the value of an hour

What's your time worth? It's an interesting question, isn't it? For some of us, we quickly calculate our per dollar wage rate from our place of employment. Others will judge the type of work to be done during that time and assign an equivalent dollar amount per hour to it. It's definitely a quandary, and one that you won't find yourself asking too often, providing that you don't feel you have wasted your time.

But we've all been there. Is it worth driving back to the grocery store because they charged me an extra 75 cents for that can of baked beans? Probably not. Is it worth calling the phone company and waiting on hold for twenty minutes so that I can dispute where that three dollar call to Mexico on my phone bill came from? It's arguable.

I sometimes feel that same bit of ambivalence when searching for coupons online. Sure, you might be able to save a few bucks here and there, but is it worth the time to search? For example, have you ever tried googling random sites for "coupon codes" for rental cars? You get tons of results for sites with super-long domain names chocked full of "rental car" keywords, and they all have the same coupons. But you check each one of them out, just in case on is slightly better than the one before. At the end of the day, you end up feeling like you have wasted all of this time for a free upgrade or ten dollars off. So what's a budget-restrained individual to do if they don't want to waste a bunch of time looking for deals every time you're going to make an online purchase?

Break out the bookmarks. Instead of googling for specific industry coupon sites when you need them, it is sometimes better to find a few good coupon sites that cover all kinds of industries. One of the latest sites to offer such a service is called "JJ9".

I have no idea what the name is supposed to mean, and their logo isn't very memorable, but they do offer a plethora of coupons for all kinds of online stores, from big corporate chains like Best Buy and Circuit City to tiny niche market shops that I have never even heard of, like Szul.

Keeping a few sites like this in your bookmarks (or favorites) folder can save you a few bucks here and there (or more) without wasting time clicking through pages and pages of Google results. I recommend using these types of sites mostly for the big ticket items.

My only real complaints about JJ9 is that some of the "coupons" are actually just advertisements for sales or free shipping policies. They also don't seem to have any way of searching by category. In fact, searching for words like "electronics" yields no matching results, even though they have Circuit City and Best Buy on their list. It's mainly a site to check out if you already know which store you plan on shopping at.