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Couponing 101 in Boston

May 16, 2012

Local folks can join me for a casual breakfast to learn about the basics of couponing at Eastern Standard restaurant, 528 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215 on Monday, May 21st.

You do not need to be EXTREME to save money!

You have probably all heard about extreme couponing and may be intimidated.  That show is NOT realisitic and you do not need to be a crazy to save signifiant money for your families. With only 30 minutes per week you can be saving 30 – 75% off your grocery bill and never pay for toothpaste again.

At Couponing 101 you will learn everything you need to know to get started and more:

  • Why coupon?
  • Where to get coupons.
  • Coupon Organization
  • Coupon Lingo
  • Couponing Strategies – How and when to use coupons
I hope you will join our small group discussion so you can start saving today.
There will be 2 sessions on Monday 5/21/12 so choose the one that works best for you.
  • 8:00 am – 9:30am
  • 9:45am – 11:15am 

Get your Couponing 101 tickets now.

I hope you can join us!

This event is being sponsored by Eventbrite Boston/hosted in partnership with Maven of Savin.

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Filed Under: Couponing 101, Tell Me How

Stop & Shop Coupon Policy

March 15, 2012

Stop & Shop Coupon Policy

There has been word of a possible coupon policy change at Stop & Shop. I will check it out with my contacts, but in the meantime I realized I had not posted their current policy. This Stop & Shop coupon policy is taken directly from their FAQ’s as of 3/15/12:

What is your policy for redeeming manufacturers’ coupons?

Our policy for redeeming manufacturers’ coupon is as follows:

  • Only 1 manufacturers’ coupon may be redeemed per item; No substitutions are allowed.
  • The exact item stated on the coupon be must be purchased in order to redeem the coupon.
  • Coupons cannot be redeemed after the expiration date stated on the coupon. The total redemption value of the coupon may not exceed the retail value of the item purchased.
  • Any coupons for “free” products will be honored for the value of the item only. “Free” coupons cannot be doubled or tripled.
  • Act Media coupons cannot be doubled or tripled.
  • Product specific Checkout Coupons cannot be doubled or tripled.
  • Product specific Checkout Coupons cannot be used with any other manufacturers’ coupons for the same item.
  • Non-product specific store Checkout Coupons can be used with another manufacturers’ coupon. For example: a customer my use a coupon for “50¢ off any Produce item” and a manufacturers’ coupon on the same item.

What is your double coupon policy?

  • We double the savings marked on manufacturers’ cents-off coupons up to 99¢. Any coupon $1 and over will be redeemed at face value of the item purchased. In cases where the double coupon total exceeds the value of the item, the offer is limited to the retail price. Lottery tickets, cigarettes, tax and items prohibited by law are excluded.
  • You may double a maximum of 4 identical manufacturers’ coupons. For example: if a customer purchased five boxes of Cheerios and presented 5 manufacturers’ coupons for 50¢, the first four coupons would be doubled to $1. The fifth coupon would only be redeemed for 50¢.
  • Up to an additional 12 identical manufacturers’ coupons/items will be redeemed at face value for a total of 16 identical manufacturers’ coupons.

Do you accept competitor’s coupons?

No. Stop & Shop does not accept competitor’s coupons.

Do you accept Internet coupons?

Yes. We do accept Internet coupons unless we are notified of fraudulent activity involving specific Internet coupons.

Can I redeem coupons on my gift card purchases?

Stop & Shop does not accept coupons of any type for the purchase of gift cards.

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Rite Aid: Can we stack mfg coupons with in-ad coupons?

March 3, 2012


I have gotten a lot of questions and emails about next weeks Rite Aid in-ad coupons and whether you can also use a manufacturing coupon along with them.  NOTE that although the coupons state “Manufacturer’s Coupon” on the top, they are coded with RC49 and considered a Rite Aid Manufacturer coupon.

According to the Rite Aid Coupon Policy:

Multiple Coupons:

  • More than one coupon can be used on the purchase of a single item under the following conditions:

* All coupons match the item being purchased.
* The total of the coupons is equal to or less than the selling price of the Item before sales tax.

