Three Easy Ways To Find Coupons
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I’m not a big coupon user, I admit it. It’s not because I don’t like to save money, it’s because I never seem to find the time to go and find the coupons. I don’t subscribe to a newspaper, so getting the ads for local retailers usually involves actually going to the stores and getting a copy of their ads. What I need is to have a way for coupons and deals to be spoon fed to me so I don’t have to go looking for them.
Luckily, there are smart people out there that are creating ways to tap into the sea of coupon-less people just like me.
Email Lists: In the past, my usual response when a retailer asks for my email address or my phone number was to decline. After all, I don’t need any more spam in my inbox, or solicitation calls, right? On a whim, I gave my information to Old Navy a few months ago. I now get a non-annoying amount of texts from them not only to alert me of sales, but also with coupon codes I can use online, or in the store. Ever since this happened I’ve signed up with my local grocery store and just about every retailer that asks. There’s not a more convenient way to carry around coupons than electronically in an email or text message.
Browser Tools: There are a multitude of browser tools out there that will help you do price comparisons while shopping at your favorite online retailers as well as help you find online coupons The best one I’ve found is coupons-vault.com. I was shopping for new running compression pants on Amazon, and as I was browsing one product, it popped up a slide window that gave me other click-able suggestions that were cheaper!
Cell Phone Apps: I try to stay on top of which retailer offers the products I use at the cheapest price. But running a household of four, sometimes it’s hard to keep track. The cell phone app Favado helps me keep it all straight. It will tell me in an instant if a product is offered at a cheaper price at a nearby retailer AND if there happens to be a coupon available.
These three techniques are the foundation upon which I’m building my coupon empire. I’m not a big coupon user yet, but I have a feeling that’s about to change.
Do you have any good couponing techniques that don’t take a lot of effort, but saves you money in your day to day shopping? Please share, I need all the help I can get!
Brought to you courtesy of Brock
Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.
I get coupons from Ebay by just searching for what specific coupons I am looking for. When they changed their coupon selling policy last year around this time, many coupon sellers stopped selling on Ebay, but instead conduct a lot of their business via email. One seller that I used regularly on Ebay now sends out a weekly email list of coupons she has available to all the people subscribed. Then if you want some you email her back with what you want and how many. She bills you via paypal and puts your coupons in the mail the same day that you pay. It’s pretty darn easy!
We usually make pretty good use of those Valpack coupons that come free in the mail. We didn’t even sign up for them, they just found us! They are usually good for the occasional Mexican restaurant visit.
@Kayla – I had no idea ebay did that, nor that they stopped. Pretty cool that you have found a way to keep it going…….have you written a post about it??
@Moneyahoy – we get something similar in the mail too….most of the time they aren’t very useful for us – but every now and then we get lucky! Thanks for the reminder!