Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Dollar Deals at Culvers have begun!


Culvers is by far my favorite fast food restaurant.  If anything, I feel bad even including it in the fast food category, it's tastes too good for that label!

So, of course I just love it when they run sales there!  Every summer they have "Dollar Deals" where for a week at a time a different item on their menu will be only $1!  I just got an email that right now you can get a single scoop waffle cone for only $1. 

This is a nice treat, but the Dollar Deal that I look forward to is when their famous Butter Burgers go on sale for only $1.  I'll be keeping a lookout for that one!

- Mister Deals

PS Check out the full email below:

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Free 7up!


Thanks to Money Saving Mom, I just found out about this sweet coupon for $1 off of 7up.  This can easily lead to free 7up, if it goes on sale for $1 - or if you can double the coupon at your local grocery store.  Print your coupon now, before they are all gone!

http://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?bt=vi&tqnm=zc5nbyx78709297&o=62674&c=SU&p=poJm63MV

- Mister Deals

Monday, May 3, 2010

Frugal Tip of the Day: Save Money on Gas - Ride a Bike!

Now that it has warmed up in my cof the woods, I have been so excited to get outside and enjoy the nice weather.  One thing I always do during the spring and summer months is reduce the amount I drive my car for short trips and errands.  Whenever I can, I walk or bike instead of taking the car.

If you are used to driving everywhere, this may seem difficult at first.  But, I bet if you try it, you will be pleasantly surprised.  I know I was! 

For me personally, I can walk to some places downtown, like Walgreens and the Post Office - which are two places I go to at least once per week if not more often.  I'm always getting register reward deals or mailing out items I've sold on ebay or amazon.com, and now by walking to the post office instead of driving there, I'm saving money, helping the environment, and staying healthy!

For grocery shopping, it might be not be practical to walk: the store may be too far away, or in a location that is not pedestrian friendly - not to mention: how am I going to carry all these bags home?  I may be frugal, but I am not about to push a shopping cart all the way home! haha.

So, for most grocery store trips I have still been driving, but I have now challenged myself to use the bus on my next trip to the grocery store.  I have some bus passes that I didn't use up last summer, so it's basically a free ride for me.  Even if it wasn't free, a round trip on the bus would cost less than a gallon of gas right now(just remember to ask for a transfer card - that gets you home for free!).

Enjoy the weather!
-Mister Deals

Friday, April 30, 2010

Swagbucks - Worth It!

There are a lot of "points" programs on the web that promise you prizes and benefits beyond your wildest dreams - and most of them never seem to pay off in reality.  Well, I can now officially say that swagbucks is actually worth the small amount of effort it takes to get setup and use it.

First, Sign Up (click this banner, note that I get bonus points for referring you):

Search & Win

Next, I highly recommend setting swagbucks as your homepage.  If you are a die-hard Google user like me, it might be very difficult for you to make something other than Google (or iGoogle) your home page, but I am telling you it's the best thing.  For one, their homepage has a search box at the top that you can use to do Google-ish searches.  Technically, it combines results from Google and some other search engines.  They present the results a little differently than Google, and in general I don't like the search engine as much as I like pure Google searches - but, it's worth it!  Even if you just do a few searches each time you open your browser, you will start winning a few Swagbucks here and there, and before you know it you will be able to cash them in!

The final thing you "need to do" (in my opinion), is add the swagbucks toolbar.  Now, I can tell you, I hate toolbars.  I generally use the Google Chrome Browser, and I love how simple the UI is.  I have sat down at other people's computers and literally cringed at the site of their Internet Explorer browser with 5+ toolbars that took up almost half of the screen! Aghhhh!  So, here is what I did: I installed the toolbar on Internet Explorer.   It's the only toolbar I have installed, and it's still not my primary browser, but just by having it, whenever I do happen to open IE, I usually get a few free swagbucks.  I'm not kidding, I just launch the program and there is a pop up telling me I got 3 Swagbucks.  And I'm like "Cool, thanks!"  Having the toolbar also gives you access to messages from "TSG" which are generally time-sensitive bonus codes that you input on swagbucks.com and receive more swagbucks.


How does it work?

Mainly, you just use their search engine and you will randomly win Swagbucks, which are points that you can accumulate and then cash in for real prizes.  My favorite thing to do is cash them in for Amazon.com gift cards.  A $5 gift card is 450 Swagbucks.  If you only use swagbucks rarely, like I do, it will take about 4-6 months to get to that level.  $5 in 4 months may not sound like much, but I try to look at it this way: how much time did I actually put in to this, 10 seconds here, 15 seconds there, if it's even 20 minutes total over the 4 months, I'd be shocked.  My point is, for almost no work at all, you are getting $5 free every few months.  And, if you really work at it: get referrals, take surveys, etc (there are a lot of ways to earn free points) then you can earn a lot more!

Watch for Codes!

