tonyandkirsten.org

If “being taken out to dinner” was a love language, that would definitely be mine.  While I am sure that everyone enjoys a dinner out every now and then, it is something that really makes me feel extra loved and special when Tony takes me out. I enjoy all types of eating out though, whether on a date, with friends, with the whole family or whatever!

So being the bargain hunter that I am, I like to have an arsenal of money-saving strategies to use to make our dining out dollars stretch as far as possible.  Here are some of my favorite ways to save $$$ on eating out:

1. The Entertainment Book: This is a city or region-specific book of coupons you can purchase online or in some brick-n-mortar stores (I purchased mine at Walgreens with a coupon soon after the 2010 edition came out).  They are full of coupons for all kinds of restaurants — everything from McDonald’s to super fancy places and everything in between.  You’ll also get coupons for various stores (I used a $5 off a $25 purchase at Once Upon a Child coupon recently) and various forms of entertainment. The Twin Cities books will get you discounts on indoor playgrounds, bowling, sporting events, rec centers, museums, movie theaters, plays and more.

I just noticed on the Entertainment Book website that all books are 50% off with free shipping — quite a deal since you still have until November 1st to use it! This would make a Twin Cities book $17.50 (prices for other cities may be lower or higher).  You could easily make that back using one or two coupons…so it might be a good option to buy one for any vacation destinations you plan to visit in the next 8 months.

2. “Gift Certificates” from Restaurant.com: Restaurant.com essentially sells coupons that they call “gift certificates” for various restaurants around the country.  I’ve noticed that the list of restaurants here in the Twin Cities has grown quite a bit over the past year or two! While at first glance it doesn’t seem like a super awesome deal — the price listed on the website is $10 for a $25 “gift certificate”, but then an additional $10 or so needs to be spent on top of that — For about the second half of each month certificates are 70% or 80% off.  When you think of buying a coupon for $25 worth of food for $2 or $3, then even that plus an additional $10 (plus tax and tip of course) sounds like a pretty good deal for a nice dinner out.

Be sure to read all the fine print on each restaurant and certificate value you are considering purchasing.  All require some minimum amount to be spent above the certificate value, but it may be more or less depending on the restaurant.  A $50 certificate/coupon to an expensive restaurant may sound great, but if the minimum purchase to use it is $100, it may not work out so well.   Some restaurants may also specify that certain value certificates may only be used at lunch and not dinner or vice versa.  They also may have date exclusions beyond the typical holidays when they are not valid.  For example, one downtown restaurant we purchased a certificate for did not allow them to be used on days where there was an event at the Target center.

3.  Purchasing certificates from “one daily coupon” sites like Groupon or Living Social.  I’m new to this scene, having just purchased my first two “Groupons” recently (and I haven’t used Living Social yet, I just receive their emails).   With these two sites (and there may be others?) you can sign up for a daily email of deals in your city/area.  They are not all dining out related — in fact it might be anything from a massage to a museum membership to a yoga class.  But a lot of them are restaurants of some sort.   Generally you are purchasing a gift certificate or coupon that will have fewer restrictions on it than those from restaurant.com will, and you will get whatever it is for about half price or maybe better.  I got a steal of a deal on a membership to the MN Historical Society, and a $16 certificate to a coffee shop for $8.  If you refer friends to Groupon (yes, that is my referral link above) you can get a $10 credit for each friend that joins and purchases a certificate within a few days of clicking on your referral link.

4.  If you like dining out a chain restaurants (and even some local joints) don’t forget to check their websites for deals and also search “coupon code” sites for printable coupons.  Many chains offer an incentive to sign up for their newsletter (just don’t forget to use your “junk” email address) such as a free dessert or appetizer or even a free entree.   Or coupons may be available for the printing on the restaurant website.  I also recently discovered that some of the same sites one can use to search for discount codes for online retailers (such as couponcabin.com and retailmenot.com) also have sections devoted to restaurant discounts.

5.  Look for other “local deal” sites in your area that may offer special printable coupons or “purchase-a-gift-certificate-for-less” promotions.  The Provisions Book seems to be a newer site in the Twin Cities offering coupons for some areas (with more coming soon).  I found a coupon for a Sushi restaurant there last week when Tony and I wanted sushi on our date night.   Gift certificate deals in the Twin Cities can be found at halfofftwincities.com.  A limited number of gift certificates for various restaurants are sold each week.  I haven’t purchased from here yet, so I can’t comment too much on it, other than to say it looks like another “read the fine print” type of site, as some of the certificates do have restrictions on when and how you can use them.

