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Cut it out

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Coupons/ Credit: Flickr user sgrace

Coupons/ Credit: Flickr user sgrace

It’s always taken a bit of persistence and planning to save money on the things you buy, whether it’s religiously cutting coupons from the newspaper or saving up frequent flier miles. Last year, NPR reported on avid e-coupon collector April Englebert, who told Weekend Edition that she saves up to 80% using online coupons. But over a year later, it’s now easier and easier to save money online – thanks to sites like Savings.com and GroupOn, as well as social networking sites like FourSquare and Yelp.

There are various models for online coupons. GroupOn provides limited-time deals that visitors sign up for using their local zip code for services like yoga studios, spas, and restaurants. Savings.com aggregates deals from national chains and online retailers. FourSquare and Yelp provide money-saving incentives for sharing information about places you’ve visited.

I spoke recently with Savings.com’s community manager Sara Dunham. She talked about the kinds of deals that people tend to search for online.

“I’m always surprised to see what people will buy,” she said. “Merchants are also trying to make it easier to buy online … Free shipping is one of the most searched terms for coupons.”

Dunham said that employees at Savings.com are even required to use the available coupons to book their work travel.

Beyond coupons, social network FourSquare hooks users up with deals at the businesses they frequent most. WLRN and Miami Herald’s Niala Boodhoo wrote about “FourSquare Day” last week:

There’s been lots written about Foursquare being dangerous for privacy reasons (it’s easy to stalk or rob you when you’re always saying where you are…
But Foursquare promotes it as a way to discover new places to eat, shop, etc. based on what your friends say they are doing.
Here’s where the Foursquare Day part comes in. Some businesses are getting in on the game by saying if you “check in” on Foursquare today at their establishment during a certain time, you can get a deal.

The privacy concerns about online coupons go beyond the information you may provide for the FourSquare and other social social network deals. The New York Times reported on the information stored in the barcodes of online coupons and when consumers may want to be wary.

Using coupons to link Internet behavior with in-store shopping lets retailers figure out which ad slogans or online product promotions work best, how long someone waits between searching and shopping, even what offers a shopper will respond to or ignore.

Have you used online coupons to save on goods or services? What kind of deals have you received?

More taxing times

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Tax Day is next Thursday, so in honor of all the last-minute procrastinators out there (and the accountants who help them!), here are few final tips and stories about tax season from around the country.

In Maryland, volunteers who just couldn’t get enough fun doing their own taxes are opening their slates to help low-income families get their taxes done — an important task, because many low-income filers are missing out on a big credit.

Georgia Samios of WYPR in Baltimore reports:

Here at Ray of Hope Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore, volunteers are helping low income people fill out tax returns. They want to make sure that those who qualify get the earned income tax credit, which can literally put money in people’s pockets. .. That means more people are covered, says the Internal Revenue Service’s Peggy Riley.
“It’s a big expansion over other years, and with the amount of unemployment we’re figuring many more people will probably qualify for the earned income tax credit this year,” she says.

A similar volunteer program is underway in Seattle, where the public library is home base to help people get their taxes done. This year, there’s more confusion as many of those seeking help are underemployed or unemployed.

NPR’s Wendy Kaufman reports:

The pain is evident at the Seattle Public Library. Part of the library’s fifth floor has been turned into tax central for the past several weekends. Low-income people are getting free help in filing their tax returns.
Courtney Noble of the United Way is in charge of the program.
“We see more people every year — and this year, we see a lot of our same customers from last year,” Noble said.

In California, tax credits passed down to homeowners from a bill passed in the 1970s are causing intense debate as the state faces a budget crunch.

In San Diego, where the housing crisis hit particularly hard last year, residents are facing off with legislators as tax time approaches and the county stands to bring in less money in property taxes. California Proposition 13 passed more than 30 years ago and gave huge tax breaks to homeowners, aiming at helping them stay in their homes and not be “taxed out” over time. But now the state is questioning the law’s relevance. KPBS produced a recent special The Legacy of Prop. 13 analyzing the bill’s influence.

