Ten Favorites of 2009! aka, Groupon Makes Fun Indulgences Affordable Again!!

I have to say, 2009 was a good year. A lot of awesome things happened during those 365 days... I started a blog, cemented my already raging addiction to the phenomenon known as Lost, got serious about going more green and being smart with my money, adopted two lovable sci-fi themed cats, got accepted to grad school, and something else I can't think of right now... what was it? Ugh this is going to drive me crazy... oh RIGHT! I got engaged!! ;P

To kick-start the decade (and my lagging writing skilz), I figure I'll stir things up a bit by highlighting a rather random selection of some of my favorite components of the past year. Since I've been meaning to write about Groupon for a while now, and it does indeed happen to be one of my new favorite things, it seems like a great place to start!

"Groupon" was coined from the combination of the words "group" and "coupon," and it is pretty much brilliance all around... every day there's a new deal organized by city, in which a business sells their services at a discount of at least 50%. These businesses range from tea houses, to fine dining, to indie art galleries, to spas, to bellydancing lessons... and that's only to mention the ones I've actually purchased myself! A typical deal might be to pay $30 for $90 worth of spa services, or $10 for a $25 gift certificate for a restaurant. There are also no stipulations for the total amount you have to spend at the restaurant or business (such as you might find using restaurants.com), so providing that you stay within budget a groupon certificate can cover the full cost of your meal or outing.

Groupon offers daily deals for 40+ cities, from Atlanta (OBVI!), to Chicago, to Phoenix, to Washington DC. Check it out!! Today's deals for Atlanta are on half-price museum admission or $20 for a horseback riding lesson, and New York's deals are on a wine and cheese tasting or half off at chocolate.com. Hmm, you probably don't have to live in New York to cash in on that last one! Sweeeeet! What will your deal be? Even if you don't love today's you'll probably be really excited about tomorrow's, so sign up for the daily email updates and something amazing will turn up soon enough. With more than 1,272,019 groupons sold and more than $63,143,960 saved... it's pretty much guaranteed! And that works for me. :)

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday, over at We're THAT Family, and Thrifty Thursday over at Coupon Teacher. Be sure to head over there each week for lots of great tips and ideas!