Deal$.

 Lately, I've gotten into fun deals.  Namely, ones that cam through switching my gender on Pandora.  I know it sounds silly, but I changed my gender from female to male in my Pandora settings.  Now, rather than getting birth control, cleaning and 'lady' stuff ads, I get advertisements for concerts, technology stuff and (one I really appreciated) Living Social.  The whole point of Living Social (and others like Groupon) is to make you aware of insane deals.  I'm talking crazytown deals here.  I've services that are discounted by 90%, which I don't typically see in my regular life.  It also sends you deals on things you wouldn't typically look into yourself, like this one:

I'm not going to lie, I definitely wanted to do this, but didn't end up buying it-I sort of regret it now.  But seriously, what a fun date for $25.  Sometimes they are less amazing (one was some sort of dental work, which isn't exactly my idea of fun).  But very frequently, they are deals on food, where you purchase a (sort of) gift card for $20 and it's actually worth $40-nice if you plan to go out anyway.

Groupon definitely has more cities.  I live outside DC and I have three specific areas I can choose.  Living Social does not, they have one for the DC area, with most of their deals focused on The District.  They are pretty friendly, they send you an email in the morning (a nice surprise in your inbox), and if you delete it, you don't hear about that deal again.  There are also iPhone apps for them, and Living Social will give you push notifications, which are handy when you are stopped at the stop light waiting to turn into school.

All in all, in this time of teacher layoffs, no COLA or steps, getting deals where you can get them is good.  These aren't deals at Wegman's for groceries, but who doesn't need a break from real life every once in awhile-even if you don't have a six-digit savings account to fund it.