I Need a Bargain - Blog

Earn Bitcoin Cashback when You Book Hotel Online

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 02:05:40 GMT

Internet is offering near 5% cash back online hotel booking. Please read on to see what I mean.

Some of you may know PointsHound offers rewarding points for online hotel booking. It's easy and free to register an account online at PointsHound, search and book hotels on their sites, and the rewarding points will go into your PointsHound account.

Bitcoin, an online currency gaining popularity, is now an option on PointsHound. It means that you can designate Bitcoin as your cashback every time you book a hotel through PointsHound. What is Bitcoin anyway? Well, in a nutshell, it's considered cash. Maybe I'm over simplifying Bitcoin as cash. But to me who use Bitcoin, it means cash.

Bitcoin is a new digital currency when transferred between parties there'll be very little or no transaction fee involved. Unlike transfer money using 'traditional' PayPal, more than 2% of transaction is typical. With Bitcoin, wallet to wallet transfer money (Bitcoin) is fast and easy as if sending an email to another person.

The following real example shows if I book this hotel for $219 for one night, I'll get 0.0138 BTC back to my own Bitcoin wallet. The current exchange rate is about $835 per BTC, making the cashback around $11.5.

To designate earning cash (Bitcoin) from PointsHound when booking hotels. Simply:

Go to PointsHound and create an account for free.
In your account setting, choose Bitcoin as your loyalty program, and enter your Bitcoin address to receive the reward.

Learn a Foreign Language Online Free

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 02:07:14 GMT

People have all sorts of different reasons to learn a second language. If you're thinking of learning either Spanish, English (for Spanish speakers), French, German, Portuguese, or Italian, you have got to give Duolingo a try.

Let me tell you Duolingo is free, completely free, really free.

By comparison, one box of the famous Rosetta Stone can easily cost you hundreds of dollars. But the fact the online Duolingo learning tool is free shouldn't be the only reason entice you to give it a try. In fact, the low entry barrier in pricing is very attractive, the main reason I'm recommending it is because of its quality, college level quality. Polyglot Benny Lewis of Fluent in 3 Months once said Duolingo is addictive per his experience, which shows how good Duolingo is.

Duolingo is scientifically proven. The founder Luis von Ahn is the same guy behind the idea of CAPTCHA. The extended idea of CAPTCHA has been built into Duolingo. Such idea is to crowd source the task of translating some websites from one language into another, and to have people learn a second language and help translating the website at the same time. Wonderful thought.

Duolingo comes with mobile app version too. Its mobile app is available for both Android and iOS. You can get them here.

Today, you're able to learn languages for free. You're able to do this online. You can do this at your own pace.

Marketplace Plan Choices and Prices

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:19:43 GMT

The Marketplace is a new way to find quality health coverage. It can help if you don’t have coverage now or if you have it but want to look at other options. No plan can turn you away or charge you more because you have an illness or medical condition. And you’ll be able to apply for a plan that meets your needs and fits your budget.

You can go to HealthCare.gov and see all the health coverage options available to you in the Marketplace. You’ll be able to compare plans side-by-side and check out costs and benefits.

Questions? Call 1-800-318-2596, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. TTY users should call 1-855-889-4325.

Do You Really Need to Fly?

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 19:08:01 GMT

Think out of the box, be creative and sometimes be adventurous, you may think of alternative ways to get from point A to point B at a lower cost.

This past summer, my son's marching band decided to board a Chicago bound Cal Train for their tournament tour. Instead of paying round trip flight tickets for the whole group of band members, they went with this one-way train ride and one-way flight back to San Francisco airport.

It was sure fun, and they must had gained adventurous experiences too. Speaking of adventurous experiences, this fearless adventurer has taken to the skies in a bid to become the first man to successfully cross the Atlantic Ocean, which is an alternative way to get from point A to point B.

Reminder to Redeem your Fresh & Easy Points

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 20:46:50 GMT

News break out that grocery chain store Fresh & Easy was sold.

By law, the rewarding program won't be transferable but you still have time to use up the points you have accumulated so far and you'll be given chance to open up a new rewarding program account at the new owner. Though you can use your rewards, you have to use it by swiping your Friends card when you make a purchase; they cannot accept phone numbers to use rewards as usual.

Some of the Fresh & Easy stores will be closed down soon. For those stores to be closed, prices are marked down 25% until remaining stock is cleared.

