November 25, 2022 • 19 mins
If you are looking for deals this holiday season, this is where it all starts. Black Friday leading into Cyber Monday. With inflation still battering Americans, many price-conscious consumers are buying less gifts and donating to charity less. Retailers on the other hand are looking to move products with sales and promotions. Marc Saltzman, tech columnist at USA Today and host of the Tech It Out Podcast, joins us with some apps and browser extensions for deal hunters, products to look out for, and scams to be wary of.
Next, the holiday season also means tons of cookies and baked goods. In order to make all those delicious favorites, you need a lot of butter. Butter in particular has been seeing some very high prices due to labor shortages and a growing appetite for cheese. In response an underground network of butter bargain hunters is sharing the news when prices drop and tips on how to get around per-person limits. Some have even turned to churning out their own butter. Clare Ansberry, Turning Points columnist at the WSJ, joins us for what to know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, November. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. If you're looking for deals
this holiday season, this is where it all starts. Black Friday,
leading in a cyber Monday. With inflation still battering Americans,
many price conscious consumers are buying less gifts and donating
(00:22):
to charity. Less retailers, on the other hand, are looking
to move product with sales and promotions. Mark Saltzman, tech
calumnists at USA Today and host of the Tech It
Out podcast, joins us with some apps and browser extensions
for deal hunters, products to look out for and scams
to be wary of next The holiday season also means
tons of cookies and baked goods. In order to make
(00:44):
all those delicious favorites, you need a lot of butter.
Butter in particular has been seeing some very high prices
due to labor shortages and a growing appetite for cheese.
In response, an underground network of butter bargain hunters is
sharing the news when prices drop and tips on how
to get around purpose and limits. Some have even turned
turning out their own butter. Claire Annsbury turning points calumnists
(01:07):
at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for What to
Now It's news without the noise. Let's dive in if
you have your eye on something. Again, I'm in techy,
so I'll just give an example of like a drone.
Then you can say, like it's too much now, but
if it drops, you know, to this point, I'll buy it.
So it's called a deal alert, So the community if
they deem it a great discount, you'll be notified through email.
(01:29):
Joining us now is Mark Saltzman, tech columnists at USA Today,
also writes for a bunch of other outlets and host
of the tech it Out podcast. Thanks for joining us, Mark, Yeah, hey,
thanks for having me on double D. Yeah that sound?
Does that sound? I don't think i've report you're referred
to it as that yet, but you know what, maybe
we might start, well, well, Mark, we're gonna be talking
(01:50):
about the whole weekend of buying. Really, we got Black Friday,
we got Cyber Monday. There's deals going on all over
the weekend and and really kind of this is the
kick off to the hall a Day buying seasons. Everything's
gonna keep through to the holidays, and uh, you know,
it's a very interesting time right now. We've got a
lot of inflation going on. We've seen stories of people saying,
you know, they're scaling back on buying gifts, they're scaling
(02:12):
back on charitable donations because of the economic climate right now.
We have a lot of businesses really trying to move
products forring a lot of discount. There's gonna be a
lot of sales going on this time around. So let's
start off by kind of addressing that, and then we'll
get into some ways that we can help you save
some money. Yeah, for sure. Well obviously, you know, uh,
it was a tougher year for many for all the
(02:34):
reasons that you've mentioned, higher prices across the board, and
so for those who still want to purchase gifts, whether
it's the same number of gifts or if you're gonna
scale back either in uh like with whom you're going
to give to or the amount you're gonna spend per gift,
there is a lot of pressure on retailers if they
want to move inventory, to to make these deals as
(02:55):
aggressive as they can within reason. Of course, they're not
going to take a loss by There's been a lot
of challenges this year. Supply chain issues among one of them. So, yeah,
there's a lot of from what I've seen so far,
some some pretty impressive things that you can get, especially
in the tech world, which is you know, my my
scene that if you are going to you know, if
(03:15):
you have, if you have earmarked some budget to buying
some things for loved ones or yourself, then yeah, this
is gonna be the weekend to do it. Last year,
shoppers spent nearly twenty billion dollars online between Black Friday
and Cyber Monday, So you know, we'll see how those
numbers reflect this time around. But really that's kind of
the spot to be is just buying stuff online versus
way back in the day, Right, We've talked about it
(03:37):
before to Mark with the door busters and people waiting outside,
there's always gonna be that element, but man, largely everything
has moved online and specifically, you know, one of the
articles that you wrote up at USA to Day was
looking at how to find these deals with apps, some
browser extensions really a smart way to kind of focus
where you're looking at. So let's talk about some of those. Yeah,
(03:58):
So if you're gonna shop, then you might as well
get the best possible price you can and in some
cases even earn cash back on your purchases. So I
did look at a handful of solutions, be the apps, websites,
or browser extensions. So flip is one of my favorites.