6.  Finally, Don’t forget to pay attention to coupons in the newspaper and advertising mailers.  These are mostly for chain and fast food places, but every now and then I spot coupons for local establishments as well.  Even if I am not planning to eat at a particular pizza joint, fast food restaurant or chain restaurant in the next few weeks, I generally save some of these coupons anyway “just in case”…because that’s just the kind of person I am.  While I don’t make it a habit to eat a lot of fast food, we do eat that kind of fare more often on the road, so I try and remember to bring some with me when we leave town.

I’m linking up today with “Frugal Fridays” at Lifeasamom.com. Visit this week’s Frugal Fridays post to learn more great ways to save money!

This idea is certainly not my original thought, but it’s one I had forgotten about until I was recently faced with a desire to pair garlic bread with a meal when all I had on hand were a few semi-freezer-burnt hot dog buns. I feel like we always end up with a few extra buns here and there after a cook out.  Or maybe half a package gets lost in the freezer until they don’t look particularly appealing.

So now that I have brought this trick back to the front of my mind, I can turn them into this:

Just spread with butter or margarine, then sprinkle with garlic powder.  Add a handful of mozzarella or Italian blend cheese. Top with a bit of Italian seasoning if you desire.  Stick ‘em in the oven until the cheese melts.  Maybe five minutes or so depending on the oven temp. Use parchment paper on your baking sheet for extra-easy clean-up.

With buns coming in at only 79 cents at Aldi, versus about $1.59 for garlic bread or garlic toast…I might even consider buying buns fresh for this purpose — especially since one package of buns would make enough garlic bread for two nights!

For a long time (at least the few months I’ve been couponing any way), I’ve downplayed the value of doing Double Coupon Wednesdays at Rainbow Foods.  Rainbow is the only store in the Twin Cities that consistently does double coupons.  But it is only on Wednesdays.  And you have to spend at least $25.  And you can only double five coupons.  It sounded like too much work for too little benefit.

But, the more I’ve been reading about using coupons (and the better I’ve been getting about finding higher-value coupons), the more I realized it might be worthwhile.  After all, wouldn’t it be better to save up to an extra $5 without spending any additional money? I also have learned that customers may do more than one $25 transaction in order to double more than five coupons…though I think if I tried this at my regular Rainbow at the times I often find myself shopping when it is really crowded with long check out lines, I might incur the wrath of both the cashier and the annoyed customers behind me!

I’ve wanted to give this a try for several weeks, but this was the first week when it was both practical for me to go to the grocery store on a Wednesday and the sales at Rainbow matched up with some of the items I needed. It worked out especially well because I was able to go in the evening (our Rainbow is really quiet at night, hence less waiting in line and easier shopping in general), and Madeline was at Grandma’s house so I only had to take the boys.  They are pretty easy to shop with…Madeline on the other hand talks incessantly and it makes it difficult to look for the right products to get the good deals.

I’d consider my first attempt to be a moderate success. I did find five $1/off coupons to use.  One resulted in a stellar deal — free peanuts.  Three were moderate deals — frozen sweet potato fries for a little over a buck (I’ll use them as a dinner side dish for next week), and two 4-pks of yogurt for $0.60.  The last of my five doubled coupons resulted in a great deal on a “treat” — $0.50 for a box of Oreo Cakesters.  Not something we “need” at all but a treat is nice every now and then, right?

Overall it was a pretty good shopping trip.  I finally managed to “save” more than I “spent” — in other words, the total I paid out-of-pocket was a couple bucks less than what the receipt said I saved when store sale prices, store coupons, and manufacturers coupons (regular and double) were taken into account.

I’d like to try this again on a week when there are some better deals to be had.  I don’t think I can realistically plan to do double coupons every week at Rainbow.  Wednesday shopping doesn’t always work with my schedule.  If this trip would have been during the day with all three kids it would have been a lot more difficult, and that is how I shop most of the time.

I think I might also have to hit more than one store more often in order to both get the double coupon deals at Rainbow and also come out ahead on our groceries overall. On the items I buy regularly, my best “overall deal” is often not at Rainbow.  Being able to double more than one transaction’s worth of coupons might change that, but I’m not sure I am bold enough to try it if the lines are long!

Finally, I think if I do double coupons more often at Rainbow I’ll have to watch out that I don’t add in too many “extras” and treats.  I am usually pretty good about only buying things I need even when things I don’t “need” are a good deal.  But when double coupons can bring the price of junk food to a few cents or a buck, the temptation is much greater!  Even if it’s a good deal, junk food needs to be a tiny part of what I buy at the grocery store each week!

