I am preparing an adult class, open to community members, with a general theme of using the web to save money. I'm in the outline phase, and have many ideas, but I thought I would put the question to a larger group of creative minds...during these tough economic times, how have you used the internet to simplify your life and/or save money?

I have some basic stuff, such as:
Local News, weather, sports
Podcasts (check iTunes' list)
Tons of free content
Craigslist
EBay
Netflix
Hulu -free TV/movies
Good old email
Online banking
Mint
Skype
Upgrade/repair household items instead of buying new
Google docs/open office
Other free software
AV software
Picasa
Gimp
Free wallpaper
Delicious bookmarks
Google maps/trip planning using a gps/phone
Find cheap gas
Review products first: consumersearch.com
Home security
Get a dog
DIY security kits
Calculate electric savings
Free healthy recipes
DIY info and tips online
Ebooks
many are free
many libraries offer downloadable ebooks/audiobooks
Cheap computer classes online

Thanks in advance for your ideas...

Freecycle, coupons.com

The Internet allowed me to cancel my Washington Post subscription several years ago. That's well over $1000 in savings, to date.

Otherwise the Internet has probably cost me money because it brings REI-LL Bean-Amazon, etcetera, into my home.

It's too easy to shop now. And that would save some on gas that previously would have been consumed going to the Mall.

:-0

My Internet connection costs about as much as a 1.5 tanks of gas.

It pays for itself many times over each month, saving me a small fortune in gas and travel time.

I have my own one-man business, located outside a major city.

It used to be that I had to deliver each project by hand.

Now I press a button.

The same happens with research: I don't visit libraries very often because I can glean most information from multiple Web sources. Naturally I have to apply caution and best judgment to such sources.

[deleted by mtf - ask bigdaddy tx why via PM]

We cancelled our $4.99 a month Netflix for free Hulu though I did spend $20 on a video adapter to run the video out to our tv.

DW uses the internet to search for and reserve books and DVDs from our local library which saves a lot of time and money.

We also get a lot of books from PaperbackSwap.com.

I get most of my gardening, home repair, canning info, and recipes from the internet. Also info on butchering game animals.

I search epinons.com and other review sites to decide which products will give me the best bang for my buck.

Slightly related, I make about 30 cents a day from my blog when people click on an advertisement.
-Blast

The web certainly introduces consumers to more information and more options, faster and cheaper.

* Consumers can compare prices at more places quickly and without wasting gas driving around
* Consumers can read other people's opinions about many products before they buy so they don't waste money on something unreliable or something which doesn't actually fit the consumer's needs after all
* Consumers can more quickly find other options. You may have been looking for a Model X washing machine based on a friend's recommendations but discover that Model Y is 30% cheaper and does everything else you wanted.
* Consumers have more ways to get things--getting things through alternative ways like auctions (Ebay) or classifieds (Craigslist) are much eaiser and more mainstream nowadays than using face-to-face auctions or newspaper classifieds were in the past, in my opinion. The barrier between linking up private sellers and buyers has been reduced through the web.

when buying computer hardware and electronics I use price comparison services like Google shopping and Pricewatch. These services make finding deals easy. Often friends buy stuff and brag about the price and how much a of a deal they got. Pretty common to be able to punch in the same item into these pricing engines and find it cheaper.

Online reviews are another bargain. They are less useful if your into the newest style or fashion, it takes time for good reviews to show up, but as long as your well away from the bleeding edge of consumerism online reviews are a good guide.

A key to using online reviews is to be able to tell when the writer is mouthing the manufacturers brochure and when they are adding useful information. One of the ways to tell is to simply visit the manufacturers site and read their sales pitch. When you see the same phrases in a review you can tell where they came from.

Reading reviews is a great way of avoiding the dogs and paying through the nose for a hyped item that isn't much of an improvement over similar items at half the price.

Reading about what is available and reviews of what is out there and finding the cheapest prices also confirms the old adage that value is in the middle of the market. Buy too low and you often get less than what you need. Buy high and your paying for hype, fashion, bragging rights, and features you probably don't need.

That value is in the middle of the market is handy to keep in mind. Shopping on the internet can be like the proverbial sip from a fire hose. Too many choices and options. Further obscured by the expected advertising, hype, fashion police, gear snobs and resellers desperate to shift mediocre products for premium prices because they got fooled also.

Sticking to the middle third of the market greatly simplifies the issue by removing two-thirds off the bat. The remainder is much easier to sort by using reviews and finding out how it worked for others.

