I love a good deal.

For years, I’ve seen all the grocery store coupon sites out there listing wonderful combo deals, how you can get free this and free that, but I never did it because I didn’t want to spend the time it takes to clip, sort, and manage coupons. I didn’t want to try to match them up with the sales circulars and double/triple coupon promotions to get the best deal possible.

I have nothing against people who do this, in fact I’m very envious of their organizational ability. I know that’s what it took to be a coupon ninja, I’d probably last a week or two, then it would fall by the wayside the first chance it could. That’s just how I am (I don’t bother with new year’s resolutions either!).

However, there’s a much easier way to be a coupon ninja and it involves the power of the internet.

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If you ever want to learn about consumer behavior, walk through a grocery store. Look at all the labels, how things are positioned, how sales are organized, and you’ll get tremendous insight into how we consume. Ever wonder why grocery stores have sales where they limit the number of products you can buy? You can get five cases of Diet Coke for $10 but you are limited to five cases. If you really wanted ten, all you need to do is buy five, drop them off at your car, and then buy five more in another “trip” five minutes after the first. The reason they “limit” your order is because it creates a scarcity and you’ll end up buying more.

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For the longest time, I thought that $25 spent on an Entertainment Book was wasted… until last night. Last night we went to Nichi Bei Kai, a Japanese steakhouse and sushi joint, with friends of ours and enjoyed a little Teppanyaki/hibachi dinner. Teppanyaki, also called hibachi (that’s what we call it), is where they cook the dish at your table and give you a little demonstration of knife skills, flames, and cooking. If you’ve never done the hibachi thing, you should give it a try because it’s a lot of fun and the food isn’t bad either. At the end of the meal, my friends pulled out a coupon they pulled from an Entertainment Book that scored us $18 off our meal!

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I find it awesome how many Internet tools we have nowadays at our disposal. You can do whatever you want online: meet friends, do business, learn, shop, and much more! I will never grow tired of discovering and exploring new opportunities Web 2.0 (and soon-to-be Web 3.0) offers to us. So in this post I am looking at social budget shopping and how we can save money with social media.

Some most useful Web 2.0 features mentioned below include:

• Personalization: create your own pages, alerts, lists, etc;
• Socialization: make new friends or share your shopping with your existing friends;
• Publicity: you no more have to guess if the retailer is reliable or a product quality is high – get access to multiple user reviews or ask your friends for recommendations.

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I picked up a copy of Quicken last year to help with our family’s personal finances and perhaps assist in the accounting of my fledgling little business. This year, Quicken has released yet another version update, Quicken 2009 is slated for a September 10th release, and offered some handsome discounts for those looking to upgrade or use the software for the first time.

Quicken 2009 New Features

I’ve read people talk about how they hated all these yearly updates because they offered little in upgrades. Well, in scouring the web for more information, I stumbled on this job posting in which Intuit, makers of Quicken, is “planning a major redesign of the product, and we are looking for a senior user interaction designer for 6-9 month.” Who knows what that means though.

There are additional portfolio planning features added, a whole new help system (with screens for each page), as well as adding more banks to its system. Quicken 2009 will now interface with over 6,000 institutions from banks to brokerages to PayPal.

Quicken 2009 Coupons Codes

• Quicken Deluxe 2009 ($59.99 $39.99)
• Quicken Premier 2009 ($89.99 $69.99)
• Quicken Home & Business 2009 ($99.99 $79.99)
• Quicken Home and Inventory Manager ($29.99 $23.99)
• Quicken Mac ($49.99 $33.99)
• Quicken Medical Expense Manager ($69.99 $44.79)
• Quicken Rental Property Manager ($149.99 $129.99)
• Quicken Online (FREE 60 day free trial, then $2.99/month)