It's basically aggregates all those uh circulars, those paper ads
that we typically get to our doorstep every week, but
(04:19):
it digitizes them all and then highlights the best deals
near you. So this is more of a retail thing.
So you type in your zip code or you let
your phone identify your location, and then it will show
you and or even if you type in something that
you want, like I don't know Samsung TV, it will
show you who's got the best deal near you, and
it can automatically apply coupons. It holds all your loyalty
or rewards cards that you can flash at the checkout
(04:42):
at the cashier, and and again it's a way of
of organizing all of those flyers and or circulars that
are near you. Another app that I go to actually
all all year round is slick Deals, which is a
community of millions of real people shoppers who all find
the best deals and then they vote on it. It
gets vetted by the community like some will say, actually
(05:04):
this expired, so forget that, or oh this is only
in this state and not in that state. So by
just sort of like you know, safety and numbers here,
they vet the best deals, which then congratuate to the
front page of Slick Deals and that way, you know, hey,
this is like a fire sale, like yes, take advantage
of this, and then they offer ways of stacking it up.
They'll say, oh, if you, you know, use this card
(05:26):
on this, then you're gonna get this back. Or if
you find here's a coupon code to get another ten
percent off, and then you even get cash back. So
like other platforms like raccutin and you know, I bought
a and all that, they they're Slick Deals also lets
gives you a percentage back of that purchase. You know,
it's an affiliate link thing where you know, the percentage varies.
(05:48):
But hey, if you're gonna shop anyways at these retailers,
might as well earn some cash back in the form
of gift cards or yeah, that posit to your bank.
And that's a cool one because you might be able
to find a deal that was unexpected did right, especially
if it's kind of community voted maybe something like you said,
some hot item that you just weren't wasn't on your
radar boom, maybe maybe you found it. It's like that
that you know, that's the thing that's gonna pull it
(06:10):
all through for you. So that's that's a cool one
that people vote on and that they do vet it right.
Then then if it's going to make it to the
front page and all that they've gone through to make
sure it's actually works, Yeah, that's the important part because
you you might get excited about what you think is
a sale and only to find out that it's not
not valid or it's in person only, not online. So
that's a good feature to have. It's the way it's built,
(06:32):
just having the whole community. And then also by the way,
you can sign up for deal alerts. So if you
have your eye on something. Again, I'm a techie, so
I'll just give an example of like a drone. Then
you can say, like it's too much now, but if
it drops, you know to this point, I'll buy it.
So it's called a deal alert, so the community, if
they deem it a great discount, you'll be notified through
email that it's on sale. So even if it's not
(06:53):
for this Black Friday. If you you know, heading into
the holidays, you can definitely identify what you're interested in.
I've Bottle was another one of those sites where you
can get on there and you can get paid back
a percentage of what you're buying with you know, affiliated retailers.
They'll give you that in a you know PayPal or
gift cards. Some cool ones to look out for their
Marco we you did give us a couple of actual
(07:14):
items that you could be on the lookout for if
you're in the market for it. As I mentioned right,
as retailers are trying to move some products, the tech
stuff is actually one of the key things that they're
really putting up on sale. So you had a few things, uh,
a fire HD Kids Edition, a tennant screen kind of
thing that with that comes with like a tougher case
and everything. You know, the kids are always dropping. It's
some really fun ones there that, like I said, if
(07:36):
you're in the market for these are really good deals.
Yeah for sure. So the ones that I'm going to
share now are at the very least thirty three percent off.
Some are much higher than that. So you mentioned a
couple of Amazon items, So why don't we start with that.
The Echo Dot smart speaker, the fifth gen one, which
is a larger, larger one. It's only forty dollars instead
of sixty. If you want to get a smart screen,
(07:59):
not just a smart speaker, then three percent off. Also
is the Amazon Echo Show fifteen. It's down to under
one seventy instead of over two fifty. And that's a
fifteen inch smart display where again you use your voice
to activate Alexa, but now you see information given to you,
not just hearing it. And this is something that you
(08:19):
want to put in like a highly trafficked area of
your home, like a kitchen, to help keep the family organized.
You can leave virtual sticky notes to one another, synchronize
your calendars, you can access recipes, stream your favorite TV
shows while you're cooking, control your smart home, look at
photos of you know, the kids and pets in a
slide show. So that's the Amazon Echo fifteen and that's
(08:40):
The Show fifteen, and that's one of Oprah's top picks.
