Frances | June 30, 2010

Don’t toss those expired coupons in the recycle bin, gather your expired coupons for military families overseas.

If you have been to our Free Frugal Fairhope Coupon Workshops you have heard us talk about another use for those expired coupons. Military bases overseas can use expired coupons in their commissary for up to 6 months after the expiration date.

We have spent some time overseas, and we can tell you from personal experience it is not cheap. The military bases commissary offers some discounts that can help with the grocery cost but the cost of living in general is expensive. Like those of us living state side grocery costs are soaring with no end in sight, so every little bit counts.

Sending coupons overseas is pretty simple and your are sending the package to a U.S. territory so doesn’t require extra international postage. You can get all the instructions including how and which base to adopt at the Overseas Coupon Program, www.ocpnet.org.

Here are a few tips from the site:

• Sort your coupons by food and non food (we especially liked the calorie tip)
• We placed our coupons in two Ziploc bags (see photo)
• Don’t send anything that has expired over 2 months, by the time it gets there they may not be able to use it
• Keep the package open until you get to the post office in case it is cheaper to send your package by parcel post
• Don’t forget about completing the customs form
• Tally the coupons value by weight or counting the values (optional)

There are several bases to adopt and the site is self serving. Fill out an on line form telling them how much you donated and the base the coupons were sent. This helps them keep track of what base is in need.

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Frances | June 28, 2010

Are you looking for particular coupons for products that you buy? Can’t seem to find the coupons that you really need to make a deal? Don’t want to wait for an auction to end? Check out The Coupon Clippers. This site offers high dollar coupons that you can order at any time.

The Coupon Clippers make it very easy and inexpensive to order your favorite coupons. Here are some of our favorites:

• $1 All Liquid Laundry Detergent Cost: $.12
• various Schick Razor Cost:$.12-$.40
• $2 Luvs diapers Cost: $.20
• $2 Pampers diapers Cost: $.15

Here is an example order of a purchase of 10 $2 All Laundry coupons and 10 $1 SeaPak coupons. Our total cost for $30 in coupon is $3.94, not bad when you consider the deals that can be made with these coupons.

Check out the FAQ link to answer all your questions. As you can see there is a $.50 admin fee per order and shipping costs. Shipping cost could vary depending on how fast you want your coupons. We have added The Coupon Clippers logo to the right sidebar of the Frugal Fairhope site so you can check their site for coupons when you see a posted deal.

www.thecouponclippers.com

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Frances | June 22, 2010

Have you noticed Frugal Fairhope has featured the Swagbucks, Ebates, & MyPoints programs this week? Have you been wondering if you are missing something when you make an online purchase?  Are you getting the best possible deal? While we support our local business as much as we can, reality is, sometimes you can get things a lot cheaper on line. Here are our purchasing steps:

• Call, email, and/or visit the local stores to find the best price. Ask the store if they will price match online store prices.
• We use Swagbucks to search for the item. Swagbucks uses the Google search engine so this will give us all the sites that have this product for sale. We are very selective on what company we use to order products on line. We look for a reputable company and will go back and do a Swagbucks search on the company to see the feedback.
  
• If the product is much cheaper online (including shipping & tax) we will then click over to our Ebates and MyPoints accounts and search for the company. This gives us the opportunity to earn cash back or points for this purchase.
• Once we have decided on a store, we check the different sales and offers that the store may have. Do they offer an on line discount code? Free shipping to the store? Percentage off when you use their reward cards?

Once we have gone through these steps we are ready to make the purchase. To give you an example of how this works, let’s look at purchasing the Swing Set Accessory, Binoculars.

1. We searched the local stores for the binoculars and found them in Lowes and Home Depot for around $24 + tax.
2. We searched on Swagbucks for “Swing Set Accessory Binoculars”. We won 12 Swagbucks!
3. We then went back to our Ebates and MyPoints accounts and search for the companies from the Swagbucks search that had this product available. You could argue that we are not comparing apples with apples since the binoculars are from different companies and some could be better than others. For this example, they are children binoculars that will be left out in weather and to us they are all made the same, cheaply. If we cared about the quality of these binoculars we would go back to Swagbucks and do a search by company name or model number.
4. Lowe’s was not listed on the Ebates and MyPoints sites, but Toys R Us, Target, and Home Depot were listed. See below for the breakdown of what we found from these three stores.

Store	On Line Price	MyPoints	Ebates	Shipping	Total
Home Depot	$ 18.97	5 points per dollar	3% cash back	$ 6.50	$ 25.47
Toys R Us	$ 24.99	2 points per dollar	1%-2% cash back	$ 4.98	$ 29.97
Target	$ 24.99	Spend $50 Get 10 points	3% cash back	$ 10.30	$ 35.29

As you can see Home Depot by MyPoints would be the best deal. We would only receive 3% back from Ebates ($.59) but get 90 points from MyPoints where we could turn this into a future gift card.

We are Frugal Fairhope so we won’t stop there.

