Entertainment Book is offering a free trial. You can print out three coupons from the Entertainment Book website for the price of your email address. Here’s the link.
The Portland/Vancouver book is still on sale for $15 with free shipping. You can purchase it here.
1 comment December 23rd, 2008
What’s the best treat on a cold winter day? A milkshake! No? What about a free milkshake? Maybe?
On the K103 website, one of our readers found this Burgerville coupon for a free milkshake or smoothie with any purchase of equal or greater value. (Thanks Russ!)
If you’re not into cold drinks right now (or leaving the house for that matter), luckily this coupon is good until January 4, 2009. File this one away for when cabin fever starts to set in.
Here’s the link to the coupon: link.
For more information about Burgerville, follow this link.
Photo by dumin
Add comment December 17th, 2008
I found two ways to buy the 2009 Portland/Vancouver Entertainment Book for $15. This is the lowest price I’ve seen so far. You’ll recoup your money after using just one or two coupons. The book normally costs $25.
1. You can buy online: I noticed today that the Entertainment Book website has taken $10 off the price of all books and thrown in free shipping. I’m not sure how long the sale will last.
2. Also, from today through Saturday (12/13), you can buy the book for $15 at Walgreens with the $10 off coupon from the weekly ad. You can usually find the ad in the store or you can print out the coupon from the Walgreens website here.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Entertainment Book, it’s full of coupons for restaurants, attractions, movie theaters, events and more. You can visit the Entertainment Book website to get an idea of what coupons are included before you buy.
4 comments December 11th, 2008
I just looked through this week’s Albertsons ad and was pleased to see that Quaker products are on sale. Even though the sun is out right now, I know that sweater weather is coming. And for those eight or so months, I know I’ll want to eat a lot of hot oatmeal.
Through Tuesday, September 16, several kinds of Quaker products are on sale for $1.50 per item when you buy 10. In addition to the different kinds of oatmeal that Quaker markets, the sale includes Granola Bites, Breakfast Cookies, Bars and more. You can check out the ad at the Albertsons website.
The price is okay, but I wanted to see if I could save even more. Here’s what I found:
These coupons bring the cost of 10 items down to $11 or $1.10 per item. Better. But…
As you may or may not know, Albertsons honors competitors’ coupons. This means you can use coupons published by Safeway, Thriftway and other grocery stores.
Now I’m down to $9 for 10 boxes of oatmeal or $0.90 per box. Great. But I’m also one of those people who saves coupon inserts from each Sunday newspaper and…
With this additional $2 savings, I’ll be paying $0.70 per item. Yum.
As I mentioned, there are other Quaker products, besides oatmeal, on sale. If these products interest you, and you’re a pack rat for Sunday coupon inserts, you can save even more:
I found out about the existence of these coupons from the CouponMom website. The site has a tool called the Virtual Coupon Organizer, which is a database of coupons published in Sunday newspapers. If you’re ever wondering whether there’s a coupon for a specific product, you can do a search for that product and see if anything pops up. To use the database, you need to create a user account, but it is worth it.
If you’ve got all of the coupons I’ve mentioned, you can do all kinds of combinations. And if you can get your hands on multiple Sunday papers (maybe from relatives or neighbors), you’re in great shape. But remember, the sale ends on Tuesday.
(Note: I’m writing this pretty late at night. If you see any flaws in my logic, let me know! … Besides the fact that I’m buying 10 boxes of oatmeal, which seems like a lot. Trust me, I’ll eat through them all, and probably wish I had bought more.)
3 comments September 15th, 2008
I just checked the Entertainment Book website and noticed that the books are on sale for $9.99.
This is a good price, since you can recoup your money by using just one or two coupons.
The Portland/Vancouver Entertainment Book contains hundreds of coupons for restaurants, sporting events, attractions, stores and travel. The website provides details on the discounts, so you can make sure you’re getting coupons you’d actually use. Coupons expire on November 1, 2008.
If you’re planning a trip to another state, I also recommend checking whether it would be worthwhile to buy a book for your destination.
1 comment May 6th, 2008
Another coupon code from the Coupon Mom!
You can get 60% off purchases at Restaurant.com if you order through the Coupon Mom website and use the code EXTRA at checkout.
Restaurant.com sells discounted gift certificates for restaurants nationwide, about 50 in the Portland area. With the code, you can get, for example, a $25 gift certificate for $4. The code works for any gift certificate purchase.
To use the gift certificates, there are usually minimum purchase requirements, so be sure to read the fine print before deciding to purchase.