By the way. Walmart, on the other hand, hast off
on a laptop instead of six fifty down to three
fifty and it's an HP fifteen inch full HD laptop.
With an Intel Core processor, eight gigs of RAM, which
is decent, not a lot of uh system memory, but
(09:02):
not bad either. And then two D fifty six gigs
of solid state drives, so not a hard drive, which
is better to have SSD or solid stakes is less
prone to damage if you have the budget for a
gaming desktop not a laptop. There's a sale on a
Dell Alien where aurora are thirteen instead of nineteen forty nine,
so just shive to Grand it's down to eleven ninety nine.
(09:25):
So that's a huge discount, right, Uh yeah, and then
TVs l G TV instead of sixteen hundred that's their
B two series. And then one more is just a
pair of wireless earbuds, I mean iPods. Apple products rarely
go on sale, but comparable in quality is the Samsung
Galaxy Buds to True True wireless earbuds for eighty nine
(09:47):
instead of one fifty, So that's sixty dollars off. Yeah,
that's a tough thing with the Apple products, as you
mentioned that rarely do they go on sales, and then
when they do have the sales, you know they're they're
not that great. Apple kind of has that monopoly on
those things, so yeah, I mean looking for other alternatives
and everything that you know, that's that's a great way
to go. You also mentioned the kids edition of the
(10:08):
Fire HD tablet. The HD ten is off, so it's
fifty five bucks instead of a hundred and tents. So
if you're looking for a durable ten inch tablet for kids,
maybe to keep in the back seat during a Thanksgiving
a long weekend road trip to reduce the are we
there yet from the back seat, it's a really good price.
Plus you'll also get a year of Amazon Free Time
Unlimited as well, which is a great service. And you know,
(10:30):
with all of this right we're we're talking about some
great deals, some way to find those deals on apps
and and some browser extensions and all that. Obviously this
is also prime time for scammers unfortunately, praying on people.
So you gotta watch out, you know, um suspicious links,
don't click on those things. There are bad browser extensions.
The ones that Mark mentioned, you know, are are are cool,
but there's other places too that you might you know,
(10:52):
be getting phishing scams, people just getting into your system.
Those are all some things to watch out for. Yeah,
one big thing happening right now because it is the
shopping season. Is a phony text or email that says, hey,
we tried to deliver something to you, but we there
was nobody home. If you want it, just fill this
out and it looks like it's from fed X or ups,
but in fact they are stealing your information for identity
(11:15):
theft purposes. So watch out for that scam. Very popular
this time of year, and I've heard from cybersecurity experts
that it's really big over the last couple of weeks
already and people are falling for it. That's such a
tough one, especially with everybody's just getting inundated with texts
right now. I mean, I know, we just came off
of the midterm elections and every single day I was
getting multiple texts of things, and then on top of that,
(11:37):
right just the other faulty text that you might be getting.
It's so hard to kind of navigate that landscape right now.
And it looks so legit and ironically they'll say, hey,
we detected a problem on your computer, click here to
fix it, and you think, like, ironically, you're you're actually
being protected by your software, but it's in fact those
bad actors out there that have installed something on your
on your device. Yeah, it's really confusing. And just to
(11:59):
end off, if you have relatives who maybe not so
tech savvy, maybe they're more trusting or naive, um that
just delicately remind them of all the scammers that are
approaching them from all directions this time of year by phone,
you know, by text, by email, social media, d ms.
Just remind them that not to believe any of these
(12:21):
or if a deal looks too good to be true,
I know that it is, and when in doubt, check yeah, yeah,
check with your your family, have them check with you
to legitimize the deal that they're looking into. Exactly. Well,
I hope everybody has a great weekend obviously, and you
find that great deal that you were looking for. Mark Saltzman,
tech columnists at USA Today, a bunch of other outlets,
(12:42):
hosts of the check it Out podcast, thank you very
much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So
when they started to see any of their local groceries
talking about weekly specials or getting circulars in the mail,
they would take a picture of the circular and posted
(13:04):
on the website saying, you know, attention alert to join us.
