Christmas Shopping for 2012

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? For next year, that is.  If you are an avid couponer, you may have ventured out this morning and begun your shopping for Christmas 2012, like I did.  I don't always do so, but with TEN $3 off Axe holiday gift set coupons set to expire on January 7th, I knew I needed to get to our small Walmart early to use them. I hit the Christmas aisle at 9:30  this morning with my coupon binder in hand. Sure enough, there was the sale sign; the $9.99 gift sets were marked down to $5.

Ten sets went in my cart. $20 for $100 worth of gift sets means an amazing 80% savings. These will be set aside in a large tote on my attic steps and either seperated to fill baskets next Christmas for my sons, or given as a gift set. I went through the rest of the Christmas aisles, picking up other items I had coupons for.  Heidi Klum perfume, half-price at $4.97, and I had $5 off coupons. There were only four on the shelves, and they, too, went in my cart. Very nice Olay gift sets in a basket with a body wash, body puff, bar of expensive lavendar soap and a lavendar Febreeze candle were on sale for half off, at $7.50, and other Olay gift sets that included a razor, body puff, shaving cream and body wash were marked down to $5.00. I had $2.00 off coupons (from last year's clearance gift sets, and the coupons expire the end of this month), along with coupons good for $4.00 towards the expensive Olay bar soaps that retailed for $4.47, so I added those to my cart as well. Old Spice deodorant sets for $2.50, minus a $1 coupon. I picked up a few Christmas gift tag packages and some Christmas paper plates in the same aisle, and then searched the store for some other good deals.  Duck packaging tape was $1 a roll, and I had some $1 coupons, so those were free. The Centrum Specialist Energy vitamins were marked down to $7 from $19, and I had three $3 coupons so I picked up those for David. My total  was $230 before coupons, and less than $100 after coupons.  Nearly $15 of that was tax.  (gift tags, paper plates and a 2-pack of cinnamon candles which were the ONLY items I did not have coupons for, are not pictured)

I opened up the razor gift sets and put those items in my own depleted cabinet. I also removed the seven booklets of coupons from each Olay gift set, that included a magazine offer I hope to cash in as a $10 refund instead of a magazine subscription. There are seven codes for magazine offers so I will have to go online and see if I can get seven checks or if there is a limit of one per household. The coupons don't expire until the end of 2012, so plenty of time to use them. I filled three totes with gift items for next Christmas.  My gift baskets are one of my adult children's favorite gifts.  One year I filled new travel totes for each of my oldest four. Other years I've used a plastic tote or laundry basket.  This year I used woven baskets for my two daughters and plastic laundry baskets for the boys. I picked up inexpensive throws and lined the baskets, then filled them with soap, shampoo, deodorant, candles, Glade sprays, razors, body washes and a nice Bath & Body Works puff. Then I gathered the ends of the throw and tied the tops shut with a nice ribbon.

I spent more than I'd planned on spending the day after Christmas but will save money next December when I am shopping for my adult children. I'm already half-way there to a few filled baskets, and it isn't even 2012 yet!

Combining Coupons with Clearance Prices

I went to Walmart tonight to finish up my Christmas shopping, picking up small items to fill my children's stockings. $184.00. Gulp. That was my total before coupons.  My daughter Katie looked at me, alarmed.  "Look what you did, adding your purchase to mine!" I joked with her. (she was going to pay me back her $5 at home) Then I handed the coupons to the cashier, and she started scanning them. Final total: $32.01, and $11.38 of that was the tax on my order.

How did I do it?  By combining the $7.00 clearance price on these boxes of Centrum Omega-3 supplements with my $7.00 coupons. 

Since the coupons expire on Christmas I used them all in one transaction, which caused the register to lock up and require a CSM key.  This is no problem in the larger Walmarts I frequent, but it kind of freaked out the CSM when she arrived at the register, and she ended up scrutinizing both the coupons and the supplements for a very long time before she used her key in the register, sighing while she did so. I'm not sure who the sigh was meant for; the cashier who called her or me, the transgressor.  Either way, when I do my couponing workshop here in Manchester in February, I am going to have to warn attendees that they may face some minor opposition and annoyed expressions when they use large amounts of coupons in our local stores. I will also teach them to always check clearance aisles for deals like this.

Hmmm, wonder what my adult children would think of one of these boxes in their stocking?

Reward Cards. Are They Worth It?

It never fails to amaze me. I’ll be waiting on a customer at my sister’s consignment store and at the end of the transaction I’ll ask if they have their punch card handy. Maybe they just spent $80, or even $100. My sister’s frequent shopper card allows for one punch for every $20 spent, and when the card is filled, the customer nets a cool free $20 in merchandise. And, get this; it only takes ten punches, or $200, to get the reward of $20, easily attainable in a month or two by a regular customer.

