Site Showcase Sunday: MyPoints

It is Site Showcase Sunday! We are starting a weekly series that you absolutely can’t miss reading every week. We will feature a website that is useful, interesting, and helpful to you!

This week I’m featuring two websites as I used both of them to score a fabulous deal. They are http://www.mypoints.com/ and http://www.restaurant.com/.

Last week I received a FREE $25 gift card for http://www.restaurant.com/ from MyPoints! I was so excited. This gift card will allow my husband and me to go out to dinner for very little out of pocket at many great restaurants. This is an opportunity for us to be frugal, but still enjoy a wonderful date night.

So let me tell you about the deal…

For the last five years I have been a member of http://www.mypoints.com/. It is a website that allows you to earn points to redeem for a variety of gift cards. It’s free to sign up. It’s easy. It’s worth a few minutes of your time, a few days a week. I created a separate email for MyPoints and I check it about three times each week. I read emails, take surveys, and occasionally make purchases online. MyPoints thanks me by giving me points for each email. It takes some time for me to accumulate enough points to redeem, but I’m patient.

After about 6-8 weeks I usually redeem MyPoints. I used to always get gift cards to Panera Bread as I enjoy eating there, but now I stick to getting cards for restaurant.com. The best part about redeeming MyPoints for a Restaurant.com gift card is that it costs me several hundred points less then the cost of a Panera Bread card (or many other popular cards).

According to Restaurant.com they “serve as the community matchmaker…Restaurant.com helps restaurant owners promote new and unique aspects of their restaurant while providing diners with great value in a fun, new and cost effective way.” What this really means is that I get CHEAP gift cards to use at local restaurants. To make it even better, their gift cards go on sale. I usually wait until many of their gift cards are 80% off. Then I login and buy them with the gift card I redeemed at MyPoints so I am out of pocket very little!

For example, I bought a gift card at 80% off at a great local restaurant. It was normally priced on Restaurant.com at $10 for a $25 gift card. Since it was 80% off I was able to snap it up for $2. I used my Restaurant.com gift card I redeemed from MyPoints so I was out of pocket nothing! When I actually redeem the gift card at the restaurant on my date night my husband and I will spend about $10. (It is a $25 gift card, but it stipulates that you must spend $35 to use the gift card.) We will spend about $10 plus tax and tip to enjoy an appetizer, 2 entrees, a dessert, and 2 drinks on a Saturday night. AMAZING!

I’m looking forward to a cheap date night very soon and fun local restaurant!

Happy Eating!
Thriftynester

Series: What's FREE Week of 10/11!

This is a picture of many of the free items I got last week (and many more not pictured!). My freebies included items I got free after coupons, samples in the mail, and even free drink coupons from the Starbucks challenge. Are you ready to get free items this week? Follow along with us this week, and then let us know what YOU got free this week!

What's FREE this week? See below for many freebie offers, these are only some of many!

CVS

• 3-Day Sale Sun-Tues:
• Halloween Nylon Treat Bags 99 Cents, 99 cent ECB
• 4-in-1 Pumpkin Carving Tool 1.99, 1.99 ECB

(*See more deals here thanks to hip2save*)


WALGREENS

• Chapstick Fresh Effects: Cost $2.99 with a $2.99 RR
  Robitussin To Go: Cost $2.49 with a $2.49 register reward, use $1/1 coupon for moneymaker
  Halls Refresh: Cost $1, with a $1 RR
• Vaseline Sheer Infusion Lotion: Cost $6.99, get $6.99 RR- there is a $1.50 printable, see http://hip2save.blogspot.com/2009/09/walgreens-deals-927-103.html for the link
  Dentek Floss: Cost $2, get $2 RR, use the $1/1 from today's paper for moneymaker

(*See more Walgreens deals here, thanks to hip2save*)

Rite Aid

• Carmex Moisture Plus Lip Balm .075 oz $2.29, $2.29 Single Check Rebate
• Carmex Lip Balm 3 pk tubes $1.99, $1.99 Single Check Rebate

(*See more deals here thanks to hip2save*)

Good Luck with your FREEbies this week! Check back next week to see what we got FREE this week and share your success!

--Savvyteacher

WAGS is HOT this week!

I don't know how many people have noticed, but Walgreen's is HOT this week. There are so many free items, and even more moneymakers than I've seen before, that I have probably visited Walgreens about 10 or more times this week already. Because the register rewards do not "roll" the same way that CVS's ECB's do, you have to make more trips and do more transactions. You also can't use more that one RR per purchase, another reason for the many trips and many transactions. Despite all of this, there are so many great deals it is worth it this week! Everything in this picture was completely free, I made money on it actually, but because of tax, the extra money is zeroed out.

Don't worry there is still time to get your freebies this week. Whether you already coupon, just started, or don't use them at all, you can get this deals!

What's FREE?

• Chapstick Fresh Effects: Cost $2.99 with a $2.99 register reward print out
• Robitussin To Go: Cost $2.49 with a $2.49 register reward, there is a $1 off coupon from last week's paper for a money maker if you have coupons
• Herbal Essence Products: Cost $2.99 with a $2 register reward. If you coupon you can use a $1/off 1 coupon to make it free, otherwise it is .99 for you!
• Halls Refresh: Cost $1, with a $1 RR print out. If you coupon you can use the .75/1 coupon for a money maker
• Vaseline Sheer Infusion Lotion: Cost $6.99, get $6.99 RR- there is a $1.50 printable, see http://hip2save.blogspot.com/2009/09/walgreens-deals-927-103.html for the link
• Dentek Floss: Cost $2, get $2 RR
• Oral B Advantage toothbrush: Cost $3, get $3 RR
  

Go and get your deals! Let me know how you did, and if you are new to the Wags game, tell me how I can help! I suggest picking one item, purchasing it, and then using the RR to purchase the next item.

