My Lessons Learned
I love to use my coupons. I recently went shopping at Walmart and discovered that they had a sale on selected grocery items for a $1 an item. I was so excited but I didn't have my coupon book with me. I could have saved a lot of money that day. So I got excited and started looking for more coupons. I collected a lot of coupons to add to my binder and was so excited to use them so I went back to Walmart a couple weeks latter. The $1 sale was over but for some reason I was still excited to use the coupons so I did. I think only 2 of my items were sale items. I didn't do that bad. I saved $8 with coupons alone. But it would have been better to wait. As excited as I am to use my coupons I recognized that I need to wait for the sales to make it worth my while. But one thing that I did that helped me save a lot more is I applied a $1 off coupon to an Old El Paso item which had a coupon for the movies so in the end I got dinner and a child's movie ticket for free. So combining coupons with offers on a box is a bonus.The other lesson I learned is to pick your cashiers carefully. I try to find the young cashiers as they are very patient and excited to see how much you save compared to the older cashiers who double check everything and it takes longer to get through the till. And another lesson learned for me is to not coupon shop on the Sunday before the Superbowl game!!! Have fun couponing!!
Are Point Cards Worth It?
Petro points, PC points, MBNA travel reward points, Shoppers Optimum points, Airmiles! There are so many point cards. Are they really worth it? In my opinion yes! Let's start with President's Choice points. I have a President's Choice mastercard that I use to funnel money through in order to get my points. Once you accumulate 20,000 points, you will be able to redeem $20 towards your groceries (it accumulates quickly!!!). So how do I make sure that I don't accumulate credit card debt by overusing the mastercard? I save the receipt and immediately go to my online banking through my iPhone and pay the mastercard after every transaction. I was going to debt it anyways so why don't I make the money work for me. Here is the link to PC financial for further information http://www.pcpoints.ca/en/index.asp
Another tip to maximize the use of your PC points card is to ensure that you tell the cashier that you are paying with your PC points card and tell her how many reusable bags you are using and they will credit you $0.03 per bag.
As well, with you PC card you can go to the Superstore gas bar, gas up, pay with your PC financial master card or point card and PC will give you so many cents per litre of gas you put in your car and all you would do is submit the receipt to the cashier the next time you go shopping.Watch out for extra point days. Last Wednesday they had a 20X PC points for gassing up at the Superstore gas bar, so for example, depending on how big your tank is, filling your tank up would have given you a $16 coupon to be applied to your groceries at the Superstore.
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A cool way to maximize the accumulation of points is to use multiple points card during one transaction. I have a Shoppers Drug Optimum card as well as a MBNA travel rewards mastercard. When I make a purchase at Shoppers, I give them my optimum card to get shoppers points and I follow that with my MBNA travel rewards card so I can get points for travel.
Another good points card that I have several of my friends using is the Visa travel card. This is a great card if you love to travel. Someone I know took a family of 6 to the Carribean for $600 because they used most of their points towards the trip and only had to pay $600 for the 6 of them for a week! In talking to my fellow mom, she said that she does everything through the card. So that is what I started to do but made sure to pay off the card with every transaction. The rule of thumb so you don't get in trouble with credit is don't use it if you can't pay it off right away!!! The only bill that I can funnel money through the mastercard is my Rogers account. If you want to pay your hydro bill through your card you will have to tack on another $5 for administrative fees. Not worth it in my opinion.So let the points work for you!!! They work for sure. I'll post more thoughts on more points cards next time. Happy Shopping!!
Eleanor
