Giveaway: Peapod $10 credit

Image via Wikipedia

In honor of nothing in particular, TAiMH is giving away a $10 credit, good on your next order from Peapod.com, the online grocery delivery service. There's no minimum purchase amount to use this credit, so if you just want to get $10 of free groceries, that's fine by me. Use it however you like. If you don't already have a Peapod account, it's quick and easy to open one. Peapod's service is not available everywhere; check their website for details.

To enter the giveaway, just leave your e-mail in a comment below, so we can contact you with the credit code when you win. ;)

Giveaway ends 12/30.


Disclaimer: Peapod.com does not sponsor this blog in any way. I'm pretty sure they have no idea we even exist.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Peapod Grocery Coupons (chris.pirillo.com)

Airline Tickets: Do the Extra Research, Save Extra Cash

Image via Wikipedia

Wren and I just purchased two international airline tickets for two adults at the absolute cheapest price we could find. About $270 apiece roundtrip. You might already know how to find budget airline tickets online on the cheap, but we thought we did too. Read on.

When shopping online, the overall idea is to REFINE and then REDEFINE your flight search until you find the lowest price. The following are tips on how to refine your online search. And it’s a compilation of things we'd been overlooking until now.

• Open many browser windows. A simple idea, but this is the easiest way to compare prices. Nearly all airline sites and ticket aggregator sites use the same type of ticket search, so it’s easy to refine your search. If you start to get confused by so many browser tabs, print out each window and compare the hardcopies.
  
  
• Try Vayama, a site that was new to us, and where we found our best price and saved an additional $30 with a coupon. Vayama often offers such coupons for same-day booking. No booking fee.

• Search airline sites, booking agency sites (like Expedia or Orbitz), AND aggregator sites (like Kayak or Vayama). Many booking agencies charge fees, and most aggregator sites do not. Once you’ve found the lowest fare, go directly to that airline’s site and compare prices. Sometimes booking directly through the airline can save you a few dollars. Hint: if you use Kayak, you can have it search Vayama, Priceline, and a few other aggregators as well.

• Try making one transaction/purchase per passenger in your group. For example, if two people are traveling together, don’t assume that you have to purchase two tickets with one credit card transaction. Instead, compare that price with the cost of purchasing two tickets separately. We found that, for some reason, booking flights separately saved us $15 each. Note: This might not be worth it if the flight is near full, and if there’s any doubt that all persons in your group can get a seat on the flight!

• Try departing from a major hub. But take all costs into consideration. We found that we could save quite a lot by departing from O’Hare, instead of from our local hub. The savings—while considering the time and gas spent driving to Chicago, lodging, and even parking—were well worth it. This option is especially applicable to international flights.

• Is your schedule flexible? Then experiment with departing on different days of the week. It is not always the case, but we found that departing on a Wednesday saved us more than departing on a Friday.

• Use cheap airlines? Not always. “Discount” airlines like Spirit and JetBlue often post astronomically low fares. But we found that, after taxes and fees, or after the price of membership, the total price of a discount airline flight can actually be more than the price of a similar major airline flight.

• Keep an eye on flight lengths and layover lengths. We could have saved $50 by choosing another airline, but the overnight layover wasn’t even close to worth it.
  

• Check the airline’s baggage policies before purchasing your tickets. Many airlines, such as Continental and U.S. Airways, are now charging for all checked bags, often $15 for the first checked bag, $25 for the second, and $100 for every bag after that. A few airlines, like American, however, still allow one or two free checked bags for some flights (in American’s case, you can check two bags for free on certain international flights). Estimate the number of bags you’ll need to bring, and factor their costs into the flight prices when comparing. The same goes for traveling with pets or other special needs. Find out the airline’s policy before you purchase tickets and factor in any additional costs.

Good luck and happy travels!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Practical Traveler: Grab Airfare Deals Now, or Wait? (travel.nytimes.com)
• Crazy rules you need to know before you travel (cnn.com)
• More than a yearlong wait for a refund (cnn.com)
• Tales of Woe - Airline Service (flightwisdom.com)

First Guest Post

Image via Wikipedia

Happy Spring! Wren's first guest post is up at Converting a Spendthrift. Head over and check it out, leave a comment, and show Shai some love. You can follow us both on Twitter for updates and Freebie/Deal Alerts.