One of the best ways to get extra swagbucks is to enter bonus codes on the swagbucks.com homepage.  The codes come from various sources: their twitter feed, facebook updates, blog posts, the toolbar, etc.  There are some other coupon bloggers who will also post when there is a new swagcode out and tell you where to find it, so the easiest way to get the codes is the just keep reading your usual blogs, assuming one of them is an active "swagernaut."  (Yes, the folks at swagbucks.com have about a million swag- terms, pretty silly, but it makes it a little fun :)


- Mister Deals

PS my swagbucks referral link: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/misterdeals

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Great Rolling at Walgreens this Week (4/25/2010 - 5/1/2010)

This is a great week to stock up on women's shaving cream and feminine products at Walgreens! There are two "Free after Register Reward" deals going on that create a very easy rolling scenario. In each case, the product is on sale for $2.99 and you receive a $3 register reward. So you basically go back and forth, buying one and then the other and paying with your register reward each time. Note that you also have to buy a cheap filler item (I suggest a Nestle candy bar, on sale for 39 cents this week), to bring the pre-tax total above $3. Your first transaction will cost $3.15, but each one after that you pay only 56 cents OOP per transaction.

Example:

Transaction 1
1 Skintimate Shaving Cream $2.99

Total = $3.15
+receive a $3 Register Reward

Transaction 2
1 Stayfree Maxi Pad $2.99
1 "100 Grand" candy bar $0.39
Use $3 Register Reward

Total = $0.56 OOP
+receive another $3 Register Reward

Transaction 3
1 Skintimate Shaving Cream $2.99
1 Butterfinger candy bar $0.39
Use $3 Register Reward

Total = $0.56 OOP
+receive another $3 Register Reward


Repeat transaction 2 & 3 as many times as you want (or until they run out of the product!). These are both items that are not going to "go bad" so stock up now, and never pay full price for shaving cream again! If you don't want to use candy bars as your filler items - check out the clearance racks, or grab some Ramen noodle which are also 39 cents.

- Mister Deals


PS Yes, my first post in almost a year is about feminine products. Does this triumphant return mean I will be blogging regularly? I don't know, but you know what they say: "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." and, as always "Be the change you want to see in the world." I'm going to be frugal - blogging or not :)

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

8 lb Fresh Fruit for about $1.50 @ Target


Mrs. Deals pointed out this deal to me at Target (also seen on Money Saving Mom ). For anyone who thinks that couponing only works for cereal and toilet paper, take a look at this (sorry for the poor quality camera phone pic - it's my only option right now!)


You can print off Target Web Coupons for $0.50 off Bananas (1 lb or more) and $1 off Apples (1 lb or more). If you are really lucky, you're local Super Target will have Apples on sale for 0.99 / lb, which would make it possible to get them free.

At my Target, the small Granny Smith apples were priced at $1.29 / lb, so with the coupon, they were only $0.29 for a pound of apples. Lucky for me, 3 of these little guys came out to exactly a pound. Literally, 2 of my receipts say "1.00 LBS" one was 1.02 and one was .99, but my cashier still happily took the coupon.

Bananas worked out pretty good, although it was a lot harder to hit the 1 lb mark dead on. I split up 2 bunches of six into my four transactions, and found that 3 bananas would weigh anywhere from 1.1 to 1.15 lbs, and 2 bananas rang up as only .68 lb. To my surprise, the cashier let that one fly too, so even though the 2 bananas only cost 38 cents, she still took off the whole $0.50 coupon (the overage came off of the 32 cents I should have paid for the apples) and I ended up having a total of only 20 cents for that transaction!

The total of all 4 transactions was:
.43 + .20 + .50 + .40 = $1.53

Total Haul:
  • 4.01 lbs of Small Granny Smith Apples (12 apples)
  • 4.20 lbs of Bananas (2 bunches = 12 bananas)

I hesitate to say "OOP" though, because I used a target gift card (one of many we received as wedding gifts), so as far as our weekly budget goes this was a completely free shopping trip.

I can't wait to try whatever Mrs. Deals makes with those apples... yum!

- Mister Deals


Monday, August 10, 2009

Shopping for basics at TJ Maxx

Almost out of vanilla & wanting some sesame oil, Mrs. Deals stopped at TJ Maxx today to scope some prices.

Since a 2oz bottle of McCourmick Vanilla costs around $5 at regular price, we decided to look for alternatives, especially with Thanksgiving time far away (Vanilla goes on sale around 50% off at this time of year). For us it is important to buy real vanilla versus imitation, and as a result we know it would take a good chunk out of our regular weekly budget.

This week we are starting with $30 for shopping & only plan on spending a little at Walgreens and Target, to make up for the cost of staples.

Anyway, onto the TJ Maxx shopping trip:

(2) 4oz bottles of Madagascar Vanilla 5.99 each
(1) 16.7oz bottle of Organic Sesame Oil $4.99

Total out of pocket: $16.97