I'm getting a bit nervous. I have only bought about 3 gifts for Christmas, and I actually have quite a number of people to shop for. I think after two weeks of not spending money, I'm anxious about spending a significant amount of money. So I'm trying to sort out the deals available before I hit the stores or start my online shopping. I'm not the real "Coupon Mom" but I have some discounts and coupons to share with you. Does anyone have any other favorite coupons we should watch out for, or great sites with online discounts? Send a comment and let's all save some cash!
1. The Coupon Mom - She's been on TV a lot lately - everything from Oprah to CNN. There are all kinds of coupons on her site. Enjoy! Watch a news article about her online and get inspired!
2. Friends don't let friends pay full retail. Before you order ANYTHING online, go to www.RetailMeNot.com. You can find free shipping, discounts, and special deals. Most involve a code share that you enter before checking out online.
3. Keep your eyes open for a Target Coupon in the mail. I got mine with a catalog that came yesterday - and it's good for $10 off a purchase of $100 or more. If I'm honest with myself, I know I can easily spend $100 at Target, and will soon, so why not get 10% off? (I can always stock up on toilet paper if I can't find anything else to buy...)
4. Orvis - I got a catalog the other day from them with a $25 coupon off any purchase of $50 or more. That's 50% off. And I got another one to share with a friend. If you're local, let me know if you want it... This one is only good in the store.
5. Foot Locker - Friends and Family discount of 30%! Shop online and use promotion code EMFF8C3P. Good only through this Sunday December 7, 2008. If you want to buy in the store, let me know and I can forward the coupon on to you, or try to figure out how to post it. (Attachments on my blog are not exactly my strength yet!)
6. JJill - one of my favorite clothing stores. Sign up for their Take 5 program and you get 10% off your first purchase, and then 5% off every purchase after that, plus an extra 5% on your birthday month. The interest rate is high on the card, so don't do it if you might be tempted to spend beyond your means. Most of your favorite stores probably offer similar programs. Sometimes during the year they offer 10% off for Take 5 members.
7. Send me some of your ideas - help us all save money!
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Saving Cash – Bananas, A Penny a Pound
We love fresh fruits and veggies. But the costs of red peppers, grapes, and bananas can be a lot more than what I want to pay. So today I headed back to the Grand Mart – International Store where I went shopping the day after we ended our two weeks of spending no money. Today, my focus was largely on vegetables. But some deals were too good to pass up.
I bought bananas for 1 cent a pound! There was a limit of a little bag of bananas, but hey, I only paid a penny for them! Limes were 10 cents each. Grapes, a very reasonable price, unlike the grocery store I was at yesterday. I'm including a picture of my beautiful produce to show you what I got for less than $7.30, including sales tax. Amazing! Is it organic? No. And maybe next time I'll pay better attention to the pros and cons of that… I have read that certain fruits and vegetables absorb more pesticide and so it's more important to buy organic in those cases. But the low price and apparent quality of the produce is quite impressive, organic or not.
In a big metropolitan area, you could probably find an international store like this one. Even in a small town, you may find a place that caters to a more international community, and the prices may be lower than your large, local grocery store. Produce prices are always incredible. I'm lucky that ours is on the way to the doctor's office, so I can just stop in on my way home. It makes shopping there very convenient.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Saving Cash - Stupid, Sneaky Charges - Cancelled!
It seems one of the best ways to save money is to stop spending it, especially on things you absolutely don't need, or don't use. With our money-tracking software, we looked at our credit card bills, and found some charges that seemed odd.
1. Diet and Fitness online tool that hadn't been used in AGES. This was costing us about $20/month, for a service we didn't use at all any more. Probably paid for it for at least 6 months. Cancelled.
2. Web domain registration of a screen name we like. We thought we might use it for a business someday, but I doubt that will happen. I need to figure out how to cancel this one.
3. Reward points - I supposedly (mistakenly) signed up for a rewards program when I ordered from a catalog. They charged me $1.95 for a trial month, and for doing the trial, I was supposed to get $15 off my next order with the company. Then I automatically started getting charged $14.95 a month, to be in this rewards program. I'm still not sure how it happened, but the customer service rep was pretty nice in canceling the $14.95 (x2) charges that I had received so far, and has canceled the program entirely, so we won't get any more charges. Cancelled.
