Boo started a new year of college last month, Bud starts in January and Art starts in less than two weeks.  Soon 3 of the 4 of us will be in higher education.  That’s a lot of books!!

Fortunately, in Boo’s first year of college we discovered the ease and cost-effectiveness of renting textbooks.  There are so many plusses:

• you can save 40%-90% off of bookstore prices
• free shipping both ways
• you can highlight in the textbooks
• there are flexible renting periods

Bud will most likely need a textbook on Human Development for his first year of college ( a good core class).  He could buy the book Human Development: A Life-Span View on Amazon for $59.97, or rent it through campusbookrentals.com for $15.72

Here’s how it works:

and campusbookrentals.com donates to Operation Smile with each textbook rental!!

 From the Operation Smile website:

At Operation Smile, our medical volunteers provide safe, effective and free cleft lip and cleft palate repair surgery for children born all over the world. We are an international medical humanitarian organization dedicated to raising awareness of this life-threatening issue and providing lasting solutions that will allow children to be healed, regardless of financial standing, well into the future.

Every child deserves the ability to smile and a chance to thrive. But in many parts of the world, children with cleft lip and cleft palate are hidden away, too embarrassed to attend school and face uncertain futures because their parents cannot afford to provide the surgery they need.

Our free, life-changing surgeries take as little as 45 minutes, and can give a boy or girl with a facial deformity a lifetime of smiles. Plus, every child we heal creates a ripple effect on the child’s family, community and country. After surgery, the child can become a more productive member of society and enrich their community.

So for a thrifty, easy way to get your textbooks delivered right to your door and feel good about each rental – we recommend campusbookrentals.com!!

This is a sponsored post on behalf of campusbookrentals.com  All opinions are 100% my own.

Craigslist can be an easy way to buy items you really need and/or want.  It can also be an easy (and free) way to sell some of that junk that’s cluttering up your house.  But as with any transaction where money exchanges hands, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).  Here are some scams to look out for when shopping on Craigslist:

•  Rental Housing Scam

Rental agencies frequently list their available properties on Craigslist.  But beware of those listings that look good to be true.  Is the rent significantly less than comparable properties?  While we were looking for our current rental, we found two different properties listed on Craigslist which were priced lower than similar houses and the only contact was by email.  When we drove by the properties we saw “For Sale” signs on the front lawns.  Contacting the “seller” returned a form email which stated that they were out of the country on business, please ignore the for sale sign which they had forgotten to have removed before they left, and that if we mailed them the attached application with a cashier’s check for the first month’s rent and security deposit then they would gladly mail us the keys.  Needless to say, we did not follow through with either of these listings, except to report them to Craigslist as fraudulent.

• Lemon Scam

Again, many legitimate car lots list their inventory on Craigslist, and so do many honest, hard-working individuals who just want to get the best price for their 1992 Volvo so they can finally invest in a new car.  But there are also scammers out there.  Unfortunately, our family found this out the hard way.  But that’s a story for another day.  The most important thing to remember when buying a car from an individual is that they should have a smog certificate for the car dated within the past 90 days.  You should also run the Vehicle Identification Number through Carfax or similar to make sure it has a clean title and has it been in any serious accidents.  Lastly, I would take a mechanically-minded person along to check for any obvious problems.

• Ticket Scam

In this scam, the buyer promises event tickets, or airline tickets, but what the buyer actually gets are either forgeries or previously used tickets.  Remember that airline tickets can only be used by the person whose name is printed on the face of the ticket.  For event tickets, ask to see a copy of the seller’s receipt from his or her original purchase verifying that the tickets are for the date and place you were told.

• Payment Scam

The seller asks you to wire the money (via Western Union or similar) or send a personal check before they will send you the merchandise.  Or the buyer wants to pay with a money order or personal check.  Transactions should only be paid via cash (make sure you know how to check for counterfeit bills – see Know Your Money from the US. Secret Service for more info), cashier’s check or Paypal.

• Robbery (or worse) Scam

Only meet a seller in a public place.  Never enter an unknown seller’s house or allow an unknown buyer to enter your house. ‘Nuff said.

Have you ever been scammed on Craigslist or do you have any more suggestions on how to avoid being scammed?  Please let me know in a comment.

For those of you who’ve been wondering – here’s a housing update for the Morris Family:

• Our current house is due to close escrow on Wednesday, May 30th (maybe a day or two later due to the holiday).
• We have finally found a rental house and should be able to move in by the first week in June.

Not sure if we’re going to have any overlap or not, but God has provided thus far, so we are not worrying.

And now an important book announcement:

After Sunday, June 3rd, the Peace and Quiet series will no longer be available on the blog.  That’s because starting Monday, June 4th, it will be available for purchase as a short story for Amazon Kindle!!  Once I get it published in Kindle format I will try to make it available for other formats as well.

Thank you all for your support;