An Update...Or, What We Are Doing Now

Here's what we are doing now...

• We met Dan Morehead this weekend. He is a friend of a friend and he is a professional fisherman. I was pretty incredulous when my friend told me this. "You mean he gets PAID to fish??" Yep, in fact he does. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would love to quit their job and get paid to fish. This is one man (among many, apparently) who have done just that. I love it when I see people living their dreams. Amazing!



• I saw this article in the paper yesterday (actually the online version of the paper because it's free) and thought back to when we were in that position. As we learned and they learned, in order to get out of debt you have to: radically change your lifestyle and spending habits, pay cash for everything, and realize that if you can't afford to pay cash for something, you can't buy it. Simple, boring tips but they absolutely work!
  


• I have been working on my new goal list for this year. To date, I have been able to achieve a few of the goals absolutely free. One of my goals was to go to the Medieval Times restaurant which we have never been to. At this point, I really didn't want to spend $50 per person on dinner, but it just so happens that they were having a two for one special and when I told the hubby that I wanted to go there for my birthday, my SIL overheard me and said she would pay for it. A fun, interesting goal completed for free! Another goal was to watch ten TED talks which I did for free online (they have some truly amazing speakers!) here. I also want to read a classic novel each month so I downloaded the free Kindle e-reader to my computer then downloaded Jane Eyre (also free since many classics are offered at no charge) which I just finished--the book is WAY better than the movie! Finally, I have been watching a Korean soap opera that I only caught a few episodes of a some years back. I thought I would have to rent the entire 35-episode set but fortunately (after looking at many websites that either didn't play the videos or weren't complete) I was able to find it here where I can watch the whole series for free (complete with great video quality and very good translation).



• I know a couple of soon to be high school graduates who are still scrambling for college money so I sent them this interesting list of scholarships to apply for.



• Finally, we are debating what to do/where to go next. We are still in Atlanta for another six weeks or so. Our plan was to go to Connecticut next to visit family for a month or two then head back to Seattle before we go to Asia this fall. Unfortunately we are getting a bit tired of being professional "couch surfers" and I really miss having my own place (although getting free rent for four months really can't be beat!). It kind of takes all of the fun out of going on vacation when you are permanently on vacation... So we are trying to weight the pluses and minuses of our decision. If we go to CT we will again get free rent for a month or two which saves a lot of money, on the other hand, we will have to drive to all of the places we want to go there as there is no public transportation where our family lives and the cost of gas in the area is more than $4 a gallon! Plus, since the hubby is the oldest of the clan, it often falls on him to pay for a lot of activities that the family does (I know we can opt out but culturally that is just the way things are) so these would be added expenses. If we go back to Seattle we can get a small apartment until we decided if/when/where to buy another house. The good thing is that this way we will have our own place and get to use a very good public transportation system as well as have more control over our expenses (with the big clan in CT there is always places people want to go so we often find ourselves going to the casinos, nightclubs, shopping, restaurants, heading over to Boston or New York for shopping etc. Hubby is thinking of all of these expenses and cringing).

So that's where we stand now. Plans seem to change on a daily basis around here so who knows where we will end up!

How Other People Spend and Save Money

Here's some wonderful links that show how other people spend (and save!) their hard-earned money:

• Over at Get Rich Slowly, JD Roth outlines how he spends and saves money in this post. When I read the post, I was thinking I could have written it! Everything from conscious spending to reducing our exposure to advertising to walking more to save gas and improve health are things that we currently do to save money.


• Trent over at The Simple Dollar posted this question from a reader along with his answer and, again, it just goes to show that people who are really focused on getting out of debt pretty much come to the same conclusions. In fact, the day before I read this post, I was thinking the exact same thing that he wrote in the first line of his answer "the biggest switch in getting away from materialism was to start focusing on what I had instead of what I didn't have." It just so happened that my birthday was a few days ago. Hubby asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I gave it some thought, and I honestly couldn't think of a single thing I wanted. I have a wonderful place to stay, plenty of delicious food, every need taken care of, enough money for my meager bills, and most important, I have the hubby with me. Thinking of everything I do have (along with staying out of the malls, not being around friends/co-workers who make materialism a daily contest, and, most importantly, not having any place to store any new things that I buy) makes me very content.


