3 Easy Fixes to Common Rebating Mistakes

Posted on September 8, 2008 in Saving Tools 3 comments

This morning I sent out 6 rebates out in the mail. Great! you might be thinking but actually a few of those rebates could have been mailed months ago.
These are three mistakes I was doing and the easy fixes I found for them:

  • “I lost the receipt/Form/UPC for this rebate.”

Solution: Implement an easy organization system. I have turned an old wipes tub into my “Rebate Box.” In it I keep letter sized envelopes, a notebook, address labels and stamps. As soon as I get a rebate form I am interested in doing I put that form inside one of the envelopes. As I compile the rest of the requirements for the rebate (usually cash register and UPC codes) I enclose them in the same envelope. When I have gathered all of the requirements then my rebate is almost ready to go out. All I need to do is address this envelope and complete the form.

  • “I missed out the rebate submission deadline.” and “Yay! I got a check in the mail, but I am not sure what it was for.”

Solution: Get your rebate out as soon as you have all requirements together. This one was a big one for me. I had been dragging my feet forever to get a couple of rebates out that I missed out on the submission date. Use the notebook in your “Rebate Box” to keep track of rebate deadlines. Also used this same notebook to keep track of those rebates you sent out and reconcile this list with the checks you receive when they start coming.

  • “I am overwhelmed, this rebate stuff is too much work.”

Solution: Evaluate and establish guidelines for what rebates you want to do. Rebating CAN be a lot of work if you decide to pursue every rebate out there. I recently came across a form for a rebate to get $1 off meat or chicken after purchase of salad dressings. Where after the cost of the stamp, all I would really be saving is 58 cents. I can save that so much easier by just using a coupon or implementing another easier to do money saving strategy. So establish a lower limit on the rebates you want to do. I have decided nothing less that $5.00 is worth my time anymore. UNLESS, it is for a product I actually use very often. This is the second guideline to establish, consider doing rebates for those items you actually need and will use. A few months ago there was a rebate to get $8 back when you purchased hair coloring for men. Sure after rebate I get this for free but there’s no need for this in our household.

Right now I am saving all the money I receive from rebates to fund our Holiday Gift fund. It’s great to save without feeling a budget crunch.

Stockpiling Diapers: How Many and Which Sizes?

Posted on August 7, 2008 in frugal living, Saving ideas, Saving Tools 4 comments

Reader Looney asked me: how do you figure what sizes to stock up on? Well, there are a few variables to keep in mind when considering stockpiling diaper.

How many of which size diaper you stockpile will directly depend on:

  1. Birth weight of the baby: This impacts whether you need to stockpile newborn diapers or you go directly to size one diapers. The average baby in the United States weighs seven and a half pounds at birth. That puts the baby in newborn sized diapers but for how long? This bring me to the second variable:
  2. Growth rate of baby: How much and how fast your baby grows affect how many packs of diapers you get on each size. Breastfed babies are known for growing very fast initially. My first son was born 7 and a half pounds ant by a month old he was over 11 pounds. My second son on the other hand was born 6 and a half pounds and by a month old was barely ten pounds big. As a result he ended up using more size one diapers than my oldest child.
  3. Baby’s body build: Some people believe that the way the baby’s body is built affects how the diaper fits the baby and as a result how well the diaper works. This is why you will hear some people saying that Huggies diapers fit better chunky legged babies whereas Pampers diapers fit better lean babies. I have been able to switch back and forth between brands of diapers without any impact on how well the diaper works. It has been my experience that babies begin to leak from their diapers when they are ready to move to the next size up.
  4. The diaper itself: Diapers are of course not standard and you will have some diapers that are supposed to be size 3 but are smaller than the competition’s size three diaper.

With this in mind when you start building a diaper stockpile you need to know the number of diapers that come in a pack and the weight range the diaper is good for. HotCouponWorld has the most extensive diaper chart I have found yet. Their chart has diapers per pack for every brand available out there.

All of this still doesn’t answer the question of how many diapers and of which sizes. That is because the answer is a big “it depends” and the best you can do is guess what your needs may be and be prepared if you have to buy diapers to supplement your stockpile. Most likely you won’t be able to stockpile all of your diaper needs, so make sure you always have diaper coupons on hand.