Down is Claire Asbury Turning Points calumnists at the Wall
Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Claire glad to be here. Well,
did you know that there's an underground network of bargain
hunters for butter out there? Claire, you wrote a very
fun story about these people, you know, whether they're on
(13:25):
Facebook community pages or whatnot, they're they're sharing the tips
on when butter is going on sale, what kind of butter,
and anybody that knows, you know, as knows that has
a relative or something. As the holidays start approaching, there's
a lot of cookies that are being baked on, so
many things that people really pride themselves on in you know,
a lot of times you need butter, and we're going
through this time of inflation. Everything. It's very expensive right now,
(13:46):
so people are very clean on finding when the prices
drop a little bit. So Claire tell us a little
bit more about these butter bargain hunters. These are pretty
much home baker's um, not professional bakers. So these are
people that for years have sort of traded recipes, shared
baking tips, shown pictures of their cookies, and so they
(14:10):
do it year round, but Thanksgiving to Christmas time is
their big big time. Butter is something that goes into
almost every big good except for some people you will
use large. But butter is big and people are really
passionate about it. So when they started seeing prices creep
up really over the summer, and then in September we
(14:30):
had a record high butter, so everybody's thinking, oh, dear God,
how we're going to be able to afford making our cookies.
So when they started to see any of their local
groceries talking about weekly specials or getting circulars in the mail,
they would take a picture of the circular and posted
on the website saying, you know, attention alert to Yeah,
(14:51):
definitely you know, And I love because, as you mentioned,
these are all home bakers and all, but they know
exactly how much butter they need to get them through
the holiday season. You spoke to one per person who
says she needed twenty pounds of butter to get through
Thanksgiving and Christmas. She only bakes with Lando Lakes, so
very specific brand they need there. And um, as you mentioned,
sharing the photos of what the prices are to forty
(15:13):
nine right now seems like a great deal to forty
nine pound. All the markets figured a lot into these conversations,
all these kind of like a discount grocery store. And
as soon as they dropped their prices, everybody in these
communities was a buzz with you know, now we've got
to go there and get them. And and the best
part is is they have capacity limits on what you
can buy, so they were taking friends so they can
(15:35):
get around that it was really something. And then you know,
prices very according to location across the country, so even
if all these drops their price in Pennsylvania to nine,
it's not going to be the same in Florida. So
you would have members of these community baker Facebook groups
in Florida's same way, you know, mine to nine, and
(15:55):
they would have an angry face emoji or somebody in
New York saying, well, that's good, but I've got it
at my regional discount store for two for four dollars.
And there were even some people would they would post
the butter deals, but also eggs and nuts because those
are taking ingredients too, and they would say, you know,
you could get this at this market in Petsylania And
(16:17):
then the next responses, where is that plays? What eggs? It?
Is it off? So it was a real danter back
and forth that just a very natural conversation. I love this.
As I mentioned, I have a family member who makes
tons of cookies every year. Everybody looks forward to them,
so I just imagine her being in this position here.
And you mentioned that the butter prices reached a record
(16:37):
high in September. That's super interesting because the butter consumption
rose per person in one and another reason why butter
prices were so expensive was because of cheese. The milk
fat that they would use to make butter was being
used a lot for cheese at that time, right, so
that milk fat can't go to make butter. And another
thing too is the reason our consumption is so high
(17:00):
is with the pandemic, a lot of people were at
home baking and you know, they just didn't turn off
the spicket. They realized how good butter tasted. And you know,
there's sort of been a gradual increase in consumption, maybe
since we're actually eating almost a pound more butter year
than we did in but also that is health concerns
(17:22):
about margarine and finding out butter isn't all that terrible
for you. If you like all things, do it in moderation.
You spoke to a lot of people about the need
to find the butter to look out for those deals.
As we mentioned, you know, some were very brand specific.
They love Lando Lakes or Carrie Gold. I love the
Irish butter. It's one of the best. So tell me
some of the conversations as you had with them, just
(17:43):
you know, looking forward to the season and really preparing
for it. Really, you know, going through these steps. They
really are excited for the fines and really love to
share their kids and to get response. I mean, the
woman who runs this group says, you know, it's a
really generous group. They're very cordial. There's no back and forth.
It's just all very helpful. And you know, when I
(18:04):
would talk to some of these people, they were saying,
you know, I've got three trays of the scotti in
the oven right now, and I'm thinking, oh, dear God,
what you know, what day is this. I can't even
I haven't even bought my ingredients yet. And one woman
was saying that this is a woman who loves Landed
Lakes and she only baked with it, but for fun,
she thought, I'm gonna try making butter just to see
(18:25):
how involved it is. So she did, and she bought
a quarter cream. Actually, she had some leftover cream and
knew it was going to go bad, and also like
these people do not like to waste anything, so she
shook up the cream until the butter separated from the
buttermilk um and added a little salt and sugar that
(18:46):
it tasted great. It wasn't a lot, but and she
won't use it for baking, but she'll spread it on
her bread. Maybe had some herbs. So it was tips
like that and sort of fun back and forth. One
of the other good tips has freeze the butter wrappers,
use them to greet grease the cookie sheet pans. Yeah,
it's just it's a very fun story. If anybody checks
it out online the online piece, you can see a
(19:07):
bunch of fun pictures of freezers full of butter as well.
