Coupons

Groupon is offering a deal today on the Children's Museum in Portland. Normally admission is $8 each. Today only you can get two tickets for $8. If you like it, you should buy a membership, it is well worth it.

If that doesn't make you happy, perhaps the Portland Pilots would make you a little more enthusiastic. Groupon also has a side deal right now offering $30 for 10 General-Admission Flex Tickets to Portland Pilots Soccer ($75 Value). I have a membership to the Children's Museum, so won't be getting that deal, but I am interested in the Pilots. Been a long time since I've been to a professional sporting event. Could be a lot of fun!

Albertson's is going to stop selling Jolly-Time Popcorn. Jolly-Time is a smaller organization and needs your help to stay in the shelves. They will give you 2 coupons for free popcorn just for showing your support. All you have to do is send an email to makeadifference@jollytime.com by August 15th, 2010 with the following information:

• State: “I prefer and am loyal to JOLLY TIME Pop Corn and will shop at another store to purchase JOLLY TIME if necessary.”
• Your name and Mailing Address (so they can mail you 2 coupons for FREE popcorn)
• Street & City of the Albertson’s store you normally shop
• Your favorite JOLLY TIME Pop Corn product.

Please remember to send to the email above. Please don't leave a contact below with your address!

Go over to http://blizzardfanclub.com/ and join the Blizzard Fan Club. You will get a buy one get one free coupon in your email a couple minutes later.

Have you ever heard of the crazy couponers who get $144.96 worth of groceries for pennies? Well, Elizabeth and I went to Rite-Aid yesterday and did it too. We may not have done quite as well as some of them, but I think we did pretty well. A couple of Items I think we could have done better on, but we only go things we regularly use (with one exception).

The exception was that I got two new razors. I usually use a single blade, because I have sensitive skin and thick beard hear. One of the razors was originally $12.99 and I got it for $0.99. The other was $9.99 and I got it for -$6.00. That's right, I am getting paid $6.00 to try it. I've not decided if I'm going to try them and see if they do better on my beard or if I'm going to give them to a charity.

Now, to do this takes a little planning. To be honest, since we are new to this it took us a little longer than it would someone who is more seasoned. Still, the four hours we spent on making the list and doing the shopping was worth it to save $134.60. Now, you might say "shut up Jason and tell us how you did it!" so I will.

First, I checked out several sites that listed deals. I saw a trend that Rite-Aid had some good deals this week. This Beautiful Frugal Life had several great Rite-Aid deals listed. Hip to Save had a bigger list but This Beautiful Frugal Life had some scenarios that were better, so I used both to make my list.

Some of the deals print out coupons on your receipt that are good for money off your next order. To make sure I get to spend these, and not have to carry them around till the next time I come in to the store, I broke the trip into three orders:

note: the total item price is before any rebates. the +up rewards are not counted toward the cost of the item as they came off the next order.

Order 1

Qty	Product	Reg Price	Sale Price	MFG	Store	Other	SCR	Rebates	UP	Total
1	Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razor	$12.99	$9.99	$4.00			$5.00			$5.99
2	Pantene Shampoo	$9.98	$7.00	$1.00					$3.00	$6.00
1	Colgate Pro Clinical Toothpaste	$4.49	$2.99	$1.00					$2.00	$1.99
2	Arm and Hammer Spin Brush My Way Kids	$14.98	$7.49							$7.49
1	$5/20					$5.00				-$5.00
	Total Paid at Register									$16.49
	Rebates sent away for									-$5.00
	Total Paid after Rebates									$11.49

Order 2

Qty	Product	Reg Price	Sale Price	MFG	Store	Other	SCR	Rebates	UP	Total
1	Colgate Pro Clinical Toothpaste	$4.49	$2.99	$1.00					$2.00	$1.99
1	Physician's Formula Shimmer Strips Eye Enhancing Mascara Duo	$10.95	$10.95		$5.00			$10.95		$5.95
1	Schick Men's Hydro	$9.99	$9.99	$5.00	$1.00			$9.99		$3.99
1	Clearblue Pregnancy Test 2 ct	$13.99	$9.99				$5.00			$9.99
1	$5/25					$5.00				-$5.00
2	Up Rewards (from above)					$5.00				-$5.00
	Total Paid at Register									$11.92
	Rebates sent away for									-$25.92
	Total REFUND after Rebates									-$14.02