• My favorite traveling family, The Family on Bikes, recently posted this insightful article How to Afford Long Term Family Travel, on their blog. Like we have found out, when you do something so far from the norm of: work, buy a house, buy a car, work some more, collect even more material goods, pay your credit cards, and go back and work some more, the first question people have is "how can you afford it???". We get that question all the time. For us, we are two adults with very few needs, but when you are talking about a family of four complete with two growing teenagers, it becomes an even more incredible feat to afford such a grand adventure. This post outlines one creative way a family can make such a thing happen.


• Then I came across this article on How to Prepare if You Think You Might Lose Your Job. This is yet another article that really hit home with me. Late last fall, I could see the writing on the wall. With very little warning, my main client more or less went belly up. We basically did half of what we recommended in this article, namely, we assessed our situation, looked at our monthly outflow of cash, started cutting back on every single expense, and instead of positioning myself for another job, came to the conclusion that we could hop off this hamster wheel and hop right back on another one or we could make a drastic change. We chose the drastic change option.


• Finally, I thought this was a useful post to share: 100 Best Money Moves from CNN. Many of the things they suggest are good ideas. There are a few, however, that were downright dumb. You don't NEED a smartphone or an iPad, plus you know my stance on credit cards so it just makes sense to use the money moves that work best for your situation.

Happy reading!

Save $1000 This Month

It wasn't until we got super serious about paying off our debt and then, preparing to sell everything and travel, that my attitude about spending money did a 180. Before, I kept spending and spending and wondered why my goal of getting out of debt never happened. Soon I found Dave Ramsey and began watching his show religiously. Only then did I decided to change my attitude and start cutting cost relentlessly because, as Dave says, "if you want to live like no one else, first you have to live like no one else." Did you know that statement is completely true? For most of our lives we were living like everyone else which meant we were spending like maniacs and we were broke. After a couple of years of living like no one else (mostly because no one would actually want to live like we were living, we were so miserly) we are now living like no one else that we know (and now they are asking how we can live like we do...I have to remind them about all of the times we were doing the things listed below...).

So if you want to get seriously radical, here's how you can literally save $1000 this month (big change of attitude and ability to ignore those who think you are crazy is required):

1. Save $100 and cut out cable TV completely. About 97% of the stuff on cable is junk anyway. Even though the SIL has cable at her house, we still only watch what would be available on regular TV with a set-top digital converter box (free after initial purchase of the box). We have also started watching many more of the TV shows and movies we like online.


2. Get your grocery money for the month, take $100 of the money and put it in the bank, then spend the rest on food. Depending on your grocery budget, you may literally be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a month or you may only have to cut out restaurant meals. Will it be difficult? Yes. Will you be able to get super creative and make it work anyway? Yes. For tips on saving money on food, check here.


3. Sell, sell, sell. The average American can sell some of the stuff they own, take in $200, and still not miss what they got rid of. Consider a garage sale, selling unwanted gold and jewelry, selling stuff on CraigsList, and/or selling stuff on eBay.


4. Look at all of your insurance coverages (life, health, auto, home) and see where you can make cuts in order to save $100. We were able to save more than $100 every six months by dropping the full coverage insurance on our car. The value of our 2001 van had dropped below $3000 and we have more than $3000 in our emergency fund so if we did have to buy another car because of a wreck, we would be able to "self insure" so to speak (and save money each month we don't have to pay for full coverage insurance which would have given us no more than the current value of the car anyway in the event of a wreck). Obviously you never want to drop auto liability insurance, which would be illegal, or drop medical coverage that you need.


5. Save $100 on your utilities this month by becoming a radical power/water/sewer/gas/garbage saver. Every once in a while we would experiment to see just how much we could save on our utilities and we would go all out to do this. We were able to cut our garbage pick up to every other week for the last few years we were in our house to save money (lots less shopping will give you lots less garbage BTW), we would set the heat lower/air conditioning higher (depending on the time of year), and become super careful about saving every penny possible on electricity, gas, and water. All of these little efforts can really save you a lot of money when added together!


6. Save $100 on the gas for your car this month. This may take a lot of creativity and compromise, especially seeing as how every time I look at gas prices they have jumped up even higher, but it can be done. Can you take public transportation for a couple of weeks? If it costs you $100 to fill up your tank each week, and only $20 for public transportation, you can save $100 in less than two weeks! You may also consider riding your bike to work, car pooling with friends, asking to work from home, etc.


