Saturday, January 23, 2010

Update and Groupons and Entertainment Book

I do realize that it has been almost a year since I last wrote. I am trying to get back into blogging, and I will try to do weekly sales or give links as well, there are a lot of other blogs out there that have done the work for us! I thank all of them! Also, my friend Amanda may be joining me on this blog, and she is an avid blogger, so w/her help, we can get this blog going!

A few new things I'm gonna discuss right now, Groupons, and buying the Entertainment Book.

Groupons are basically buying mostly gift certificates, vacations, and more at HUGE reduced prices. The catch of it all is that, you can sign up to buy it, but if the quota (say 50 people) have not bought it by the end of the deal, the deal is off. So basically the company will say "We will sell this "item" for 70% off only if 100 people or more buy it). Also be cautious, if you decided to use this and look to see where exactly you can use the groupon, for example, a Quiznos was only good at one specific Quiznos in Dallas, which would of been too far of a drive for me. So I said "no". I have not bought any yet myself, just no deals that I need. But if you like luxury spa packages and good sushi, then Groupon is your place to get the discounts. Just take a look at www.groupons.com.

Next the Entertaiment Book.
Again, look this is up to see if its in your area. But they will have great buy one get on free dinners, and clothing coupons, entertainment coupons, and more. A few of the coupons have Kids Eat Free with purchase of entree. Which is nice for those times the whole family goes out! All you have to do is put in your zip code to see which book would be best for you. You can browse to see what coupons they have, and see if it would work for you! Right now they're on sale, at times they are $35, at others around $20. They start selling them before November, b/c thats when the new book is valid and the old book if you had one has expired. (All coupons are good to Nov 1 of that year, eg: Nov 1 2010).

Well, those are a few tips that I have. I hope you find them helpful, and I will try to update more this upcoming week!

~Curry

P.S. If you are a member of PPBC in Irving, there is Coupon 101 held in Baker Hall each Sunday starting at 4pm. Hope to see you there!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Checkout these links!

My friend Amanda's blog on coupon tips.

Also checkout this new website she discovered: Be Centsable.

If you click here you will see a list of a bunch of stores and links for other blogs. These blogs will keep up with the current deals, and they are a free service. The first part though, you will see national sales for CVS and Walgreens, look at those and find which one helps you the most!

Amanda also has found another website, Taylortown Preview. (yep, shes awesome) This will give a list of coupons from each week. Check it out!

For DFW:
Kroger
Albertsons and Another
Tom Thumb

For Topeka Area:
Dillons

For Houston Area:
Krogers
Tom Thumb

For East Texas:
Brookshires non doubling or tripling (Brookshires is currently doing this"
Brookshires in Mississippi, matched the Texas ad though. They double currently.

I am working on the "how I do it" part of the blog, but here are some links and tips! Enjoy!

Again, I started out on www.grocergame.com, this service is more of how I achieve my great savings, and "trained" me, and how I shop.

Also a huge thanks to Amanda for finding these websites!!!



Tonya

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Link to explain the beginning of the coupon game

The month of February was insane for me, I had plans to start this blog and it did not happen. I did however come across an article that helps explain the basics of the coupon game.

Coupon-clipping means big savings



Gwen Martinez is buying more groceries and health and beauty-care products than ever before — but spending less.

Like a growing number of Americans in this economic downturn, the 29-year-old Martinez is a relatively recent convert to clipping coupons from newspapers and in-store circulars and finding them online.

"I am saving about 69 percent overall," said the Arlington medical secretary, who began in August after a fellow customer at a Walgreen checkout spontaneously handed over a handful of coupons, immediately saving her $10.

Martinez was hooked, and she’s far from alone.

"Coupon clipping is definitely up," said Mark Adamcik, 45, an Albertsons store manager with more than two decades with the chain and its predecessor, Skaggs.

"As the economy tightens up, it makes coupons more appealing."

Get out the scissors

Coupon use rose 15 percent in the last three months of 2008, compared with the same period of 2007, said Charlie Brown, vice president of marketing at NCH, the redemption unit of Livonia, Mich.-based Valassis, which invented the Sunday newspaper coupon sections and owns Red Plum, one of two big coupon companies.

And in a typical year, Americans redeem $3 billion worth of coupons, with fewer and fewer finding themselves too embarrassed to pull out wads of coupons or lug in baseball card albums choked with coupons for breakfast cereal and canned soup.

"There’s less negative stigma attached to coupon use during slower economic times," said Ron Larson, a marketing professor at Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

A recent survey has borne that out.

Nearly 57 percent of 3,013 consumers surveyed nationwide in December admitted that they were once self-conscious about handing over grocery coupons but no longer care because of the money they’re saving, according to a study by ICOM Information & Communications, a provider of marketing data. Twenty-two percent said they were still uncomfortable using the coupons.

Forty-three percent said they’ve used coupons more in the past six months, it said.