For Further reading:  I’ve really been enjoying the blog “Dollars in the Pocket.”  It’s a local “deal blog,” and the author posts grocery lists for several stores each week including Cub, Rainbow and Target. These lists match up sales with coupons and other deals so you can see where the best grocery deals are each week in the Twin Cities.

Sometimes it’s pretty easy to get a good deal.  It’s just a matter of buying the right thing when it’s on sale, spotting a clearance tag at Target or clipping/printing a coupon and actually remembering to use it.  Other times, it feels like I really have to work to earn the savings.  Here are a few of the items I got at rock-bottom prices last week at Cub:

The chicken and the hot dogs were easy deals. I printed two coupons at the Gold’nPlump website for the two packages of chicken, making them $2.50 each.  I used a coupon from the Sunday coupon insert on the hot dogs.  But the cereal, cookies and waffles were another story all together.

Cub was offering a “buy 8 of these items, get $5 off” store coupon for certain Kellogg’s/Keebler items.  That by itself was not a super great deal (even with sale prices), but paired with the remainder of the multitude of Kellogg’s coupons I had printed at the beginning of May, it was an awesome deal (less than a dollar per item).   My first choice would have been to do the deal with 8 boxes of cereal.  Unfortunately I only had six dollar-off cereal coupons remaining for flavors our family enjoys that also matched with the items on sale.  Instead,  I saw that a dollar-off coupon was available for cookies. While not a necessity, I figured they might come in handy for a summer picnic or road trip.  The waffles I had no coupon for, but Madeline loves them and I was getting such a great deal on the other items I thought we would spring for the waffles too as our 8th item instead of more cookies or cereal without a coupon.

I read all the fine print carefully and thought I had 8 items that matched the sale…but then a dreaded event occurred while I was in the check out line — the cashier couldn’t get the $5 store coupon to work.  She said something must be wrong with what I had purchased.  Maybe the Mini-Wheats because the flavors I had weren’t in the picture?  No, I told her they might not be in the coupon picture, but they were in the ad picture.  Seeing the huge line of annoyed people piling up behind me, she finished ringing my order and sent me to the customer service desk for them to figure it out.  I packed up my groceries and took my kids (whose patience was waning at this point) over to the service counter where I waited patiently in line (and the kids waited slightly less patiently).  The service desk employee pronounced that the problem was my cookies.  Despite the fact that my cookies were within the ounce-range listed on the coupon and were on sale at the ad-listed price, she could not be convinced that my Oatmeal Chips Deluxe would apply to the coupon.  Luckily, she let me return to the cookie aisle to swap it for another package of a different variety at the same price, and then credited me the $5

Now, I felt sort of bad about this because I had used a coupon specifically for the oatmeal flavor of Chips deluxe…but not too badly because I really think it was Cub’s computers that were somehow programmed wrong.  All in all this ordeal probably added 15 minutes to our shopping trip.  I wouldn’t have done it to save a buck, but for $5 I think it was worth it. 

Last year I learned an important lesson. Even though more than two months were left in the summer, one cannot find very many kids sandals available at Target in late June.  I had purchased a pair of sandals for Erik in the early spring last year, thinking he would wear them all summer long.  Of course, his feet grew faster than expected.  Silly me to think I could just walk into a store in the middle of the summer and purchase another inexpensive pair.  Luckily, my box of garage sale purchases for future summers saved me.  I had a pair of sandals I thought I would be saving for this summer that fit (with a bit of room to spare) for the remainder of summer 2008.

Moving along toward summer 2009, I was not going to make the same mistake again.  Last year’s sandals fit Erik, but just barely.  Early garage-sale adventures had not yielded any results.  So, I ventured out to Target last week in search of boy sandals.   And I only found two pairs his size.  In mid-may.  Now, to Target’s credit, the sandals were on sale last week, so many of my fellow Twin Cities parents were probably also out buying sandals.  And I could have gone to check at other Target stores as well…but who wants to do that with three kids in tow?

Of the two pairs in his size remaining at the Richfield Super Target, one was in a cushy, dressy leathery style.  I took one look at those, pictured Erik ruining the leather and padded soles in a mud puddle, and knew I couldn’t buy them.  The other style were Spiderman sandals, which also came with a $2 premium added to their price for those nice licensed pictures.  So, I paid my $15 on sale for a pair of kids sandals, knowing that I might pay a lot more than that if I had to go to a real shoe store or department store to buy them in the middle of the summer.