On 2013-09-13, I received the following email from Fresh & Easy:

Today our parent company Tesco has announced it is selling the Fresh & Easy business to The Yucaipa Companies LLC. All along we have been hopeful that Fresh & Easy could be sold as an operating business, preserving jobs and the great shopping trip you've come to expect from Fresh & Easy.

We are very pleased that this agreement with Yucaipa preserves more than 4,000 jobs and a vast majority of the business. Unfortunately, as a result of this agreement some stores will be closing.

For over five years, all of us here at Fresh & Easy have worked hard to bring you great products and a great shopping trip at a great value. We appreciate the love and support we have received from you, our most loyal shoppers. Rest assured, we plan on working through this transition to new ownership with the same spirit and dedication that we've brought to this business since the beginning.

We are also pleased to announce that Yucaipa will be offering a Friends Rewards program just like the Friends of fresh&easy Rewards Program you already love. California state law does not allow the transfer of your personal information from the Friends of fresh&easy Rewards Program to the new buyer of Fresh & Easy, so you will be required to re-enroll in the new Friends Rewards Program over the next several weeks. By re-enrolling, you will continue to earn points on your purchases, and your existing points and rewards balance will be honored. We will be sending instructions on re-enrollment within the next few days.

If your local store is on the list to be closed in the coming weeks, you will be able to use your existing rewards until the store closes. For your convenience, we have waived the 500 point minimum for converting your points to rewards. Also, starting tomorrow, in the stores that will be closing only, all products (with some exceptions) will be 25% off and these stores will stay open until remaining stock is cleared.

For your convenience, we have provided a button below to convert your entire points balance to rewards. Once your points have been converted, you can use your rewards by swiping your Friends card when you make a purchase; we cannot accept phone numbers to use rewards. If you have lost or misplaced your registered card please ask an associate for assistance. If you have not registered your card you can still do so by following the directions on our website.

For more information please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) at http://www.freshandeasy.com/friendsfaqs

Thank you again for your support and we look forward to seeing you in one of our stores soon.

Sincerely,

The fresh&easy Team

If you have earned points in the past but has lost your card, you can pick up a new card from any store and link your points to it. Simply log on freshandeasy.com and go to 'friends card' section, delete your lost card, add new card, then you're good to go using your new card to spent your earned rewards. But beware, do not redeem points while your lost card is still associated with your account, because you may not be able to reclaim your earned reward tying to your lost card. :(

Actionable Items toward Being Debt Free

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 18:23:55 GMT

Are you in debt now and want to be debt free in 2013? Maybe not that easy, but here's a list of things suggested by DebtConsolications.com that you can do to cut down your accumulating debt:

1. Leave your credit card at home

We second this approach if you're not a disciplined shoppers and tend to buy more with a credit card in hand. However, for disciplined shoppers, a cash-back credit card with no annual fee save you money rather than costing you more, if you always pay credit card bill on time.

2. Cut back on expensive home entertainment.

Think about do you really need that premium video service?

3. Brown bag it at lunch

4. Re-evaluate your cell phone bill

5. Pay credit card bills on time

A must do. If you can't, then you need to stop using any credit card in order to get out of debt.

6. Don't pay full price ever

Browse and search on our main INAB site for all sort of discount pricing.

7. Carpool, take public transit or bike to work

8. Reduce your interest rates

by ApolinarRios.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

A Guide to Buying Bike Rack

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 21:09:45 GMT

From $45 to $560, choosing the proper bike rack for your vehicle should be easy. Refer to the following guide to find which bike rack will work for your vehicle. See below for a quick summary of using a hitch or a root mount.

Source: courtesy of bikerackshops.com

Trending Deals

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:37:38 GMT

INeedaBargain.com (INAB) proudly identifies up-to-date trending deals. To encourage you to try out this free service, we're running a free MacX Video Converter Pro giveaway (a $49.95 value) this month (2013 Jun).

Definition of Trending

Trending has become a synonym of hot lately. People looks for trending news, trending topics, trending videos, etc. According to Wikipedia, trending topics on Twitter means:

A word, phrase or topic that is tagged at a greater rate than other tags is said to be a trending topic. Trending topics become popular either through a concerted effort by users, or because of an event that prompts people to talk about one specific topic.

If so, how about trending deals, and how to find these deals.