Finally let me share with you what we have used in the first 8 months of my baby’s life: two newborn jumbo packs, eight size one jumbo packs, ten size two packs and three size 2/3 (only Pampers makes this size). We switched to size three diapers when my youngest was around 4 months old and I estimate we will be in it for a few more months. I think I still have another twenty jumbo packs of size three diapers. If anything this is the size you are safest stockpiling because a baby will be in it for a few months. If you would like to read about other people’s stockpiling experiences check out this thread.

The Drugstore Game, How To Get Started

Posted on May 15, 2008 in frugal living, Saving Tools 4 comments

It recently came to my attention that even though I talk about all of the deals I get at Walgreens or CVS, I really have never talked about how to shop these stores the right way. Initially I thought I would write about it but in the process of researching this I found two people who have done a great job at this.

  • First I want to direct you to Cathy’s post on Creative Strategies for Coping with Rising Costs. In Part Two of these series she talks about how to play the drugstore game (a term she coined) and resources to help you play it right. Also check out her second blog CFO Reviews and everything she has written about her experience playing the game here.
  • One of the people she recommends reading and that I also recommend you read is Crystal at MoneySavingMom. She has also written two primers on how to shop CVS and Walgreens as well. Make sure to check out her entire beginners guide that can be found on the right bar on her blog.
  • A final resource that I want to share is the forums at HotCouponWorld. There are many things that I like about these forums but what stands out to me is the community itself. Here you will find thousands of people sharing helpful tips to help you save money. That is the main focus of the boards and the majority of the topics are centered on that. I also enjoy that the moderators are really good about maintaining the integrity of the website. There are many ways to use coupons and many opportunities to abuse them. Here you will find the right way to use coupons. You can also find about deals sometimes weeks in advance and you can also use their forums to trade coupons and take your savings to another level. Finally I like that you can find forums for the stores that interest you. The thing about blogs is that you usually are reading about the savings trip for that person in particular at the store that interests that person. At HCW you can choose your store and read how many other people shop at that store.

I hope this list of resources is helpful in getting you started in this journey of saving money. I really can’t believe how much my shopping habits have changed since I started using coupons and shopping Walgreens or CVS. At the beginning I was happy just to save money, then I was ecstatic to get it free, now if they are not paying me to take it from their stores it doesn’t interest me. I hope you will take a look into this way of shopping and benefit from it.

What Food Can You Find at Walmart That’s Free or Cheap After Coupon

Posted on May 12, 2008 in Saving Tools 0 comments

The incredible community that it is Hotcouponworld is putting together a list of items that you can find for very cheap or free at your local Walmart after coupon. Please note that availability, prices and coupon value vary by region. Here is a sample of the items mentioned:

  • Bush Grillin Beans .25 with $1/1 coupon.
  • Cascadian Farm Purely Steam frozen veggies for $1.77/box. There are $1/1 qs out.
  • Cattlemen’s original BBQ sauce $1.78 — Q for 75 cents off plus there is a MIR (a tag wrapped around the neck of the bottle) for the full purchase price of $1.78.]
  • Farmland bacon $2.50. Coupon for $2/1.
  • Farmland Ham Steaks $2.88. Coupon for $2/1.
  • Farmland diced (also chopped) ham 1lb for $2.50, less $2/1 coupon = .50/pkg.
  • Honey bunches of oats with chocolate clusters was on sale $1.98 ( if sale is over it is still only $2.28) there is an IP coupon out there for $2/1.
  • Huggies Travel wipes $.98 use the $1 off Huggies bath and Body coupons
  • Kashi Granola for FREE! They were $2 each and I had 2-$2 IP from the Kashi website
  • Kashi Go Lean cereal for $2.00, which makes it free after $2/1 IP.
  • Kens 7 oz Lite Accents Salad Dressing Spray 1.93 – 1.00 q 5/4 = .93 (My inserts had $2/1 coupon so FREE!). My inserts also have $2/1 Ken’s dressings. These sell for $2.24 per bottle at my local Walmart. So only $0.24 per bottle after coupon. Of course if you have a Pick and Save near you, you will get paid $0.25 per bottle to take it, now until 5/14.
  • Kraft Bagelfulls are approx $1.89 less $1/1 coupon
  • Live Active Cereal 12cents after $3.00 IP
  • Luzianne 24ct Family sized tea bags (regular) for $1.53 -.60/1 mc= .93
  • Malt-o-Meals with $1/1 printable makes it cheap or free
  • Minute Rice Ready to Serve Rice $1.38 w/ $1/1 q from 4/27 Red Plum
  • Muir organic tomatoes are $1.22 use $1/1 IP
  • Ortega taco seasoning is .50 there is a coupon out there for $1/2 Ortega products
  • RONZONI SMART TASTE PASTA purple box. $1.50 at my SW and there is a $1 Q expires 5/31/08.
  • Silk Soy milk was 2.78 less the 2.25 IP.
  • Tabasco Pepper Sauce .98 – .50 q 4/20= .48
  • Vlasic pickles $1.98 $1/1 printable q
  • YoPlus 4pk yogurt are $1.98- $1/1 q= .98