  • No more than one “48” Rite Aid Valuable coupon, one “49” Rite Aid Manufacturer coupon, and one “5” Manufacturer coupon can be used on a single item.

So YES – we can STACK manufacturer coupons with this weeks Rite Aid in-ad coupons.

See all of the Rite Aid matchups here.

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Charity Voice Research panel: $100 Amazon Giftcard giveaway

October 3, 2011

UPDATE – The Giveaway is now CLOSED

Let me tell you a little about Charity Voice, but before I do I feel the need to share why I normally do not talk much about survey companies.

I receive numerous requests about alternative ways to earn money online.  While there are many survey companies (some reputable ones I have shared in the past), I hesitate to talk about a lot of them because many are crappy, spam you, sell information and require you to jump through hoops to earn points, enter sweepstakes, etc. before you can even think about getting anything out of it.

Charity Voice caught my eye because of the philanthropic angle.  The parent company has many years of  research experience and when the owner’s dog passed away from cancer, they were driven to make a difference in the ways charities can earn revenue while providing exceptional research results.  They created AllieSmiles and then the birth of Charity Voice.

I am so excited to be partnering with Charity Voice because in this economy it is getting harder and harder for people to give to the charities that so desperately need our help.  Charity Voice allows you to not only earn money for yourself, but you can also choose to donate it to your favorite charity.  How easy is that?  You can donate to many well-known charities such as Juvenile Diabetes, American Cancer Society, ASPCA, Red Cross, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and many more.  You can even contact them to see about having your favorite charity added to the list.

Brands and businesses NEED market research to improve their products and services, so they pay for it.  In return, Charity Voice pays you – CASH (not sweepstakes entries or points or credits) - via Paypal for the surveys you complete.  You even earn $5 just for joining.  Because their parent company are researchers themselves, they comply with all the laws governing privacy and spamming.

When you register, you actually choose how often you want to be contacted and you can opt out at any time.  You participate anonymously and will not be contacted by any of the companies or have to sign up for future mailings or offers.  You will receive invitations to participate in a survey, or you will see available surveys in your dashboard – look I had $5 worth right when I logged in:

If you qualify and complete the survey, you will receive reward dollars which you can cash out to paypal or donate when your account reaches $25.  You can decide each time – keep some, donate some.  Many surveys will pay $2, $5, $10, $25 or more depending on survey length and level of respondent required.  Your account is typically credited within 7-14 days after completion of the survey.  Luckily you only have to go through a couple questions in order to find out whether you qualify.  Now some of them are long – 20 minutes is really close to that, but one of mine was all about ice cream brands.

So if you have some time online and want to earn some money for you or a charity, or if you just want to provide feedback to help shape future brands and improvements, join Charity Voice now and be sure to look for the confirmation email to complete the registration process.

GIVEAWAY

To get things rolling, the folks at CharityVoice would like to award one Maven of Savin’ reader with a $100 Amazon giftcard. Now that will take a dent out of the Christmas shopping.

All entries must be individual comments on this blog post.

MANDATORY ENTRY – Join CharityVoice and be sure to confirm your registration.  Remember you get $5 just for joining.  Come back and leave a comment that you did and let me know what charity you are considering donating to.

Additional Optional Entries:

  • Follow @CharVoiceOnline and @MavenOfSavin on twitter and let me know you did.  Stay tuned for a future HOT TwitterParty with even more prizes!
  • Tweet the following – Join @CharVoiceOnline, earn $$ for you & charity & win $100 Amazon giftcard @MavenOfSavin http://bit.ly/oTnenR    and let me know you did.
  • “LIKE” CharityVoiceOnline on facebook and share this giveaway with your friends on facebook.  We are all about sharing here and who can’t use $100 on Amazon?

A winner will be chosen at random on October 16th.  GOOD LUCK

Disclosure: CharityVoice supplied the Amazon giftcard for this giveaway. The above post contains my referral link and 50% of any earnings I receive will be donated to various charities.

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Filed Under: Giveaways, Tell Me How

How to get the coupon inserts you want!

