With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, both online retailers and bricks and mortar stores are hoping consumers are finally ready to buy. Amazon continues to grow at a fast clip by taking sales away from the Big Box stores. Indeed, Borders finally went bankrupt, because the chain just couldn’t compete. Stores like Best Buy are counting on people wanting to browse physical items and perhaps get help in their buying decision from a store clerk. Yet, some shoppers will visit a store, get help from a clerk, look at all the items on the shelf, do their research, and then go home and order from Amazon.

Some retailers are fighting back by pushing for legislation requiring Amazon to collect sales tax. They have successfully had laws passed in Illinois and New York State that online retailers must collect sales tax on purchases for customers who live in those states. Walmart’s executive vice president of global e-commerce said in the Wall Street Journal: “The rules today don’t allow brick-and-mortar retailers to compete evenly with online retailers, and that needs to be addressed.” Historically Amazon hasn’t had to collect sales tax unless it had physical operations in the state trying to collect the tax. California recently passed a law to collect sales tax from Amazon due to the thousands of bloggers who get a small percentage of every sale that they pass via a link onto Amazon. Amazon decided to end its affiliate program in California rather than pay the tax.

Walmart and other large retailers such as Target, Best Buy, Home Depot and Sears are backing the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a Virginia-based organization that is helping to lobby in all states for the collection of sales tax by online retailers.

Big Box stores if they want to survive can’t continue to do business as they have always done and expect to compete against Amazon. Amazon can stock far many more items than any physical retailer. Thus, big box stores have to make sure they have the right products at the right time and at the right price. They have to get better at managing their supply chains, to reduce inventory so that they do not get stuck with obsolete product. They also have to make sure their price is close to Amazon’s price.

Chains like Target have long understood the value of having a pleasant shopping environment, with spacious aisles. Target is also fighting back by pushing its own store brands like Archer Farms. Sears for years benefited from having a strong brand in Craftsman tools. People would come to Sears just to get a Craftsman wrench. Similarly, Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, and other Big Box stores will have exclusive deals with manufacturers to have a ton of low priced hot products from a brand that is not the top tier but perhaps second tier. Think Vizio LCD tvs, not Sony, stacked up in the front of the store.

It still pays to visit your Big Box store for your holiday shopping, to get a sense of the trends, and price points. Then you can either buy while you are at the store, or whip out your smart phone and price check Amazon. There are bar code scanning apps that make it effortless to check the price of any product with a bar code on Amazon. Just take a photo of the bar code with your phone, and let the app call up the Amazon price.

Some day, we may buy everything on Amazon, but then, what will happen to all those retailing jobs?

Have you ever browsed Borders Books or Barnes and Noble and then bought the book you wanted on Amazon? The same goes for electronics at a Best Buy or department store. If so, you are not alone. With Borders announcing the closing of all remaining 399 store locations by September, Barnes & Noble remains the sole big box book store. But how long can their reign last? Five years? Just as record stores (or do you know them as CD stores) went the way of the dinosaur, so too are chain book stores. Hopefully, independent booksellers will have a little breathing room to figure out how to stay in business long term, as more and more people switch from printed books to eBooks, and people continue the trend of researching products at a store where they can get their hands on them, and then buying them online to save money.

Retailers are trying to get states and congress to pass laws requiring Amazon and other online retailers to collect sales tax. If they succeed, it may help level the playing field and throw a lifeline to bricks and mortar retailing in America.

So what’s wrong with the big box store concept today? After all, it worked so well for so many years. Shoppers appreciated the variety and selection found in the 20,000+ shopping environment. They appreciated the easy access of the stand alone store in the suburbs, where you just drive up to the store and park versus the mall, where you roam around a vast complex, searching for a place to park, and then walk half a mile within the mall to get to your destination. Certainly some big box concepts are still doing well, like Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Malls on the other hand are experiencing very high vacancy rates. Some of them look like ghost towns. Traditional department stores like Sears and J.C. Penney’s seem tired.