For the complete list check this thread. Here you will also find the document with detailed information as to where to find these coupons in your inserts. You can always check the coupon database at HCW for more information on coupons. I love to use it to see if there is a coupon out there for an item I need. It’s very useful tool.

Q= Coupon
IP= Internet Printable coupon
MIR= Mail in Rebate

Don’t Put All of Your Nestegg in the Same Tax Basket

Posted on March 19, 2008 in Saving Tools 2 comments

I mentioned in this post that we are thinking of opening a Roth IRA in my husband’s name. We already have one for me. But why would we do that if we haven’t maxed out his contribution to his 401K plan? Because we want to diversify our retirement portfolio.

When people talk about diversifying their portfolios they are usually referring to saving on a mix of stocks, bonds and cash. But they forget that it is also important to invest on a mix of taxable and non-taxable accounts. We are investing for retirement in both a 401K account and a Roth IRA. Why do we do that? Because we want to shelter some of our retirement savings from being taxed when the time of taking distributions comes around.

In Money Magazine May 08, there is an article that states that tax rates are at one of its lowest points currently. Did you know that at some point tax rates where up to 70%. I think most of us are too young, or where not paying taxes at the time to know what that was like. The fact is that tax rates are currently very low and with government funded programs such as Social Security or Medicare needing a transfusion very soon, a tax hike is not out of the question.

But we invest in a Roth IRA not only because we expect tax rates to be higher in the future but also because we think we are paying less taxes now than we will in the future. Currently we have children we can claim as dependents, a mortgage that allows us to take a tax deduction. But we expect that as the time to retire gets near we will become empty nesters and we certainly hope not to have a mortgage payment by then. With less deductions we can expect to pay more income taxes and we would like to be able to use more of our retirement income to live on not to pay taxes with. Hence the reason we are protecting some of it now by investing in a Roth IRA.

There are other good reasons to save on a Roth IRA too. A Roth IRA can serve as an emergency fund for you. Of course having an emergency fund is always best. But for times when those savings are not enough you can also tap into your Roth IRA up to the amount you have contributed without paying any penalties or having to worry about paying the money back like a 401K loan. Also, you can use it as a way to save for college. You have heard it before, you can borrow money for college but not for retirement. Say right now you think it is best to focus on saving for retirement, when the time comes for your children to start college you think you are in a position to devote some of your retirement savings to pay for it, a Roth IRA allows you to withdraw any money you have contributed without paying taxes on it.

There are few things in life that are certain, taxes being one of them. When planning for your future don’t leave them out of the equation. For us, I think it will be nice to use our retirement savings to enjoy our final years instead of seeing Uncle Sam keep a good chunk of them.

Getting Ready for Next Year Part 2

Posted on December 28, 2007 in Money talk, Saving Tools 1 comment

On part one I talked about how to minimize your taxes and maximize your deductions. On the second part of getting ready for next year, I am going to show you how to maximize your paycheck by minimizing your withholdings.