“No, I don’t have a card,” I’ll hear, and when I explain how the card works, the customer might simply shrug her shoulders or respond; “I don’t want one. I’d just lose it.”

I am amazed.  I have had customers spend halfway to the golden egg of the coveted filled card still refuse their rightful punches.

Are rewards cards worth it? Are they worth the extra hassle of finding a place in your wallet or purse to store them? I have been asked this many times.

Well, it depends. Do you like free money?

These are the rewards cards currently in my wallet.

I have more rewards cards that are virtual only. I don’t have an actual Hot Topic rewards card, although I am sure they sent me one a couple of years ago. Since I do all my shopping with them online, my membership number with them just pops up in the box as soon as I log in on their website. I never set foot in their store but Christmas shopping for several young people means I do take advantage of their online sales every year. A couple of these cards are teacher’s rewards cards. Even as a homeschooler, I am entitled to the 10% off at Half Price books every time I shop there, and the usual rewards at Staples. Some of the cards I have never used (I have yet to shop at a CVS, but will soon experience that pleasure as I prepare for a couponing workshop held in an area that has a CVS store) Others I only rarely use; The Kmart card is necessary to participate in any of their double coupon promotions. But if I am shopping in a store, even rarely, and they offer a rewards card, I’m in.  Why? Because I like to save money, and eventually most of these cards will either save me money or make me money.

For instance, yesterday’s shopping trip involved a stop at a Dubuque consignment store, The Trading Post, where I used a filled punch card that netted me $10 in free merchandise.  It had taken me several months to fill that card, but I regularly shop there with my two youngest girls and it wasn’t too difficult to find both a beautiful necklace and a pair of earrings to use that $10 on. Free jewelry!

My next stop was Staples, where I turned in nine empty ink cartridges to take advantage of their double rewards on ink; $4 instead of their usual $2. I had to buy HP ink to take advantage of this reward, but this week I get back 20% in rewards on my ink purchase (and I needed ink anyway) and I had $30 in previous ink rewards and a $10 gift card from a rebate to use towards my purchase. See how this works? Use your rewards to pay for things you need anyway, items you will get more rewards for buying.  I also picked up two packages of Duracell batteries priced at $12.99. Who doesn’t need batteries? Staples is currently offering their Rewards card members a full 100% back in rewards on those battery packs!

 

So, my total looked like this: 2 black ink cartridges priced at $27.99 (yes, I can get them cheaper online, but remember I am getting 20% back in rewards AND $4 for each empty cartridge I turn in, for an additional $36 back), two packages of Duracell batteries at $12.99 each. My subtotal, with tax, was $85.60. OUCH. Subtract a $3 off two Duracell battery coupon (you knew coupons would be involved, didn’t you?) and my total was $82.60. Subtract the $30 in rewards I’d gotten in the mail from October purchases, and that equals $52.60. Now, subtract the $10 from the gift card that also arrived in the mail from a previous transaction, and I paid the grand sum of $42.60, still a pricey transaction~ but don’t forget!  I will get back almost $5.50 in rewards for purchasing the ink, and another $36 in rewards for turning in empty cartridges, AND $25.98 with that 100% back in the Duracell package rewards (limit 2), which means I wait for rewards in the amount of $57.58, far more than I paid for the transaction in the first place!  And I certainly know how to wait; I’m a writer and a mother. Waiting is my middle name.

And by the time I get the rewards, I’ll probably need more ink and there will be yet another rewards offer to take advantage of.

So, are rewards cards worth it?

Well, you tell me. Do you like free jewelry, batteries, and cash?

A Blast From the Past! Trading Stamps

From my work in progress:
As for trading stamps as we know them, they are a marketing tool that dates back to the late 19^th and early 20^th century. According to Jeff R. Lont’s three-part series, “The Trading Stamp Story,” from StudioZ.7Publishing, a department store in Milwaukee introduced the first trading stamps in 1891. Merchants would issue stamps to customers as an incentive to shop at their store. The gummed stamps were saved inside booklets that, when filled, could be exchanged for merchandise.
In 1896 the Sperry and Hutchinson Company became the first trading stamp company to operate as an independent business with their S& H Green Stamps. They provided stamps and booklets to merchants and even opened their own store where the only type of payment accepted was their own S&H stamps. Other companies and merchants soon followed suit, reaping billions of dollars by the mid 20^th century. Stores and service stations handed out S&H or other trading stamps to
entice customers. Names like Gold Bond, Triple-S, King Korn, Blue Chip and Top Value popped up on the scene. By playing on a housewife’s weakness for “free things” (sound familiar, avid couponers?) trading stamp books were one of the hottest sales ideas of the post-war decade.