Order 3

Qty	Product	Reg Price	Sale Price	MFG	Store	Other	SCR	Rebates	UP	Total
2	Kellogs Raisin Bran	$9.58	$3.98	$1.50						$2.48
2	Corn Pops	$8.98	$3.98							$3.98
2	Corn Flakes	$8.98	$3.98	$1.50						$2.48
2	Rice Krispies	$9.58	$3.98	$1.00			$5.00			$2.98
2	Naproxen Sodium	$25.98	$12.99							$12.99
2	Up Rewards (from above)					$2.00				-$2.00
1	$5/25					$5.00				-$5.00
	Total Paid at Register									$17.91
	Rebates sent away for									-$5.00
	Total paid after Rebates									$12.91

Now, I'll point out a mistake I made so that you might not make the same mistake. Notice on Order two that there are two items in the "rebate" column. Unlike the Single Check Rebates from Rite-Aid, the mail in rebates both need an "original dated receipt." That means I can only send in for one of the rebates. I'll go to Rite-Aid and see if they can give me a duplicate receipt, but I doubt it. I'll let you know if it works

As I have recently mentioned, coupons are a great way to save money. You can easily save 50%+ on your grocery bill with some work. It does take time, but not as much time as it would take to make the money that you save. Rebates are another great way to save some money. With coupons, you save the money at checkout, but with rebates you pay now and get a check later. You can get a rebates on a lot of things. Some companies now offer "instant rebates" which act like coupons, in that you get the rebate instantly, but there are still a lot of rebates that you mail away for.

When you go shopping, be sure to shop the sale items and be sure to use coupons to further improve those savings. Keep your receipts, and look for rebates. When you find a rebate, use you can further increase your savings by sending them in, but there are a few things you need to remember.

Read the instructions! Most rebates will ask for the UPC and the original receipt. Be sure to send what they ask. If you do not follow their instructions completely, you will have wasted both your time and the cost of the stamp. If you have multiple rebates that you want to get on the same receipt, ask the store for multiple copies, when you make the purchase.

You can find rebates in many places. You can find them at manufactures web sites, in newspapers or magazines, or with products you purchase in the store. Even if it is not a rebate you think you will use, you can hold on to it to trade with someone else, or in case you decide you do need it.

Not wanting to work constantly to keep paying for the things we need or want, I'm constantly on the lookout for ways to save money. Do we really need cable TV? No, the digital converter box works just fine. Do I need internet on my phone? No, I have it on my computer. Do we need to go out to dinner once a week? No, but it would be really nice if we could.

Date night is important. We need the time together, to spend those couple hours with just Elizabeth make me feel nice. It is important to her too. But it gets expensive. Spending $35 on a meal really hits the pocket book. How many hours does it take to make that $35 and we blow it in an hour of leisure? Ouch. But we need that personal time... How can we cut the costs?

I've found a couple of options for saving. You can get one of the coupon books that has coupons for eateries or entertainment in your area. Some have 50% savings at restaurants, discounts at movies, plays, museums and more. They offer some great discounts. You should look through them though. Most of the coupons will never get used and you want to save more than you spend on the book. A lot more. Why spend $25 for the book if you are not going to be saving at least $100 off of the coupons?

Another option is to have deals delivered to you. Check out the web sites of your favorite places. They will sometimes have deals listed. You can also use services such as groupon or woot. These guys have a deal a day which is a great deal. With groupon, it only happens if enough people buy it, but you can often find meals at 50% off, and the like. Woot keeps the same deal going until they have sold every item, then they have another deal.

If you don't mind writing a report about you eat, go shopping, whatever, you can also be a secret shopper. There are a lot of places that offer secret shopping jobs to people like you. The DMOZ has a great list of mystery shoppers, but beware of scams. A legit service will never ask you to pay them for a job, nor will they ever send you a check to deposit and then ask you to send them money back.

If you save money on grocery shopping then you can spend that savings on fun things, but saving money using one or more of the above methods is better. Save money good.