Cats and Coupons

With the holidays approaching people are shopping for friends and loved ones. I work outside of the home as well as inside the home. At the end of the day the last thing I want to do is pack everyone into the car and go to a store to fight crowds and wait on lines. So for the past seven or eight years I have done the majority of my shopping online. One of my favorite stores is Amazon. I can shop for anywhere from two to eight people all on one site. I always check out Amazon books, toys and housewares before shopping anywhere else. They’ve also got a great bargain and clearance section. I compare prices using their site and they offer free shipping on lots of items.

How can you not love online shopping? I click, I pay, I open the door and take them from the delivery guy. It’s definitely my favorite way to shop! What do you think of online shopping?

I have a bunch of membership tags on my key chain. Some are for stores here, one’s for a store in Florida when we go to Walt Disney World and yet another is for a store in upstate New York when we go camping every summer. It’d be great not to worry about carrying all of them all of the tine. I’d love to see all grocery stores use one common club card. They could still run their sales and people would still be able to take advantage of specials, but it would make it easier on the customer. But since that day isn’t likely to happen soon, a site like Just One Club Card is a useful one for people like me.

Just One Club Card allows people to enter card membership numbers for up to eight stores. It’s free to use. After you enter your numbers you print a new card that contains the numbers for all of the ones you entered, allowing you to carry only one card to all stores. He’s even made it possible to add in pet store cards, and other stores. The guy that thought of this had a great idea!

When I went to the grocery store last week I noticed banners all over the Marty’s Shoes store windows saying they were selling everything and going out of business. I have never found anything in my size in there, but know they did have some good bargains. I went past again this past Friday and the stock is dwindling. Now is the time you’re likely to find really good bargains so if you have a Marty’s Shoes near you go take a look. I checked the martyshoes.com website and it says they’re not selling because they’er liquidating and that they’ll be back in November.

As cameras and other gadgets improve and get upgraded it isn’t unusual for the type of removable media that they take to change. AS time goes by families also have different gadgets and each of those might use different media. Instead of buying a card reader for one specific type of media, be sure you check out the multi slot card readers that read many types of media. These readers used to be more expensive but they’ve come way down in price. You can get a decent one now for as little as $10. Overstock has a DNJ USB 2.0 All-in-one Card Reader/ Writer on sale for half off right now at $9.99 that reads 25 different types of cards including SM, SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, CF, MD and XD picture cards. Something like this is an affordable solution for any family.

I was browsing in the Amazon Toy Outlet and found five terrific deals on games. All five of them are in stock.

Monopoly Disney Pixar Edition - SALE $12.79, a savings of 63% on the regular price of $34.99. This is a Monopoly board game featuring play based on the content from the Pixar library. The properties are from the movies Cars and Ratatouille.

Hasbro Transformers Risk Game - SALE $7.50, a savings of 70% on the regular price of $24.99. This is a remake of the classic board game featuring the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Disney Hannah Montana Mattel DVD Game - SALE $7.80, a savings of 70% on the regular price of $25.99. This is a DVD board game based on the Hannah Montana television show featuring trivia, songs, and dance moves from the show.

Hasbro Monopoly Tropical Tycoon DVD Game - SALE $12.15, a savings of 65% on the regular price of $34.99. This is a DVD board game that’s played a little different from the original Monopoly in that the players are given a profession.This game has a tropical theme, with island based properties and utilities.

Scene It? TV Travel DVD Game - SALE $5.10 s savings of 70% on the regular price of $16.99. This is a game intended for travel and requires a dvd player with a screen. Inside the travel tin is the DVD, game board and magnetic tokens. Trivia cards and dice remain on screen.

The CouponCabin website offers what a person might expect when they hear the name - coupons. Users can search for coupons by name and by category, results will show all of the coupons associated with the site searched for. There are at least twenty categories that coupons fall under. There’s even a category just for Vegas. (No Orlando vacations though.) They have special categories containing printable coupons, mall stores, free shipping offers and clearance sales. The site is free to use and does not require registration. The folks at CouponCabin monitor more than 950 stores for new coupons and offer a newsletter containing the hottest coupons.

