You may also have noticed that I've peppered "Spend Less the Easy Way" all over the website in various and sundry places. You may wonder what I mean by that.

Methods for spending less the easy way don't eat up all of your free time. My favorite ways to spend less the easy way involve putting "spend-less machines" in place and then forgetting about them! Once these machines are in place, they work by themselves with very little additional labor on your part. Setting up these systems sometimes require a little time, but the up-front research pays off at the back end.

Finding a "spend-less machine" may take some time, but it's usually almost no effort to use once set up, and then you automatically spend less with each purchase! It's not a matter of needing to clip coupons every time you want to save on groceries (though those offer savings as well!) You have the machinery in place, and it keeps working for you!

Granted, the very best results are achieved by combining as many offers as you're allowed, on the lowest price you can find. But if you're pressed for time and can't check out every sale in the area, your other trusty methods are still humming away, keeping a tight grip on a few percent of every purchase. Besides, there's a point at which you're spending a whole lot of time for a pittance.

So, I tend to like online and offline shopping techniques that are easy to set up and that get me most of the way toward the lowest price. It probably doesn't get me all the way to rock-bottom, but it cuts a good chunk off of retail. Here are my favorites:

• I use a good rewards credit card wherever I can. My Chase PerfectCard™ gives me at least 1% back and is credited to my next bill. If you manage your money well and use a credit card only for convenience, then this could keep hundreds of dollars in your pocket!
• I use click-through rewards sites whenever I can. EBates.com is a great click-through site. This is another way to save another few percent or sometimes a lot more. I pay with my rebate credit card to knock off a little more!
• I check Ebay for just about anything. I pay for stuff through PayPal using my rebate credit card whenever I can.
• Do you sense a pattern here? Another good reason to use a credit card (as long as you don't abuse the credit card) is because you're afforded a lot more buyer protection than if you use direct debit, check, or cash.
• I check websites that compare prices from many different sources at once (so I don't need to check them all out myself!) I've found a few good ones, but odds are you can find some that are better suited to what you're looking for!