访谈录 2008-12-17&12-19 假期购物小贴士（在线收听）

Two weeks from today is Christmas, so (with) time running out, our financial advisor Ray Martin is here with tips for shopping that go beyond just looking for a good deal. Good morning, Ray.

 Hey, Maggie, great to see you!

 Love your tie. Thank you! Very festive!

 Right, ‘cause it's the season.

 All right, you have some questions, you said these are the most commonly asked questions that you got from shoppers. No.1: what do I need to know about gift cards this season?

 Well, yeah, on consumers' minds right now are if I buy a gift card and it doesn't get used later on and the merchant goes out of business. Wow, what happens here? And you know, you're really unprotected with, you know, the closing of Tweeter, Sharper Image, Linens 'n Things and so on, It's really important to buy the gift card that person will use quickly, things for food, clothing, fuel so for that reason right there alone. Also you know you want to look at the fees, er, and make sure you don’t buy gift card that has monthly fees or that will expire later on. And buy a gift card that's tamper-proof.

 What does that mean?

 It means the security code on the back has that masking that has to be scratched up, hasn't been tampered with.

 Ah, I never knew that existed.

 Yeah, look at the back of the card, it has, it should be masking the card number, or you buy a card from behind the counter where a thief hasn't been able to write down the number, and later, try to steal your money off, when they stay in the rack of it.

 So once you find that the Drugstore (coupon) hanging on the shelf, may not be the best ones.

 And if the card number is exposed, don't use that card.

 All right, No.2 and my favorite, how do I find promotions and coupons?

 Yeah, there's no reason to be paying full price for anything right now, ok, and this is a great tip from power shoppers.

 First, let's say you are online, ok? And you are on your merchant's website, er, and you are getting ready to check out (and) buy a backpack, Dick's Sporting Goods, for example. It says, are you using a promotional code? You'll say "well, I don't know, I don't have one." Or instead, open, don't check out yet, open a second tab of your browser, go to Google for example, type in here, for example, Dick's Sporting Goods promotional codes, OK. And make sure I got that all in there. And, then hit the search, and when you do that, you'll quickly see a website with lots of different links, to various providers that may have promotional codes, and for example if you go down to one of these sites here, you might see the promotional codes that you can use to buy the item...

 And look, up to 50%, see, this is not small potatoes.

 Right, and you might see the website code like 'DSP ALL 15'. You type that in Promotional Code (awesome) and get discount right away! (All right.) Also, for coupons, if you're gonna go to Wal-Mart, Target or wherever, go to websites like coupon.com, couponcabin.com and fatwallet, go and print on their website printable coupons and then take those to the stores where you go shopping and you get the coupons and use them right away, you know, 5 dollars, 20 dollars, 20% off and that kind of thing.

 This is I how I saved huge the other day. (Absolutely.) I actually went to the store's website, and right there it was a little section 'print coupons here', it was almost too easy.

 Perfect.

 Thank you. Ray

 Oh, you're welcome.

 Good to have you.