4. Watch out for the "totally free" trial periods online, because you often then start getting charged. We recently did one of these "free" trials. It was free, but then it started costing $59/month. We ended up paying for two months. This was a service that I actually enjoyed, but wasn't worth $59/month to me. Cancelled!
There are more ways for us to trim the fat, but now I think we'll be moving on to a closer look at our insurance (car and home) and our telecommunications next.
1. Diet and Fitness online tool that hadn't been used in AGES. This was costing us about $20/month, for a service we didn't use at all any more. Probably paid for it for at least 6 months. Cancelled.
2. Web domain registration of a screen name we like. We thought we might use it for a business someday, but I doubt that will happen. I need to figure out how to cancel this one.
3. Reward points - I supposedly (mistakenly) signed up for a rewards program when I ordered from a catalog. They charged me $1.95 for a trial month, and for doing the trial, I was supposed to get $15 off my next order with the company. Then I automatically started getting charged $14.95 a month, to be in this rewards program. I'm still not sure how it happened, but the customer service rep was pretty nice in canceling the $14.95 (x2) charges that I had received so far, and has canceled the program entirely, so we won't get any more charges. Cancelled.
4. Watch out for the "totally free" trial periods online, because you often then start getting charged. We recently did one of these "free" trials. It was free, but then it started costing $59/month. We ended up paying for two months. This was a service that I actually enjoyed, but wasn't worth $59/month to me. Cancelled!
There are more ways for us to trim the fat, but now I think we'll be moving on to a closer look at our insurance (car and home) and our telecommunications next.
Saving Cash - November in Review
As most of your know, we spent two weeks of November trying not to spend any money. In the end, we did buy gas for the cars, and one $6 splurge of snacks at the grocery store. But I think that's all we spent, aside from regularly scheduled bills. I didn't think we had a massive rebound spending after those two weeks were up, but... are we really saving cash?
Well, let me first say that we are currently tracking all our spending on Money and at Mint.com. I would highly recommend that you find ONE software and stick with it. It's really ridiculous to try to use two different programs to do the same thing. We paid for Money, but Mint is free. We still haven't set every little detail up on either one, but we're working on it. We know it's hard to evaluate your spending and to set goals for the future if you don't know where your money is going today. We found some discrepancies for the month of November in the two money-tracking systems, but after a little work, they ended up showing us a similar picture. (I can't believe this, but I can't for the life of me find where I saved our Money file from November 30 on my computer.) So here's the update as we see it on Mint.
We have a category which is called Food and Dining. It can then be broken down by store or restaurant. In October, when we were living normally, we spent $1738 in this category. In November, we spent $956. So in November, we saved $782 in this area! Obviously, food is one of our biggest variable expenditures, whether it is in the form of groceries or eating out. The fact that we stopped spending money for two weeks certainly helped.
So breaking it down a little more:
October grocery spending was - $894
November grocery spending was - $756
This $140 savings wasn't as extreme as I would have liked to see. Initially, I was very disappointed, and wondered why we spent so much in November. But then I considered all the extra shopping and stocking up on frozen meat and fish that we did in Pennsylvania at Wegman's grocery store, and I felt much better. We have around a month's meat and fish in our freezer now, and it may last even longer. Then I examined our spending even more, and found about $160 of the $756 was special for Thanksgiving. We bought several nice bottles of wine to share at dinner with the 13 people there, and also some good French and Spanish cheeses, with yummy crackers too. If we had planned ahead, we may have been able to get better deals, but we spent what we spent. Now we'll have to plan better for Christmas. I think it's easy to say that we splurged for a special occasion, but it seems there is always a holiday, birthday, company, or some other "special event" that we could use to try to justify frequent splurges. So we'll work on that!
What about dining out?
October - $844 (includes restaurants, coffee shops, snacks, etc)
November - $200 (now that's much better - but we want to get it even lower!)
What about shopping in general? This includes shoes, clothing, books, electronics and software.
