Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Extreme Couponing: Fad or Lifestyle

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Ever since TLC decided that it would make for good reality television to follow around a bunch of folks who use coupons and dub them “Extreme Couponers”, there’s been a ton of talk about the people on the show, and people like them.  People who spend hours each day clipping coupons and then checking them against store fliers all so they can create spreadsheets and action plans on how to best use the coupons in order to pay the least amount of money for whatever it is that they are buying.

So far, I’ve avoided talking about these people.  I figure it’s about time that I make my thoughts known.  What kind of personal finance site would Beating Broke be if we didn’t talk about one of the hottest topics in the personal finance world.  My immediate take upon watching an episode of the show was that the people on it are a bit OCD.  I like my money, and I’d rather not part with it if I don’t have to, but not so badly that I’m going to buy several hundred tubes of toothpaste.  Or several hundred of anything for that matter.  I also don’t buy the “I saved $xxx” argument.  If you hadn’t gone to the store in the first place, you would have saved every penny you spent.

Coupons can play a somewhat important role in your shopping.  But, it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as all that.  My wife, for instance, is on a coupon train that Extreme Couponing: Getting ready for my big shopping trip!she joined through Swapmamas.  Every week or so, she gets a big envelope that’s bursting at the seam with coupons that the person who sent them to her just couldn’t use.  She’ll sort through them while we’re watching T.V. or lying in bed at the end of the day.  She carries the ones she keeps in a nice little accordion pocket organizer that she bought for that reason, then sends the rest off to the next person on the train.  When we go shopping, we try to make a list and she’ll take 10-15 minutes to flip through the coupons to see if we have any sams club coupons or similar that we can use.  We don’t get results like the folks on that show, but it’s not out of the ordinary to save anywhere from 5% to 20% on any given trip.  On stuff we were going to buy anyways.

Extreme couponing has become a bit of a fad.  People are watching shows like the one on TLC and thinking they can do the same thing.  Some of them are going to less than honest means to achieve those goals and are stealing papers from dispensers just to get to the valuable coupons in the inserts.  When you have to steal to save your money, you really need to draw that line and get some help.  Done right, couponing can be something that is hardly intrusive at all, and that can save you some money.  Done right, it can become a bit of a lifestyle.

Some say they just don’t have the time to use coupons, but I think they have a somewhat distorted view of the time involved.  It doesn’t have to be time consuming, and the returns can be rewarding.  Give it a try.  Next thing you know, you’ll be buying two of those Sunday papers.

photo credit: bargainbri

Originally published on 8/15/2011

Take Advantage of Super Bowl Sales to Save Money

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Super Bowl 2013 is on February 3, only a week away.  If you’re a football fan, you’re probably counting down the days and planning your Super Bowl party.  Your whole day, indeed your whole weekend, may revolve around the Super Bowl.

However, if you’re like me, you aren’t a big football fan.  In fact, I have no idea which teams are even heading to the Super Bowl this year. (Ed. note: 49ers vs. Ravens)

Still, fan or not, the week before Super Bowl is the perfect time to save some money, and lots of it.  The Super Bowl is a national, cultural event, and many sales revolve around Super Bowl viewing “necessities.”

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some things you may want to buy and stock up on while they’re cheap during the week before Super Bowl:

Super Bowl SavingsTelevisions – If you’re in need of a new television, you’re likely to see the lowest prices now, the week before the Super Bowl.  The prices now are often even better than those on Black Friday.  Of course, if you don’t need a tv, this isn’t a good deal, but if you’ve been thinking about replacing yours, now is the time to do it.

Cable/satellite packages – If you don’t yet have cable or you want to switch providers, now is the time.  Cable and satellite companies hope to snag new sports enthusiasts during the big game, and some cultural Super Bowl events, such as the notorious Lingerie Bowl, can only be seen on cable (as well as the much more benign Puppy Bowl).

NFL apparel – Get your favorite team’s jersey at a significant discount this week.  Even Victoria’s Secret gets in on this by offering discounted pink NFL gear.

Beverages – If you’re a family of soda drinkers, don’t buy your pop at full price.  Stock up during Super Bowl and buy enough to last you through the next big soda sale, which usually happens around Memorial Day.  Bottled water is also often on sale.  We only buy bottled water for our car trips when driving to conferences, but it’s nice to buy it when it’s at rock bottom price.

Snack foods – If you have a teenage boy or another member of the family who can’t get enough of snacks like nachos, chips, and cheese curls, now is the time to buy them while they are cheap.  True, you may need to hide them from your snack monster so they’re not devoured in a few days, but again, you can stock up and save for the next several months until they go on sale again around Memorial Day.

