The Deal with the Weather!

Ok so this week we had a very rare event here in Galway; it actually didn’t piss rain for the week!!! Not only did it not rain, we actually had some sun to deal with for a change. The highest I saw the temperature go was 23 degrees which is pretty amazing when you consider the usually gloom. Of course as with any bit of sun, the residents of Salthill had to deal with opportunists all week.

But of course our beloved full week of sun is going to be followed by this lovely weather:

So if you did manage to get some sun last week, CONGRATULATIONS!!! Hopefully it lasts you until next year.

This Week in the News

While it is pretty crazy that Ireland was sunny last week , some crazier stuff happened in other parts of the world:

• An app which shows users where the closest toilet paper is, has taken off in Venezuala. More.
• A German bank clerk allegedly fell asleep with his finger on the keyboard of his computer and in doing so deposited €222,222,222.22 into a pensioner’s account. More.
• A British woman found an un-exploded WWII bomb in her back garden and proceeded to wash it in her kitchen sink to the shock of her husband. More.

Joke of the Week

“A woman went down to the Welfare Office to get aid. The office worker asked her, “How many children do you have?”

“Ten,” she replied.

“What are their names?” he asked.

“David, David, David, David, David, David, David, David, David and David,” she answered.

“They’re all named David?” he asked “What if you want them to come in from playing outside?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “I just call ‘David,’ and they all come running in.”

“And, if you want them to come to the table for dinner?”

“I just say, ‘David, come eat your dinner’,” she answered.

“But what if you just want ONE of them to do something?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “I just use their last name!”"

What Deals do you want?

At Smartsearch we provide you with all the deals we think you will love. We specialise in:

• Hair Deals
• Beauty Deals
• Health & Fitness Deals
• Restaurant Deals

But is this what you want? Our job is to bring you the deals you want, by doing this both Smartsearch and our customers will benefit. So I urge you to let us know what it is you want, be it a specific business you want a deal from, an entirely new industry or just a specific activity. If you let us know what you want via Facebook, Twitter or by emailing info@smartsearch.ie we will listen to you and we will do our very best to get the deals you want. So let us know?

This Week in the News

Here’s some of the crazy things which happened in the news this week:

• A cat was found trying to enter a prison in Russia with several mobile phones taped to it’s stomach. Now that’s innovation! More.
• A shopper in a London branch of Lidl found a tarantula when he picked up a bunch of bananas. More.
• The UK police force compensated a staff member £8,000 after the staff member tripped over a paper airplane. More.

Joke of the Week

“Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business.
When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed to find a wife with whom to share his fortune.
One evening, at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.
“I may look like just an ordinary guy,” he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will die and I will inherit £200 million.”
Impressed, the woman asked for his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.
Women are so much better at financial planning than men.”

The Last Money Saving Deal

After you have read this post I will have provided you with 12 of the very best money saving deals, that’s one for each month of the year. Each week I have spent time trawling the net looking for the best tips so hopefully this list has helped you to save some cash

The blog will be changing direction from next week on and there will be no more money saving deals. So savor this last tip as it will be the last, but make sure to check back next week to see what I have in store.

Don’t Deal in Brands

Buying brand name groceries is one of the easiest ways to waste your shopping budget. We all like to buy Kellogg’s cereals and Heniz baked beans but is there really a difference between these and the cheaper store brand alternatives?

The answer from a number of studies is no (in the majority of cases). Many branded products and own brand products are even made in the same factories. When you buy branded groceries you are essentially buying the cheaper product but with a shiny wrapper.

There are four tiers to the branding of groceries:

1. Luxury - Tesco Finest or Dunnes Store’s Simply Better range.
2. Branded – Cadburys or Birdseye.
3. Own Brand – Super-Valu or Dunnes Stores brand.
4. Basic – Tesco Value.

An easy way to get a better deal with your shopping is to just drop down a branding tier, for example if you usually buy McCain chips just try the store’s own brand chips. If you don’t like it then you can always try a different alternative. If you can find a cheaper brand you like then you are going to continue saving money every time you shop.

In the Office

This week in the office we had a birthday. And just to embarrass the birthday girl here’s a photo.

Happy 23rd birthday Katy!

This Week in the News

Some of the weird and wonderful things which happened in the world this week:

• An American couple stabbed each other when they disagreed on who should win American Idol this year.
• The largest flag ever created was unfurled in a tiny Romanian village.
• A baby in China was rescued from a sewer pipe after apparently being flushed down the toilet.

