Cute Cheap Stuff!

This week you can download “Pick Up the Phone” by Dragonette for free from iTunes. I quite enjoy this song and I’m realizing that I have a new band to like. Yes!

Thanks for being loyal readers! I apologize that I haven’t been posting as much lately. I just haven’t been motivated to blog about cheap stuff lately. I’ve actually been thinking about expanding what I say here beyond financially-related things. It may not exactly go with the cutecheapstuff name, but whatever – it’s my blog!

But that won’t be happening yet, as I’m about to head off on a vacation to….. (drumroll)…. Hawaii! I’m very excited, as I’ve been dying to visit for a long time, and it’s finally happening.

For the next week, I won’t be posting. But I’m hoping that when I return and get settled in, I’ll feel bloggy again.

(Sorry to be one of those people who talks about how they don’t post on their blog and life is so busy, blah blah blah. My life isn’t really that busy – I’m just lazy!)

Amazon has a couple nice Sharon Jones deals:

1. Download the song “I Learned the Hard Way” for free!
2. Download the album (also called “I Learned the Hard Way”) for only $6.99.

Use discount code hearts when you check out at Fredflare.com and get free shipping! That’s saving $7.95, and there’s no minimum purchase. The code ends Feb. 8.

I’ve been coveting this cardigan for a long time:

$40

and this:

$28

and this hoodie jacket:

Sigh. Must.resist.

If you are engaged or if you know someone who is (which probably all of us do), check this out. You can win a free wedding gown or 5 bridal party dresses from David’s Bridal – every month! Click here to enter the drawing.

Groom sold separately.

(Thanks, Money Saving Mom)

Photo: Creative commons – Flickr user catchesthelight

There are moments in life when I really feel like an adult:

• Paying bills
• Grocery shopping, which I kind of enjoy
• Setting up my own doctor and dentist appointments
• Doing taxes (it took me hours and hours and hours the first time)
• Donating blood
• Making the decision to turn off the TV at an appropriate time and go to bed (this is a relatively new thing to me)
• Enrolling in benefits at work.

I’m not a benefits specialist, but I have worked in the area for a few years. I worked for a Long-Term Care (LTC) Insurance broker for a couple years, and I also worked in a benefits communication consulting group for a couple years. I’m no expert, but I feel fairly competent in discussing benefits on a casual level.

I’m going to skip talking about LTC insurance for the moment and instead focus on a benefit that many companies offer: a Flexible Spending Account (FSA).

If your company offers an FSA, I implore you to use it. With an FSA, you are allowed to contribute money to a personal account pre-tax (meaning the money is deducted from your pay before your total pay amount is taxed). The personal account is for paying for items and services that are health-related. I don’t want to get into a long explanation of FSAs, but if you really aren’t familiar with them, here’s a good place to start.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of an article I found about using up what’s left of your FSA by the end of the year. One annoying part about having an FSA is that at the beginning of the calendar year, you decide how much per month you want to set aside for health-related expenses. Sometimes you may not set enough aside and you wind up paying for expenses with post-tax money, and sometimes you overestimate how much you’ll need and you wind up with money in your account at the end of the year. FSA rules do not allow you to rollover leftover money from the previous year, which means that you need to spend what’s left in your account before it goes away.

If you do need to spend FSA money, this article mentions 10 things that are considered FSA-eligible that the average person might not know. I found the article last month and I meant to post it here but didn’t. I mention the date because many FSA plans run January-December, but not all. My company’s enrollment year runs September-August, and that’s not unusual. That is my defense for posting this in January.

If you do not participate in an FSA and your company has it, please do it. You don’t have to contribute a lot. Even if you consider yourself a healthy person, you can still find things to purchase with FSA money – like eyeglasses and contacts, for example. That stuff isn’t cheap! I’ve set aside extra this year so that I can finally buy new glasses – for the first time in 7 years. I think I’m due for a new pair.