If you are a woman of a “certain age” you may have fond memories of the days when stores offered trading stamps as an incentive.

Okay, I’ll come clean. When I married my husband David over 30 years ago, he did come with a dowry of several S&H green stamp booklets. As a newlywed in Cedar Falls, Iowa, I soon discovered the fun and excitement of shopping at a store that offered trading stamps. I can remember trading in those first booklets for a tall kitchen wastebasket. Yes, our first trading stamp purchase was something to hold our garbage in. (an omen of things to come?) The excitement of turning in those first half a dozen booklets was palpable . We waited with bated breath for the merchandise to arrive at the store and to receive the long-awaited phone call that we could come pick it up. I have no recollection of what we used in our small student housing trailer until then. The monthly rent for the trailer was under $93 a month. I imagine we used empty grocery sacks, from our twice-weekly trips to the grocery store where we picked up eggs, milk, bread, canned soup, ribs for barbecuing, and not much else. (to the tune of about $13 a week) At that cost, I’m surprised we netted enough additional booklets to get a bathroom rug and eventually, a high chair for the baby that was born less than ten months after our wedding.

I found this unique vintage trading stamp booklet holder at a garage sale. It was designed for holding trading stamps. It makes the perfect display on my desk as I work on my book.

More from the Coupon Archives

Some people take pictures of their pets. Others take pictures of their children. As a couponer/refunder for 30+ years, I take pictures of my toilet paper stockpile and filled cupboards. These two pictures are from 2003. I loved those Palmolive dishsoap cloths but they were terribly wasteful. I gave both my mother and my son some for Christmas that year. I’d gotten them for pennies with coupons!

From the couponing and refunding archives

Back n the 80s I called myself a “refunder” just as often as I labeled myself a couponer.

From my work in progress:
For those of us who have been in this biz for any length of time, refunding will always be synonymous with couponing. According to David Vaczek and Richard Sale in an August 1998 Promo magazine article about advertising
promotions, refunds and premium offers have a long history as a promotional tactic, going back as far as the early 1880s, when Adolphus Busch, a beer salesman from St. Louis, used to park his beer wagon in front of a saloon to give out free samples. Refunds, unlike their coupon counterparts, offer a certain amount of money or a premium like a t-shirt, hat or stuffed toy sent to the buyer of the product in exchange for the consumer sending certain proofs of
purchase to the company. One hundred years after Bush’s knife give-away the vast amount of premium refund offers available would boggle the mind of any 1880’s salesman. By the 1980s it was easy for me to stock a Christmas gift cupboard with free crayons, balls, hats, t-shirts, towels and stuffed animals, not to mention all the cash back offers that could easily add up to almost $100 a month. A typical refund back then might simply request four UPC’s or ten
wrappers, of which the avid refunder would already have in their files, waiting for just such an offer. Before the advent of UPC codes, manufacturers might ask for a net weight statement for one offer and a boxtop for another so the savvy refunder saved the entire packages from the products they bought. Cash register tapes were rarely needed, except for some of the more lucrative offers like money back on a liquor purchase or car tires. Manufacturers counted on a
certain amount of “slippage” with these offers, using the special offer to motivate the customer to purchase the product, knowing that a good percentage of consumers would inevitably forget to send for the refund. Hard-core refunders, however, didn’t let anything slip by them. If it was free, they sent for it, even if it was a cat toy and they had no pets.
You could tell I was a refunder by our Christmas gifts:
How about the Tide hat for David and an Energizer Bunny tee-shirt for Dan?
Or the 7-Up beach towel for Beth?
Most of our Christmas gifts in those days were free premiums, and the majority of the kid’s t-shirts, toys and balls came from company-sponsored refund offers.
I had an entire room devoted to my hobby, and in the far left corner of this picture you can see some of the gift items I had set up for the benefit of a New York camera crew that interviewed me about refunding and couponing. Unfortunately, the edited version only included information about couponing, despite the fact that in the final version of the video I am shown filing a Tylenol box in a plastic bag. Viewers who were unfamiliar with refunding would wonder what a Tylenol box had to do with saving money with coupons.
I always involved my children in my hobby; collecting candy bar wrappers from trash receptacles in the park, walking the alleys for Pampers points, and cutting coupons. Once we were in the store, I often entrusted my children with the job of finding the product that matched the coupons, keeping them occupied while I scrutinized the shelves for more coupons, more refund forms and good deals I could combine my coupon savings with.