On May 31st I ran a Holiday Contest where a second entry could be earned for sharing a frugal, deal hunting, couponing, or rebating tip! Some were common sense, some were “wow, I never thought of that!”, some I disagreed with, and some were, er, umm dicey.
So, what I thought I’d do over the next month is take five of those responses daily and give you my take on the advice. I’d love for people to add their thoughts and ideas too. And if this seems familiar, yup I did this last year too! I LOVE my reader’s tips and ideas. No matter how long you play this “game” you can always learn something new. Thank you all for providing your wisdom and insight!
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Aimee
I am rather new to this, but my biggest tip is ORGANIZATION!!!
I have two small children(2 & 5M) and I have to take them with me to the grocery store because of my DH work schedule. So my game plan is I get prepared by having a coupon clipping party with my 2yr old. We sit down with our inserts and scissors and stapler. I go through the inserts first and start clipping and as I clip I pass along the pages I don’t need to her so she can ‘clip’ too! Then I use a three ring binder with baseball card protectors to organize coupons according to subject & date. That way I am ready to go when we enter the store. I also have a coupon envelope that I let her carry while we are shopping. When I put an item in the cart I put the matching coupon in the envelope. Then we know we have everything together when we go to check out!
Shopping with little ones is such fun Aimee! Sounds like you have it all under control.
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Wendy
My friend goes to the local baseball diamond and collects all the bottle caps for My Coke Rewards. (Lucky me, I get his extras.) It does pay to enter the caps as you can get coupons for free drinks or money towards sneakers at NIKE. I paid $6 for my last pair of Nike’s at the outlet store
Aren’t you luck to have such a good friend, Wendy!
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Dina
Save all your receipts in case there is a rebate.
I used to save them for years! They were all in envelopes, by date and whenever a corresponding rebate came along, I was set. Now that so many rebates have start dates, or buy-between dates, I seldom save my CRTs longer than 3-4 months.
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Pat
As I leave Walgreens, I always check my receipt when I get to the car. I match up to make sure I got the price and the RR that I was expecting. I write in pencil on each RR what the item and or company was that I got it for so when I go to use them I can easily check out the next time.
If something did not ring up right, I then return it immediately.Often the manager, if they have time, will help figure out why a reward did not ring up.
It is a good Idea to check every store receipt and settle the issue immediately if there is a problem. Thanks Pat!
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Maura
Make a section of your binder dedicated to catalinas and ECBs! I was forever losing them – but once I put them in my binder I never lost another. Simple but def works!
Thanks for the tip Maura!
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