Win a Kodak ESP-7 Printer
May 11, 2009 Product Giveaway
Kodak wants me to save money
I’m a weird person, in many ways. Too many to go into here. So we’ll just concentrate on this one: I’m an inherently cheap person with expensive tastes. What does that mean? Well, I’ll insist on free shipping for a luxury item that I don’t need. I’ll spend days researching the cheapest way to buy a new and expensive electronic gadget that I just HAVE to have. I like saving money, but at the same time, I want the best stuff. I think I’ve found a printer that fulfills both sides of that coin.
Last month I went to a really interesting event held by Kodak about saving money. There were some other great bloggers there (forgive me if I’ve forgotten one or two of you, I’m a nightmare with names and faces and am stealing this info from other bloggers who were at the same event, so really you should blame them for getting it wrong): Kim from Mom in the City (whom I run into at every event – we must share a social secretary), Amanda from goodyblog, Katja from Skimbaco Lifestyle (and the Disney Wonder cruise), Kelcey from the Mama Bird Diaries (who hooked Fiona and me up with the almost-private Barenaked Ladies concert last year), Nicole from Momtrends, and Wendy from Babies Gotta Have It. There were also some great bloggers conferencing in by phone, but if you think I’m bad about names in person…
Anyway, Laura Rowley (whose book I have sitting right here – she gave each of us one at the event) led us in a discussion on how we can all save money, room-by-room. I was Tweeting like mad during the event, and I’ve summarized some of my best money-saving Tweets from the discussion (the advice I can’t take credit for, just the reporting of it):
Save money on basics:
- Always ask your doctor for a generic prescription.
- Call your insurance agent and make sure that you’re getting all of the discounts you’re entitled to. Some common ones you might be missing out on: combining auto and home insurance; discounts for home alarm systems; auto safety discounts such as airbags, anti-lock breaks, etc.; auto discounts for taking defensive driving classes (I did that one!).
- Give your kids an allowance equal to their ages and then make them responsible for paying for certain things (that one was mine!).
Save money on entertainment and travel:
- Use your local library to borrow movies and videos, instead of renting. Some of them even let you reserve the next available copy online.
- Sign up at RedBox.com to get movie codes delivered to you each week. (UPDATE: I just saw over on Consumerist that RedBox is phasing out its free movie Monday codes. Too bad.)
- Have a “staycation” and act like a tourist in your own town (my kids LOVE IT when we do this stuff).
- Use HomeAway.com to negotiate a price on someone else’s vacation home.
- Call the Chamber of Commerce before heading to a place on vacation – they’ll be able to give you all sorts of coupons and discounts for local attractions.
- Take your kids to visit a local firehouse, and bring the firemen some brownies. Your kids will have a great time and the firemen will really appreciate it.
Save money around your house:
- Avoid “vampire power drain” by unplugging your appliances when you’re not using them. Even when off they’re still using electricity. (OK, I admit it, I included this one for all of you, but there’s not a chance I’m going to do it. That’s just way too much work for me. I know that it saves tons of money though, so if you’ve got it in you, go for it.)
- Spruce up a room with decals instead of paint or wallpaper.
- Save money on lots of stuff, from kitchen items to vacations, at school and charity silent auctions (I just chaired one, and can vouch for the fact that there were some GREAT deals to be had).
- Fax for free at faxzero.com. They put an ad on the cover page, and you can only send two three-page faxes per day, but still, it’s free.
- And of course, save lots of money on ink with the Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer!
You can save an average of $110 a year on ink costs with the Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer. Kodak even has a handy overpayment calculator that figures out for you just how much you’d save on ink with a Kodak printer compared to other printers. I found out that I would save about $120 per year on ink costs! And I know that in the big scheme of things that might not sound like a ton of money, but look at the savings list above: this is all about making small, manageable cuts that add up! And, saving money on ink doesn’t mean that you pay an arm and a leg for the printer (it retails for under $200!), or give up features (it has Wi-Fi, two paper trays, a built-in duplexer, and produces borderless pictures that look like they came from a high-end photo processing machine).
Enter to win your own Kodak ESP-7 Printer
Kodak was nice enough to send me one of these printers to review, plus they’re giving a Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer to one of you! To enter, you can do one of two things: either go to Kodak’s overpayment calculator and then leave a comment on this post telling me how much you would save, or leave a comment telling me what you would do with an extra $110 (the average savings for switching to this printer).
You can also get an extra entry by Tweeting about this contest, with a link back to this post and #PrintProsper at the end (leave a separate comment with a link to your Tweet). You can even just copy this and Tweet it if you want to be super lazy conserve your own energy:
Selfish Mom and Kodak are giving away a Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer! Come on over and enter to win: http://twurl.nl/17rhzj #PrintProsper
(UPDATE: A couple of you have asked how to link to an individual Twitter post. Here’s how: Once you’ve Tweeted, click on your Tweet where it tells you when you’ve Tweeted. On TweetDeck it says the actual time you Tweeted, on Twitter it says something like “one minute ago.” Clicking on that should take you to your individual Tweet and you can copy and paste that link. If that’s not working for you, then leave a comment with your Twitter name and I’ll find it.)
That’s two entries per household please (yes, I do check). The winner will be chosen from all eligible entries by random.org. Contest ends around 6pm eastern on Sunday, May 17th. Printer can be shipped to U.S. addresses only. For full giveaway rules please go to the giveaway rules page.
I hope you found some of these money-saving tips helpful. Stop back tomorrow for my review of the Kodak ESP-7 All-in-One Printer. Plus, as a bonus, in tomorrow’s review post I’ll tell you how you can get another couple of entries!
Good luck.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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