Manufacturers of brand-name food products, under pressure from supermarket chain’s cheaper private-label items, bought about 5 percent more coupons in the fourth quarter of 2008 to promote their goods at a time when cost-conscious American families are eating more home-prepared meals, said Suzie Brown, chief of marketing at Valassis and no relation to the NCH executive.

Boxes of coupons

On Thursday evening, Martinez entered an Albertsons in Hurst with a shoebox-sized, purple plastic box containing more than a thousand coupons sorted by category, and picked up the weekly store circular with a front-page of more coupons.

Less than 30 minutes later she wheeled her cart toward cashier Cinda Atkins’ checkout lane with $103.08 worth of groceries.

After her coupons were scanned, Martinez said, "This is my favorite part."

Atkins calls out that the cost was reduced to $61.49 — a savings of $41.59 or slightly more than 40 percent. The customer next in line, who waited patiently as 40 coupons were scanned, shook his head in amazement.

Martinez does even better on health and beauty-care items at two major drug chains, CVS and Walgreen, that brings her monthly average overall savings close to 70 percent.

On Jan. 10, a receipt showed that she paid just $1.05 for $45.45 worth of goods at Walgreen, having combined store coupons providing credits for the entire price of an item with coupons clipped from the newspaper for the same product.

The savings allow her to spend more on food and healthcare goods than before, and to pay down some credit-card bills.

Tricks of the trade

Stephanie Nelson of couponmom.com claims that a family of four can save $100 a week on groceries by clipping coupons. Since 75 percent of grocery coupons come from the Sunday newspaper, she recommends buying two or three copies to save dramatically, then scan the Internet for more.

And some manufacturers are sweetening the deal.

Last year, multiple purchase requirements on health and beauty-care coupons dropped to 6 percent, from 11 percent in 2007. Moreover, expiration dates were lengthened, the average period rising to 2.8 months from 2.6 months, said NCH’s Charlie Brown.

But the opposite was true for grocery coupons, which saw expiration dates reduced to 2.3 months in 2008 from 2.4 the year before. Multiple purchase requirements decreased, but only by a tad, to 35 from 37 percent.

The average value of a coupon distributed today is $1.29, Brown said.

Coupon use and private-label purchases tend to rise during tougher economic times because many people look for ways to save money, said Larson, adding that consumers might also have more time on their hands to clip and sort.

Larson rattled off the grocery coupon’s various effects: They draw attention to a product, lower its price for past buyers and attract new ones, generate consumer "pull" during soft sales periods, remind even nonclippers of the product’s existence, create a marketing synergy benefit when coupled with in-store specials, and they limit growth of private-label competitors.

Hitting home

Despite the manufacturers’ desire to snare a steady buyer with a coupon offer, Martinez says she no longer becomes loyal to a particular brand.

"I’m a sale kind of girl," she said.

Her grocery cart included a mix of national and private-label brands, including a loaf of Albertsons budget Good Day sandwich loaf.

The Minnesota-born Martinez alternates between Kroger and Albertsons, depending on the weekly specials. Both are convenient on her commuting route between Arlington and North Richland Hills, where she works at North Hills Hospital. And both double and triple the value of many coupons. Typically, the big-box discounters like Wal-Mart and Target discount only the face value.

Although some coupons carry fine print saying they cannot be combined with other offers, she learned from Internet couponing forums that most stores don’t mind.

On Thursday, Albertsons staff said they had no objection if the computerized scanning system accepted them.

"Cheese was a really good deal," Martinez said.

Combining offers allowed her to apply an in-store flier coupon putting a $5 sale price on three 8-ounce packages of Kraft-brand cheese along with a newspaper coupon and another won in an online contest.

The combination reduced her cost to 50 cents apiece. The usual retail price of an 8-ounce packet at Albertsons is $2.50.

While few supermarkets make much, if anything, on savvy coupon users like Martinez, she wouldn’t be there without the tiny slips of paper.

Before August, most of her groceries were purchased at Sam’s Club.

"But I stopped after I began couponing, and find I get better deals at supermarkets with coupons," said Martinez, noting that coupons don’t help much in the large bulk quantities at a wholesale club store like Sam’s.

"Frankly, I used to hate grocery shopping," she went on. "It was my most dreaded chore until I started coupon-clipping.

"Now it’s an adventure and a challenge."


Gwen Martinez’s tips on saving big with coupons
Double up. Purchase multiple Sunday newspapers for extra coupon insert sections.

Join reward programs at all the stores and learn how they work.

Read the fine print. A coupon may exclude trial sizes or you may grab an item not included in the offer.

Don’t toss that coupon. You never know when that item will go on sale and become a great deal.

Stock up. Buy multiples when items are on sale.

Be adventurous. Don’t stay loyal to a brand when you can get a far better deal on something new.

Share the savings. Think of a neighbor or someone in your community and pick up the item to donate.

Ask. Even veteran coupon users get useful advice from others so join an online forum or a local coupon club to maximize savings. (Martinez is a member of www.hotcouponworld.com.)