  1. First, figure out how much money you need to have withheld from your paycheck every month. This step will require a bit of work but the exercise is very worth it. By now you have probably received your last pay stub. With it, plus some additional information you can estimate your 2007 tax liability using this tax estimator (first link on the left side). I think they recently redesign this calculator. The couple of things I notice are missing are deductions for 401K contributions and also for student loan interest paid. If any of those two apply to you I will deduct them directly from your gross income when using this calculator. By now it is too late to make any adjustments to your paycheck if you owe or are owed a refund but it is very useful to know where you will stand come April 15th of next year.
  2. Once you have determined your estimated tax liability, adjust your paycheck to more closely match what you need to have withheld. For this I use the paycheck calculator found here. Basically what you need to do is the following: if your tax liability this year is $2600 and you estimate that next year your income won’t change drastically and your situation will remain mostly the same (i.e. you won’t be adding any dependents, or buying a house, get divorced or get married) then you can assume that your tax liability next year will be very similar to what it was this year. If you want to make sure you don’t end up owing at all then you can add $xx amount to this year’s tax liability and have that amount deducted from your paycheck. So, let’s say you decide that you would like to have $3000 deducted from your paycheck and you get paid every two weeks. You need to have $116 withheld from each paycheck for Federal Tax purposes. You need to play around with the number of federal allowances you can enter in the calculator until the amount being deducted from your paycheck is closer to what you need deducted. Once you have determined the number of allowances you should be claiming submit a new W-4 form to your payroll/HR office to make the changes.
  3. You can also use this paycheck calculator to estimate what your paycheck will be if you have had significant changes to what gets deducted for employee benefits. Maybe your health insurance premium has increased, or you have decided to increase your 401K contribution. Enter any of these changes in the voluntary deduction section.

This really is a work in progress, so you might need to revisit this calculation sometime mid-year. Even then, last minute changes can ultimately influence your calculation. Every year I engage in these calculations at the end of the year. Also, during the year I calculate our tax liability every few months. Yet, I am still looking at a sizable refund for next year (adding a dependent will do that). I, however, enjoy knowing where I stand in terms of our tax liability. I rather engage in this exercise a few times during the year than be surprised once a year with how much I may end up owing the IRS. If you have any questions about how to use any of these calculators please feel free to leave a comment and I will answer promptly.

Keeping Holiday Spending Under Control

Posted on November 10, 2007 in frugal living, Holiday Cheer, Saving Tools 0 comments

The holiday season is the time to give and stores sure like to put you in that spirit. Retailers couldn’t wait for Halloween to be over so they could put out their holiday decorations. Oh! and it’s not retailers only, one of our local radio stations has already started playing holiday music! I thought the earliest they got started was after Thanksgiving. The incentives are clearly there to put us in the spending spirit. And it’s so easy to spend isn’t it? store catalogs, store sales, manufacturer’s promotions. It feels like the making for a perfect storm. To help you keep your spending under control consider the following tools:

1) Before you do any more gift spending this season, sit down and figure out how much you can truly afford. I found a guideline online to spend 1.5% of your annual income ( I am not even going to go into how little sense that makes to me considering the national savings rate is negative, but whatever). However, figure out how much it makes sense for your family to afford. Consider your particular situation: if there has been a layoff in the family, income lost, additional expenses, or maybe you have a nice bonus coming to you soon. Maybe you are counting on a nice tax refund to help pay for this year’s gifts.

2) Once you have determined how much you can afford to spend, make a list of all of the gifts you need to get and how much you would like to spend. Reconcile this list with your budget and determine if you need to make any changes to your list in order to meet your budget.

3) Do not be afraid to cut back on the number of people you are gifting or the amount you are spending on some people. Some ideas are:
-Instead of giving gifts to each one of your siblings and their children consider drawing names. In my family, we only give gifts to the children, no longer to my siblings.
- Consider cashless gifts. With a newborn coming soon to my household the best gift anyone could give me is the gift of time. Offer to bring me a homemade dinner for my family, or maybe just come and visit while I get stuff done around the house. Consider doing this also with older relatives. They probably appreciate more you coming over to visit and helping with household chores or maybe doing their holiday shopping for them. Help is an often overlooked gift and it’s probably one of the most appreciated.
-Consider homemade gifts. I know a lot of people are considering this in the advent of all of those toy recalls. For more frugal gift ideas check here and here for additional information.

4) Consider cheaper shopping alternatives: Online retailers can offer significant savings this time a year. They know they are at a disadvantage with brick and mortar stores because it’s more difficult to draw you in to their website or put you in the holiday “spendy” mood. Also, another advantage of online shopping is that it can help in controlling how much you spend. You are more likely to look just for the item you are interested in, instead of wandering around retail displays and picking up additional impulse buys. Also, try shopping outlets. I personally love outlets. I do most of my clothes shopping there.

5) KEEP TRACK OF YOUR SPENDING. This is very important if you want to stay within budget. The purpose of a budget is to serve as a guideline. If you set one and don’t come back to see how you are doing against it then it’s purpose is lost. Reviewing your budget will help you make adjustments and stay on track.