The Save Big Secret, Part Two

Image by val'sphotos via Flickr

We've covered coupons and sales, but there's so much more to saving money on groceries and everyday items.

We'll cover the basics now (and stick to food items), but look for future articles expanding on the various tips listed here.

1. A couple weeks back, Jane posted a very helpful article about where to find inexpensive meat, particularly chicken. However, if you really want to save money and help the environment (see footnote #1 on the Jan. 16 post), go vegetarian--or better yet, vegan. If you're not ready to go all the way just yet, start small and work your way to your goal. Eliminate red meat first (including pork), then poultry, seafood, etc. The process is easiest when you take it in slow steps, and it's perfectly fine to spend 6 months on each step. PETA's GoVeg.com is a great resource for learning more about vegetarianism and how it can help save your body, your wallet, and the planet.
   Beans, legumes, tofu and other soy products, textured vegetable protein (sounds gross but tastes good), vegan cheese, powdered egg replacer (amazing for baking) and wheat gluten are all tasty, economical replacement sources of protein. Get your soymilk with added calcium, but check the exact daily requirements. Many vegans especially need to take a daily calcium supplement, though your daily multivitamin may take care of that for you.
   
   
2. Buy in bulk whenever practical. Dried beans from the bulk bins are almost always way cheaper than canned beans, and they make for a lighter load in your grocery bag. Rice, noodles, quinoa, and other grains are also best bought in bulk. Just make sure you store them properly. Weevils are not veggie friendly. ;)
   
   
3. Stick with store brands/generic brands whenever possible. But don't feel the need to sacrifice taste or nutritional content for it.
   
   
4. Buy ingredients for meals, rather than pre-made meals. Yes, it's less convenient, but it's usually much healthier and cheaper. When you make it yourself, you can be sure you know exactly what's going in it and what sort of standards it's prepared at. If you're trying to keep tabs on exact nutritional content or calorie-counting, preparing your own meals does make figuring their exact nutritional content a bit more involved than just reading the box after you pop it in the microwave, but it's easily worth the extra math.
   
   
5. Speaking of ingredients, buy ones that are inexpensive and versatile and that store well. The idea is to be able to buy your ingredients in bulk, thereby saving money, and use them in many different recipes. Staple items like flour (don't neglect the whole wheat variety!), sugar, rice (go for the stuff with the highest fiber content), pasta (again, don't neglect the whole wheat stuff), various Asian noodles, potatoes, onions, frozen and canned fruit and vegetables¹, and beans all fall into this category.
   
   
6. Make sure you're actually getting the deal you think you're getting. When you're at the store, ignore the item prices. That's right, ignore them; they can be misleading. Instead, look for the per unit price (per ounce, per 100, etc.). If you're trying to see which brand of an item is cheaper, you can compare these to find which is the better deal.
   
   
7. Make big meals, enough for leftovers. This saves time and effort (and keeps you from ordering out) for those times when you're too tired or busy to cook. This works especially well with soup or other one-dish meals; you can make a giant pot, set aside some for leftovers, and freeze the remainder. (No matter how good something is, you probably don't want to eat it every day for a fortnight.) Alternate leftovers with sandwiches, etc., to take to work to keep from spending $7 on lunch every day.
   
   
8. Ditch empty foods. Stop wasting your money on junk food and empty calories--soda, chips, snack crackers, and maybe the toughest one to cut--alcohol. That said, if you want to have a drink now and then, you're much better off buying alcohol at the store and making your own drinks than going to the bar.
   
   
9. Stop buying bottled water. All those bottles are bad for the environment (yes, even if you recycle them), and you're wasting your money anyway. In most cities in the U.S., tap water is just as healthful as bottled water, plus it has Fluoride, which many bottled waters do not. If you're really paranoid about your water quality, get a Brita pitcher. You can get super-cheap refill cartridges from sellers on Ebay, Amazon, etc. I've even found a boxful on Craigslist for $5. Also, hopefully this doesn't come as a surprise, but a lot of bottled water is just fancy tap water (Dasani, Aquafina, and others).²
   
   
10. If you drink coffee, brew it at home and take it with you in a travel mug or thermos. Better yet, drink the free work coffee (unless, of course, it's really gross like my work's coffee). Alternatively, you could pick up a cheap little coffee maker at a garage sale or thrift store and keep it at work. If you drink tea, buy bags at the grocery, keep a mug at work, and brew it there.
    
