MoneySavingGuid Legitimate ways to make money working from home -- from MarketWatch. http://is.gd/7Row
• bargainbriana Cheap Batteries this week at CVS! Stock up for the holidays! http://tinyurl.com/43k8cq

So as you can see, there's a whole mess of finance activity going on up in thurrr. I won't tell you it's the greatest thing on earth or anything, but it's def. worth a peek if you haven't ventured out there already. And if you do, be sure to holler and "follow me" so you can stalk my every move and see what i'm up to...or not, that sounds kinda creepy ;)

Labels: blogging, link lovin, randomness 3000, twitter