So it's just a good story leading up into the holidays,
and you know, just thinking about all these cookies and
pastries and all Claire Asbury Turning Points, columnist at The
Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. Take care of that's it for today. Join
(19:31):
us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts. This episode of The Daily Dive is produced
by Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar
Ramrrors and this was your Daily Dive
It's Friday, November. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. If you're looking for deals
this holiday season, this is where it all starts. Black Friday,
leading in a cyber Monday. With inflation still battering Americans,
many price conscious consumers are buying less gifts and donating
(00:22):
to charity. Less retailers, on the other hand, are looking
to move product with sales and promotions. Mark Saltzman, tech
calumnists at USA Today and host of the Tech It
Out podcast, joins us with some apps and browser extensions
for deal hunters, products to look out for and scams
to be wary of next The holiday season also means
tons of cookies and baked goods. In order to make
(00:44):
all those delicious favorites, you need a lot of butter.
Butter in particular has been seeing some very high prices
due to labor shortages and a growing appetite for cheese.
In response, an underground network of butter bargain hunters is
sharing the news when prices drop and tips on how
to get around purpose and limits. Some have even turned
turning out their own butter. Claire Annsbury turning points calumnists
(01:07):
at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for What to
Now It's news without the noise. Let's dive in if
you have your eye on something. Again, I'm in techy,
so I'll just give an example of like a drone.
Then you can say, like it's too much now, but
if it drops, you know, to this point, I'll buy it.
So it's called a deal alert, So the community if
they deem it a great discount, you'll be notified through email.
(01:29):
Joining us now is Mark Saltzman, tech columnists at USA Today,
also writes for a bunch of other outlets and host
of the tech it Out podcast. Thanks for joining us, Mark, Yeah, hey,
thanks for having me on double D. Yeah that sound?
Does that sound? I don't think i've report you're referred
to it as that yet, but you know what, maybe
we might start, well, well, Mark, we're gonna be talking
(01:50):
about the whole weekend of buying. Really, we got Black Friday,
we got Cyber Monday. There's deals going on all over
the weekend and and really kind of this is the
kick off to the hall a Day buying seasons. Everything's
gonna keep through to the holidays, and uh, you know,
it's a very interesting time right now. We've got a
lot of inflation going on. We've seen stories of people saying,
you know, they're scaling back on buying gifts, they're scaling
(02:12):
back on charitable donations because of the economic climate right now.
We have a lot of businesses really trying to move
products forring a lot of discount. There's gonna be a
lot of sales going on this time around. So let's
start off by kind of addressing that, and then we'll
get into some ways that we can help you save
some money. Yeah, for sure. Well obviously, you know, uh,
it was a tougher year for many for all the
(02:34):
reasons that you've mentioned, higher prices across the board, and
so for those who still want to purchase gifts, whether
it's the same number of gifts or if you're gonna
scale back either in uh like with whom you're going
to give to or the amount you're gonna spend per gift,
there is a lot of pressure on retailers if they
want to move inventory, to to make these deals as
(02:55):
aggressive as they can within reason. Of course, they're not
going to take a loss by There's been a lot
of challenges this year. Supply chain issues among one of them. So, yeah,
there's a lot of from what I've seen so far,
some some pretty impressive things that you can get, especially
in the tech world, which is you know, my my
scene that if you are going to you know, if
(03:15):
you have, if you have earmarked some budget to buying
some things for loved ones or yourself, then yeah, this
is gonna be the weekend to do it. Last year,
shoppers spent nearly twenty billion dollars online between Black Friday
and Cyber Monday, So you know, we'll see how those
numbers reflect this time around. But really that's kind of
the spot to be is just buying stuff online versus
way back in the day, Right, We've talked about it
(03:37):
before to Mark with the door busters and people waiting outside,
there's always gonna be that element, but man, largely everything
has moved online and specifically, you know, one of the
articles that you wrote up at USA to Day was
looking at how to find these deals with apps, some
browser extensions really a smart way to kind of focus
where you're looking at. So let's talk about some of those. Yeah,
(03:58):
So if you're gonna shop, then you might as well
get the best possible price you can and in some
cases even earn cash back on your purchases. So I
did look at a handful of solutions, be the apps, websites,
or browser extensions. So flip is one of my favorites.
It's basically aggregates all those uh circulars, those paper ads
that we typically get to our doorstep every week, but
(04:19):
it digitizes them all and then highlights the best deals
near you. So this is more of a retail thing.
