Best Bargains of 2011

Every summer Kiplinger's Personal Finance scours the landscape for irresistible deals on everything from cars and college to tech and travel. Furniture and free ATMs? Got them here, too. Check out our annual guide to markdowns, discounts, and strategies to save you money.

Snag It Now

Hawaiian Island hop. Head to Hawaii in mid September and save $782 over a mid-July trip. The tour of Oahu, Kauai, Maui and the Big Island from BeachDestinations.com includes 12 nights' lodging and round-trip airfare from Los Angeles for two. Cost: $2,849.

An exotic Chinese adventure. Visit Beijing and Shanghai in November and spend $2,731 -- compared with a mid-July price of nearly $4,000. The trip for two includes round-trip airfare from Boston, a flight from Beijing to Shanghai, and hotel stays for three nights in each city. Book at Trip-Masters.com.
Cook out, eat in. Eating in restaurants is pricey. Cooking at home is a chore. Split the difference by attending a meal-prep session at a professional kitchen operated by Dinners Done Right or Make & Take Gourmet. The companies provide ingredients, utensils, recipes, containers and food prep. You assemble the meals and bring them home to freeze and cook later. Cost: about $4 to $6 per serving.
Chevrolet Impala. The Impala gets a refresh for 2012, but the '11 is selling for an average of 22% below the starting sticker price of $25,215, according to TrueCar.com. The Impala gets nearly 30 miles per gallon on the highway.
Cadillac DTS. Last chance to get the classic Cadillac cruiser; the DTS bows out this year. At 19% below the $47,600 starting sticker, you can justify extras such as the lane-departure warning and blind-spot alert package ($695).
Nissan Armada. Nissan's biggest SUV has three rows of seats and 20 cubic feet of cargo space behind the third row -- but with gas prices high, sales have been slow. Pick up the Armada (starting at $38,885) for 17% off sticker.
Chevrolet Aveo. The Aveo will be replaced by the Chevy Sonic for 2012, so dealers are pushing it off the lots at 19% off sticker price (starting at $12,725). The subcompact gets 27 mpg in the city, 35 on the highway.
Cheap tunes. Just because you play songs on iTunes doesn't mean that you have to buy them from the Apple Store. As Amazon attempts to attract music customers, it often undercuts iTunes prices. Its MP3 Daily Deal offers a deeply discounted album, usually to the tune of $3.99. Recent offerings include rapper Jay-Z's debut Reasonable Doubt and The Civil Wars' Barton Hollow.
Best time to buy furniture. New furniture hits showrooms in August, according to the American Home Furnishing Alliance. That means you can save 10% to 50% in July as retailers make room for the new inventory. January is another good time to buy, as new inventory arrives in February.
Lock in your kids' tuition. In 13 states, you can still prepay in-state tuition years in advance, protecting yourself against future tuition hikes. See whether your state offers a prepaid-tuition plan at the College Savings Plans Network. If your student wants to attend a private school, look into the Private College 529 Plan, which offers a similar arrangement for more than 270 participating private colleges.
Fire sale on ETFs. The cost of owning -- and buying -- exchange-traded funds keeps coming down. The annual expense ratio for Focus Morningstar US Market Index, an ETF that tracks the entire U.S. stock market, and Focus Morningstar Large Cap Index, a fund that tracks large-company stocks, is 0.05%. The largest (and oldest) ETF, SPDR S&P 500, charges 0.09% annually. Meanwhile, a growing number of discount brokers, including Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade and E*Trade, are letting their clients trade selected ETFs without commissions. And Scottrade customers can trade all 15 FocusShares ETFs, which Scottrade sponsors, for no charge.
0% balance transfers. Cut your credit card interest rate to 0% for 21 months by transferring a balance to the Citi Platinum Select MasterCard or Citi Diamond Preferred Card -- among the longest offers available. Note that there's a 3% transaction fee.
Snag It Now: For Free
Free ATM Withdrawals. Open a checking account at Ally, Schwab Bank or E*Trade (all FDIC-insured) for a rebate on fees at any U.S. ATM. None of the accounts requires a minimum balance or charges a monthly fee, and all offer free online bill pay. Or open an account at one of about 1,000 banks and credit unions that belong to the Allpoint network, which includes 43,000 surcharge-free ATMs worldwide.
Manage Your Tech-Files for Free. When you upgrade to a new computer, it probably won't come with Microsoft Office, and you'll pay $115 (at Amazon) for the basic suite. Instead, try Google Docs or OpenOffice. Both offer basic word processing, spreadsheets and multimedia presentations.
Comp Your Computer Storage. Need a place to store and share files? Windows Live SkyDrive (25 gigabytes of free space) lets you upload music files, documents, photos and videos. Bonus: You can create and edit Microsoft Office files in your SkyDrive browser window and save them directly to your account -- no Office download required. You can also use Dropbox (2GB free; $120 per year for 50GB) or Amazon Cloud Drive (5GB free; $20 per year for 20GB).
Get a Steal on Security. You don't have to pay $70 a year for security software. Avast Antivirus and Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows get good reviews from tech experts and offer basic defenses, including malware protection.
Sign Up with an Online Tutor. Tired of trying to teach your kid the difference between sine and cosine? Ask your school or local library whether it provides access to free online tutoring, such as Tutor.com and SkillsTutor.com. These sites offer tutors in a range of subjects and let students and tutors communicate online.
Source: Yahoo