The Apple Model

One only need to look at the success of Apple with its iPhones and iPads to see a model for how retailers can thrive in the future. Apple storefronts are much smaller than a Border’s in size, but they are usually find in prime locations such as busy shopping districts in major cities, or in high end retailing malls where people are eating Stone Cold Creamery ice cream before they duck into an Apple store. Apple stores are as much about marketing Apple products as they are selling them. Steve Jobs really doesn’t care if you buy your iPad at an Apple store, on Amazon.com or at Best Buy, so long as you buy one. Chances are, if you’ve had a positive experience trying out the iPad at an Apple store, with the very knowledge store clerk, then you will feel good about your purchase. Apple stores leave plenty of space between display models, which are all in working order and connected to the Internet. No sales clerk will bother you but wait for you to approach if you have a question. Instead of waiting to check out at a cashier, any store clerk can check you out by swiping your credit card with an iPhone and emailing you a receipt.

Finally, the Genius Bar at Apple is sheer genius. Apple owners know that if they ever have a technical problem they don’t have to waste time and energy on the phone trying to describe their problem or product failure to a technician. They can just go to Genius Bar and get immediate help. Mobile phone providers emulate the Genius Bar with robust on site support at their storefront locations.

Retail space is expensive by the square foot. Labor is expensive too. So, to succeed now and in the future, stores need to work on the consumer experience. That means great furnishings, perhaps a coffee bar, don’t crowd the place with products, and have exceptional sales and after-the-sale support. And if what you sell can be digitized, make sure you have a Web strategy to support your bricks and mortar operation.

Consumers lamenting the loss of Borders, consider supporting your local independent bookstore by actually buying something there. After all, you can’t yet buy a hot cup of coffee on Amazon.

Extreme Couponing Takes Off

Do you coupon? It’s becoming more popular in tough economic times. And food manufacturers of all types continue to pump out the coupons because they work as incentives to get people to try new products, or buy in bulk. Then of course there is the whole Groupon craze, that is conditioning shoppers to expect local deals of the day.

Perhaps you’ve caught the popular show Extreme Couponing on the TLC. This TV show highlights shoppers who can save as much as 95% off on their grocery store shopping excursions. While that is difficult to achieve if you have a family, because you have to buy basics like milk and eggs which do not come with coupons, it still is possible to achieve 50% off your check out, or even 75% in extreme cases, and that’s what we’re talking about here. Extreme couponing.

Where to Find the Coupons?

Your local paper is still the most efficient place to get coupons. It pays to not just get one paper, but try and find all of the newspaper sources for coupons in your area. Of course, if you purchased these papers, you’d already be in the whole somewhat. However, you can often find papers in the local library, which shouldn’t care if you take the coupons. Or ask a neighbor for his or her coupon inserts, or dig them out of a recycle bin. Or, bite the bullet and buy your own paper.

The trick with newspaper clipping is to not spend and inordinate amount of time clipping coupons. Do a preliminary sort of coupons to get yourself organized. Invest in a paper cutter, the kind with the sliding blade that cuts paper faster than scissors. And if you must use scissors, have a pair that is sharp enough to cut without having to snap them closed but rather push the blade through the paper.

Today, the Internet has become coupon central. It’s possible to use Google or Bing to target searches for the type of product you want to buy, such as breakfast cereal. Try these sites for coupons:

Coupons.com
Smart Source
Coupon Database

A quick drop by your local supermarkets for in-store circulars is also a good idea.

Stockpiling Purchases

What you quickly learn when entering the world of extreme coup0ning is that you will buy more than you can consume quickly. Essentially, what this means is that you will buy some items with coupons that will last you a long time, such as three jars of ketchup. Or a case of toilet paper. If you live in an apartment, storage may be an issue. Don’t be shy about storing your extra food in plastic bins under your bed if you have to.

For perishables like butter, you can simply freeze what you can’t immediately use. Just be sure to package it to avoid freezer burn. And date everything you buy so you know how long it has been in the freezer.

Some grocery stores like Safeway have announced limits on the amount of coupons you can use in one shopping excursion. The way around this is to have more than one “shopper card” so that when you break your shopping up into two or three trips through the register line, they don’t realize that you are coming through again.

