To everyone who has been bidding on the Bargaineering Store auctions, there has been a technical glitch this morning. It’s powered by an auction Wordpress plugin that I edited, to use Bargaineering Bucks, and apparently when you deactivate the plugin, it deletes every auction and every bid in the entire database. I have NO idea why someone would design the application that way (you gain no benefit by completely purging the database!) but unfortunately I lost all new auctions and all bids since Saturday. I normally back up the database every single night but the recent Wordpress upgrade disabled my daily upgrades… so the end result is a perfect storm where all bids and auction activity since Saturday was lost.

All restored auctions will be honored as they are but anything not restored will not, unfortunately. (I don’t delete completed auctions so all completed auctions have been restored)

Thank you for understanding and hopefully we don’t run into any more problems.

A couple months ago, Will and Greg at Wisebread asked me if I’d be interested in joining a new blog network they were creating, later to be dubbed the Money Tips Network. I’m a big fan of the work they do at Wisebread and so I was eager to join them on a project. Well I’m happy to introduce you to the Money Tips Network, which includes thirteen of the most trusted personal finance blogs.

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I’m happy to unveil a new Bargaineering.com feature – an email newsletter! (and a new giveaway!)

So what do you get when you sign up for the email newsletter?

• You’ll get an eBook containing 100 easy ways to save money. With the recession in full force, we’re all looking to save some money on the things we don’t care about so that we can spend it on the things we do. The book will have a hundred ways to save so you’re bound to find something you can use, or your money back! (look at how snazzy and bendy that cover looks!)
• Second, there are plenty of things that I want to write about that are too long for Twitter and too short for a blog post. These include interesting things I find on the internet, especially poignant topics in the forums or just commentary on subjects in the news today.
• I’ll also be using it to giveaway all sorts of goodies like the dozens of personal finance books I have on my shelf and announce any sort of timely promotions I find.

Sign Up Today!

Name:
Email:

If you get an error, please try again. The sign-up form seems to be a little flaky and we’re working on it.

As always, you can contact me with any questions whatsoever!

Starting this month I’ll be doing a monthly roundup of some posts I found particular entertaining, interesting, or informative. I won’t inundate you with a list of posts, each one will be carefully selected and given some context.

This month I’ve been doing a lot of food blog reading since I’ve been writing about a variety of cooking topics, like making bread crumbs and pizza crusts, so I found a couple foodie blogs to share with you all. I hope you like this new monthly feature!

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The general idea of “pay it forward” is one that’s been discussed very often on the Internets but finds its origins back in the days of Benjamin Franklin, if not earlier (and simply not recorded). In general, the idea is that you do a good deed for someone else and then that person does it for someone else and then that person (or multiply it and do three good deeds)… you get the idea. There’s no expectation of return or anything like that, you just keep the good love flowing. I believe this Heineken commercial is a play off that idea (or it’s just a good analogy):

I think we need to extend the idea and simply treat everyone as if they were a good friend. Good friends do favors for each other without any expectations of a return. Good friends treat each other with respect and give each other grief. If you treat everyone like a friend and they do the same, the world would be a better place.

Time to grab a beer!

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you probably saw me mention earlier this week that I could lose days watching all the great videos on TED.com. That’s where I found the informative and entertaining video about Chinese American food and where I found this talk by Benjamin Wallace, a writer for plenty of entertaining magazines like GQ, Details, Food & Wine, etc. and recently published a book titled The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.

The video is that of Wallace talking about how he decided he’d seek out and try all the world’s most expensive things, from Kobe beef to ridiculously expensive golf clubs, from fancy olive oil to a $65,000 bed, and even the Veyron 16.4 ($1.5 million). Well worth the fifteen minutes.

Expensive doesn’t always mean better.

What are you thoughts on this?

Some of you may have noticed that the banner on the website has changed from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity to simply Bargaineering. For years I confused people by telling them my personal finance blog was called Blueprint for Financial Prosperity (quite a mouthful) but located at bargaineering.com (or pfblueprint.com). So, to make things right and to do something I should’ve done four years and over two thousand articles ago, Blueprint will be set ablaze and Bargaineering will emerge like a phoenix from its ashes!

Everyone Loves Forums!

In addition to the name change, the eagle eyed among you may have noticed a new “Forums” link the navigation menu above and those two follow me on Twitter may have heard me mention it, but last week, with the help of Jeremy from GenXFinance, we launched a new section to the site, the BFP Forums. The forums are a place that I hope many of us can congregate, share information, ideas, tips, tricks, and other nuggets of wisdom.