The internet is also a great benefit and savings for such things as free books, general information, instructions, advice from people with similar problems. A lot of people are happy to help. It takes some time to differentiate between the well meaning and unskilled and those who are both willing to help and know something but even the rank novices can sometimes come up with good points. Nobody is the final word and everyone has something to offer. Most everyone, excepting the very few that are malicious, has advice that is worth what you pay for it.

Switch to Linux with opensource software downloads from various free repositories (Internet-based), and you save hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over a PC running expensive Windows OS with all the associated programs you have to buy (Word, Excel, virus scanner, malware detectors, backup/imaging software, etc.)

Blast - what's your ID on paperbackswap? It asks for who referred you by your PBS nickname. I thought you should get credit for this.

Thanks

Dave

The internet is for porn.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841227974645

edit: The Gimp is an amazing free graphics program.
If you want there is Inkscape for vector graphics and Ogre for 3D.
Ogre
http://www.ogre3d.org/
(a bit complicated but very powerful)

Inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org/
(lovely, easy and simple)

All free and open source.

You can run online businesses, whether selling products or services, and your website can look just as professional as a business with a physical storefront.

The Internet has also been a boon to telecommuting and remote workers. You can save money on commuting costs, buying lunch and your Starbucks beverages, wardrobe, automobile maintenance, etc. You can avoid the stress of driving to and from work in rush hour traffic and you can free up a significant extra chunk of time that you'd otherwise spend getting to and from work.

why was this in red?

[deleted by mtf - trying to keep the rest of this useful thread intact]

It's something my DW taught me. She calls it "a hint".

-Blast

I make my money online. And save money on things I buy.

It's Win-Win.

[killing parts of this thread, trying to keep the rest intact]

One thing I did with a recently purchased computer (bought at a Circuit City's bankruptcy sale) is download OpenOffice, instead of paying for Microsoft Office or something similar (is there anything sold that is similar). OpenOffice is free, donations are asked for, and works. I've used the spreadsheet and word processing programs so far, without too many difficulties.

So far the only thing I have not figured out that I could do in Word and Excel is use the find and replace function; the function that looks for a specific word in a document and finds it.

The other things I often use the internet for are product reviews and to compare pricing.

The search and replace is there, right under the edit menu IIRC.
Scribus is an open source desktop pubishing app, of course there is firefox and thunderbird which are well known.

I think it's a wash, maybe. Better prices can be found online, but more things can be found and purchased more conveniently. So I think it evens out in the long run and maybe skews towards spending more.

For example, I just treated myself to a Fallkniven TK3 in black quince. It was a pretty good price online, but not available locally. So did I save a few bucks or spend more than I would have?

So Blast, if I click 10 times. does that buy you a beer?

The internet is very good for comparing prices.

I research the heck out of products online, then go in to buy them locally if they're available and not outrageously priced. Unfortunately, many salespeople these days just don't know what they're selling. Their goal is to sell you something, your goal is to buy yourself the most appropriate something for your use. These two goals are usually mutually exclusive, so I do prior research on the internet to gain knowledge BEFORE shopping. Prepared thusly, 99 times out of 100 I know more about the product in the store than the salesperson does.

More likely it would get him banned from Adsense for click fraud

On the other hand I just read that some bloggers had some success by changing the "Paypal Donate" button to "Buy Me A Beer"

Another thing the internet is good for is cutting communication costs especially with "voice over internet protocol" instead of racking up long distance telephone bills.

Very true. I know a couple whose daughter is working in Australia. They use some sort of VOIP/video link to talk several times a week.

The cool part is that they talk more and longer than when they all lived in the same house. Absence makes the heart ... &tc.

Very good point. I had forgotten about all the perfectly good and free software there is on-line.

One of the best IMHO is Open office which can substitute for MS Word. I also like Abi-word.

I've been Windows - free since 1997, and haven't looked back. But having been programming in Unix since the late 70's helps also.

I've been successful at getting some of my family to at least switch to Macs. Even though they are pricey, having a Unix based operating system has saved them many hundreds of hours of frustration.

The internet has been great. Sometimes I buy locally, when I'm trying to find something that's not available, I love being able to go to Amazon and use free shipping.

There are times when I like to use a local merchant, and there are times when I feel I'm being held hostage, and like to go on-line to circumvent them. And there are times when I want to hold what I'm buying before I buy it. It really depends on the situation.