All About Kimberly

Sailing Along the Life of Single Parenthood

Tag Archives: Mystery Shopping

Ugh! It’s that Time!

There are just a few places that I dread going – one of those is the eye doctor. I love my eye doctor.  I actually encourage anyone in our area to go to him if they are in need of an eye exam. What I hate is the cost.  The cost of those contacts and eyeglasses every year.  So I started venturing into looking for another provider for my eyewear and back in the summer I found Zenni Optical.  The eyewear at Zenni is so cheap that I bought me a pair of glasses this summer (and then Becka a pair later on) even though my prescription was about to expire.  Their prices are so great they were worth just buying a pair to see.

Gathering some of the measurements we needed for the glasses was a little difficult, but when I finally broke down and admitted to my eye doctor that I was looking at buying these glasses from Zenni, he helped me with teh information I had to fill in for Zenni, and I was able to order a pair for both myself and Becka. He wanted me to bring the glasses for him to see so when I do go in for this next visit, I’m going to take the pair that I bought for only $13!!!  Yep, you read right – $13.00!!!  These are really just amazing prices, and I’ve been as satisfied with my glasses as I am with any other pair I’ve ever owned (I much prefer my contacts).

We are all looking for as many ways as possible to save money and prepare for this economic downturn we are approaching.  Finding vendors where you can save MAJOR money like with Zenni is one of the ways I have found to not break into savings (and keep putting back for our 2010 Disney trip).

More information:
Clark Howard Review

Fiasco

On my way to the movies tonight, we stopped by a gas station between here and the movies.  Why? Not just to get gas – actually to complete a mystery shop.  It was not one that I usually do, but since we were going that way to go to the movies, I logged in and took the job real quick.  To complete the shop, I had to purchase gas and go in the store and make a purchase (Cameron happily planned to buy a coke and candy bar).  Imgaine my surprise when I went in to pay and found out that to use my credit card (actually a debit card) that they charged a fee for credit card processing. I was stunned!  I haven’t had to ever do that – and this is a national common gas station.  Well didn’t this put a kink in my plans?  I DO NOT want to pay to use my credit card so I started digging through my purse, looking for enough cash to cover our expenses and of course, I didn’t have it.  I pay for everything with my debit card.  I never carry cash.  I finally ask if they will take a check, and can you believe they said yes?!  And they don’t charge a fee!!!  They’d rather have a check (that they can’t know if it’s good or bad) than take my credit card where they know they will get their money?!  Needless to say, I reported this absurd behavior and won’t be shopping that location again for an actual need or a mystery shop!!

Let’s Go Shopping!

Well, I’m going to be doing some shopping this evening (which is interesting since my next post for our road trip also involves shopping, but this is online shopping, not local shopping).  Heavenly Couture is having some awesome back to school sales. Everything is less than $18 (Isn’t that some cheap clothing?).  Yep, this is the time to do some shopping. 

If you’ve never shopped at Heavenly Couture, it is a great store with some really high quality clothing at great prices.  One of my favorite features is their daily special where they sale one item for the day for $9.99.  How often can you find high quality discount clothing that changes every day.  They are one of my bookmarked sites that I pull up each day. The striped sweater above was today’s 9.99 item.  Not my style – but Becka would love it I think.

The boots that I’ve pictured here (that are on my list to order) – only $14!!  I have been wanting some new winter boots in something other than black so I was really excited to to find these.

If you are a bargain shopper, I would check out Heavenly Couture.  I’m not much of an online shopper, but they are one of my regulars.

Shopping Wisely

With rising gas prices, utility prices, grocery prices. With the price of everything increasing, finding smart ways to shop has become increasingly important. We rely entirely on my teacher’s income in my house. No outside child support or such. Just my paycheck each month. I don’t know if you know much about Texas teacher salaries, but they aren’t that high (at least not if you choose to live in rural areas) so I’ve been finding ways to cut corners, save money. It’s important to me that we take family vacations, the girls can participate in extracurricular activities, take lessons…I want them to have amazing opportunities.

In Texas, we just finished tax free weekend. This is one weekend each year that most clothing and shoes under the price of $100 are tax free. With three of us needing back to school clothes, that savings adds up. But now that is over, and I am looking forward to my next big day of savings – Black Friday. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when stores run major sales. If you have never taken advantage of these sales, you’ve seen the chaos on the news.

Here it’s not only an important way to save and be able to purchase items for Christmas, it’s also a family tradition. Last year I knew we would be going to Florida so that I actually didn’t need to buy the girls anything, but still had to get up and go. My mom and grandmother and I load up ever year. We separate to do some of the shopping – each taking the others’ lists to whatever stores they’ll be going to. We are typically finished by about 8:30 or so that morning and then meet up for breakfast before going home.

I can remember the days of buying the newspapers every day for a week, anxiously waiting the sale papers to tell us what bargains would be available, but now thanks to the Internet, we usually have our lists complete before the sale papers come out. We double check them to the sale ads, but so far, they’ve been entirely accurate. Last year thanks to a rewards program forum I participate in, I found out that you can also do a lot of your blackfriday shopping online. I actually gave that list to my dad as he refuses to fight the crowds. He was excited to be playing the game with us as he found some great deals (and we were excited to have one more person to give us even more stores to cover).

Finding sites with reliable sales information can be troublesome, and if they aren’t reliable, you turn out to have wasted your time and maybe missing some sales. One site that I’ve bookmarked to track the sales this year is BlackFriday.biz. They are already posting ads for this year! Yes, in August, we can already start anticipating those sales for some of our favorite stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Scared you’ll forget about this site before November arrives? Sign up for the email alerts, and they will let you know each time they get a new sale ad. How convenient is that?

What an Expense!!

Every summer is a “fun time” in our family. (Sorry, I know you can’t tell, but this statement was made with a lot of sarcasm!).  Why you may ask – because summer is when we go for all of our yearly checkups – with the family doctor, the eye doctor, and the dentist. Yep. All of these appointments are crowded into June, July and August so that we don’t have to miss school for them.

Becka has commented that she thinks she needs glasses and while out last night, I was really wishing my glasses had that tint to them that changes as you go from inside to out as my contacts were really bothering me and I had to wear my glasses. I’ve seen all the online contact lens vendors, but in looking for a frugal way to purchase both myself and Becka a pair of glasses, and today I found zennioptical.com!  They are an eyeglass manufacturer who sales directly to us the consumer instead of the eye doctor. So the middle man is cut out and we get the savings. They have glasses starting at $8!!!

I think these glasses are pretty stylish and I could stand wearing them when I have to wear glasses.  They are similar to the ones I have, but with a little more character. How cool is the little design on the ear pieces?  I truly plan to come back and spend even more time at Zenni Optical after our eye exams, and if you try to be a frugal parent, I would encourage you to do the same.