And be sure to visit the Coupon Mom regularly for more money-saving ideas!
Add comment February 21st, 2008
I never thought I’d buy coupons. Pay money to save money; it didn’t seem intuitive. But my first experience with a coupon clipping service convinced me that, in the right circumstances, buying coupons is worth it.
Last week, grocery chain Albertsons advertised a special that caught my eye:
6 bottles of All Small & Mighty liquid laundry detergent for $15
Or $2.50 per bottle
Not a bad deal in and of itself, but I knew that there was a $1 coupon from the Sunday paper a few weeks ago.
Problem was, I had just one coupon. Even though Portland-area Albertsons stores add an additional $0.50 savings for each coupon used*, one coupon hardly made a difference:
6 All detergents: $15 - $1 coupon savings - $0.50 additional savings = $13.50
Or $2.25 per bottle
But if I could get a coupon for each item purchased, I could reduce my cost substantially:
6 All detergents: $15 - $6 coupon savings - $3 additional savings = $6
Or $1 per bottle
Now this price got my blood pumping.
I decided to visit The Coupon Clippers, a site I had heard about in online coupon forums. Managed by Rachael Woodard, The Coupon Clippers is a coupon clipping service that provides manufacturer’s coupons and rebate forms for a small handling fee.
I ordered 14 coupons for All Small & Mighty, as well as 22 other coupons to use on other sales. The total cost for these coupons was $3.89. If I could do the All deal twice, the cost would be:
12 All detergents: $30 - $12 coupon savings - $6 additional savings = $12
Total cost: $12 + $3.89 (cost of coupons) = $15.89
Or $1.32 per bottle
This wasn’t as good as $1 per bottle, but it was an acceptable price for me. And if I could use the other coupons I had purchased, the cost per item purchased would go down even further.
I ordered the coupons on Tuesday night, and they were shipped on Wednesday. The coupons arrived on Saturday, enough time for me to use them on the sales.
I would definitely use The Coupon Clippers again. The process was problem-free, and the turnaround was as promised. If you don’t have the right coupons on hand and don’t have the ability or motivation to get them in a more economical way, I would recommend giving The Coupon Clippers a try.
Tips for using a coupon clipping service:
* Portland-area Albertsons stores allow you to use the Thriftway and Safeway “doubles” coupons from the Oregonian Foodday issue.
For more information on coupons, check out these articles:
“And Your Total Is $0″
“You’re Not Alone”
“My Grocery Game (Part 1)”
“My Grocery Game (Part 2)”
1 comment May 16th, 2007
In my last post, I talked about coupons. Now, what to do with all those coupons?
Alright, here’s my confession: I’ve been a big slacker lately when it comes to saving money on groceries.
I hope that this blog will help inspire me to do better. Again, it’s a time and desire issue. I just haven’t had the desire to spend time looking through weekly sale ads and matching coupons.
So…I’ve decided to extend my subscription to The Grocery Game. I did the $1 trial. Now the subscription price for 3 months goes up to $10 for 1 store, and $5 for additional stores. I’ve signed up for Albertsons. (Update: After 3 months, I decided to stop using The Grocery Game.)
Before I get to my routine, there are 2 things to keep in mind when looking for deals:
With that, here’s a rundown of my weekly deal-hunting routine:
Looking for Deals
At a minimum, I aim to do the following each week:
Go to Pinching Your Pennies Screaming Deals Around Town Forum. Store sales change each week, starting on Sunday; sometimes people know about the sales and post earlier than Sunday. I usually check toward the end of each week to see if there’s information for the following week or I check on Sunday.
Look for the Rite Aid and Walgreens threads for that week.
Check for free after rebate (FAR) or cheap items I’d like to pursue. I like Rite Aid’s rebate program better than Walgreens’ because it’s all online. But I do both, depending on the free items offered.
See whether anyone has been kind enough to post coupons for the FAR or cheap items that I want. If so, you may see a notation like “SS-10/1″ or “V-10/1.” SS stands for SmartSource and V stands for Valassis. The date is publication date. If I find a deal I want to pursue, and the coupon notation says SS-10/1, I go to the October folder in my filing cabinet and find the SmartSource insert that I dated 10/1.
If there are no coupons listed, check Coupon Mom’s Virtual Coupon Organizer for Oregon to see if there are SS or V coupons for the products I want. I may go one step further and see if coupon websites or manufacturers’ websites have printable coupons.