I hope these ideas help you stay on budget this holiday season and make sure above all you spread love and cheer all around.

How I am Making Coupon Clipping Work for Me this Time Around

Posted on November 8, 2007 in frugal living, Saving Tools 2 comments

Through the years I have tried clipping coupons. I have always quit because:

1) The savings have never seemed worth it to me. I mean saving $0.25 on a bottle of Joy dish washing liquid is not going to drive me to early retirement.

2) I have also never been lucky enough to live near a store that doubles (let alone triple) coupons to make the effort more worthwhile.

3) Most of the items I found coupons for are not things we usually consumed. I don’t buy Pillsbury Grands, or Crescent Rolls on a regular basis and have no use for canned soups.
So, it just seems that clipping coupons was just not for me. However, it seems it’s time to backtrack on that perception. Over the last month I have been introduced to several resources that have shown me how to make clipping coupons work for me.

Not having a newspaper subscription and not wanting to get it because I was sure whatever coupons came with the Sunday newspaper wouldn’t work for me, had been another reason I wasn’t clipping coupons. I found two solutions to this little problem. First, I found the website Taylortown. In this website you can preview the list of coupons appearing on your Sunday newspaper as early as the Wednesday before. There are a few minor differences in the list the website posts and the actual coupons you might get. But I think those are due to regional differences and how companies decide to market their products. But the vast majority of coupons is the same. Now, I am able to decide in advance if I want to buy that Sunday’s newspaper or not because I can determine in advance if there are any coupons that would make it worthwhile for me to get it. Second, I have found that I can get my Sunday newspaper at a price cheaper than the weekend subscription. My local Dollar Tree store carries the Sunday newspapers for, you guessed it, one dollar. The cheapest price I have found so far.

The other resources I have found have to do with helping me get the most bang for my buck. Coupons can save you money, but to make sure you save the most with them, it’s best to combine them with store sales. But how do you find out about all of these sales? By reading blogs like this one.

We have also all heard of using The Grocery Game to make the most of your coupon clipping. Unfortunately I have never been lucky enough to live near a place where her list could work. Or the supermarkets around me have never been in the list of stores she tracks sales for. To use this service you also have to pay though. However, at the Couponmom you can get similar research done for you for free. You do need to register to use the services provided but afterwards you can access all of this information for free. She also doesn’t track all grocery stores out there but she does quite a few. And again, she pairs any current sales with coupons (even letting you know from which insert it came) to make sure you save the most.

Finally, I have also discovered online coupons. I try to check at least once a week the website Coupons.com.

I hope that if you don’t clip any coupons sharing how I am making it work for me this time around will make you give it another try. Who knows, maybe an extra $0.25 off a bottle of Joy dish washing liquid CAN lead me to early retirement.

Source for Free After Rebate Offers

Posted on November 3, 2007 in Saving Tools 1 comment

Quite a few stores offer free after rebate items in order to draw you in to their stores. I guess it’s their version of a grocery store’s loss leaders. If you don’t have the time to check every sales circular on your Sunday newspaper for what’s available free after rebate consider this website. Sales circular compiles sales offers by Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Kmart, Office Depot, Office Max, Radio Shack, Sears, Staples, Target, Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreens and other local retailers. You can search by specific state and if you look at the top of the page for your state you can find the items that are offered for free after rebate.
Last year around this time, we used this site to find out that we could get a copy of Norton Antivirus for free after rebate. It was very timely too, as our yearly license was about to expire. We are hoping the deal comes around this year as well, so we check this website at least once weekly.

Hot Deal Inside Scoop

Posted on October 27, 2007 in Frugal Spending, Saving Tools 0 comments

Have you ever wondered where “all of these people” find out about these great deals at Target? But you don’t have the time to 1) scour the internet looking for them, or 2) visit your local target everyday to check out the clearance aisles. Here’s a nifty tool I have found. This website collects clearance items as posted by individuals on public forums. Sometimes they post the items together with their inventory number as recorded by Target (DCPI #) and they have also access to Target’s inventory files (? I am not sure how, but it works) and you can search if the item is on sale at a Target around you. The address to this website is here.

This could come in handy to find cool holiday gifts on sale. Check it out!

← Click Here for More Deals
Click Here for Newer Deals &rarr