As regular readers know, I’m a regular person just like you. I’m not an expert, just more knowledgeable about certain topics because I spent the majority of my day reading about it, and so I am often stumped by particularly complicated problems or scenarios. That’s where I hope you can all can come in and lend me a hand. I know there are experts out there in various arenas whether it’s investing (Khyron, Matt, George, just to name a few) or banking (Joe) or gardening (Jon) or frugality (Dawn) or pets (seems like everyone, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout to my long time friend Nick), so I’m hoping you will all join the forums, ask and answer questions freely, and, above all, become friends with one another so we can all learn and grow together.

A Bribe!

After the emotional appeal comes to bribe, right? It’s starting to be tax season, I’ve already received many of my 1099’s and my W-2’s, and we’ve partnered up with Intuit to give away several Quicken and TurboTax products. I’ll be tying in the forums and forum posts to some of the giveaways so sign up today and join in the spirited conversation.

Another Bribe!

Finally, as an added bonus/bribe, and heretofore unannounced (though some of the top commenters can attest to this), I ask readers for ING Direct referrals to put on my ING Direct referral promotion page. At last estimate I believe I’ve consumed 750+ referrals (30 accounts worth of referrals) on that page. As a reward to frequent forum users, I’ll start asking them, in addition to top commenters, for their ING Direct referrals next (and their spouses and relatives, I just use referrals until they run out!).

If you have any suggestions about the name change, about the forums, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

First, what is RSS? It’s Really Simple Syndication and it allows you to receive the articles I write to the site without actually having to come here. You can read a lot of sites very quickly, without having to wait for them to load. Watch this video for a quick explanation:

On this site, the feed contains full articles, not summaries, so you get the whole thing as if you were actually at the site. Sometimes the images I put into the post that don’t appear entirely correctly and you will still have to visit to leave your comments (I hope you do), but RSS makes reading much quicker and easier. You can use your favorite RSS news aggregator (My favorite is Bloglines) or just have them piped into an email address.

To subscribe to the RSS feed, click on the HUGE orange icon below and Feedburner will walk you through the process:

Blog Feed By Email

If you want to get the feed sent directly to your email, Feedburner also offers an email digest service as well. Simply enter your email in the box below and click submit.

Twitter Too!

Twitter is a microblogging tool that lets you connect with people on a 140 character by 140 character basis. It’s a lot of fun and you should give it a try! I tend to post quick little 140 character ideas and posts to it from something crazy I saw walking around to giveaways and freebies to what I’m eating (ok, just kidding, I don’t twitter what I eat). It’s free, it’s fun, and everyone’s doing it. Please sign up and follow me @bargainr.

Here’s a brief video on Twitter:

American Chinese food is more American than it is Chinese… watch on and enjoy! (learn how John Wilkes Booth planned the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in a Wok & Roll restaurant)

The presenter is Jennifer 8 Lee and this video is just a brief presentation of the types of things she researched in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, a tome that chronicles Chinese food!

My wife and I were married in February of 2008 and with our anniversary coming up, thought it would be fun if we spent a few days in sunny Florida at the magical kingdom that is Walt Disney World. In the last few weeks, I’ve spent some time researching the best deals, trying to understand the dining plan, and checking which dates would work best for the both of us and the airline ticket prices. It all culminated yesterday when I booked a five day vacation that would include Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and the rest of the gang.

Well, as Murphy’s law has always tried to warn me, the day after we booked, my wife received an email offer from Disney. Disney had been watching her account and saw she was considering a vacation. We never booked through her account, we booked through mine. Anyway, Disney had no idea so they sent her an offer. Book four days and get three days free plus a $200 Disney gift card.

Wowsers, that’s a heck of a deal.

We booked a five day with nothing more than the publicly available discounts. My wife said I should call to see if they could match the email offer. After chatting with a very nice CSR, we were able to change our package to the “private” offer. The fifteen minute phone call dropped the price of our vacation by $200 plus gave us a $200 gift card. $400 for a 15 minute phone call? No problem!

Nothing about our itinerary changed, it was just cheaper. Disney didn’t have to do match the offer but they did. A lot of vacation type places are offering fantastic discounts but they usually aren’t willing to make a change to a package you’ve already signed up for and paid a deposit on. This was certainly above and beyond what I would’ve expected, but it just shows that it always pays to call!

Thanks Disney!

(Photo: expressmonorail)