The Value of Price Matching

Pricematching is when a store like Walmart will match and honor a coupon from another store like Kroger.  In other words if blueberries are on sale for 1.99¢/quart at Kroger, you can take the ad to Walmart and at checkout ask the checkout clerk to match the price offered at Kroger. Hand over the coupon and stick to your guns. You may have to point out their own policy, if the cashier isn’t used to price matching.

E-books and e-book readers are quickly surpassing printed books. If you want to get in on the craze and you own a computer or a smart cell phone, it’s really quite easy. E-book reader software is free. You can simply download and install the Amazon Kindle e-book reader application for a computer or phone, or the Nook application from Barnes & Noble. Google also offers a great e-book reader program. These apps make it easy to download and read e-books.

E-Book formats

E-Books come in several formats. The Kindle format is proprietary, so it can only be viewed in the Kindle program or on a dedicated Kindle reader, which at current prices is about $140 ($114 for a version that comes with ads). Barnes and Noble just released a new version of its Nook, which outdoes the Kindle with a touch screen and sharper text. A color version of the Nook retails for $250. There are of course many other hardware readers out there, including a popular one from Sony. The Barnes and Noble version reads E-pub format, a cross-platform file format that can be opened by a wide variety of devices or software programs.

You don’t have to buy a dedicated reader however if your cell phone screen is large enough to view texts. You won’t see as much text per screen on your phone as a reader, but many people including myself think it works just fine. The advantage is that your cell phone is usually always with you and fits in your pocket.

The thing to keep in mind is that ebooks you purchase will have digital rights management (DRM) which prevents you from passing them on to others, because they will only be viewable for the devices or software you have registered with the ebook retailer you bought your book from.

Free E-books in the Public Domain

Kindle, Nook, Google, and Sony all offer thousands of free e-books, which sounds like a lot, but is a lot less than the millions of ebooks available. Most of the free e-books you find are public domain books, meaning that the copyright has expired. How to know if something is in or out of copyright is challenging, because depending it varies by a number of factors, but generally speaking most books from the 19th Century and earlier are out of copyright and in the public domain. Think of the works of Shakespeare for instance, or Jane Austin.

These public domain books do not include DRM, so you can keep them and move them around and always be able to open up the file and read them. The very best place to find free public domain ebooks is from Google. Google has spent years scanning millions of books out of libraries around the world.

E-Books on Loan

Public libraries are investing in ebooks just like they have always done for printed books. E-books purchased by libraries also have DRM that track when a book is out on loan–typically for a two week period. You just have to have a library card with your local library, and if your library has ebooks to loan, you can find them on the libary’s website.  You then download the book to your dedicated reader, your cell phone with an ebook reader app, or your computer with an ebook app. The book is then viewable for the two week check out period, and then automatically is not viewable when your lending period expires. If no one else is on the waiting list, you can check it out again if you need to. It’s that easy.

Both Kindle and Nook now allow you to loan a purchased ebook to a friend for a one-time two week period, provided they own a dedicated reader.

Purchased E-Books

Unfortunately publishers aren’t discounting ebooks much below the price of printed versions. Amazon and Kindle seem to match one another on price. The majority of ebooks are priced at $12, with NYTimes bestsellers often priced at $9.99. Sometimes older titles can be found for $5-8.

Small publishers working through independent books stores can sometimes price their ebooks lower than the giants. So it pays to do a quick computer search to try and find the best price, since you will only be paying for the book and not shipping and handling.

As Borders Books and Books A-Million close many stores nationwide faced with bankruptcy, options for book buying continue to shrink. Barnes & Noble has become the defacto winner among the “big box” store book sellers. Independent book stores are no doubt grateful for the windfall, yet the question remains: how long before the only place to be assured of finding the book you want is online? Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of bookselling these days. It is tough to compete with online, not only for books, but for any item that can be shipped via the mail. That’s because Amazon, and other online retailers, can stock just about any book in print, whereas bricks and mortar stores can stock only a fraction of titles.

The other big trend affecting book selling and the ability to buy discount books is the electronic book trend. Amazon’s Kindle is currently battling it out with Barnes and Nobel Nook to be the most popular ebook reader. An Amazon Kindle black and white model can be had for about $129, and the Nook for $149. Many ebooks are priced at 9.99, with a new higher price point of $12 gaining popularity.