7. Don't shop at ALL this month and save $200. For us, each time we go to the store, we spend a minimum of $50. If we don't shop AT ALL for the month, we can save around $200. Yes, this is super boring and feels like total deprivation but it is possible to do this if it is only for a month. You have clothes and shoes so you can squeak by for a month without buying any more of these things. You still have your food budget so you can shop for necessary food, but all other shopping (clothes, toys, books, shampoo, makeup, etc) is out for a month.


8. Save $100 on services that you usually pay for: mow your yard all month instead of paying for it to be done, clean your own house instead of paying for it to be done, save $100 on daycare by having a friend/grandma babysit for free (it takes courage to ask when otherwise you would never do such a thing but you can always trade services--you babysit for a friend, they babysit for you--if you don't want to flat out ask for a freebie).

It takes quite a bit of effort and "chutzpah" to save so much money in such a short amount of time, but just tell yourself that it is only for one month and you will survive it. You may end up, like me, finding that many of the "radical" changes you make to save money for just this one month actually stick and become a part of things you do on a regular basis!

Are you Missing Money?

Check out these websites to see if you have money waiting for you that you may have forgotten about:

• Missing Money


• National Association of Unclaimed Property


• 11 Ways to Claim Your Cash


• List of State Unclaimed Property Offices


• Links to Unclaimed Government Property

The Yearly Goal Wrap Up

I'm going to be 44 in a couple of days which reminded me that I needed to wrap up my annual goal list which I posted here about 365 days ago. The list is pretty self explanatory; unfortunately I completed less than half of the items, but on the other hand, there were so many changes during the past year, that I am still really satisfied with what has happened during my 43rd year of life. At the time I wrote the list, I had no inkling that our lives would change so dramatically. I wanted to travel more but we didn't know at the time that the universe would converge and a bundle of serendipitous events would result in us now traveling full time. What started as a dream--being able to sell everything and have the funds to travel for at least a year--became a reality when my main client went belly up in late fall (without basically being forced out of a job, I probably would have never had the guts to leave a "good job". That would be crazy right?), and I was faced with the decision of finding more work for my business or (horrors) finding an actual job to pay our bills and support our lifestyle. Also, home values were declining and our house was way too big for us and we wanted to get out while we still had equity in the house so we put it up for sale and it sold rather quickly. Then, seeing as how my work days were numbered, we got laser intense on getting out of debt (selling gold, selling nearly everything we owned, CraigsListing like a maniac, no shopping at all, etc). By the time our house was getting ready to close, we determined that since we were nearly debt free, had enough income coming in to meet what would be a minuscule amount of living expenses without the house, and didn't actually need a new home right away since we would be traveling, we decided to put the small amount of things we kept in storage and have been traveling since February. Miracles really do happen! Since I am still really into lists, I have created a new goal list for my 44th year of life. I posted it here on my other blog and have hopes that I will get a lot more completed this year. Many items were taken from last year's list because they are things I still really want to do, while other items are travel-related. Overall, I am looking forward to an amazing, adventurous, year!

10 Things About Little Kids (Money Saving Tips Included!)

We are a month into our adventure in babysitting for the hubby's sister's grandkids. They are two and four year old little girls who are generally pretty good--as good as two and four year olds can be--but it has been quite the re-learning experience. Here's what I have learned so far:

1. It doesn't take much to entertain them and certainly doesn't require a room full of toys to do so. We have made tents out of blankets, played cook with real pots and pans, been to the local park numerous times, read numerous books (from the library), and the older one has helped me make cookies (she likes to stir stuff) and clean (I put dry rags on her feet and she "skates" behind me to dry the floor as I mop).


2. Grandma has a strict no TV policy. They never watch TV but do watch little kid videos from the library. Occasionally I'll let them watch 'Arthur' which is a really good cartoon on PBS (no violence, lots of information on good values, etc). That's probably why I haven't heard them ask for a single kiddie consumer item yet--because they don't get to see the commercials for these things so aren't brainwashed into begging for them.


3. They aren't picky eaters. Both mom and grandma tell them that if they don't eat what's on the table, they can go hungry. As a result, they are really good eaters. This saves money, time, and aggravation (another kid I know will eat exactly three items total--chicken nuggets, Gogurt, and cheese pizza--if these things aren't in the house, the mom will literally run out to the store to get it). This makes for an annoying, picky kid who gets to control the parents. Not good.