Search Engine Doesn't Return Trending Deals

Trending deals implies hot deals getting popularly mentioned by shoppers. A search of 'trending deals' on Google returns a special Top Trending Deals page on Pinterest, showing deals that someone set up a page on Pinterest thinking they were trending at one point. Obviously, the page was set up more than a year ago, sometimes in year 2012. It's old. Maybe it's because the page title is named 'hot trending deals', or maybe because the page is hosted on Pinterest, somehow Google decided to show such page as the top return when someone like me searched for 'trending deal.' The result is far from flawless. It's actually useless because the deals are out dated.

Other search result listings have similar problem. In fact, among all the returned listings, none shows trending deals in our test search on Google.

INAB Trending Deals

We believe in trending deals are interesting to share. True trending deals should be up-to-date and should be talked about by either shoppers or promoters, or both. We at INAB identifies and displays trending deals in two places. If you come to our site and you're not signed in, top trending deals are displayed on our homepage:

If you come to our site and you're already signed in, the trending deals are listed under 'TRENDING' tab:

Either place, trending deals we identified are recent so chances are that they are valid. We assure you trending deals we show are popular in a way that are reported by multiple sources. These deals are being mentioned and are clustered by our proprietary ranking algorithm. Our system re-calculates the trend twice every hour which keeps tracks of the real trend as close as possible.

Further, if you ever wonder who are reporting the deals, just click on 'X others' and the similar or same deals that we clustered together will be displayed for your reference:

A New Way to Find Deals Online

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 06:14:45 GMT

The new way to find deals online is to have those deals come into your sight.

What if you can tell someone about what you like and what you don't like, then that person can find you deals online that match your interests. That someone is us - a newly improved INeedaBargain.com - that let you follow what you like.

Starting this week, we have an enhanced service open to all members, free. If you already have an account with Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, or AOL, you can use your existing account with those providers to log in our site. You'll only be asked what categories you like to follow and we'll present them to you every time you visit our site. The deals you like will find their way on your INeedaBargain.com homepage, specifically, they will be shown under a 'MY FEED' tab next to 'TRENDING' deals:

(your 'MY FEED' page)

In the above screenshot, on the left, it shows I'm following my interests on 'baby', 'clothing', and 'shoe' categories. Under 'MY FEED' tab, newly published deals of those categories will show in chronicle order - more recently spotted deals first. As the deals continue to roll in they will appear on follower's INeedaBargain.com (INAB) homepage. This feed is essentially an aggregated view of all sources - FatWallet, dealnews, Tech Bargains, Bargainists, etc. - that we cover, but only those match the specified interests will be included.

There are 2 ways to modify what shows under the 'MY FEED' tab. You can go to 'settings' of your account by clicking on 'settings' at the upper-right corner on most pages, then choose to 'Manage categories you follow.' Alternatively, also my preferred way, is to search for the category you like to follow by using the search box. For example, I searched for 'iphone case':

I took the chance to browse for 'iphone case' deals and decided to follow all the future 'iphone' deals under my feed, so I clicked on 'iphone' tag to land on the 'iPhone' category page, then click on 'Follow this category' to start following iPhone related deals:

Now, if you're also following iphone deals, go back to the homepage, under 'MY FEED', you should start seeing iphone related deals.

Give it a try now and start discovering what's on sale in clothing, laptop, shoe, HDTV & more (100+ categories). I hope you enjoy new interesting promotions and stay up to date with what's hot right now.

Low-Cost Cardboard Bike

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:28:44 GMT

There are many bike deals spotted on our main site INeedaBargain.com every day, but no bike is like this one. It's strong. It's durable. It's cheap. It's made out of cardboard.

Izhar Gafni is an Israeli inventor of a company named I.G. Cardboard Technologies. Back in July last year, it was reported that he designed and developed a prototype of a green, low-cost, high-quality bicycle after three years of development. The bike was recently spotted on the streets of Times Square, New York this week. It is made of cardboard.

It:

is made out of cardboard
has two wheels
costs between $9 to $12 to build one
is targeting to sell for under $20 after rebates kick in
will weigh about 20 pounds
can hold up to 485 pounds

I have not yet seen any commercial production of this bike yet. Popular Science rated the maturity of this product 6 out of 10. On their company website, they're seeking distributors to partner with. It's not yet clear when the mass production will hit the market. We look forward to seeing them available for purchase.