Tip: Coupons

Did you know, each year over 1.2 BILLION coupons are produced for non grocery items and a third of those are never redeemed? Yeah, that's a LOT of coupons and money wasted. Consumer Reports has a great article on how to take advantage of coupons and the tricks that coupon pros use to get the most out of those money saving pieces of paper.

Tip: Upromise & Ebates

Every time I shop online I always check 2 places for savings Upromise and Ebates. Here's why: both sites offers savings discounts and special sales codes to their members. In addition to special sales and deals, they also give you a percentage back for your purchases if you shop through them. Upromises gives you money back for education (to be transferred into a 529 account and it can only be used for education such as college) and Ebates gives you cash back which you can cash out once you've accumulated $5.01.

How do I choose which one to go with? Well, I check both sites and which one would give me a bigger percentage back for the store I want to shop at. Sometimes Upromise gives a bit more back, sometimes Ebates does. It really varies and depends.

Another thing to think about is, the money given back from Upromise can't be touched or accessed without penalty. It cannot be withdrawn from the Upromise account and the only way to access it is to link a 529 educational account to it. There are pros and cons to this of course, with the biggest pro for me being that it forces me to save for my kids' college fund. The con is I can't access it...which is actually a good thing.

In addition to online savings and cash back towards education, Upromise also have tons of coupons you can load up your grocery store cards with! You simply add your grocery cards (all of them!) to your account because buying select brands of items also gets you cash back. Then go to their list of eCoupons, and with a few clicks, all available coupons you want have been loaded to your grocery cards. No software download, no printing, no ink, no paper.

The pro with Ebates is you get the cash back in a check or PayPal. The con is, well...I personally haven't had too much luck with Ebates. The one time I remembered to shop through them I never got the credit and because I shop through Upromise so much more, I couldn't remember which merchant it was that I used through Ebates to get them to give me the credit so it was lost. I'm not ready to give up on them yet. I personally know someone who has received a check from Ebates (I've seen the physical check myself) so I know they're legit. I recently shopped through them again. Hopefully I'll get my credit without problems.

On occasion, you'll come across a merchant who isn't very on top of the ball when it comes to their donations, so you have to contact Upromise or Ebates to get your credit. For me, Best Buy was the worst in this. Every single time I made a purchase through Best Buy I've had to wait the 45 business day period to see if my credit showed up in Upromise and every single time, it wouldn't make it there and I have to contact Upromise to investigate. Upromise has always been great about it and always saw that I got the credit I deserve.

Freezing food

It's a commonly known fact that freezing food is a great way to save money. Do you freeze food? Do you want to start but don't know the skinny? Do you know how long frozen food is good for?

The Consumerist has a list of articles that can steer you in the right direction!

• Freezing food - how to get started
• 20 ways to make the most of your groceries
• How long will frozen food last?
• Keep it or toss it?

Coupons tips: Bricks - a quick tutorial

I previously mentioned in this post that in many cases, if an online printable coupon is issued through Bricks, you can request to have them mail you a coupon via snail mail instead of printing it online. This comes in very handy for a number of reasons including if you don't want to install the printing software or have printer issues. The coupon arrives pretty quickly, usually within a week or two in my experience. It's really simple to request a mailed coupon, but here are some instructions and screen shots anyway, just because it looks purdy. :p

When you get to a Bricks coupon site, it'll look like this. To request a coupon, simply click on the "Help" link on the lower right hand corner of the screen.

(Click to enlarge)

Once you've clicked on the "Help" link, you'll land at a screen that looks like this, or it may generate a new browser window, depending on your browser and settings.

(Click to enlarge)

Fill out the form and voila! They will mail you one copy of the coupon, regardless of how many you could've print at home had you printed it. Once you've requested a coupon to be mailed it will not allow you to go back to attempt to print it.

Keep in mind that while Bricks is the only one that allows this option (though they all share the same coupon software) you can only request a coupon if the vendor/merchant allows this feature. Usually they do, but I've ran across at least one that doesn't. If it doesn't you'll get a message informing you.

Tip - recipes & print jobs

I used to eat out a lot. I admit it, I was lazy. In fact, I once justified my excessive dining out habits by saying and convincing myself that eating out costs just as much as cooking at home once you factor in water usage, electricity/gas, and the energy it takes to clean up afterward.

I'll wait while you laugh at me. :)


Now I know better though. I cook at home now. A lot. I enjoy it now. Not only is it cheaper...much cheaper, but I can better manage what's in my food...including that stray dog hair, but hey at least I know where it's from, right? ;)

One thing that comes with cooking at home are recipes. I love collecting recipes and trying new recipes because I have a luxurious tastes when it comes to food. I love to eat gourmet, and I actually don't mind cooking gourmet...as long as I have a recipe to follow.  I have hundreds of recipes saved...at last count, over 500 of them. Now if I were to print each one out, many of which are at least two pages long, that would take two reams of paper and a LOT of ink...things that costs money. Not to mention my printed recipes tends to walk off.  Here's what I've come up with to save and organize my recipes:

CutePDF

CutePDF is a program that allows you to print things to a .pdf format and save them on your computer rather than printing it out on paper. I .pdf all my recipes then organize them into folders based on their main ingredient, course, or cuisine.  And of course, I back them up periodically, off site, especially since our external hard drive containing hundreds more of my favorite recipes died. :(  That was a very very sad day for me.