GasBuddy tells users where to find the lowest price gasoline in their area. On the front is a map of the US in colors of green, yellow, orange and red. The lowest prices are in green and the highest prices are in red. Users can visit GasBuddy on the web as well as access it from their cell phone, and updates are available by text message as well.The prices come from users who voluntarily send in gas prices for stations in their area. Historical gas price charts are available going back for up to six yearsfor those who like to watch trends. GasBuddy is free to use.

Here’s a neat site for those of you that research prices and wait to buy things until they are selling at a price acceptable to you. The site is WishRadar. To use it sign up for a free account. Then input items you want, or import your wish list from Amazon. When the price of an item drops to the price you’ve specified you’ll get an email notifying you. That’s it. One item that we need is outdoor chair cushions. But I always think they’re too expensive for something that will only be used 3-4 months out of the year so I don’t buy them. If I put the cushions and outdoor furniture covers on my list now and use WishRadar I might actually find cushions at a reasonable price.

Price Protectr is a price protection service that allows users to register, or list, online purchases made from any of 134 stores. It’s free to use. All you have to do is put in the url of where you bought the item and your email address. If the price drops you’ll receive an email notification so you can request a refund. There’s also a deals page that allows you to put in keywords and be notified of new price drops. It’s an interesting concept.

I noticed when I went online this morning that my grocery store is now offering the ability to shop online. After shopping you can have your order delivered (in some areas) or you can pick it up at the store and have your car loaded. I am one of those people that goes down almost every aisle when shopping, because every once in a while I see something that didn’t make it onto our grocery list or something that there’s an unadvertised special on. If I were buying online I think I might end up spending less, because I wouldn’t be buying things that I hadn’t planned on buying. But then, who can resist a good unadvertised special on things like shampoo or the best acne treatments? These are the kinds of things I stock up on. What do you think of online grocery shopping?

I found a new site that helps people try to save money. It’s the TheGroceryGame.com.  TheGroceryGame tracks product pricing at many grocery stores in a database, as well as manufacturer coupons and supermarket specials. Users can log in and get a list that matches up coupons with sales and shows that week’s good deals, great deals to stockpile, and free items available at their grocery store. TheGroceryGame offers a free first month trial. After that they charge a nominal fee of $10 for every 8 weeks, which breaks down to $1.25 per week. If you save more than that it becomes worth it to join. Let me know what you think of it if you try it.

I have this compulsion to do lots of research and price comparison before buying something online. I buy many things online, because as a full time working mom I don’t always have time to go to the store. Today I learned about a new website that offers lots of coupon and discount codes. The site is called Retail Me Not.

Retail Me Not is very organized, easy to navigate and pleasant to look at. It offers a browse by category option as well as the ability to search for whatever coupon or store you’re looking for. You do not need to sign up to be a member to use the site. Users can submit their own coupons and discounts to the site as well. Other features offered include printable coupons, user forums and a newsletter. They even offer a Firefox extension that will alert you if any coupon codes are available for a site you’re visiting.

Be sure to check out Retail Me Not during your online shopping trips.

One of my local grocery stores offers discounted items in the back of the store. In one corner near the deli there’s a couple of shelves with discounted bread. Most of the time the bread is a day old. Further along the store, near the middle of the back, is a table where you will find products that are being discontinued. Discounted meats are sold from the meat case obviously, usually they have a sell by date of that day. In the other corner is a group of bins containing discounted or damaged health/beauty and pet products such as expiring flea collars and acne creams, and anything that’s been dented or dinged. Usually the savings is between 25-50 percent off of retail. Does your grocery store have bargain bins?

Yes, that’s right. The title said where to get free sterling silver jewelry. You can get it at the Silver Jewelry Club. I saw this mentioned on the Today show and had to check it out. This site offers free pieces of sterling silver jewelry, all they ask is that you pay a small shipping charge. I ordered a piece and it’s quite pretty, well worth the few dollars I paid for shipping. They only sell a number of pieces at a time and the inventory is always changing so if you’re a jewelry lover you’ll want to bookmark the site. Visit SilverJewelryClub.com and get your free Sterling Silver jewelry today.