But, I also made the smart decision to not remove the tags immediately.  Since Erik’s old sandals still fit and Target has a 90-day return policy, I decided to keep my eyes pealed for a better bargain.  I didn’t have to wait long.  The very next day I hit the jackpot with a garage sale being held by the mom of preschool-age twin boys.  I found another pair of  Spiderman sandals for a fraction of the price:

And, as an added bonus, I found a few other nice pairs of shoes at bargain pricing:

(I did get a pair of cushy sandals at the garage sale, pictured above…for 75 cents we can save them for nice occasions!) The only thing that would have made us happier (well, Erik really), would have been a pair of “Train! Train! Train!” sandals, as Erik would put it.

While I am not typically in the habit of showing off the good deals I snagged at the grocery store, I couldn’t resist today.  And the kids were nicely playing with chalk on the front steps (and Kai was asleep) when I brought in the groceries so I had time for a quick picture:

This was the result of a trip to Cub Foods.  Cub is offering some great store coupons this week, and paired with the many one-dollar-off Kellogg’s cereal coupons from last week and the great dollar-off Kraft Foods coupons from this week (still available here and here as of today), it made for some sweet deals. I spent $60 but saved $40 in sale prices, store coupons and manufacturer coupons.  The produce was one of the biggest non-sale expenses — Cub didn’t have a lot of great fruit sales this week, but I didn’t think we could make it to another store today…so about $9 was spent on the fruit.

I don’t normally buy quite this much junk/processed food — I am stocking up for a back-patio grill-out we are having for Madeline’s birthday.  The hot dogs, some of the pop, some of the mayo, the cheese slices and the Doritos are being saved for that occasion.

I think the deal I am the most proud of is the cereal — the raisin bran and rice krispies worked out to 50 cents per box.  I may even go back to repeat that deal if I have a chance later this week.  I still have more coupons that fit with that sale, and there is no minimum purchase on the “Save $4 when you buy 4″ store coupon.  Who can argue with stocking up when it’s that cheap?!?  Well, I guess the salad dressing (free w/coupon from last week’s paper) and the lunch meat (free w/store coupon and purchase of coke products) were great deals too, but I felt less clever about them since only one coupon was required for each. 

I’m still hoping to hit Target for a few deals later this week (like a store coupon + manufacturer coupon for chicken that will yield a 20 oz. pkg of chicken for less than $2).   And I’m looking forward to more cereal sales this month on other Kelloggs cereals since I still have a bunch more of those dollar off coupons!

I’ve always tried to be a bargain hunter and find the best deals in my shopping for groceries and household products, but it’s only been in the past six or eight months that I’ve added using coupons to my repertory of bargain hunting strategies. We signed up a Sunday-only subscription to the newspaper soon after we moved here. My original intention in doing this was not to get coupons — it was to have all the weekly sale ads conveniently delivered each week, as well as having the entertainment value of the Sunday paper to read each week.  But, as I started paying attention to the coupon inserts, I realized I could actually make use of them.  I’m no coupon diva, but I have managed to learn a few things that are helping me save money.

1. There really are coupons for things I use. Before I started actually looking at the coupon inserts in the newspaper, I thought that almost all the coupons would be for convenience foods I rarely use.  I was surprised to find that many coupons are for household products (toilet paper, paper towels, laundry and dishwasher detergents, dish soap, etc) and “personal care” items like body wash, shampoo, deodorant, contact lens solution, and so on.  We like cold breakfast cereals, and there are a fair number of cereal coupons for the non-super-sweet varieties.  There are also a decent number of coupons for fairly basic food items like plain pasta, canned tomatoes, frozen veggies, baking supplies, yogurt and other dairy products.  There’s also the seasonal coupons — I saw coupons for pens and other office supplies at “back to school” time and coupons for ice cream in the summer.  There are now coupons for Halloween candy. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas time there are extra coupons for baking supplies.

2.  Internet coupons are (more often than not) the “real deal”. I also had this idea that internet-printable coupons were a total fraud.  Several years ago, when using a coupon I had gotten in the mail from a manufacturer, a salesclerk really gave the coupon a close look and asked me if this was one of those “fake internet coupons…because all those are a scam, you know.”  I didn’t really know anything about internet coupons, but at that point I was scared into thinking that I should never try and use one anyway. A few years ago internet coupons may have been a scam…and that “too good to be true” coupon your Aunt Ethel forwarded you in an email probably is a fake. But coupons printed today from reputable sources are usually just fine to use.