Joanne Faryon reports on Prop. 13′s impact:

Prop 13 locked in property assessments at 1 percent of the purchase price, and limited yearly increases to 2 percent. The result: California has among the lowest property tax rates in the country. In fact, more then half of all the homes in San Diego County are assessed below market value.

For last minute tips, Nightly Business Report continues it series with Kiplinger’s Kevin McCormally. Recent tips include help Supercharging You Standard Deduction and changes in Demutualized Stock Sales.

California crunch

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It shouldn’t be news to anyone that California is in a major crunch these days, and not the granola kind. The budget crisis has gotten so bad that in Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has threatened to shut down the entire city government for two days a week to save money.

KPCC’s Air Talk had the mayor on to address threats facing the city’s Department of Water and Power from ratings agencies, and options to keep the city afloat beyond a partial shut down.

Villaraigosa told KPCC’s David Lazarus:

It’s not something that I want to do. But it’s something we need to look at and discuss. … Clearly we don’t’ have a lot of options where we know that we don’t have the cash to pay employees. We are liable to them when we ask them to work, knowing we don’t thave the cash to pay them.

In the comments section of the KPCC page, concerned LA residents left pressing questions about other budget issues hitting City Hall, like early retirement payments for city employees and furloughs for municipal departments outside of the general budget.

LA school budgets are also being cut. That’s drawing some Hollywood names to make the issue a hit online, like in this Funny or Die video with Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, who visited Wonderland Avenue Elementary School in LA to get their point across about overcrowding and budget cuts:

It’s not just LA that’s affected. Earlier this month, protests against budget cuts for schools were held in northern California. Youth Radio reporters caught up with protesters in Berkeley.

Waving signs that read “No Cuts” and “Defend Public Education,” the crowd of around 150 people included elementary school student Eliza Fosket Hyde, 7, who made a homemade sign “We want money for pableck shools.”

A struggle from serving to working

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The unemployment numbers have leveled off at 9.7% — certainly a lukewarm sign at best for the country by any measure. Particularly for veterans, reentering the workforce is a challenge. Male veterans between ages 18 and 24 have a nearly 22 percent unemployment rate, according to the Labor Department.

PRI’s The World reports on a group of vets in Wisconsin who are having trouble finding work since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

PRI’s Global Economy Podcast

The Wisconsin veterans aren’t alone, but new programs and opportunities are trying to make a difference for veterans around the country. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Program recently announced a $2 million grant competition to help vets get jobs in the growing field of renewable and sustainable energy.

The green jobs blog Intelligent Energy Portal reports:

[The] grants are intended to provide services to assist in reintegrating eligible veterans into meaningful employment within the labor force and to stimulate the development of effective service delivery systems that will address the complex employability problems facing eligible veterans.

In West Virginia, job fairs are introducing recently returned veterans to new kinds of careers. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports:

Derek Brown is the vocational rehabilitation officer for the VA. He says it can be tough for veterans to figure out how to find a job.

“I think it’s a unique challenge, in the military it’s a lot different for employment you get assigned from one assignment to the next assignment it’s not like you really go out and interview for a job,” Brown said.

The PBS News Hour’s Patchwork Nation analyzes military communities around the country. In Hampton Roads, Va., the GI Bill has increased college enrollment in one local college and is working to put students on career tracks that have high employment rates:

Compared with other TCC [Tidewater Community College] students, those on the GI Bill are taking more career and technical programs such as in information systems technology. A higher percentage are on the transfer track, meaning they will move on to a four-year college.

Revisiting earthquake economics

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In the months since the Haiti earthquake, tent cities have sprung up in Port-au-Prince. Frontline and NPR’s Planet Money report on the communities that have developed out of economic necessity.

Planet Money’s Adam Davidson in Haiti:

Beyond housing, various industries are also having to adjust to the new economy in Haiti. Miami Herald and WLRN reporter Niala Boodhoo visited a rum distillery, a cocoa farm, and a microfinance organization to find out how the country’s production has changed.

Boodhoo joined The Takeaway for a chat about her findings in Haiti, including the food crisis and the issue of remittances – monies sent from families abroad to help their families in Haiti.

I think the immediate problem for a lot of people is food. You have a country where 2/3 of the labor force is engaged in agriculture but is still producing less than half the food that’s needed in the country.

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