October - $1171
November - $224
Wow. I hadn't realized that we spent so much in October. I know we were buying some needed clothes in October, but what about the rest of it? This is certainly something to carefully examine in the next few weeks.
And entertainment, including DVDs, movies, music, magazines, books, the arts?
October - $253
November - $100
Lastly - personal care (includes hair cuts, massages, manicures, pedicures, makeup, skin care)
October - $313
November - $0
I could break it down even more, but for the blog, I have admitted our greatest short-comings, and the areas that everyone probably wants to look at when trying to save cash. Let me tell you, even though my blog doesn't have an enormous readership, it's still quite humbling to admit all this!
So in the end, did stopping our spending for two weeks help?
Yes! It definitely did.
First, it helped us by saving cash for those two weeks. And then it made us want to spend even less in the weeks that followed. At the end of the month, this "experiment" may have saved us around $2200. And although this month would be an extremely difficult time of year to stop spending money, I would recommend it at some point for anyone who wants to save money in the short-term, and reevaluate spending patterns in the longer term.
Well, let me first say that we are currently tracking all our spending on Money and at Mint.com. I would highly recommend that you find ONE software and stick with it. It's really ridiculous to try to use two different programs to do the same thing. We paid for Money, but Mint is free. We still haven't set every little detail up on either one, but we're working on it. We know it's hard to evaluate your spending and to set goals for the future if you don't know where your money is going today. We found some discrepancies for the month of November in the two money-tracking systems, but after a little work, they ended up showing us a similar picture. (I can't believe this, but I can't for the life of me find where I saved our Money file from November 30 on my computer.) So here's the update as we see it on Mint.
We have a category which is called Food and Dining. It can then be broken down by store or restaurant. In October, when we were living normally, we spent $1738 in this category. In November, we spent $956. So in November, we saved $782 in this area! Obviously, food is one of our biggest variable expenditures, whether it is in the form of groceries or eating out. The fact that we stopped spending money for two weeks certainly helped.
So breaking it down a little more:
October grocery spending was - $894
November grocery spending was - $756
This $140 savings wasn't as extreme as I would have liked to see. Initially, I was very disappointed, and wondered why we spent so much in November. But then I considered all the extra shopping and stocking up on frozen meat and fish that we did in Pennsylvania at Wegman's grocery store, and I felt much better. We have around a month's meat and fish in our freezer now, and it may last even longer. Then I examined our spending even more, and found about $160 of the $756 was special for Thanksgiving. We bought several nice bottles of wine to share at dinner with the 13 people there, and also some good French and Spanish cheeses, with yummy crackers too. If we had planned ahead, we may have been able to get better deals, but we spent what we spent. Now we'll have to plan better for Christmas. I think it's easy to say that we splurged for a special occasion, but it seems there is always a holiday, birthday, company, or some other "special event" that we could use to try to justify frequent splurges. So we'll work on that!
What about dining out?
October - $844 (includes restaurants, coffee shops, snacks, etc)
November - $200 (now that's much better - but we want to get it even lower!)
What about shopping in general? This includes shoes, clothing, books, electronics and software.
October - $1171
November - $224
Wow. I hadn't realized that we spent so much in October. I know we were buying some needed clothes in October, but what about the rest of it? This is certainly something to carefully examine in the next few weeks.
And entertainment, including DVDs, movies, music, magazines, books, the arts?
October - $253
November - $100
Lastly - personal care (includes hair cuts, massages, manicures, pedicures, makeup, skin care)
October - $313
November - $0
I could break it down even more, but for the blog, I have admitted our greatest short-comings, and the areas that everyone probably wants to look at when trying to save cash. Let me tell you, even though my blog doesn't have an enormous readership, it's still quite humbling to admit all this!
So in the end, did stopping our spending for two weeks help?
Yes! It definitely did.
First, it helped us by saving cash for those two weeks. And then it made us want to spend even less in the weeks that followed. At the end of the month, this "experiment" may have saved us around $2200. And although this month would be an extremely difficult time of year to stop spending money, I would recommend it at some point for anyone who wants to save money in the short-term, and reevaluate spending patterns in the longer term.
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