Also, for those of us who aren’t good at saving, an FSA allows you to set aside money before you even have a chance to get your grubby hands on the cash, and then it forces you to only spend that money on health-related things – instead of, say, cute shoes and cupcakes.

Being an adult isn’t always fun, but it’s the right choice.

I’m sure we’ve all been keeping track of the developments in Haiti and we’re probably all aware of ways to donate. But just in case you’re still looking for an organization to give to, check out World Concern, who have staff actually in Haiti – some of whom haven’t been accounted for yet.

According to the web site, WC:

World Concern has worked in Haiti since 1978 and currently provides hope to 125,000 people. Our work with the poor includes microfinance, agriculture, disaster response and small business development. World Concern’s goal is to transform the lives of those we touch and lead them on a path to self-sustainability.

Wherever you decide to give, may it touch the lives of people in need more than we will ever know.

I apologize for the lack of posting here. I started my new job this week (which I’m very grateful for), and I’m really tired. I’m not used to working 8-5 every day!

Obviously, I now have less free time during the day to blog. I will still keep blogging, but it’s probably going to be a little slow for a while – at least during the week – until I get adjusted to this schedule. (I’m soooooooooooo not a morning person.) I really do have things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

 I should have mentioned this earlier, but posting will be light around here until after Christmas.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Attention Seattle area people: University Village is giving away a $500 gift card! Click here to enter.

If you’ve struggled to keep track of events you’re invited to on Facebook, check out this post about how to export your Facebook calendar to your Gmail calendar. It’s very simple.

Here’s to being more organized!

(Thanks, Lifehacker)

This week is $12 T-shirt week at Threadless. Talk about awesome and affordable gifts!

(Thanks, Yugo, for the tip!)

If you’d like to share a deal you come across or if you just want to drop a line, feel free to e-mail cutecheapstuff AT gmail.com. Thanks!

If you haven’t bookmarked or subscribed to an RSS feed for this site, you can now just go to cutecheapstuff.com (instead of cutecheapstuff.wordpress.com) – it automatically forwards to the wordpress blog. It’s handy, and hopefully it’ll be easier to remember the URL without having to add the wordpress part at the end.

Also, about RSS feeds – up until recently I wasn’t using one. I’m kind of a visual person, and I liked being able to go to individual blogs and see the design the way the blogger meant it to look, but when you read lots of blogs, it’s time consuming to individually visit each site. So I started using Google Reader, and it’s awesome.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, you should really consider it! If you have gmail, just click on the Reader link at the top of your Gmail page, and click on the Add a Subscription button and then add cutecheapstuff.com and your other favorite blogs, and voila! You can now catch up on all the new posts all at once.

(Sorry for the tutorial if you’re already RSS savvy. Thank you for being awesome.)

For a limited time, you can download from Amazon for free “I Don’t Know What It Is” by Rufus Wainwright.

(I’ve never really gotten into Rufus. I know that he’s pretty popular, but his voice just bugs me. But I want to like him.)

Amazon’s daily deal (9/8) is the new album by A Fine Frenzy, “Bomb in a Birdcage” for just $3.99.

I have to say that I wasn’t blown away by her previous album, but after listening to the samples from “Bomb in a Birdcage,” I’m highly intrigued.

Free sample of Tide Total Care

Well, hello!

Welcome to Cute Cheap Stuff. I’m Terri and I’d like to be your guide to finding the best online bargains.

There are a lot of frugal blogs out there on the ol’ interwebs, but often the deals I see aren’t that enticing. I don’t have a husband and 6 kids to buy groceries for, nor am I interested in buying hardly any of the gazillion deals on various electronic thingamajiggers.

Basically, I like cute stuff. And I like to pay as little for it as possible. I also like free stuff – samples, giveaways, you name it. I spend a pretty good amount of time searching for these bargains, and I’d like to share my findings with you. Sound good?

Thanks for visiting, and be sure to bookmark this blog. All the cool kids are doing it.