October 1, 2011

Reminder, there could be LOTS of coupon inserts tomorrow as I shared in the Sunday Coupon Preview.  Make sure to check the potential coupon list to see if you even like the coupons.  Before you go nuts buying newspapers, here are a few tips:

Make sure your paper carries the inserts you want. 
Around me, the Boston Globe typically carries everything, BUT it is the most expensive.  I can get a local paper cheaper, but it does not carry the RedPlum (which is OK most weeks).  Check these sites to find which papers carry these inserts:

Check the paper (BEFORE YOU BUY IT) to make sure all the inserts are there.  
I get emails every week about missing inserts asking what they should do.  I ALWAYS check the paper (up at the counter so people do not think I am stealing the inserts) to make sure that the extra papers I am buying have what I need.

Do not buy papers you cannot afford.
Remember there is always another deal, always another coupon and always another sale.

TOSS (or donate) your expired coupons

Out with the old, in with the new!  SInce there are tons of new printable coupons today and you will be bringing lots of inserts into the house tomorrow, it might be a good idea to clean out & organize your coupons today.  See how I do it HERE.  If you hang on to whole inserts, you can use the coupondatabase to find out which inserts still have valid coupons.  I sorted by inserts by date and found out that prior to July, most inserts only have a few un-expired coupons.  That is when I clip the few I want and toss the inserts.  Again, the 3 month rule held pretty well – even the 7/10/11 inserts only have 7 coupons left.

Same goes for All You magazine – prior to July 2011, there are only a couple valid coupons left – clip those and recycle the magazines.

Are you ready???

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Filed Under: coupons, Tell Me How

How to get Facebook Feed back to “normal”

September 22, 2011

I know many of you – including myself – are completely annoyed with facebook for messing things up with no instructions.  I have found a way to get your feed back to normal.  If this does not work, I will be back later with a tutorial on how to create lists to see what you want, but lets try this first…

Go to ACCOUNT SETTINGS and click on NOTIFICATIONS…

Find that EMAIL FREQUENCY box in the upper right corner and UNCHECK IT!  This should cause your feed to show all the posts again.

Now to get rid of all the crap that is already there from before, you will need to go to anything in your feed under TOP STORIES and click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of the post.  Then click “unmark as top story”.  You will need to do it to all of them.

Hopefully, now your newsfeed should be by timestamp rather than random.

Let me know if it works.  So far, so good, fro me, but I do not know if that is temporary.  If not, I do have another workaround…

thanks Laura!

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MA Sales Tax Holiday 8/13 – 8/14/11: Is it worth it?

August 11, 2011

This weekend 8/13 – 8/14/11 , Massachusetts will have a Tax Break Holiday.  See when your state is participating here.

Many non-business retail items costing $2,500 or less are exempt from the sales tax, but some items –motor vehicles, motorboats, meals, telecommunications services, gas, steam, electricity, tobacco products, and anything else costing more than $2,500 – are not.There is no sales tax on beer, wine and alcohol during the holiday. There is also no sales tax on single items of clothing that cost up to $2,500.

My question is… IS IT WORTH IT???

(Re-published from my last year post…)

I know we are saving the 6 – 7 % sales tax, but would you race to the store to buy something you did not have the money for if they advertised 6-7% savings??  HELL NO you would not.  So why does every one rush out during Tax Holidays?

[Read more...]

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Daily Deal Sites: Don’t let your vouchers expire!

August 7, 2011

Time to fess up and tell the truth. How many of you have let daily deal vouchers expire because you totally forgot about them?  Some sites are very nice and send reminder emails, but all do not.  A Daily Deal on something you would not normally spend the money on or an activity you would not normally do is WASTED MONEY if you forget to use it.

Even worse, I buy them so quick sometimes, not only do I not remember what I bought, but also have a hard time remembering from WHO since there are ever increasing numbers of Daily Deal sites.  How do you keep track of yours??  Do you pin them up, make a spreadsheet, mark them on your calendar???

I am printing mine all out right now and putting them in date order.  Then will put a reminder on my calendar for at least 2 week prior to the deadline.  Here are a few sites you might want to check your voucher inventory and expiration dates:

I am sure there are more.  I will add to the list when I remember them.  What was the biggest BUMMER of a voucher that you let expire?
NOTE – most sites (and are required by state law) to honor the paid value after expiration, but you lose the promotional value.

 

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