Don’t forget that other condiments like ketchup, mustard, and salsa may also be on sale now.

Foods you can freeze – You’ll also likely find chicken and ground beef on sale, as well as cheese.  Don’t forget that you can freeze these items, so stock up and feed your family for the rest of the winter with meat that you got on sale.

Whether you’re a Super Bowl fan or not, this week is the perfect week to stock up on some basics and buy some luxuries at a steep discount.

What is your favorite item to buy during Super Bowl sales?

Stacking Discounts for the Win

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I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to shopping for stuff.  I like to get the best price (don’t we all?), so I often find myself shopping around a lot when it comes to buying anything that’s higher priced.  And, so long as my patience holds out, I usually do end up getting a good price on whatever it is that I’m shopping for.

Most recently, I needed to buy a new set of tires for our Suburban.  Now, if you’ve bought tires for anything recently, you know that they aren’t very cheap.  In fact, they can be downright expensive.  The bigger they are, the bigger the price tag too.  Winter is almost upon us, though, so it was time to bite the bullet and get shopping.  I looked around locally first, wanting to keep money local if possible.  That was silly.  $150 a tire?  That’s crazy.

So, geek that I am, I went looking online.  There’s several online tire dealers and they usually have decent prices.  I found one that had a good price on a good tire.  Closer to $120 a tire.  That’s better, but still not great.  I noticed that a different model of tire had a nice rebate attached to them.  $75 off a set of 4.  Getting better.  Closer to $100 a tire. The rebate didn’t expire until November 6th, so I had some time to shop around.

Then I got an email from eBay.  eBay has a program called eBay Bucks where you get a certain % of your purchase back as an eBay certificate to use on your next purchase.  In the email, they told me that there was a 48 hour special.  Buy from a list of select shops and earn 20% back in eBay Bucks.  The tire shop that I had been looking at was featured right on the front page of that special list.  Rock on!

After a bit of searching through their store, I managed to find the exact same tire I had been looking at, for the exact same price that they had it for on their website.  Except, now I get 20% back from eBay too.  The deal just got a whole lot sweeter!

Not to be outdone, and wanting to save as much as I possibly could on the tires, I went looking for extra deals that I could stack to save even more money.  Which is where Discover comes in.  Each quarter, Discover runs a bonus program for their cashback program.  Instead of the normal 2% cash back on purchases, they bump it up to 5% on certain categories.  In the third quarter, the category was hotels and travel.  I used that when I went to Denver.  In the fourth quarter, the category is online shopping.  I’m assuming that’s a clever ploy to get people to pay for their online holiday shopping with their Discover card.  Well played, Discover, well played. But, I’m just buying some tires today. 😉

Discover card in hand, I went on over to the eBay store, and bought some tires!

  • 4 Tires: $472  (with free shipping)
  • Rebate: -$75
  • eBay Bucks: -~$94
  • Discover Cash Back: -~$24
  • Total: $279 (or about $70 a tire.)
  • Stacking discounts, cash back, and rebates for the win: Priceless

Taking my time, making sure I checked for all the possible discounts and rebates I could, then stacking them all where possible saved me a ton of money!  Granted, most of that is in the form of cash back.  The eBay Bucks must be used on eBay but we actually buy a fair amount of stuff on eBay because it’s generally far cheaper than anywhere else.  We haven’t bought hardly any Christmas presents yet, so I’m sure we’ll find a good use for it, and we’ll save on that stuff too.  The Discover cashback can be redeemed for gift cards and such, but I prefer to build it up over $50 and then use it as a credit on my account.  And, the rebate, when it comes (why does it take forever to get those?), will likely be used to buy some groceries or something that we would have already been buying anyways! Plus, we needed the tires, so we were going to be buying tires anyways.  (I don’t suggest you do this for frivolous things you don’t need!)

One other note, that’s probably specific to this purchase and not, necessarily, others is that some tire places will charge you a bit extra to mount the tires if you buy them elsewhere.  I’m aware of that, and will probably try and bargain that down a bit, but it makes some sense.  There’s a new local (not a chain) tire shop in town, anyways, so I’ll likely take it up there and pay the small premium to give the local guy some business.  Even if they charge me $25 a tire to mount them (I think it’s closer to $12), the total cost per tire will still be well below what the original price would have been.  And, if I had paid that original price, I still would have had to pay to have them mounted, so I still win!

Do you try and stack discounts?  When was the last time you had a win in discount stacking?  What was it for?