Joke of the Week

“Four Catholic men and a Catholic woman were having coffee in St. Peters Square.
The first man tells his friends, “My son is a priest, when he walks into a room, everyone calls him ‘Father’.”
The second man chirps, “My son is a Bishop. When he walks into a room people call him ‘Your Grace’.”
The third gent says, “My son is a Cardinal. When he enters a room everyone bows their head and says ‘Your Eminence’.”
The fourth man says very proudly, “My son is the Pope. When he walks into a room people call him ‘Your Holiness’.”
Since the lone Catholic woman was sipping her coffee in silence, the four men give her a subtle, “Well ………?”
She proudly replies, “I have a daughter, slim, tall, 38″ DD bust, 24″ waist and 34″ hips.
When she walks into a room, everybody says, “Oh My God.”"

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

Ok so who has credit card debt which you just roll over from month to month and never actually deal with? I’m going to guess that a lot of us deal with at least some of our debt this way. As we all know the killer with these credit cards is the monthly interest rate which gradually chips away at what little cash we have left.

Now what if I told you there is a better way to deal with this cost.

You can quite easily transfer your debt over to a new credit card which has an introductory deal of 0% interest. Many vendors offer deals like this; such as:

• Tesco Personal Finance who offer 0% on credit balance transfers and 8 months at 0% on  purchases.
• PTSB whose deal is 0% on balance transfers for 6 months.
• Ulster Bank’s Gold Mastercard offers 0% for 6 months on purchases and 3.9% APR for 12 months on balance transfers.
• Bank of Ireland offer 0% for 6 months on credit.

So why not deal with you debt this way and minimise your cost.

This Week in the News

• A British Skydiver left the hospital after a ten month stay. He survived a 13,000 foot fall. More
• A burgler from Birmingham was caught after he had successfully robbed an elderly couples’ house. His finger prints were found on a box of Jafa Cakes he had eaten in the house. More
• An American man broke the world record for the longest ferris wheel ride. He rode a ferris wheel in Chicago for 48 hours 8 minutes and 25 seconds. More

Joke of the Week

“My wife and I were eating in a restaurant the other day, when A fella walked up to me and through a prawn cocktail over me, I said what was that for, he replied, “that’s just for starters”"

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

Here’s a simple one for you this week. Don’t go shopping when your hungry!

A study was released this week which gives some great incentives to deal with your hunger before you go on your weekly shop. According to the study if you go shopping while you are hungry you are more likely to buy more food and the food you buy will be more calorie filled.

The study looked at both shoppers who had recently eaten and shoppers who had skipped their last meal; the hungry shoppers on average bought 18.6% more food and 31% of this food was high calorie snack food.

There’s an excuse to have a snack if ever I heard one! So from now on deal with your hunger before you go shopping or else you won’t get a good deal when you reach the checkout.

This Week in the News

Here’s a new segment to the blog I hope you all will find fun.

I am sick of tuning into the news just to hear of all the awful things which happened in the last 24 hours. To deal with this every week I am going to post a roundup of all the weird and wonderful news which should be celebrated and not covered up by the doom and gloom.

Here’s some of the crazy things that happened this week:

1. A seven month old baby learnt how to water ski.
2. An American solider shot down 44 years ago in Vietnam was found living in a small village in Vietnam. He now speaks fluent Vietnamese and has forgotten how to speak English.
3. Three fake nuns were arrested in the Caribbean, as they were trying to smuggle cocaine into the country under their habits.
4. A man who thought that he just had a runny nose for the last month found out that his brain was actually ‘leaking’.

More next week.

Joke of the Week

“A mother took her little boy to church.
While in church the little boy said, “Mommy, I have to pee.”

The mother said to the little boy, “It’s not appropriate to say the word ‘pee’ in church. So, from now on whenever you have to ‘pee’ just tell me that you have to ‘whisper’.”

The following Sunday, the little boy went to church with his father and during the service said to his father, “Daddy, I have to whisper.“

The father looked at him and said, “Okay, just whisper in my ear.””

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

Ok you may think that I’m clutching at straws with this one but I promise you it really is a great tip which I use to deal with my spare change.

Here’s the deal; I have a piggy bank!! There I said it. Whenever I come back from a visit to the corner shop I throw all of my change into a big vase (piggy bank) so I don’t have to deal with it filling up my wallet. Now this vase (and it is a big vase) fills with coins extremely quickly, so I then had to come up with a way to deal with the vase filling up.

I was too embarrassed to count up my change and use it in any shop, the guilt of landing a pile of coins in front of some poor checkout operator was just too much for me. Now here’s the creative bit; I started to bring all my coins with me to supermarkets with self service checkouts such as the ones in Tesco (I sound like a Tesco advocate; but I know some Dunne’s Stores and Supervalu’s have these checkouts too). So instead of forcing the poor checkout operator to deal with my coins I could just deal them into the checkout machine and leave it to deal with them. All I had to do was chuck all of my coins into the machine and then wait while it deals through it all and counts it up. Then the magic started, I saw my shopping bill just fall to pieces as my coins chipped away at it.