4. I have to control myself at the Dollar Store. It would be so easy to fill my basket with things they would like--there's so much cute stuff and it's ONLY A DOLLAR! However, I would eventually be broke and end up with a house full of junk. So I try to restrain myself and buy them each one small thing every other week.


5. I have to control them at the Dollar Store. Note to self, leave kids home when going shopping. Eventually they will need to learn how to shop but taking kids by rack after rack of toys is enough to make anyone (me and them) crazy. With four adults in the house, there is usually someone around to watch them when someone else goes shopping.


6. Some things are worth their weight in gold. The little one is usually pretty good (except for the fearlessness part where she will fling herself off of anything--slide, sofa, pool--whether or not someone is there to catch her) but the other day she was a total maniac, like call-the-exorcist kind of maniac. I went through the usual list--not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, and then figured out she had a couple of new teeth coming in. While I usually look for cheaper alternatives to whatever I need to buy, I had no qualms about buying teething gel at the local grocery store. It was something that couldn't wait and made both of us happy.


7. A potty trained kid is a good thing. The little one has been potty trained since she was about a year and a half old. This is kind of a luck of the draw thing as some kids potty train very young and others make you wonder if they will ever get out of diapers, but the sooner the better (it saves the cost of diapers and the ick factor of changing them).


8. Enrichment activities are also a good thing. I usually hesitate to buy toys, figuring they will be discarded and forgotten pretty quickly, however I don't have any qualms about paying for enrichment activities for kids. The older girl takes gymnastic and karate when she is home with her parents and has been enrolled in a local karate school since she came here. Lessons give kids things they can't just discard, namely, skills, the ability to set and reach goals, the opportunity to work with others, and many other things that they will carry with them into adulthood.


9. If you give something to one, you need an identical item to give to the other. I know they need to learn how to share but at this age, they want exactly what the other has. If one gets something the other doesn't get, lots of crying and hitting ensues. Eek.


10. Everyone gets to be on a schedule. For the hubby and I, who have basically thrown our schedules to the wind, this took a bit of adjustment, but it works much better when there is a clear schedule each day and everyone knows what comes next. They get their naps on time which means they don't get cranky, everyone knows when to come home for dinner which makes for a fun way to share a meal and encourages good eating habits, and we know exactly when to take them to the park for optimal burning of energy (and optimal response to nap time!).

Over all it's been a wonderful experience. All of our grandkids live far away from us so it is nice to have little ones around for a change. It is also our first foray into doing something so totally out of the ordinary for us--namely trading work for room and board which makes it even more adventurous.

The Joy of Paying Bills

I never thought I would be happy to pay bills but these days I am pretty happy because, #1, there is so few of them, and #2, they aren't expensive bills. Thinking back to when our bills totalled somewhere around $8000-$10,000 per month, I am positively giddy when I look at our short bill list! Here's what we pay now: Annually: private mail box (around $150), grandson's school ($480), car registration ($40) Semi annually: car insurance ($200 every six months) Monthly: cell phone ($85 per month), tithe ($50), have mail sent from PMB ($10), storage unit ($55 per month), health insurance ($35 per month) Notes:

• A private mail box is way more expensive than a postal box but well worth the money when you travel because they will hold your mail for an unlimited amount of time and also send you all of your collected mail to where ever you happen to be (for a small fee; we usually have mail sent once a month for about $10).


• We have committed to sending our grandson to school in the Philippines so this expense will be around for another decade or so. Currently he attends a public school but we told him that if he does well we will send him to a private school for high school and college so this cost will most likely increase. Since they don't have such things as Social Security or welfare in the Philippines, we feel his education will be the only thing that will help support his family in the future so it is well worth the cost.


• Even though our car has been parked since early February, we still pay liability-only car insurance so we will be insured when we drive other people's cars. We also get to pay the annual registration to keep it street legal so the guy who is watching it can drive it around occassionally to keep it running.


• Our cell contract will expire in December at which time we will go to no-contract cell phones since we don't use them much any more.


• I used to tithe 10% of my income but since I am not working and don't have much income, I still feel it is necessary to tithe monthly so I have settled on $50 a month until I earn more.