So you type in your zip code or you let
your phone identify your location, and then it will show
you and or even if you type in something that
you want, like I don't know Samsung TV, it will
show you who's got the best deal near you, and
it can automatically apply coupons. It holds all your loyalty
or rewards cards that you can flash at the checkout
(04:42):
at the cashier, and and again it's a way of
of organizing all of those flyers and or circulars that
are near you. Another app that I go to actually
all all year round is slick Deals, which is a
community of millions of real people shoppers who all find
the best deals and then they vote on it. It
gets vetted by the community like some will say, actually
(05:04):
this expired, so forget that, or oh this is only
in this state and not in that state. So by
just sort of like you know, safety and numbers here,
they vet the best deals, which then congratuate to the
front page of Slick Deals and that way, you know, hey,
this is like a fire sale, like yes, take advantage
of this, and then they offer ways of stacking it up.
They'll say, oh, if you, you know, use this card
(05:26):
on this, then you're gonna get this back. Or if
you find here's a coupon code to get another ten
percent off, and then you even get cash back. So
like other platforms like raccutin and you know, I bought
a and all that, they they're Slick Deals also lets
gives you a percentage back of that purchase. You know,
it's an affiliate link thing where you know, the percentage varies.
(05:48):
But hey, if you're gonna shop anyways at these retailers,
might as well earn some cash back in the form
of gift cards or yeah, that posit to your bank.
And that's a cool one because you might be able
to find a deal that was unexpected did right, especially
if it's kind of community voted maybe something like you said,
some hot item that you just weren't wasn't on your
radar boom, maybe maybe you found it. It's like that
that you know, that's the thing that's gonna pull it
(06:10):
all through for you. So that's that's a cool one
that people vote on and that they do vet it right.
Then then if it's going to make it to the
front page and all that they've gone through to make
sure it's actually works, Yeah, that's the important part because
you you might get excited about what you think is
a sale and only to find out that it's not
not valid or it's in person only, not online. So
that's a good feature to have. It's the way it's built,
(06:32):
just having the whole community. And then also by the way,
you can sign up for deal alerts. So if you
have your eye on something. Again, I'm a techie, so
I'll just give an example of like a drone. Then
you can say, like it's too much now, but if
it drops, you know to this point, I'll buy it.
So it's called a deal alert, so the community, if
they deem it a great discount, you'll be notified through
email that it's on sale. So even if it's not
(06:53):
for this Black Friday. If you you know, heading into
the holidays, you can definitely identify what you're interested in.
I've Bottle was another one of those sites where you
can get on there and you can get paid back
a percentage of what you're buying with you know, affiliated retailers.
They'll give you that in a you know PayPal or
gift cards. Some cool ones to look out for their
Marco we you did give us a couple of actual
(07:14):
items that you could be on the lookout for if
you're in the market for it. As I mentioned right,
as retailers are trying to move some products, the tech
stuff is actually one of the key things that they're
really putting up on sale. So you had a few things, uh,
a fire HD Kids Edition, a tennant screen kind of
thing that with that comes with like a tougher case
and everything. You know, the kids are always dropping. It's
some really fun ones there that, like I said, if
(07:36):
you're in the market for these are really good deals.
Yeah for sure. So the ones that I'm going to
share now are at the very least thirty three percent off.
Some are much higher than that. So you mentioned a
couple of Amazon items, So why don't we start with that.
The Echo Dot smart speaker, the fifth gen one, which
is a larger, larger one. It's only forty dollars instead
of sixty. If you want to get a smart screen,
(07:59):
not just a smart speaker, then three percent off. Also
is the Amazon Echo Show fifteen. It's down to under
one seventy instead of over two fifty. And that's a
fifteen inch smart display where again you use your voice
to activate Alexa, but now you see information given to you,
not just hearing it. And this is something that you
(08:19):
want to put in like a highly trafficked area of
your home, like a kitchen, to help keep the family organized.
You can leave virtual sticky notes to one another, synchronize
your calendars, you can access recipes, stream your favorite TV
shows while you're cooking, control your smart home, look at
photos of you know, the kids and pets in a
slide show. So that's the Amazon Echo fifteen and that's
(08:40):
The Show fifteen, and that's one of Oprah's top picks.
By the way. Walmart, on the other hand, hast off
on a laptop instead of six fifty down to three
fifty and it's an HP fifteen inch full HD laptop.
With an Intel Core processor, eight gigs of RAM, which
is decent, not a lot of uh system memory, but
(09:02):
not bad either. And then two D fifty six gigs
of solid state drives, so not a hard drive, which
is better to have SSD or solid stakes is less
prone to damage if you have the budget for a
gaming desktop not a laptop. There's a sale on a
Dell Alien where aurora are thirteen instead of nineteen forty nine,
so just shive to Grand it's down to eleven ninety nine.
