From Laura P. at  FatWallet.com:

Post a Hot Deal, Get a Free T-Shirt.

My desk is buried under bins full of FatWallet T-Shirts. And I need your help.

The first 1000 members to post a Hot Deal receive one free FatWallet T-shirt each. When you post a deal, I get to walk one of these sweet Ts out of my office to shipping and receiving (better known as Debbie) where it will be whisked away via USPS to you, our valued member.

To Get Your Free T
1.Post your Hot Deal
– If after 24 hours, your smokin’ deal is rated positive (above 0) by the FatWallet community –
2.You will receive PM and/or email notification of your deal’s eligibility, linking you to the page where you claim your prize (give us your address)
3.You should receive your kick butt T-shirt within 10 days of submitting your shipping information. One T-shirt per member

Challenge! Members who post a Hot Deal from a FatWallet Cash Back merchant will receive the exclusive, previously unreleased “I am the Revolution” FatWallet T-shirt (while supplies last ‘cuz these shirts rule)!

Eligibility
· Deal must have a positive rating 24 hours after being submitted
· The usual Hot Deal criteria (Hot Deals FAQ : No reposts, no spam, compare your price, forum guidelines…) apply
· Only Deals from a FatWallet Cash Back merchant qualify for the “I am the revolution” FatWallet T-shirt
· Limit one T-shirt per FatWallet.com member per promotion
· Eligible deals posted after 7/22/08 12:00 a.m., CST
· While supplies last

I’m aware of rising food and energy prices. Who isn’t? But lately I’ve begun to notice that fueling up the car and the family is causing us to exceed our budget month after month.

I tried to track my spending about a month ago, but if you haven’t heard, that’s hard to keep up, and I fell off the wagon weeks ago.

So I went back to Mint.com, a free, secure site that aggregates and categorizes all of your credit card and account data for you. It also recently added a feature to allow you to aggregate your investment account data as well.

It took about an hour to properly categorize some misidentified purchases (since when is Green Mill a church?). And I’m still having trouble getting one of my financial institutions to regularly update when I log on.

But when finished, I had a pretty accurate, albeit startling assessment of our food and fuel costs in the form of a handy dandy pie chart.

I clicked on the “trends” tab and found that so far in July, we’ve spent $352 on food and eating out. Sounds like a respectable amount for a family of four, until I tell you that we’ve spent an equal amount of money using Cub Foods gift cards a la the stimulus rebate and hit the farmer’s market a couple of times!

As for gas, we’ve spent $162, although some of that will be reimbursed mileage for work.

Just a few months ago $500 would pay for food for our family with room to spare.  That included a pizza and a night out at a casual restaurant.

Gas used to cost $125 a month– including a trip from St. Paul to the Minnesota Zoo. Not any more.

So that leaves my husband and I with a budget we’ve yet to balance. We don’t want to save less, and we don’t want to make changes to our spending habits. But something has got to give, and we’re both mulling that over in the days to come.

One thing I’ve been considering lately is a chest freezer to facilitate smarter shopping and batch cooking. That would eliminate going out to eat or getting take-out about once per week.

Dining out is a crapshoot with small kids anyway. Last time we went out for a “relaxing meal,” I made three trips to a smelly bathroom, had to peel a kid off the floor, confiscated crayons after they became airborne and didn’t even enjoy the food. We paid $38 for that mistake — with a coupon.

If you’re too young for AARP, then try Qvisory

According to an e-mail from their PR guy:

Qvisory is an online community for young people [KM: That’s 18 to 34 acc. to them] that’s a brainchild of Andy Stern from the SEIU [KM: That’s a labor union] . It’s built on the same model as AARP, but for young people; it will help them with work, health and money issues they face with services like health insurance and financial counseling, and will advocate for their interests in DC as well.

It also acts as a social network where you can make a pact with other users to make a change– such as pay off credit card debt, move money into index funds, or start paying off grad school loans.

As for the age business, where are the 34 to 49 year olds to go? Where’s the advocacy for them? That demographic is so often lost in the talk about young people and old people. I guess I can join for two years.

A Qvisory membership costs $36 per year versus AARP’s $39.95 for five years. But with Qvisory, you get free phone financial counseling and use of handy tools like an e-safe deposit box.

The Star Tribune launched infoCenter today — a place where you can view salaries of select public employees as well as real estate transactions, homicide maps and other intriguing data.

The paper across the river also recently launched a salary database for public employees.

As one who is on the liberal side when it comes to sharing my personal financial data, the sites don’t bother me. But I imagine others, especially those who have their salaries listed, may feel uncomfortable.

How would you feel if your salary were listed for your friends and family to look up?

Bargain-hunters and shopping mavens, this reader needs your help:

Do you have any tips on where to get decent quality stuff (new or used) on a tight budget? I want to be environmentally and fiscally responsible and not buy anything that is going to fall apart and need to be replaced in a few years. I have some of the basics like a bed, but I am going to need some furniture and a washer and dryer.