Deal Specialist makes his own baby wipes. Not necessarily to save money (even though it does), but because he believes it is safer since he can control what goes into the wipes.  It’s much easier than you might think.  Here’s what you need to make the baby wipes:

• Roll of paper towels (something that stays sturdy when wet, we use Viva towels)
• Seal-able plastic container that will fit a roll of paper towels that has been cut in half
• 3 tbsp Light Olive Oil
• 3 tbsp Baby Shampoo (any will do, but we use Johnson’s baby shampoo)
• 3 cups of water

This is what you do:

1. Cut a roll of paper towels in half (perpendicular to where you pull the paper)
2. Remove the paper towel cores from both halves
3. Put one half in storage and the other half in the sealable plastic container (you will be pulling the baby wipes from the center of the half paper towel)
4. Mix olive oil, baby shampoo, and 3 cups of water in another container
5. Pour mixture on top of paper towel half
6. You’re Done!!!  Since no preservatives were added, I would use up the wipes within 3 weeks just to be safe.

Deal Specialist tip:  We use these at home, when going out, we do purchase baby wipes just for convenience.  You could put a few of these in a smaller container if you wanted to use these when going out.

Printable Paper

The Deal Specialist is always looking for ways of saving on everyday expenses.  My last endeavor was to to reduce my phone costs.  An obvious target to reduce cost was my home phone since I mostly use my cell phone.  I maybe used my home phone on average of 1-3 times a week and it was costing me about $30 a month, if you do the math that is $360/year or $2.50/call.

However, I was not ready to completely get rid of my home phone completely due to it being a good method for me to make long calls and receive calls.  Did a bit of research and found Ooma.  Buy the equipment and get free phone calls for life.  Sounded too good to be true, but the product had great reviews.

I took the plunge and ordered it from Amazon here.  I received it and I have to say I was impressed.  Once unpacked and briefly looking through the manual, I activated the Ooma device online at the Ooma website.  Setup was a breeze:

• I plugged the Ooma device into my router, phone, and power
• Waited for the Ooma device blue light to come on to indicate a connection
• Set up my voicemail and was good to go

Voice quality was comparable to a land line and was actually better than my office work line which uses VoIP as well.  I found the numerous reviews on Amazon were quite accurate and I am very happy with my purchase and savings.  Overall, thumbs up for Ooma!

An easy way of documenting is to use a photocopier.  Just lay out all your cards and other contents (no need to photocopy cash ) on the photocopy machine and print out a copy.  Keep this photocopy in a secure place.  Hopefully you will never need to use it, but you have it just in case.

Just use your camera phone:

• Take a picture of the outside of your luggage bag in case you need to give a description
• Take a picture of the contents of your bags as you are packing (or just one picture after you are done packing) in case you need to report it to insurance one day.

That’s what the Fave 5 concept is – short concise 5 item lists about all things Deal Specialist: Personal Finance,  Productivity, Technology

For all our Fave 5 Features Click Here.

All you need to do is:

1. Create an Xmark account (simple 5 minute registration)
2. Install the Xmark plugin
3. Login to your Xmark account from your browser.

Then manage your bookmarks as you have always been.  If you install the plugin on all your computers, all your bookmarks will be synchronized:

• Add a bookmark, it gets added to all computers
• Delete a bookmark, it gets deleted from all computers
• Organize once and it gets organized on all your computers

Xmarks is free for download here

However, there is a better way!!! There is a concept called account/financial management which allows you to see the big picture: from your daily spending to your net worth to helping you manage a budget. This isn’t a new concept, Quicken has had a product that has done this for a long time. What made it cumbersome to use was the setup. Well with web technology taking leaps and bounds, much of the setup has been made easier and user friendly. Here are some popular websites that allow you to aggregate your finances:

Mint
Quicken Online
Yodlee MoneyCenter

Check it out!  In future posts I will be providing reviews for these sites.