So, what are the options for discount books buying these days?

Public Library

Your best bet to save money on book buying is to simply borrow a book from the public library rather than buying it outright. The fact is, that very few of us re-read books, and yet we buy and keep books for years on the shelf.

Ebooks can also be borrowed, through digital rights management. So, what can be easier than downloading an ebook? You get to keep it for two weeks before it magically disappears from your reader. You can check it out again if this is not enough time to finish it, provided another library patron hasn’t reserved the same copy behind you.

Libraries are also great places for used book sales, because as institutions they do not keep every book they ever buy, but rather, unload hundreds, even thousands of titles every year to clear out shelf space for new purchases.

Amazon

Search for any book online at Amazon, and usually you can find the same book used for less than the price from amazon for the same book new. Of course, you have to factor in about $4 for postage and handling, but even so, the used book is less expensive. Many are only $2, making the used book a bargain. The condition of the book and the rating from other buyers of the book seller’s legitimacy is also listed, making it easer to take a chance on the used title.

Garage Sales

Garage sales and church sales are great places to find used books at bargain basement prices, like a quarter! The nice thing about these sales is finding books that are decades old in hardcover.

Used Book Stores

I love used books stores for the sense of adventure they provide in browsing the shelves. You truly never know exactly what you will find. It used to be that they provided great bargains, but with the price of rent these days, usually used copies are priced about 50% of the current sale price, even if the book when new was less the current sales price penciled into the inside jacket or on a sticker.

Friends

Consider book exchanges with your friends. Certainly you have a bunch of books you’ve read, that you can trade for books they have read but that you haven’t. Some people simply leave books they have read in public places like laundromats with a note that says, “free book.” So it pays to dart into these places to see of some kind stranger has left a book there for you to take for free.

Independent Book Stores

Like Barnes & Noble, the indie books stores often have a table or two of discounted books available. These are slow sellers, or books that were prices as bargains to begin with from the publishers.

Interest in eating healthy is growing, and the available choices for organic food is growing. Organic food is grown using no chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Instead, organics are carefully cultivated using natural processes such as mulching to reduce weeds, using compost to add nutrients to the plant, and natural techniques to battle pests such as ladybugs that eat aphids. Organic meats are similarly produced with no growth hormones and pesticides on the plants that the animals eat. For meats look for the terms “grass fed” or free-range, as in free-range eggs or grass-fed beef.

Organics can be more expensive than the mass-produced food we find in grocery stores. Prices have come down somewhat as more people shop for quality healthy alternatives. So, where are some good places to find organic food that is affordable?

Grocery Stores

Look for the organic produce section in stores in your area, and be sure to price shop between stores. Some stores really jack up the price on organic food while others price them more reasonably. A good sign of affordability is whether organic vegetables have their own section or are placed side by side with their non-organic counterparts.

You will find that store-brand organic foods are sometimes the same price as name brand non-organics, particularly when it comes to lettuces.

Farmers Markets

Most of the produce, meat and eggs available at farmers markets are locally grown in sustainable ways, using minimal pesticides. Also the person selling you food out of a market stall is often the farmer himself or herself. Just ask if the farm uses organic techniques. Though they may not be USDA certified organic, due to the expense of meeting all regulatory requirements, the food is essentially “organic” unless the farmer admits to using pesticides and fertilizers.

The good news about buying food with a prepaid card at a farmers market is that many of the sellers accept them, since it is easy to connect to the MasterCard and Visa networks with a cell phone connection these days, and these independent producers don’t want to miss sales.

CSA

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A CSA is a way for groups of people to commit to buying food from a farmer. What the farmer does is sign up customers who agree to divide whatever that farmer produces for the CSA, so, for example 80 families belong to a CSA. When a crop of lettuce comes in, it divided 80 ways. If there is extra lettuce produced everybody gets extra lettuce. This gives the farmer a predictable income at retail prices rather than wholesale prices, and gives families a source of very fresh, organic produce. Some CSAs combine the output of various farms to provide more variety.

If you belong to a CSA, you might get a big box of vegetables every week through the summer, and what you received would vary from week to week as different crops matured. Like farmers markets, CSAs typically accept prepaid cards as well.