I really can’t over emphasis how much you can save by if you start to deal with your coins like this. Every month or two I will bring a pile of change with me when I am doing a big shop and it can often take €20 off my final bill. Now I don’t know how you deal with your build up of change but I am pretty sure this is the easiest way to make the most of it.

So essentially my tip of the week is to:

1. Keep your change.
2. Save it.
3. Then spend it easily with self service checkouts.

Joke of the Week

‘Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.”‘

Weekly Money Saving Deal

Trying to find the cheapest utility provider deals is my definition of a nightmare. I really think that the likes of electricity providers and broadband providers have some sort of evil society where they discuss the best ways of making their deals hard to compare. There are always so many differences between the deals that it is virtually impossible to compare them; I mean if your looking at changing broadband provider there are differences in:

• Minimum contract length
• Switching costs
• Installation costs
• Equipment cost
• Download limits
• Upload limits
• Speed
• Payment options
• Support
• Then finally the monthly cost

I often set out with great intentions to reduce my bill by finding a cheaper deal. However 2 hours’ in when I have finally chosen a deal only to find out it isn’t available where I live, it isn’t long until I shut down the computer and forget about the whole thing altogether.

That’s where uSwitch comes in.

uSwitch is a free service which allows you to compare; energy deals, phone deals, broadband deals and television deals. The great thing is you can compare all of these services for free so any saving you will make will be passed straight on to you. Check out their site here, all you have to do is enter your location and then you will be clearly shown all the deals available in your area.

Joke of the Week

“A man and his wife are dining at a table in a plush restaurant,
and the Husband keeps staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sits alone
The Wife asks ” Do you know her?” Yes sighs the Husband, she is my ex girlfriend, She took to drinking right after we split up 7 years ago, and i hear she has not been sober since.
“My God” says the Wife. “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”"

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

I don’t have a clubcard, but everytime I am at the checkout in Tesco and they ask me “Do you have a clubcard?” I always wonder if it’s worth it? I always come to the same conclusion – it isn’t. Until now!!

My thought process behind thinking that it is not worth it having a clubcard only considered spending your points in store. After a short bit or research you find out that this is categorically the worst way of spending your points. For example if you spend €1,000 in Tesco you will only get a voucher for €10 off your next shop. If we are honest this saving really is minimal, although it still is a saving.

You can multiply your savings by up to four times by using your points to buy Tesco deals. So spending €1,000 could potentially buy you a deal worth €40, which is a substantially better saving.

Earning Points isn’t just about Buying Groceries!

Another common misconception about the Tesco clubcard is that all you do to collect points is swipe your clubcard at the checkout in store. Doing this gives you 1 clubcard point (which equals 1 cent) for every €1 you spend, but there is more you can do:

1. Online – If you shop on Tesco online and get your groceries delivered to your home you can still collect points by entering your clubcard number at the payment stage.
   
2. Bord Gáis Energy Bills – If Bord Gáis is your electricity provider you can register your clubcard to instantly earn 100 points and then you will earn 1 point for every €2 you spend on electricity.
3. Recycling - You can earn 500 points for recycling any old mobile phone which turns on, 100 points for any old mobile phone which does not turn on and 100 points for any used ink cartridge.
4. Filling up your Car – If you use Tesco filling stations you can swipe your clubcard anytime you fill up to earn 1 point for every €1 you spend.
5. Tesco Mobile – If you are on Tesco Mobile you can register your clubcard and earn 2 points for every €1 you spend. If you aren’t on Tesco Mobile they offer you a bundleof clubcard points for signing up; if you signup and top up by at least €10 a month you could earn 2,500 bonus points in three months.
6. Tesco Credit Card – If you use a Tesco credit card you can collect points on everything you spend.

Spending your Points

As I mentioned above you can multiply your points to up to 4 times there value by spending them on Tesco deals as opposed to spending them in store. Check out clubcard deals for a full list of the available deals. Here is a list of my favorite deals:

• 250 points gets you €5 off your Bord Gáis energy bill.
• 250 points gets you a €10 voucher for Milanos restaurant.
• 250 points gets you a €10 voucher in Bewley’s Cafés.
• 250 points gets you a €10 voucher for Tesco days out which offers a number of family activities nationwide.

So if you are like me and don’t have a clubcard I strongly recommend you sign up today, and whatever you do don’t spend your points instore!!