• Our storage unit is holding about $15,000 worth of stuff so the small monthly fee we pay for this service is well worth it. When we decide where/when to resettle this fee will go away.


• We have an amazing health insurance plan for such a little bit of money; hubby has this automatically deducted from his retirement pay each month.


• I really like paying bills on an annual basis so you can pay once then forget about it until the next year however some bills won't allow this (cell phone, car insurance). Since we are unsure of how long we will store our stuff, we have opted to pay for the storage unit monthly although we will pay some months in advance if we are out of the country.


• Online bill paying and online banking are awesome! This makes it so very easy to keep track of your money and move it around to pay bills. Unfortunately my bank doesn't have a way to scan checks in order to deposit them so when we get checks in the mail (a nice after affect from the sale of our house--we still have small checks coming in for various things) I have to mail them to our branch in Washington, however it only takes a few days for them to post.


• Money that comes in monthly (hubby's pension and Social Security, my small earnings from online stuff) is put in savings or used to pay for our daily needs (food mostly, make up and toiletries, and other small random things we need). Fortunately we don't have room to cart stuff with us around the country so we don't shop for many material items.


• So far we have been able to trade services for room and board and the use of a car so that in itself has cut what would be regular monthly expenses to nearly nil for the time being.


• I came across this blog post from Married With Luggage which outlines how much another set of travelers spend each month. Interesting!


• We have talked about the possibility of buying another house and settling down again but neither one of us feels compelled to do so yet. We plan to keep traveling for another year or so, but, as we have learned with this lifestyle, you never know what will happen. Our plans have already changed significantly about six times in the last two months so we really don't know where we will end up next or what new adventures await us.


• As Betsy said in the blog post above, when you get into the traveling (free!) lifestyle, you don't have many constraints and can be open to many more possibilities. We may look for house sitting opportunities, we may look into volunteer opportunities that provide room and board, we might camp for a month (a distinct possibility when I bike from Canada to Mexico later this summer)...you just never know. What I do know at this point is that I never want to be saddled with many thousands of dollars of monthly bills ever again!

Allergy Season...Ugh

I thought it was odd that my cold was hanging on for so long. The stuffy nose, sneezing, can't go anywhere without a Kleenex thing was getting old. Then I walked into Walmart yesterday and the first thing we came to was a wall of allergy medicine. Ohhhhh So I hopped online and went to weatherbug.com and saw that the pollen forecast was a 10.2 out of 12 (in other words, high) and then it dawned on me that maybe my cold was mingling in with allergies. Ick. Fortunately I don't have allergies year round but early spring seems to be a killer and early spring in Atlanta where everything is starting to bloom is really playing havoc with my sinuses. Here's what I do to try to lessen the impact:

• I try to lay off the milk, dairy products, and wheat. These items seem to make my allergies even worst.


• I use a "nettie pot" type device (actually one of those bulb "snot removers" that got left by one of the grandkids) to clean out my nose once or twice a day.


• If it gets really bad, I close all of the windows and turn on the AC if it gets too hot. I really love fresh air but early in the spring, when the windows are open all day, you can literally see a layer of pollen on the hard surfaces near the windows.


• I dust and mop and vacuum more often.


• I try to walk early in the evening while it is still late but after the pollen has died down.


• It is already a decades old habit (I learned this in Japan) but we never wear shoes in the house and we usually change into "house clothes" when we get home to avoid tracking in the dust and pollen we pick up outside.

What I'm Doing Now

Here's a quick update...

• I'm currently recuperating from being sick. It wasn't as severe as the flu but I did feel pretty crappy for the past few days. I am sure I picked it up from the nieces we are taking care of. I love carrying around cute little toddlers. I forgot, however, that whenever I am in the same zip code as a toddler I get sick. Guess my immune system isn't up to par. A cheap, quick cure for this: lots of water/tea/soup, lots of vitamin C, and a bit of Thera Flu.


• Right this very minute I am watching the new show "Extreme Couponing" on TLC. I am super inspired by the people's stories (most note that they are debt free too!)--they are literally getting hundreds of dollars of food and toiletries for a few dollars...AMAZING! I use coupons occasionally but not like they do on this show. On the one hand, it does seem to take a lot of time and preparation to do what these extreme couponers do and since we are living so minimally, we don't have the need/storage space for all of the stuff that they can buy for literally pennies. On the other hand, if I can spend a few dollars and get lots and lots of stuff, maybe I should and just give it away to people who need it. Stay tuned for a post on couponing!