Grow Your Own

Last but not least, one of the least expensive ways to eat organic is to simply grow your own produce. Or, if you live in the country, raise a few laying hens for fresh eggs. If you really want to eat healthy organic fare year round you can learn how to an vegetables, or invest in a deep freezer.

After food, clothes are one of the more expensive items to have to buy, especially for families. Clothes wear out. And children’s need new clothes as they grow out of their old ones. While it is only human nature to want some clothing items that are fashionable, for the bulk of your clothing purchases it pays to shop frugally.

Buying Out of Season

The best months for buying clothes as they go out of season is January for winter clothes and September for summer clothes. Retailers need to clear out their stock to make room for the next season. They often sharply discount clothing as much as 75% off. You will get a few weeks of wear sometimes, but once the weather changes, you have to simply store them away and defer your enjoyment of them until next year.

Consignment Shops

Consignment shops are great places to find high-quality clothing at very low prices. These types of shops usually carry a mix of new and used clothing. They usually don’t sell anything that is damaged, stained, or torn, and more often the clothes are in good condition. One man’s fashion mistake is another man’s fashion find. Often you can find fashionable clothing in like-new condition.

Outlet Stores

Outlet stores are ideal places to shop for inexpensive name brand clothes at discount prices. These stores used to be located in far away locations so as not to compete with full retail price stores, but they have proved so popular that most metropolitan areas have them. They tend to cluster together in outlet malls. Name brand stores like the Gap, Old Navy, and Timberland sell discontinued and out of season items at bargain prices at their own outlets. The downside to shopping at outlet stores is that you need to be a savvy shopper. Some outlets offer only a few discounted items while the rest of the merchandise is marked at retail. However, if you’re a regular sale shopper and know what the going rates are, you should be able to score some incredible deals.

Shop Online

Websites like Amazon and Ebay are well known for providing every day low prices. The advantage of shopping online is that you can price comparison shop with ease. You don’t have to pay taxes on your purchases most of the time (but are supposed to declare them on your income tax form). You save the time and money you would otherwise spend driving to a bricks and mortar store. Other ways to save online is to sign up for daily deals delivered right to your inbox through such deal finding services as Group On. You can also sign up for newsletters and special offers from the clothing manufacturers themselves.

Department Stores

Did you know that department stores put their premium items out front and keep discounted items in the back? You can sometimes find imperfects, discontinued items, off-season and slow mover items on a sales rack at discounts up to 85%.  Sometimes these clothes are a jumble because of the savvy shoppers who have pawed through them, but don’t be discouraged. You’ll smile when a $50 shirt rings up for $9.

Tips for buying a flat screen TV.

The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show opens today in Las Vegas. This 3-day event is where manufacturers of audio equipment, digital cameras, camcorders, TVs, and other consumer electronics highlight new products and cutting edge technologies. For the past three years, TV sales have been up 20 percent annually, as people replaced their old tube televisions with flat screens. TV sales for this year are projected to rise only 2%, according to industry analysts.

If you haven’t replaced your old TV and are looking for a flat screen, or if you bought a flat screen but see that you can get a much bigger screen for a good price, what should you look for?

Flat Screen Trends for 2011

3-D television is big, but now is not the time to buy, unless you have a lot of money to blow and are the early adopter type.

Television in three dimensions, with eye-popping visuals that require you to wear bulky glasses, is all the rage in your local Best Buy, or high end electronics store. Though manufacturers expected robust sales last year, consumers were reluctant to adopt the technology, realizing the hidden costs such as the high cost of 3-D blueray discs, and the glasses.

While 3-D is back again this year at CES, but now there are some mobile versions and TV sets that don’t require glasses, yet many trend-watchers feel the technology still has a ways to go before it catches on. Sure, a blockbuster movie like Avatar looks good in 3-D, but how many programs or movies would similarly blow you away in 3-D? Not many. Also, some people report eye-strain after a couple of hours of watching 3-D pictures, or fuzzy pictures.

