LivingSocial.com and McDonald’s are selling a coupon booklet good for 5 Big Macs and 5 Large Fries for $13 – that’s $2.60 for each burger/fry combo. Over 200,000 sold already. Supposedly they want to sell a million vouchers like they did earlier this year with Whole Foods. Nutritional facts because I was curious:

Big Mac = 540 Calories, 29g Fat
Large French Fries = 500 Calories, 25g Fat

The means you’re getting 5,200 Calories for the bargain price of $13. 🙂 Are Cheap Calories The Reason We’re Unhealthy? Perhaps, but I’m of the crowd that really doesn’t expect wholesome food when buying fried beef and fried potatoes. I think it’s quite possible to eat well and cheap, but frankly some people prefer the taste of fast food.

American Express really wants you to use your AmEx for shopping this season! They have thought up another creative promotion called the Gift Chain where if you register your AmEx first, then every time you spend $25 or more at a participating online store between November 28 and December 21, 2011, you’ll be eligible for a surprise gift worth between $2 and $500 each time (up to 10 gifts max). Thanks to reader Michelle for the tip. Update: Another reader tip is to buy gift cards of $25 from a participating store such as Walmart.com, and repeat as needed. Make sure you can use the gift cards at some point later, perhaps for a single larger item.

Here are the eligible retailers:

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Groupon-like site Eversave has $20 to spend at Overstock.com for $10. If you are a new user, you’ll also get $3 credit instantly when signing up, but you can’t use it on this offer. Overstock.com has free shipping as well until 12/25/2011. Limit 1 per person. I think I bought some nice bed sheets from them at a good price a while back.

Gift cards. Even though they are far from perfect – let’s face it, there’s a reason they have become so popular. They are convenient to buy, require minimal decision-making, and you get to spend exactly what you budgeted. While you may fall back upon a gift card, that doesn’t mean you have to spend full price on them!

Grocery Stores
You can now find gift cards from every store imaginable at your neighborhood supermarket, and certain credit cards give increased rewards at grocery stores.

Also, check for specific deals by your local chain stores. Safeway is popular in my area, and they are offering $10 towards your next purchase if you buy $100 in select gift cards from 11/24-12/6. In addition, through December 10th, Safeway also has 4x gas rewards points on all gift card purchases.

Gift Card Reseller Sites
A secondhand market for gift cards has sprung up on sites like PlasticJungle, Cardpool, GiftCards.com, and GiftCardRescue. You can buy both physical gift cards and electronic gift card codes. You might feel weird about giving a gift card for $48.44 instead of $50, but if you keep looking you can usually find a nice round number. Wrap that “used” gift card in a nice handmade card and envelope, or print electronic codes directly on the card. The good thing about these websites is that the transactions are guaranteed by the site and not some random person. I’ve bought a few cards from Plastic Jungle with no issues, usually Home Depot cards at 7% off.

eBay
The world’s biggest garage sale is another good source of discounted gift cards, although I would stick with sellers with excellent feedback ratings. Even as a former Powerseller, I haven’t been overly impressed with eBay’s customer service of late. Using a bid sniping service if you’re not using Buy It Now. You could even try Craigslist if you’re brave.

eBillme
These guys are trying to be the next PayPal payment service, and part of their business is selling discounted gift cards. However, read their terms and conditions carefully. New users can get 10% off a $100 Amazon gift certificate for a $10 credit, but you need $50 of credit to actually get a check mailed to you. Otherwise, you have buy something using eBillMe as the payment method from a participating merchant (like Sears or Buy.com) and apply that $10 credit to your purchase. Rather convoluted in my opinion, but may work out for you.

Cash Back Shopping Portals
When shopping online in general, there are now a bajillion cashback shopping portals that will get you cash, points, or miles of some kind. I usually prefer cash from eBates ($10 new user bonus), Mr. Rebates ($5 new user bonus), or BigCrumbs. You can use Evreward.com to compare them, however it doesn’t always keep up with the quickly-changing payouts during the holiday season.

Please note that for many merchants, purchases of gift cards are not eligible for cash back. You can always give it a try, but don’t include anything else in your cart because it might negate cash back on the entire purchase. One known exception: American Express Gift Cards. These are pretty close to cash, and BigCrumbs offers 1.6% cash back and there is a promotion code to waive the $3.95 purchase fee.

“Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the issuer. This site may be compensated through the issuer’s Affiliate Program.”

Person-to-person lending site Prosper.com is running a few holiday promotions for both borrowers and lenders. If you have great credit, check out how your loan fees could be much less than the value of the iPod you get!

Free iPod Nano with Personal Loan
Borrowers who apply for a Prosper loan through this Monday, November 28th, 2011 get an Apple iPod Nano when the loan originates. I can’t tell if the iPod Nano is 8 gb ($129) or 16 gb ($149). Note that the fine print for this offer does not exclude AA loans with 1-year terms, which have very low origination fees of only 0.5% of the amount borrowed; a $2,000 loan would have an origination fee of just $10. There is no pre-payment penalty for paying off your loan early, so do the math. 🙂

Before committing to anything, you can get a free rate quote without affecting your credit score. You’ll even get a free credit score afterward unless you get the best AA rating, at which point you know your credit score is sky-high anyway.

iPad Nano, Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones, or iPad 2 for New Lenders
New lenders who register by December 12 and invest the minimum needed for each gift by December 23, can get the following:

• $5,000 – Apple iPod Nano, 16 GB ($149 value)
• $10,000 – Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Headphones ($299 value)
• $25,000 – Apple iPad 2 32 GB WiFi model ($599 value)

“Lenders who receive promotional offers from Prosper may be subject to IRS Form 1099-MISC reporting requirements should the total value of those items exceed $599 in a calendar year.” Gee, look how nicely that worked out.

Vente Privee is kind of a fancy Groupon-like deal site that sells designer things in 72-hour sales. That doesn’t sound like something I’d normally be interested in at all, but they are offering a $20 statement credit with your first purchase with an American Express by 12/31. (American Express is an official partner.) Check out this application page (my referral link) and you should see the offer. “American Express Cardmembers get a $20 statement credit with first purchase*”. Referring others to the site yourself after joining will also get you $20 in store credit.

As mentioned the sales rotate each day, but I was able to find a nice sugar shaker for $10 + $5.95 shipping and some kid’s clothing for $6 + $5.95 shipping. Not bad for some free stocking stuffers. Many of the cheaper items sell out fast… go figure. 😉

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Google Music was opened to the public recently, and I finally got a chance to poke around. I’m not an especially active user of all these services where you save all your music in the cloud, as I’m pretty happy with my iPod Touch. I buy a few songs here and there, but mostly only redeem any iTunes gift cards or Amazon MP3 credits that land in my lap. However, I did notice that Google Music has a lot of pretty good free songs available, at least at launch.

First, they have a Free Song of the Day. Next, there are many free tracks sprinkled around the site. Here are some lists of free songs grouped by genre, let me know if you find more. You can download the songs directly onto your computer, and setup is pretty quick if you already have a Google account.

• Free Pop & Hip Hop songs (Jessica Simpson, TLC, Usher, Whitney Houston…)
• Free Rock Songs (Augustana, Train, John Mayer, Alice Cooper)
• Free Country Songs (Kenny Chesney, Alabama, Brooks & Dunn, Dolly Parton)
• Free Classical songs
• Most popular free songs list (several repeats from above)
• Free albums of live music from Shakira, Pearl Jam, Coldplay, Rolling Stones, Busta Rhymes,and Dave Matthews Band.

I found plenty to fill up the workout playlist. As a reminder, here’s a list of free MP3s from Amazon available as well, but I see more popular mainstream artists on Google Music.

Mastercard has a holiday offer going where if you register your Mastercard credit card number and spend $200 online with it, you’ll get a $20 gift card. Valid for first 80,000 – this promo started yesterday and I have no idea how long that’ll last, so just treat this like a nice surprise if it comes.

* Starts 11/15/11. Ends 12/31/11 or while supplies last. Offline, PIN-based & international transactions ineligible. Gift Card quantities are limited to the first 80,000 eligible entrants & maximum 10,000 other gifts to next 10,000 eligible entrants.

(Update: Looks like this deal is over.)

I know that there are some Economist readers out there, and it’s a pretty expensive subscription. Right now the site NEAmag.com/2011FREE is offering a one-year subscription for free (51 issues) with no credit card required. You’ve got nothing to lose by trying, and there are several other magazines including Kiplinger’s Personal Finance available as well.