• I am using my free time to brush up on both my Japanese and Spanish language skills with my new books. I am also using a site called Quizlet to test myself on these languages for free (check this site out for all sorts of free study help with everything from languages and math to history and the MCAT/LSAT/GRE).


• We have been getting creative in the food department. The hubby and I do all of the cooking for everyone and while my SIL provides a lot of food (her hobby is shopping at Costco) we like to contribute as well. We have found a huge Asian grocery store where prices are pretty good. At most grocery stores I am absolutely stunned by how high prices have gone on many basic food items. So mainly our meals consist of soups, stews, casseroles, lots of stuff baked from scratch, and lots of ethnic meals (Mexican, Indian, Asian) which really helps to stretch our food dollars while at the same time adding lots of variety to our meals. Note: the SIL and her SO have repeatedly said they have never eaten so much at home and they have also repeatedly said they actually like eating at home now.


• A real time update....a guy on the Extreme Couponing show just bought $5743 worth of groceries and sundries for around $250 and an armload of coupons. Holy Cow! The good part is he is giving away most of the stuff he got to the food bank. Very cool! I predict that tomorrow the grocery stores will see a decided uptick in people using coupons!


• We may be starting a trend. The SIL and her SO (sister in law and her significant other) have asked us quite a few questions about how we got to the point we are at now (no home, no need to work, very few bills and expenses, and unlimited time to travel and do what we want to do). They would both like to retire soon but said that they need to bring in a minimum of $10,000 a month in retirement income in order to do so. I was flabbergasted. For most people, if your lifestyle is costing you $10,000 a month, you will NEVER be able to retire. So over many dinners we have discussed how we decided that freedom was much more important to us than material goods, how we paid off our debts, how we sold nearly everything we owned, and how we are experimenting with a mobile lifestyle, at least for the time being. We also told them that the two of us can easily live on $2000 per month (currently we are only spending about $1000 per month since we are getting free room and board). Hearing those numbers, they were flabbergasted! Now they are seriously talking about selling their huge house, talking about ways to decrease their debt, and they now think that retirement may actually be possible.


• It takes four adults to take care of two small children (and we are still tired at the end of the day!). How women in their 40s have babies is beyond me--the energy required to keep up with the (extremely energetic) kids we are taking care of now is beyond what I could ever do by myself. But it is fun, the kids are very nice and sweet, as well mannered as can be expected for a two and four year old, and we feel like we are positively impacting both the SIL (she has built in babysitters any time she needs them) and the kids (they get to have fun with their aunt and uncle plus we like to spoil them a bit).

I should get back to regular blogging soon, now that I am not coughing like a maniac. I will now go finish watching the couponing show!

A Book Shopping Revelation

For the past few weeks I have been looking at a couple of books each time I go to Barnes and Noble. Since I really hate to pay retail for anything, I have been waiting to get a coupon which B & N regularly sends to my email inbox so I could at least save a little off the price of the books. Yesterday I finally got a coupon in my email which would have taken 10% off the retail price of the books. That was OK, but since one of the books was $60 (a college-level Japanese language text which I want to use to refresh my language skills before we go to Japan in the fall), that would still only save me $6 which is about the cost of tax. However, I really wanted the book, so I was ready to splurge but alas I was pretty lazy yesterday and didn't feel like driving to the mall so I went online to B&N thinking I would purchase the book there. To my surprise, the book that cost $60 in the store only cost $45 online! Maybe everyone else knows about this pricing thing--go to the store, pay much more? But it was a surprise to me. Then it got me to thinking that maybe I could find the book for even less somewhere else online so I Googled the title and was even more surprised when the book came up for $40 at Amazon. With free shipping! I thought I would push my luck even more and Googled 'Amazon promo codes and coupons' but none of the coupons I found would work for the books I wanted. Oh well...I ended up getting both books for a total of $46 with free shipping and they should be here in a couple of days. Now I'm a happy camper with an extra $30 in my pocket. The moral of this post is that if you are willing to spend your hard-earned money on something, it pays to shop around instead of just going to the logical source, especially now that the internet has put a range of shopping possibilities at our fingertips.