    
11. Speaking of free stuff from work, don't forget to take full advantage of free food for meetings, special occasions, etc. At my place of business, whenever there's leftover food from a meeting, we put it in the department kitchen for whoever wants it. I've gotten many a free lunch that way.
    
    
12. A more time-intensive (and much more rewarding, I would say) way to acquire fresh, organic produce on the cheap is to grow it yourself. Even if you live in a high-rise apartment building, you can have your own garden; you'd be surprised what you can grow in containers inside or on a sunny balcony. Plus, you don't have to worry about pesky (but oh, so cute) bunnies and such nibbling at your lettuce. New to gardening? No worries. We'll be posting a more in-depth article about vegetable and herb gardening shortly.
    

[1] Contrary to popular belief, frozen and canned vegetables/fruit are usually no less nutritious than fresh, provided of course, that no salt or sugar has been added. For more info, see this article by Nutritionist Jane Harrison.

[2] For more info on drinking water, see the NRDC's Bottled Water FAQ
this article in Fast Company, and this article at Medical News Today.


Update: Thanks to WiseBread for including this post in the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights No. 2: Saving Money Edition.

Related articles by Zemanta

• On Moving Toward Vegetarianism: Finding Some Support (treehugger.com)
• What's the Deal With: TVP (fitsugar.com)
• Vegan Meals in Under 30 Minutes (vegan-food.suite101.com)

The Save-Big Shopping Secret

Image via Wikipedia

With the recession hitting harder all the time, more and more people are turning to sale shopping. Now I don’t mean going to a department or specialty store and buying stuff just because they sent you an advertisement about their huge spring sale. I mean buying the things you need and use only when they are on sale (a good sale—not that $0.12 off stuff). Furthermore, I’m talking about clipping coupons and using them in conjunction with store sales. (Usually manufacturers will release coupons 4-6 weeks before their promotional sales.)

I’m going to talk mostly about grocery and pharmaceutical items, as those are what you’ll most often find coupons for. So where do you find these coupons? Well, the best and most obvious source is your local Sunday newspaper. Where I live, that costs $1.50. That’s usually well worth the savings you’ll make in coupons, but of course, why spend it if you don’t have to? One of my roommates has the Sunday paper delivered because he likes to read the sports and news sections. He used to just toss the coupons and adverts, but now he passes them on to me. Before we had this arrangement, I had a similar one with a coworker. She would clip the coupons she wanted from her husband’s paper and then give the rest to me. When I was done, I’d pass it on to another coworker. Most of the time there are double inserts, so there was usually plenty of coupons to go around. Plus, the three of us tended to buy very different items, so it worked out well. You might also ask a neighbor who gets the paper delivered if they’d be willing to share the coupon inserts. The worst that can happen is they say no.

Other coupon sources include various online coupon sites (SmartSource, Coupons.com, RedPlum, P&G E-Saver, etc.) and forums (DealCatcher, BigBigForums). In my experience, though, the online printers sometimes don't have much of a selection, and the forums are hit-or-miss. Check out the ones above--I've found those to be the best--and see what works for you.

What to clip
Some coupon connoisseurs would tell you to clip coupons only for the items you already buy. I'm a little more generous with the scissors. Following that rule wouldn't provide much excitement for someone like me that only buys store brands, generic items, and absolute necessities. Most coupons are for name brand items. And if a coupon (+ sale maybe) would make the name brand item as cheap as or less expensive than the generic item you usually buy, then there's no reason you shouldn't clip away. Same goes for items that you usually consider too expensive to buy—a coupon might move them into your realm of affordability. So the rule is that you may clip coupons for:

1. things you normally buy

2. things you don't normally buy but foresee needing in the near future

3. things you would like to buy but usually don't because without the coupon/sale, they're too expensive

Once you've clipped all the week's coupons, you need to sort them. Start by separating food/grocery coupons from pharmacy/non-food coupons. If you have babies or pets, you might want to make a separate piles for them too. Now for the fun part—date organizing. This is important so that you don't miss coupons' expiration dates. Filing your coupons may seem unnecessary at first, but once you're a few weeks in, you'll be wishing you'd organized sooner.