(09:25):
So that's a huge discount, right, Uh yeah, and then
TVs l G TV instead of sixteen hundred that's their
B two series. And then one more is just a
pair of wireless earbuds, I mean iPods. Apple products rarely
go on sale, but comparable in quality is the Samsung
Galaxy Buds to True True wireless earbuds for eighty nine
(09:47):
instead of one fifty, So that's sixty dollars off. Yeah,
that's a tough thing with the Apple products, as you
mentioned that rarely do they go on sales, and then
when they do have the sales, you know they're they're
not that great. Apple kind of has that monopoly on
those things, so yeah, I mean looking for other alternatives
and everything that you know, that's that's a great way
to go. You also mentioned the kids edition of the
(10:08):
Fire HD tablet. The HD ten is off, so it's
fifty five bucks instead of a hundred and tents. So
if you're looking for a durable ten inch tablet for kids,
maybe to keep in the back seat during a Thanksgiving
a long weekend road trip to reduce the are we
there yet from the back seat, it's a really good price.
Plus you'll also get a year of Amazon Free Time
Unlimited as well, which is a great service. And you know,
(10:30):
with all of this right we're we're talking about some
great deals, some way to find those deals on apps
and and some browser extensions and all that. Obviously this
is also prime time for scammers unfortunately, praying on people.
So you gotta watch out, you know, um suspicious links,
don't click on those things. There are bad browser extensions.
The ones that Mark mentioned, you know, are are are cool,
but there's other places too that you might you know,
(10:52):
be getting phishing scams, people just getting into your system.
Those are all some things to watch out for. Yeah,
one big thing happening right now because it is the
shopping season. Is a phony text or email that says, hey,
we tried to deliver something to you, but we there
was nobody home. If you want it, just fill this
out and it looks like it's from fed X or ups,
but in fact they are stealing your information for identity
(11:15):
theft purposes. So watch out for that scam. Very popular
this time of year, and I've heard from cybersecurity experts
that it's really big over the last couple of weeks
already and people are falling for it. That's such a
tough one, especially with everybody's just getting inundated with texts
right now. I mean, I know, we just came off
of the midterm elections and every single day I was
getting multiple texts of things, and then on top of that,
(11:37):
right just the other faulty text that you might be getting.
It's so hard to kind of navigate that landscape right now.
And it looks so legit and ironically they'll say, hey,
we detected a problem on your computer, click here to
fix it, and you think, like, ironically, you're you're actually
being protected by your software, but it's in fact those
bad actors out there that have installed something on your
on your device. Yeah, it's really confusing. And just to
(11:59):
end off, if you have relatives who maybe not so
tech savvy, maybe they're more trusting or naive, um that
just delicately remind them of all the scammers that are
approaching them from all directions this time of year by phone,
you know, by text, by email, social media, d ms.
Just remind them that not to believe any of these
(12:21):
or if a deal looks too good to be true,
I know that it is, and when in doubt, check yeah, yeah,
check with your your family, have them check with you
to legitimize the deal that they're looking into. Exactly. Well,
I hope everybody has a great weekend obviously, and you
find that great deal that you were looking for. Mark Saltzman,
tech columnists at USA Today, a bunch of other outlets,
(12:42):
hosts of the check it Out podcast, thank you very
much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So
when they started to see any of their local groceries
talking about weekly specials or getting circulars in the mail,
they would take a picture of the circular and posted
(13:04):
on the website saying, you know, attention alert to join us.
Down is Claire Asbury Turning Points calumnists at the Wall
Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Claire glad to be here. Well,
did you know that there's an underground network of bargain
hunters for butter out there? Claire, you wrote a very
fun story about these people, you know, whether they're on
(13:25):
Facebook community pages or whatnot, they're they're sharing the tips
on when butter is going on sale, what kind of butter,
and anybody that knows, you know, as knows that has
a relative or something. As the holidays start approaching, there's
a lot of cookies that are being baked on, so
many things that people really pride themselves on in you know,
a lot of times you need butter, and we're going
through this time of inflation. Everything. It's very expensive right now,
(13:46):
so people are very clean on finding when the prices
drop a little bit. So Claire tell us a little
bit more about these butter bargain hunters. These are pretty
much home baker's um, not professional bakers. So these are
people that for years have sort of traded recipes, shared
baking tips, shown pictures of their cookies, and so they
(14:10):
do it year round, but Thanksgiving to Christmas time is
their big big time. Butter is something that goes into
almost every big good except for some people you will
use large. But butter is big and people are really
passionate about it. So when they started seeing prices creep
up really over the summer, and then in September we
(14:30):
had a record high butter, so everybody's thinking, oh, dear God,
how we're going to be able to afford making our cookies.
