Sunday, August 31, 2014

Finding the savings

I keep plugging along working at getting every penny of savings I can out of purchases.  Even if it's only .78 cents!  DH has one more building project to complete and gave me a list of what he needs. He is going to build a small porch cover over the french doors at the back of our house. We always have to cover in plastic late Fall through early Spring because it tends to leak a bit with hard rain and it helps keep the heat in the house. But, he is hoping the cover will keep the rain out and we can still enjoy our view of our backyard and new arbor.

One thing on his list was some little tool called a T-Bevel. He was nice enough to send me links straight to almost everything at Home Depot on his list. I had installed this nifty new plug-in on my browser that pops up on the top of my browser and tells me if something is cheaper at another store. This T-Bevel wasn't available in store, so was going to have to be an online purchase. The plug-in told me Staples had it too and also shipped free to store. I choose Staples instead since it's less than 2 miles from my house and also said it would be in within 2 business days. I also went through Swagbucks to make the purchase and earned 4 swagbucks per $ spent and found an online coupon code for Staples for another 10% off and then charged it to my debit rewards card for another 1% back. The tool was only $8, but hey, might as well save as much as I can on it.

The rest of the items and lumber on his list are all available at the store. I had all the prices of what he needs at it's just at $200, plus tax. I went to Giftcardzen.com and purchased 2 discounted e-gift cards, at 11.8% savings, that I could print out to take to the store. Total saved $25.95 plus another 1% ($1.95) using my PayPal debit rewards.

He ordered all the bolts he needed via ebay again and saved some there vs. buying them at Home Depot.

I also purchased Walmart e-gift cards at 3.3% discount and used on my grocery shopping trip. I only found one coupon for my stuff, so just $1 in coupon savings this week. I've submitted my receipt to Walmart Savings Catcher and am waiting to hear back on that, but so far, out of the 4 receipts I have submitted that have been processed I am up to $20.58 in Walmart credit. I like that! It's just too easy not to take advantage of.

Then I needed to buy the dogs flea treatment, which always seems cheaper online at Amazon than at the pet store. But thanks to that handy new price comparison plug-in I actually found it cheaper at Petco online, using a coupon code. This time the best "portal" to earn extra points through was actually my regular debit card that is hooked up via Chase's Ultimate Rewards program. I earned 4pts/$ back, which is the same as 4% of my purchases total. I can then transfer that as cash back directly to my checking/savings as soon as it's available. I had hoped I could find an e-gift card to also use at Petco online for this purchase, but no luck finding anything. They were all "in-store only" type gift cards.



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