An Interview With Melissa Hathaway of ShopAtHome.com

An Interview with ShopAtHome.comHey folks! Welcome back to Club Thrifty! Today we are uber pleased to be joined by Melissa Hathaway, Senior Marketing Analyst at ShopAtHome.com. Enjoy!

 

Club Thrifty: Hello Melissa, and thanks for being with us today! Tell us a little bit about ShopAtHome.com?

Melissa: ShopAtHome.com is a site that shares thousands of coupons on nearly everything.  In addition to providing coupons, we also work directly with retailers to negotiate Cash Bach rewards for our users.

 

CT: Sounds cool, but how does it save you money?

MH: We aggregate best of the web deals and share them through email, social channels and our site to help you save on everything you buy.  We also scour the web and have a few hundred thousand coupons on our site at any given time.  There are lots of coupon sites out there, but they aren’t created equal.  They all receive a commission from retailers for sending them traffic, but what makes ShopAtHome.com different is that we share a portion of that commission back with our users in the form of Cash Back.  That means that just by going through ShopAtHome, you’ll get a portion of your purchase sent back to you in cold hard cash (okay, it’s actually a check, but you get the idea……)

 

CT: Are there buying patterns we should know about? When should we buy what? What coupons and deals circulate when? [Read more...]

Billing Errors Causing Temporary Insanity: A Rant

Billing Errors are driving me crazyI’m starting to feel like I am being secretly videotaped on that old MTV show, Boiling Points.  And let me give you a hint; my boiling point is currently T minus zero seconds when it comes to billing errors.  I have had so many billing errors in the past few years that I sometimes wonder if I am being punished for something I may have done in a former lifetime.  Do companies just hate me?  Can they really all be that bad at basic math?  Is good customer service just a thing of the past?

I received four bills in the mail while I was away last week, and two of them had crazy mistakes on them.  And not just small mistakes, glaring errors.  The kind that make my head spin like the exorcist as I try not to yell expletives at innocent customer service reps.  The kind that make me question the competency of the companies that I choose to do business with.  The kind that make me bat shit crazy.  Let me explain. [Read more...]

photo by: sfxeric

Why I Quit My Job: A Club Thrifty Confessional

Why I Quit My Job: A Club Thrifty ConfessionalI have an announcement to make…and it’s a doozy.  At the beginning of April, I quit my job.  I walked away from my super stable and well-paid 9-5 job and leaped toward the unknown.  I put in 2-weeks notice but agreed to work until the end of the month…and now its done!

Why Did I Quit My Job?

A few months ago, I wrote about how I was a workaholic.  The truth is, that is probably an epic understatement. [Read more...]

photo by: Alex Bellink

Vacation Baby!

So, we thought we’d take a little time out of our regular schedule to bring you a couple of photos from our vacation. We’ll be back to our regular posting schedule on Monday. Enjoy!

 

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Living on Unemployment: Mission Impossible?

While we are enjoying our vacation, please check out this guest post from Daniel Hilsden from Money Saving Angels. If you are interested in guest posting at Club Thrifty, please see our guest posting guidelines.

 

Living on Unemployment: Mission Impossible?

Could you afford to support yourself on unemployment benefits alone?

Being and becoming unemployed is more of a reality than ever for millions of Americans. It’s apparent enough when we see that even government workers are amongst those finding themselves on temporary employment furloughs – the statistics would have you believe that unemployment rates are gradually decreasing, but some members of the public remain unconvinced by these figures.

The notion of nationwide unemployment poses a rather prominent question: does becoming unemployed mean that you’ll no longer be able to survive modern-day living? Will you be able to keep a roof over your head, food in the fridge, and maintain personal transport?

Is it Possible to Live on Unemployment? [Read more...]

photo by: Dave Dugdale

Student Loan Debt: Why Taking Control is Essential

The following is a guest post by our friend Kevin Watts from Graduating from Debt. If you are interested in guest posting at Club Thrifty, please see our guest posting guidelines.

 

Student Loan Debt: Take ControlBy the end of 2012 student loan debt in the United States had risen to almost $1 trillion. That’s right, trillion with a ‘T’. To put this figure into perspective, total consumer debt at that point stood at $11.34 trillion, which means that student loan debt represented an almost unbelievable 8.5% of all consumer debt.

These figures clearly indicate that student debt is out of control, and current debt problems are only going to get much worse if students do not start taking positive steps to get their debt under control. But just how can you keep your student loan debt within acceptable limits? [Read more...]

photo by: DonkeyHotey