As a result of the layoff, we obviously have to cut our spending in as many areas as possible. This will be hard. This will not be fun.
Our oldest son just finished a very successful season of high school swimming, and I had a ton of digital pictures that I wanted to get printed. (I scrapbook, and I also make duplicate scrapbook pages to give to my inlaws as gifts for their birthdays and Christmas.) Even though photo-finishing falls pretty squarely into the "luxury" category, I decided to see if I could find a better deal than what I normally pay (8 cents per print at winkflash.com).
I searched the web and priced all the different services I could think of (Costco, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Walgreens, CVS, etc.). Those all ran right around 12 to 13 cents per print. The best price I found was at Clark Color Labs, where their standard price was 8 cents per print (same as my usual service), but on the day I accessed their website, they were offering 40 free prints for signing up. So, I got 90 4x6 prints for $9.40 after shipping. Deal!
So, the moral of this post is to shop around--for everything. Photo-finishing is not the last thing I'll be comparing prices on in the days and weeks to come.