Internet-Connected TVs

Between, Apple TV, Roku, Boxee, TiVo and other so-called “set-top” devices, the idea of being able to access Netflix, YouTube and Hulu on a flat-screen in your living room is gaining traction. Google  TV is also on the horizon, but isn’t quite ready for prime time. New internet-connected TVs will be shown at CES from LG, Samsung and other manufacturers. You can also buy Blue Ray players that are “Internet ready.” And X-Box also connects to the Internet and will stream Netflix movies provided you have a streaming account.

How do these TVs or stand-alone boxes work? You just need a broadband Internet connection from wifi or an Ethernet cable, and the Internet-ready device will connect to the Web just like a computer. You can surf the web on your TV, or watch a streaming movie or downloaded movie file.  If you watch certain Internet entertainment content like TV shows or movies, you can access a sidebar of people commenting on a live event, even using Twitter or chat software. It’s like watching a show with a bunch of your friends.

Bigger Screens and Thinner

The prices of 32″ flat screen LCD TVs have come down. Some brands on sale can be had for $350.  A 36″ LCD can be had for $450-$550.  The price of LED screens have also dropped, but they are not yet in the “sweet spot” of affordability. LED is a brighter screen with truer blacks. It is also thinner, so it looks a little more refined than LCD. But hey, who is complaining when you can mount your TV on the wall and it only sticks out 3 or 4 inches?

In case you are wondering, you can buy a flat screen TV–3D, Internet-ready, super big or super flat, with your prepaid MasterCard, online, or at any store that accepts debit Mastercard.

Living Social and Groupon are the two big names right now in offering local deals.

This week Google announce it was buying Groupon, a website launched in 2007 as a way for consumers to get great local deals on everything from restaurants, to retail stores, to day spas. You name it. It has taken off like wildfire, through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. All you do is sign up with an e-mail address, and tell Groupon where you live, and the site will automatically show you deep discount deals for your local area. It started in major cities but is now in 300 local towns nationwide and growing fast. Retailers love it because they get a flood of new business they wouldn’t already have. For instance, a local bakery in Chicago offered a special 50% off on muffins, and had to work around the clock to fill 10X their normal muffin orders for that day.

There are numerous other sites like Groupon. Another popular one, tied deeply into Facebook, is Living Social. If you “fan” Living Social, you will similarly see local deals for your area. A deal on Living Social might be as deeply discounted as 90% off but only available for one day. Also, you can often purchase a $50 gift certificate for eating at a restaurant for just $25. It’s like printing money!

Jar method of savings

We told you about the envelope method of budgeting a while back. Here’s another tried and true method of savings for special purchases such as Christmas gifts: “the jar method.”

Change Jar

If you are like me and empty your pockets out every night, you can quickly amass a small fortune in loose change. I use an empty milk jug. Be sure to wash it out and dry it very good before using it. If you have a bank account, your bank won’t charge you anything to convert your coins into cash. Most bank branches have a coin counting machine, and in just a few minutes, they can count your coins and either deposit the funds in your bank account or hand you paper money in exchange for all that metal. If you don’t have a bank account, many grocery stores boast a coin counting machine up front. These machines will keep 10% of the value of the coins they count. Coinstar is a reputable coin-counting kiosk.

Swear Jar

My uncle swore by his swear jar. It didn’t prevent him from swearing, but it was always a ready source of spending money. Every time he swore, he threw a dollar in his jar. I also had a landlord once that made his housemates put a quarter in a jar every time we forgot to tuck our chairs under the dining room table. People also keep this type of jar handy to create an incentive to stop bad habits such as drinking and smoking. The downside of the method as far as saving money, is that it does seem to work to break bad habits, so eventually, you stop the behavior and stop putting money in the jar.

Sacrifice Jar

To quickly save up a lot of money, say between now and Black Tuesday, go without a favorite vice such as a Starbucks coffee. Every time you skip that $4 purchase, put the four dollars in the jar. Suspend Netflix for a month, or your satellite TV, and put the money you saved into the jar.

Of course, whatever method you use, I advice not keeping all of your savings out in the open in this jar, in the event a loved one dips into it. You can withdraw most of the cash ever so often and hide it somewhere safe.  Likewise when you are ready to go shopping, and you have a MiCash prepaid MasterCard, use Western Union or a Greendot MoneyPak to put your cash on your card.