If you have a MyPoints account for a while you may have 1,600 points to order a $10 gift card or 3,850 for a $25 gift card from Home Depot? Here is how Frugal Fairhope would purchase these binoculars:

Home Depot Binoculars $18.97
$6.50 Shipping
-$25 MyPoints Home Depot gift card
-Receive 90 MyPoints
Final Price: $.49 + 90 MyPoints

Category: Free Stuff, Hardware Store Deals | No Comments »
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Frances | June 2, 2010

The first of the month can be a sad day for “coupon ladies & gentlemen” across the country. This is the day when the majority of coupons have expired. Millions of dollars in coupons are tossed in the trash.

If you have been to our Free Frugal Fairhope Coupon Workshops you have heard us talk about another use for those expired coupons. Military bases overseas can use expired coupons in their commissary for up to 6 months after the expiration date.

We have spent some time overseas, and we can tell you from personal experience it is not cheap. The military bases commissary offers some discounts that can help with the grocery cost but the cost of living in general is expensive. Like those of us living state side grocery costs are soaring with no end in sight, so every little bit counts.

Sending coupons overseas is pretty simple and your are sending the package to a U.S. territory so doesn’t require extra international postage. You can get all the instructions including how and which base to adopt at the Overseas Coupon Program, www.ocpnet.org.

Here are a few tips from the site:

• Sort your coupons by food and non food (we especially liked the calorie tip)
• We placed our coupons in two Ziploc bags (see photo)
• Don’t send anything that has expired over 2 months, by the time it gets there they may not be able to use it
• Keep the package open until you get to the post office in case it is cheaper to send your package by parcel post
• Don’t forget about completing the customs form
• Tally the coupons value by weight or counting the values (optional)

There are several bases to adopt and the site is self serving. Fill out an on line form telling them how much you donated and the base the coupons were sent. This helps them keep track of what base is in need.

Category: Coupons | No Comments »
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Frances | June 2, 2010

We received a call this morning from the manager one of the Florida store. The policy of ONE Walgreen’s Register Reward per transaction/visit is district wide. The Florida and Alabama stores are considered one district. We have updated this list to include this new information.

Here are some additional details to consider:

• All stores will only take one $X off $XX  per visit/transaction. You will not be able to combine a competitor $X off $XX and a Publix $X off $XX for one transaction.
• Product Coupons = Store coupons
• ECBS = CVS Extra Care Bucks

The purpose of this post is information only. This is not an official document from Publix stores and the information could change at any time without notice. As of noon today, June 1st, here are the coupon policies for the Alabama & Florida stores that were collected over the phone. Calls were made to a member of management (Service Managers for Florida) and we were given the following information. Thanks to Reader J… for the information from the Florida stores.

Alabama Fairhope
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: YES Only non video credit coupons
Rite Aid Product Coupons: YES
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: NO
Food World Product Coupons: NO
Bruno’s $X off $XX: YES
Bruno’s Produce Coupons: Yes
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: NO
Commissary: NO
Save-A-Lot: NO

Alabama Gulf Shores
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: YES Only non video credit coupons
Rite Aid Product Coupons: YES
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: NO
Food World Product Coupons: NO
Bruno’s $X off  $XX: YES
Bruno’s Produce Coupons: Yes
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: NO
Commissary: NO
Save-A-Lot: NO

Alabama Orange Beach
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: YES Only non video coupons
Rite Aid Product Coupons: YES
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: NO
Food World Product Coupons: NO
Bruno’s $X off  $XX: YES
Bruno’s Produce Coupons: Yes
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: NO
Commissary: NO
Save-A-Lot: NO

Florida Mobile Hwy
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX:  NO
Rite Aid Product Coupons: NO
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: YES
Food World Product Coupons: YES
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: YES
Commissary: YES
Save-A-Lot: NO

Florida University 9 Mile
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: NO
Rite Aid Product Coupons: NO
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Store Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: YES
Food World Product Coupons: YES
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: YES
Commissary: YES
Save-A-Lot: NO

Florida Pine Forest 9 Mile Road
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: NO
Rite Aid Product Coupons: NO
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: YES
Food World Product Coupons: YES
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: YES
Commissary: YES
Save-A-Lot: NO

Florida 9th Ave & Bayou Blvd
Target Product Coupons: YES
CVS $X off $XX: YES
CVS ECBS: NO
CVS Product Coupons: YES
Rite Aid $X off $XX: NO
Rite Aid Product Coupons: NO
Winn Dixie $X off $XX: YES
Winn Dixie Product Coupons: YES
Food World $X off $XX: YES
Food World Product Coupons: YES
Walgreen’s Register Rewards: YES, limited to one per visit/transaction NEW
Walgreen’s Product Coupons: YES
Apple Market: YES
Commissary: YES
Save-A-Lot: NO

The purpose of this post is information only. This is not an official document from Publix stores and the information could change at any time without notice.

Category: Grocery Store Deals, Publix | No Comments »
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