Joke of the Week

“A guy with a huge orange head goes in to see a doctor. The doctor says, “How did you get such a huge orange head?” The guy says, “Well, one day I was walking down the beach when I tripped over an old lantern. A genie came out and said, I’ll grant you three wishes, whatever you desire…what is your first wish?’ I said, I’d like all the money I could ever spend.’ The genie went Poof!’, and there it was, all the money I could ever spend. Then he said, What is your second wish?’ I said, I’d like a beautiful woman to love me, someone I could enjoy this money with.’ The genie went Poof!’, and there she was, a gorgeous girl who immediately loved me. Then the genie said, And what is your third wish?’…and I think this is where I went wrong…I said, I’d like a huge orange head.’”"

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

The cost of running a car in Ireland just seems to go up and up and up without any sign of coming down. Now most of us can’t simply stop using our cars for various reasons (including fitness) so this week I am going to offer you some really simple tips to cut your car costs straight away.

Ok lets first start with a fact; the biggest car cost for most of us is fuel plain and simple. Now short of prospecting for oil in our gardens there is very little we can do to impact the international price of oil, so instead I will give you some advise on how to make the most from the fuel you already buy.

• Although fuel prices are spiralling upwards you can still make the best of a bad situation by shopping around and finding the filling stations which are slowest to raise their prices. Petrol and diesel prices can differ by as much as 5 cent per litre locally so it’s worth shopping around. Some quick scouting of your local area will help you to identify the station with the best deal however websites like Pumps.ie can help you to compare your local stations instantly.

• Filling stations advertise their prices per litre which makes it easy for you to compare prices. Rather than just noticing a couple cents difference in the price you can really see the difference by shopping by litre instead of euro. If you start purchasing 20 litres of fuel instead of €20 worth when you stop to fill up you will easily notice your savings between different stations.

• The heavier your car is the more fuel it will use from day to day. Now I am not saying you should strip your car down to some sort of dune buggy, but if you take off any unused roof or bike rack or you leave your golf clubs at home instead of in the boot you will notice some savings.

• The harder you accelerate and brake, the more fuel you burn, so go easy on the pedals.

• Driving at a slower speed can dramatically cut costs. For example cutting your speed from 110kph to around 80kph, will burn about 25% less petrol.

• You may hate waiting in traffic but your wallet hates it even more. Sitting in traffic burns your fuel so do your best to avoid it when you can.

• It may seem small but by simply closing your sunroof or rolling up your windows you can make your car more aerodynamic and reduce your fuel consumption.

• Typically by using your car’s air conditioner you are increasing your fuel consumption by 10%. Now this will vary depending on the model of your car but in fairness the weather in Ireland rarely justifies the air-con.

• Make sure your tyres meet the minimum thread depth of 1.6 mm and that you regularly check your tyre pressure. Maintaining your tyres can make your fuel go that little bit further.

Hopefully all of this will help you to keep your car and finances in tip top order, maybe you could even take a road trip with your savings and try out one of our fab getaway deals.

Joke of the Week

“A Scotsman who was driving home one night, ran into a car driven by an Englishman. The Scotsman got out of the car to apologize and offered the Englishman a drink from a bottle of whisky. The Englishman was glad to have a drink.

“Go on,” said the Scot, “have another drink.”

The Englishman drank gratefully. “But don’t you want one, too?” he asked the Scotsman.

“Perhaps,” replied the Scotsman, “after the police have gone.”"

This Weeks Money Saving Deal

I know myself that there are mountains of clothes in various wardrobes and dressers in my house that haven’t been worn since Mary Robinson was in charge. Now I would like to think that I am not a mad hoarder and most people do in fact have the same problem, so this week I am providing you with a solution.

This solution is not going to make you a millionaire but it’s surely better to be paid for your old clothes than paying for someone to take them away for you.

In recent years a number of companies have sprung up who will pay you for your old clothes and footwear. You can either call into one of their centers or arrange for them to collect the clothes from your house (they may charge for this). They will then pay you based on the weight of all of the clothes you have brought.

They will take the following items from you:

• Clothes
• Curtains
• Bedding (except duvets & pillows)
• Towels
• Handbags
• Belts
• Soft toys
• Hats, caps, ties and scarves
• Paired shoes and trainers
• Baby clothes
• Pyjamas

Our top tip is to try and sell old curtains and bedding to these companies as these are the heaviest items which they accept, meaning you will make the most from the collection.

Visit this website for more information www.cash4clothes.ie.

Competition Winner!

Congratulations to Jasmine Callanan who was the winner of our Easter Cadbury Cream Egg giveaway. Jasmine correctly guessed that there were 96 eggs in our office, she got to keep these eggs as her prize.

Make sure to check our Facebook and Twitter pages regularly to see any new competitions and to keep up to date on our deals everyday.

Joke of the Week

 ”My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We’ll see about that.”