Similar to Pinching Pennies are Bargainshare’s Grocery Coupons and Deals Forum or the Rite Aid and Walgreens boards on deals.families.com. If I have time, I may check out 2 of the sites to see if there are any differences; usually the information on sales is the same, but the information on combining specific sales to specific coupons or rebates may differ. If you’re not familiar with these sites, you may want to check all 3 over a couple of weeks, and see which you like the best.
Both Rite Aid and Walgreens are a 10-minute drive from my office, so I typically go during a lunch break sometime during the week. Sometimes I’ll go on Sunday if I have time and if the item is something really good, which may mean it could sell out quickly.
On Sunday, I also check The Grocery Game. If I find any deals I want, I track down the coupons in my files. I also get the Safeway and Thriftway doubles coupons from the Oregonian FOODday insert (delivered on Tuesdays/Wednesdays). These coupons add 50 cents to any manufacturer’s coupon. Albertsons allows you to use 8 (4 from Safeway, 4 from Thriftway) per shopping trip. Albertsons accepts all coupons from any grocery store in the Portland area. If I need extra FOODday newspapers, I grab a couple for free from the FOODday box at a nearby apartment complex. Does anyone have a list of the apartment complexes that have FOODday boxes? 
I shop Albertsons only for good deals. When things are not on sale, the prices are very high. When I need something immediately, I typically go to Trader Joe’s, Fred Meyer or the local farmer’s market.
Add comment October 27th, 2006
As promised in my previous posts about using coupons and rebates for grocery-type shopping, here’s my routine.
Before I get to it, let me say that I don’t consider my routine to be the “best” routine or the secret sauce that will save you the most money.
The fact is, I don’t save the most money—there are many people who spend much, much less than I do. I do what makes sense for my life…and that changes constantly depending on my financial situation, my needs, my time, and my desire to devote energy to this part of my life vs. others. I am always aspiring to save more time and save more money. Is that possible? If you have the answer, let me know!
I’m going to start with coupon management. Part 2 will be about finding deals.
Managing Coupons
Each Sunday, I get the Oregonian newspaper delivered to my home. I find the glossy coupon inserts from SmartSource and Valassis. Sometimes P&G will also have a coupon insert, I grab that too. I quickly skim each insert for coupons that I want to use that week (usually, I’ve already thought about buying something and, lo and behold, there is a coupon for it) and I clip those out. The rest of the insert I leave intact. I write the date on the front of each insert.
I have a filing cabinet with 12 folders, one for each month. I store the inserts in the appropriate month’s folder. In other words, I keep a year’s worth of inserts in my filing cabinet. The current month is at the front of the drawer. On the first Sunday of a new month, I go to the back of the drawer to find that month’s folder, recycle last year’s inserts, file the new inserts, and move the folder to the front of the drawer.
If you want to start a system like this and you have the resources, my advice is to acquire and label all 12 folders at once—instead of having to think about, find and label a new folder each month. Once you have all 12 folders, you shouldn’t need to get any more. You’ll just cycle through the same folders each year. Instead of a filing cabinet, you can store your folders in one of those handy plastic bins that are so in vogue right now, a cardboard box, or whatever your imagination might conjure. The goal is to be able to find a specific insert for a specific date. And you can always upgrade your system later. ;)
No matter what my schedule or other commitments, I make it a priority to collect, date, and store these inserts. This may mean saving old papers until I can find time to go through them. If I don’t collect the inserts, I regret it—my luck is that I’ll end up needing that one week’s inserts that I didn’t collect.
The downside of this system is that I don’t have the coupons with me at all times. If I were to find a great deal while shopping at a store, I couldn’t just find and use a coupon on the spot like I could if I used a different system (such as clipping all coupons and organizing them in a binder/coupon organizer by brand name or type of product). The upside is that I don’t need to clip all coupons, organize them and carry them around with me. I prefer to travel light, even if it costs me.
Typically, I don’t buy extra newspapers to get more inserts. I usually have just one set of inserts per week, and try to find more coupons online as needed. I’m torn at the moment about whether I should be more active about getting extra inserts.
Next time, I’ll talk about my routine for finding deals…and show you why I store coupons by date.
Add comment October 23rd, 2006
In my last post, I talked about redeeming rebates and matching coupons effectively.
Now I want to share some resources that provide more information and can help you locate deals more easily. Time is money, right?
The beauty of the Internet is the free exchange of information from many voices. And there are a lot of voices. Check out these message boards for grocery deal discussion and money-saving advice (and share some of your own ):
There are also many “experts” out there, people who make money teaching others how to save money on groceries and more. 3 expert sites that I know of are:
Later, I’ll share my routine.
Add comment October 19th, 2006
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