These days, coupon publishing firms like “smart source” (the same people who bring you some of your Sunday newspaper coupon inserts), the manufacturers themselves, and other coupon websites have found ways to allow consumers to only print a specified number of each coupon (usually one or two) and to make the coupons more difficult to tamper with.  The downside of this is that you have to install little coupon-printing applets from the various websites that allow you to print the coupons, and these applets seem to only work well in Internet Explorer.  But, that small hassle seems well worth it to find coupons that are often even better than the ones you find in your Sunday newspaper inserts.

It is still wise to check on your local stores’ policies before walking in with an armload of internet-printed coupons.  Some places still won’t accept them, even with the safeguards against fraud that are now in place.  Other stores limit the value they will accept (such as only accepting internet printable coupons up to $1 in value).  Some stores may require the coupons be printed in color or limit the number of identical coupons that can be used in one transaction.

3.  Use your coupons when the product is on sale. This seems so obvious now, but until I read this tip on a bargain hunting blog, it had never occurred to me.  When I had considered using coupons in past years, another reason I had thought it might not be worthwhile is that even with a coupon for a name-brand item, it seemed like the generic would still be cheaper.  However, I find that when I use the coupon the same week the product is one sale, many times the name brand product will now be cheaper than its generic equivalent.

Cold breakfast cereals are a good example of this.  I can get a box of generic cereal at Aldi for somewhere in the range of $1.75 – $2.25 depending on the flavor. But, if I wait to stock up on name-brand cereal when it is on sale or a special promotion is in effect, I usually end up paying as little as $1.25 to $1.50 per box, and occasionally as little as $1 per box! Some items rarely go on sale, and sometimes the generic is still cheaper even when I could combine a sale and a coupon, but the “sale + coupon” strategy is usually pretty effective.

4. Combine manufacturer coupons with store coupons for even more deals. This is another strategy that was new to me in the past few months.  If your grocery store puts out store coupons, you can usually combine those with a manufacturer’s coupon and use both on the same item! You do need to read the fine-print on each coupon, because some coupons that are published in a store sales flyer really are manufacturer coupons.  Similar to using your manufacturer’s coupons when an item was on sale, combining your coupon use also makes for some of the best deals.

5. Use blogs and other websites to track coupon deals and other bargains. I’ve discovered there is a whole genre of blogs devoted to hunting for bargains using coupons and other money-saving strategies.  These blogs will alert you to the best deals of the week (often combining sales, coupons and other special promotions) at various grocery stores, drug stores and discount stores like Target and Wal-Mart.  These blogs will also often alert their readers to free product samples various manufacturers are giving away, special give-aways and other deals at various restaurant chains, and general bargain-hunting strategies.  A couple of blogs from this genre that I’ve been enjoying are Money Saving Mom and Northern Cheapskate.

There are also websites solely devoted to pointing out the best deals each week at various grocery stores.  Some of these like “The Grocery Game” are a paid service, while others such as Coupon Mom and My Grocery Deals don’t charge for their service, but also don’t have quite as much information.  I did the free trial of “The Grocery Game” and didn’t find it useful enough to pay for it, at least based on the way I shop.  But many people apparently find it to be a great way to save a ton of money on their grocery bills.

Another great resource for learning more about using coupons and other deals is “Hot Coupon World.”  They have forums devoted to couponing in general, as well as forums for specific kinds of deals, and store-specific forums.  The store forums can be a great resource for learning more about the coupon policies of the stores you shop at, as well as finding out about great deals that other shoppers are finding.  There’s also a coupon database.  If you see a sale on a particular product and are looking for a coupon to pair with the sale, you can search in the database for that product, and if there have been any coupons lately it will tell you where to find them.

Concluding Thoughts: Like I said, I am no coupon diva.  I’m not one of those people you read about who can walk into the store and come out with a whole cart-load of groceries for a couple bucks.  But, I think I have saved a decent amount of money by spending a little bit of time pursuing the use of coupons.  I am also not super organized about, so it doesn’t really need to take a lot of time to make it worth while.  I read through the Sunday paper coupons each week, but I tend to only actually clip coupons once every few weeks. I have a coupon organizer (I think it’s really a check organizer) I got in the dollar section at Target, and sometimes lots of coupons are sitting in it clipped, but not sorted by category.  I try to spend a little bit of time each week looking through sale ads and finding coupons, but some weeks I just go to Aldi and find what I need and I don’t look for all the best deals.  Even if I only have time to pursue using coupons and finding awesome deals one or two weeks out of each month, I’m at least helping make our grocery budget stretch a little further.