So when they started to see any of their local
groceries talking about weekly specials or getting circulars in the mail,
they would take a picture of the circular and posted
on the website saying, you know, attention alert to Yeah,
(14:51):
definitely you know, And I love because, as you mentioned,
these are all home bakers and all, but they know
exactly how much butter they need to get them through
the holiday season. You spoke to one per person who
says she needed twenty pounds of butter to get through
Thanksgiving and Christmas. She only bakes with Lando Lakes, so
very specific brand they need there. And um, as you mentioned,
sharing the photos of what the prices are to forty
(15:13):
nine right now seems like a great deal to forty
nine pound. All the markets figured a lot into these conversations,
all these kind of like a discount grocery store. And
as soon as they dropped their prices, everybody in these
communities was a buzz with you know, now we've got
to go there and get them. And and the best
part is is they have capacity limits on what you
can buy, so they were taking friends so they can
(15:35):
get around that it was really something. And then you know,
prices very according to location across the country, so even
if all these drops their price in Pennsylvania to nine,
it's not going to be the same in Florida. So
you would have members of these community baker Facebook groups
in Florida's same way, you know, mine to nine, and
(15:55):
they would have an angry face emoji or somebody in
New York saying, well, that's good, but I've got it
at my regional discount store for two for four dollars.
And there were even some people would they would post
the butter deals, but also eggs and nuts because those
are taking ingredients too, and they would say, you know,
you could get this at this market in Petsylania And
(16:17):
then the next responses, where is that plays? What eggs? It?
Is it off? So it was a real danter back
and forth that just a very natural conversation. I love this.
As I mentioned, I have a family member who makes
tons of cookies every year. Everybody looks forward to them,
so I just imagine her being in this position here.
And you mentioned that the butter prices reached a record
(16:37):
high in September. That's super interesting because the butter consumption
rose per person in one and another reason why butter
prices were so expensive was because of cheese. The milk
fat that they would use to make butter was being
used a lot for cheese at that time, right, so
that milk fat can't go to make butter. And another
thing too is the reason our consumption is so high
(17:00):
is with the pandemic, a lot of people were at
home baking and you know, they just didn't turn off
the spicket. They realized how good butter tasted. And you know,
there's sort of been a gradual increase in consumption, maybe
since we're actually eating almost a pound more butter year
than we did in but also that is health concerns
(17:22):
about margarine and finding out butter isn't all that terrible
for you. If you like all things, do it in moderation.
You spoke to a lot of people about the need
to find the butter to look out for those deals.
As we mentioned, you know, some were very brand specific.
They love Lando Lakes or Carrie Gold. I love the
Irish butter. It's one of the best. So tell me
some of the conversations as you had with them, just
(17:43):
you know, looking forward to the season and really preparing
for it. Really, you know, going through these steps. They
really are excited for the fines and really love to
share their kids and to get response. I mean, the
woman who runs this group says, you know, it's a
really generous group. They're very cordial. There's no back and forth.
It's just all very helpful. And you know, when I
(18:04):
would talk to some of these people, they were saying,
you know, I've got three trays of the scotti in
the oven right now, and I'm thinking, oh, dear God,
what you know, what day is this. I can't even
I haven't even bought my ingredients yet. And one woman
was saying that this is a woman who loves Landed
Lakes and she only baked with it, but for fun,
she thought, I'm gonna try making butter just to see
(18:25):
how involved it is. So she did, and she bought
a quarter cream. Actually, she had some leftover cream and
knew it was going to go bad, and also like
these people do not like to waste anything, so she
shook up the cream until the butter separated from the
buttermilk um and added a little salt and sugar that
(18:46):
it tasted great. It wasn't a lot, but and she
won't use it for baking, but she'll spread it on
her bread. Maybe had some herbs. So it was tips
like that and sort of fun back and forth. One
of the other good tips has freeze the butter wrappers,
use them to greet grease the cookie sheet pans. Yeah,
it's just it's a very fun story. If anybody checks
it out online the online piece, you can see a
(19:07):
bunch of fun pictures of freezers full of butter as well.
So it's just a good story leading up into the holidays,
and you know, just thinking about all these cookies and
pastries and all Claire Asbury Turning Points, columnist at The
Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. Take care of that's it for today. Join
(19:31):
us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts. This episode of The Daily Dive is produced
by Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar
Ramrrors and this was your Daily Dive
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