Recycle Your Books, and Make Money Too!

Do you have books laying around, cluttering your house or collecting dust? Cookbooks you aren't using, textbooks from the past, or just a collection of random books?

There are several ways you can recycle these items, many of them online, but one way is to find a local used bookstore that "buys" books and offers store credit, and even better, cash for your old books.

If you happen to live in the Raleigh area, my favorite book buyback place is Edward McKay. They are located on Capital Blvd. and they offer both cash and store credit options for your books. If you aren't local, you can find something similar in almost any city or a city nearby.

This afternoon I took a bag full of books, including some old teacher books I wasn't using anymore, fiction, and a couple text books or books from college classes. They accepted about 30% of what I brought, and I received about $5 in store credit which I can use to pick out books from the store, and about $4 in cash. One tip to remember is that they only buy so many of a certain kind of book at a time, so don't write off those leftovers they didn't accept. I always hold on to them, try again in a month or so, and most often they are bought at another time. After a few tries, then I either try to sell or swap with my online sites, and as a last resort donate to a local thrift shop. Another thing to think about is deciding what kind of resource is best for which books. Anyhing that is current literature and recent textbooks I use online sites, because you get more money for your value. You need to decide which resource is the best for the books you have.

Stayed tuned for more tips on how to recycle your books!

--Savvyteacher

The Truth About Target

Do you want to know the truth about Target? The truth is, I love that store. It has always been one of my favorite places to shop and before I began the frugal path to saving money and making wiser purchases I had always gotten many of my everyday items there. Once I started using coupons and playing the drugstore games, Target became a distant memory. It wasn't until I found that shopping wisely, browsing the clearance racks, and using coupons you can find many good deals at Target.

The ugly truth? Target's coupon policy is very unclear, only recently was posted on their website, and their system in the store and employees are not knowledgeable about the policies that do exist. I spent less than $6.00 for ALL of the items in the above picture, but all of the coupons used were mostly a fight because the employee did not understand how to adjust coupons that were higher than the value, and she was unaware of how their policy truly works.

What I learned today? Target has amazing clearance deals and I will be a frequent browser of the clearance items, located on many end caps. Target can have some good "free or nearly free after coupon items", but you need to do small transactions because they don't know how to handle large amount of coupons, and definitely be aware and prepared. Carry the coupon policy with you if you are going, know what it says, watch them ring through your coupons, and most of all- be firm in letting them know their own policy and pointing out what you are in fact allowed to do, but be polite. Even if you become frustrated, being firmly polite will carry you a lot farther than being the crazy coupon lady!

Were all these items worth it in the end? Well, I got all those items for less than $6.00 total (many of them free), so you be the judge.

--Savvyteacher

Get your Coupons for FREE!

How did I maximize my trip to Walgreens today in order to get another Sunday paper with coupons for free?

Our local paper was having a delivery deal this past month, so I now get my paper delivered each week for just over a dollar, well under the selling price in our area. his allows me to check out the coupons and decide if I want to purchase another paper that week. Before going to Walgreens today, I checked the weekly ad to see what money makers I could find to help me purchase an extra paper for free.

This week at Walgreens there are several money makers in addition to free products. Walgreens uses a register reward program (RR) making many items free or nearly free after reward. If you roll them each week you can spend very little out of pocket (OOP).

The picture above shows all the products I got for free, including the newspaper because I was going to make $1.50 extra on the products, that allowed me to cover the cost of the paper. I walked in with $5 in RR's, and walked out spending $1.55 OOP and $6.50 is RR's. Translation? All of the above products + newspaper entirely FREE.

Free Samples in Your Mailbox!

Here is a picture of the samples I received in the mail this past week. Each week I get somewhere between 1-3 items in the mail, and the chance at many free items. Why do I spend time each week signing up for samples? Simple-- free items, good coupons, and the chance to try new products!

1. Free items. The items I got this week will each turn into either a lunch or a breakfast. That is part of two meals for free! Not all samples are always food items, I have gotten several freebie household products, toiletries, and more! This helps keep your costs down, even if it is one free sample of laundry detergent- that is one free load! Everything adds up and helps cut costs.

2. Coupons. Almost every single time I get a sample or freebie in the mail comes with a coupon. Usually a very high value coupon! So, in addition to a free item, the coupon helps get me that same item for either free or near to free when you use it on the special coupon weeks at some stores when they triple or double coupons. I also often get free samples in the form of a coupon for the item free. Two weeks ago I got a coupon for a free Yoplait Whips yogurt, and all I had to do was take in into the store to redeem it. Free! One freebie that has been an ongoing was the Mars Chocolate Relief Act. Each Friday for a few months you could sign coupon for a free Mars brand candy bar. This coupon can help get you more than just that freebie- if you pair it with a store's BOGO (Buy One Get One) you can get 2 for FREE, from just signing up for that one coupon! Another place I have gotten free after coupon products is on facebook. Many companies are starting facebook pages and giving away free after coupon items for becoming a fan on their page.

3. Getting to Try New Products. Do you like trying out new products, or getting to sample something new on the market before you actually purchase it? Samples help you do this! Many times I get to try something that I have seen on an add as a new product and it allows me to see if I like that product or not, before purchasing it in the store. I love getting to try so many different kinds of products for free, and often times find my new favorite of a certain item!

I try to spend no more than 20 minutes a week signing up for free sample online, and the outcome far exceeds my time. One way I have found to manage doing this, is taking 5 minutes out of my lunch break and as I eat click around and choose a few things I am interested in and sign up! It has become a part of my lunch routine, and now allows me to have a steady flow of samples in my mailbox each week!

--Savvyteacher