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Cheapo Flights: only $39!!!
Luxury Gifts sale
The Company Store is having a pre-holiday 20% off all luxury gifts sale. Use promo code T9KLUX at checkout.
Cheapo Alert: Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor, dance choreographer, was recently interviewed for the New York Times. Saying there isn't much money in dance, Taylor made all the furniture for his house from wood that washed up on the beach. He even pulled out the old rusty nails, straightened them, and re-used them to make the furniture!
Taylor decorates his beachside house with "whatever he can find". The man is so cheap he made artwork out of dead mice - I am NOT KIDDING - and he frames dead bugs for the wall. This sounds gross, and yet, the pictures of his house make it look unique and fascinating. He hangs out with super-famous artists like Jasper Johns, and picked an artwork out of the trash at Jasper's place - a dead crab impaled on a stick.
Check out the article!
Discount Code for Jewelry
http://www.silverjewellerygifts.com -- If you order this month and quote 'octpromo' you will get 20% off your WHOLE order!
So, You Think You're a Cheapo? (Cheapo Cheapskates Episode #1)
Do you think you're a Cheapo? Well, compare yourself to Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, a budget European airline. He came up with the brilliant idea of charging passengers to go to the bathroom on the plane! "Yeah, that's right, you need a dollar. Don't have one? You'll have to hold it!"
OK, so he hasn't done this yet, but the airline never gives a refund - NEVER. They charge you a fee to check-in online - $7. And they charge you a fee to check in at the airport - $56! In the Ryanair office, he makes his employees bring their own office supplies and doesn't use email. At home, where his wife has three kids under the age of 5, O'Leary doesn't hire a nanny (although he is worth more than $500 Million).
O'Leary is proud to be cheap and proclaims it right in the New York Times. This is a classic Cheapo article, definitely check it out! And when people ask for a refund on an unused ticket? "No! Go away. We’re not interested in your sob stories! What part of ‘no refund’ do you not understand?”
Ryanair is so cheap that there's even a parody video on YouTube making fun of how cheap they are. And yet, don't forget - this is the cheapest way to get around Europe. They focus on on-time flights with no lost bags. What are you willing to sacrifice for a cheap fare?
Does O'Leary take the Cheapo cake? Send us your stories of Cheapo Cheapskates!
Free books!
Project Gutenberg is a website that creates electronic versions of famous books throughout time. Over 100,000 titles can be read thanks to Project Gutenberg and their associates.
Go to the Gutenberg Catalog to find books and audiobooks for download. It's a little confusing at first, but worth it! To begin, type in an author's name on the left such as "Jane Austen", or choose a category you are interested in (please note that recent authors still own the copyright to their books, so these are mostly historical authors).
With the Jane Austen example you will see a list of books and audiobooks. Click on the link for Prind and Prejudice with the picture of the little audio speaker next to it. Scroll down to where it says "Download this Audiobook for free". To save time for now, skip the Readme file (which gives instructions) and the Index file (which describes the different chapters). If you want to download the files, click on the link called "main site" for the next link in the list, which is Ogg Vorbis Audio. If you just want to listen online, scroll down to the Apple iTunes section and choose the first link for "main site". After a brief introduction you will hear:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Stiff true, still funny, and now it's free!
If you find the navigation difficult on the Guternberg website, just click on the top 100 downloaded books link and let other people figure out for you what makes popular reading. Pride and Prejudice is number 4. You'll also see Dracula, The Kama Sutra, Grimm's fairy tales, the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Ulysses by James Joyce, the Art of War, the Iliad, Alice in Wonderland, Machiavelli's The Prince, the Adventures of Huck Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, and tons of other classics.
Dig in!
Welcome to Cheapo.com!
We've decided to have a blog so we can share interesting stories about being cheap, and deals from time to time. Thanks for visiting!