There are several very good options for organizing your coupons. My favorite is to use a mini filing system like this one. You can usually find these for a dollar or two at an office supply or dollar store. Look for one with 12 “files,” one for each month. You'll want one mini-filer for each of the piles you made in the last step. Label the files January through December.

Alternatively, if you have lots of coupons and 1-month files are too confusing, you can label the files January 1, January 2, February 1, February 2, etc. and just have six months per mini-filer. If you choose this method, the “January 1” file would contain coupons that expire 1/1 through 1/15, and the “January 2” file would contain coupons that expire 1/16 through 1/31, and so on.

In the interest of saving trees, I like to look at the store circulars online each week. Many stores, like Shaw's and CVS, let you browse their online circulars and print only the deals you're interested in, saving both paper and the time it would otherwise take you flip back and forth looking for the deals you circled.

Using the same rules you used for clipping coupons, mark the sales you want to take advantage of, and print the list. Then take out all the coupons from the soonest-expiring file in your organizer and look for coupons that match the sales. Then, assuming you didn't find coupons for ever sale, do the same for the next-expiring file. When you find a matching coupon, take it out and write “C” next to the sale on your list. You may also want to note here any qualifications; for instance if the coupon is for $1 off two, write “2” next to the “C” so that you know you need to buy 2 when you're at the store, without having to rummage through your coupons. This sounds more time-consuming than it actually is. The whole process only takes 5-10 minutes.

Lastly, if there's anything that you really need to buy that week that's not on sale, check to see if you at least have a coupon for it. If you do, write it in on your list with a C next to it, and you're set to shop.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How I bought $125 worth of groceries for $42! (theorganizedparent.typepad.com)
• Coupons.com Launches Facebook Coupons (marketingvox.com)

It's Not Quite Time for Stone Soup

Image via Flicker

With all this talk about the recession it’s not surprising that websites like www.greatdepressioncooking.com have started becoming popular, even as a joke. I’m not suggesting anything quite as radical as boiled shoe leather, but thinking about where and how people used to get their food can give you some great ideas for ways to save money now.

Butchers are a dying breed in America today. As with many local businesses, butchers have become overwhelmed by giant box stores and grocery mega-marts. However, not only can butchers compete with the prices of your major grocery store, they often knock them out of the park. Take the time to compare prices—you can feel good about supporting local business and you’ll save a couple bucks along the way.

Yesterday at my local butcher I bought a whole chicken and half a pound of boneless chicken tenders for $7.01, plus tax.

Almost everywhere the cheapest way to buy chicken is as a whole, uncut bird. And so the whole chicken I bought wasn’t a deal; it was the exact same price per pound ($1.49) as most store brand chickens. But since it’s the same price at either store, the math, for me, is simple. Same price + convenience + supporting a small business = Purchase.

But the tenders! They were a steal. At the butcher I paid only $2.49 lb., while at the grocery store I would have shelled out $6.49 lb.

I’m also able to buy more economically at the butcher, with much less food and packaging waste. I can order half a pound if I don’t need a pound, while at the grocery store all the meat comes in pre-packaged, Styrofoam wrapped lots that are much more than one person (me) needs.

A butcher can normally tell you exactly where the chicken you are purchasing came from, and chances are it will be from much closer than the chickens shipped by the hundreds into your major chain groceries. Now, as Mother Jones recently discussed, local does not mean more sustainable; however, it can mean fresher. Don’t be afraid to talk to the people behind the counter and find out if you like the way they do business.

When you’re living on a budget don’t count out small businesses. Sometimes they’ll surprise you. Also, if you’re in the mood for some angry money talk, Forbes.com has a great article on small businesses and the recession.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Inexpensive Chicken Recipes (articlesbase.com)
• Old-School Butchers in Your Neighborhood (thekitchn.com)