If you’re like me, you love a discount where ever you can find one. But are you aware of all of the places to look for these discounts?

For example, do you receiving a telltale blue-and-white postcard from home accessories store Bed, Bath and Beyond in the mail on a regular basis? Is there even a Bed, Bath and Beyond near to you? There isn’t to me, and so I’ve always tossed these coupons in the trash, thinking, “What good are these?” Turns out, they are very good–especially if you live near a Bed, Bath and Beyond competitor like Linens and Things.

This past weekend I needed to buy a birthday gift for a party my older daughter would be attending, and what she wanted to get her friend was not available at any of the stores where we could use our existing gift cards. I knew I could find this gift at Linens and Things, and figured I’d bring in the Bed, Bath and Beyond postcard coupon that had just arrived in the day’s mail. When I got to the checkout counter, I asked if they take their competitors coupons, and sure enough they do. So I got 20 percent off my purchase, even though I never stepped foot in a Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Are there other store-related coupons that you’ve got lying around, that you might be able to use in a competitor’s place of business? If so, check it out. It never hurts to ask and who knows? You might just end up getting an unexpected discount on your purchase like I did.

So in my quest not to spend money haphazardly, I’ve managed not to go food shopping for almost two weeks. This morning, there were such slim pickings for breakfast and for packing the girls’ camp lunches that I was shaking crumbs out of the cereal boxes into their breakfast bowls and reaching all the way to the back of the refrigerator to find something palatable to pack. There is no doubt about it–I must go food shopping today.

Problem is, I work from home and I’ve got two work-related deadlines to deal with today. So I don’t want to just rush out to the market, hungry and desperate to fill my cart (because we all know that’s how you end up overspending) just to get home in time to get my work done. At the same time, I can’t spend hours lollygagging up and down the grocer’s aisles, looking for a good deal. What’s a frugal mom like me to do?

Well, I discovered something interesting this morning. My two local food stores offer their circulars online. As I type this blog entry, I’ve got two tabs open in my web browser so I can toggle back and forth between each store’s circular as I got down my shopping list. This will allow me to actually compare apples to apples–or in this case, grapes to grapes–as I decide which store has the better bargain.

For example, one of the stores, Giant, which is right in my town, has grapes on sale for $1.99 a pound. The other is ShopRite, which is a little farther away–and offers a shopping online option–has grapes on sale for $.99 a pound. Can you guess where I’ll be buying my grapes from today?

A nice benefit to the Giant website is that it does allow me to create an online shopping list that I can print out and take with me to the store. Just now I discovered that Giant has a better offer on bread this week–10 loaves for $10 or a buck a loaf versus ShopRite’s best price of $2 a loaf–so onto the list the bread went.

So why bother with this toggling back and forth? Well, I recently read that a shopper who comparison shops like this and visit two or more stores in a day to purchase groceries end up saving about $40 per trip. If I have to visit these two stores to get these bargains, so be it. Gosh knows I’d love to save $40 per grocery shopping trip.

QUICK ADDENDUM
Those supermarkets can be so sneaky with their so-called good deals, and I almost fell for it. The Giant circular was advertising what seemed to be an amazing deal. Buy three General Mills products, and get a coupon for $4.50 off a future gallon of milk. At the same time Giant was offer General Mills cereals on sale–3 for $6.00. Hey, $2 a box isn’t so bad. So I did the math, and with this deal I would have spent $1.50 total to get three boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk. But then I read the fine print–there were only three General Mills’ cereals that qualified for the deal, and none of them are the kind my kids like. So while it’s tempting to go for the money-savings offer, what good would it do us to have cereal no one will eat? Besides, I just discovered that at ShopRite milk is way cheaper–$2.89 for a gallon of skim versus $3.18 at Giant–and they have Kellogg cereals that kids do like on sale for $1.99 a box. There’s a four-box limit at this price, and I’m going to go stock up.

Last weekend we threw an at-home birthday party for Annie, who turns 10 in a few days. For many years running, we would outsource the her and her sister’s birthday parties. Sure, these were expensive endeavors but it made our busy lives easier. One year Annie had her party at The Little Gym. Another we went to a local health club. The past two years we visited The Brunswick Zone, an awesome bowling alley that offers glow-in-the-dark bowling plus laser tag.

At all of these events, all we had to do was show up, and bring a cake and our checkbook. The rest of the time we could bowl or play laser tag or just hang out with the other parents at the party. A staffer served food, placed the candles on the cake, served it and cleaned up afterwards. For this we would pay a couple hundred dollars, and everyone would go home happy.

In our Suddenly Frugal lifestyle, this kind of birthday party expenditure just won’t fly. This year, we needed do a simple, homemade celebration that hopefully wouldn’t cost too much. And I think we succeeded on all fronts–from budget to everyone going home happy.

One way we kept our birthday party costs down was by using things we already owned. For example, when Annie was turning 4, we had a luau-themed party. (This is when the movie “Lilo and Stitch” was all the rage.) As was common in my pre-budget days, I over-ordered luau supplies from Oriental Trading Company, which meant we had plenty of left overs for Annie’s party 6 years later. We had leis, decorations and paper goods. The only splurge we allowed was on favors–grass beach mats from Five Below, which cost $1 each–and a $10 fish pinata from Party City.

Another cost-savings was baking our own cake–I spent $9 total on cake and frosting supplies, and was able to make two double-decker cakes, with two boxes of batter leftover for future cake-baking. “The Early Show’s” Hannah Storm recently blogged on the beauty of a homemade cake for a birthday, and I agree with her on how simple is often better when it comes to birthday cakes.

We did end up spending a bit more than expected on other food–$50 on pizza (but leftovers provided two nights’ worth of dinners for the four of us) and $30 on two gallons of Rita’s Water Ice (that’s the Philly version of Italian ice, FYI). But our total birthday bill never came close to any of the outsourced parties we’d done in the past. Better yet, I know the at-home party was a huge success, because Annie is already asking to do it again next year, and big-sister Jane wants to do something similar for her 12th birthday in July. That’s fine with me and my budget!

Now that I’ve been keeping a closer watch on our expenses, I’m amazed at how much money we’ve spent getting sucked into “conveniences.” Before we moved we had a cleaning lady, which was a wonderful convenience (in that I could count on my home being spotless every Monday). But thanks to the home organization site FlyLady, I’ve re-learned how to keep house–and now I can do it for free. Bye-bye, cleaning lady and $300 a month in expenses.

The same can be said for the “convenience” of home shopping for foods. We used to buy our meat directly from a local company that would drive its freezer-laden truck to our home once a month, and we would buy right out of the back. Sure, we’d get months worth of salmon, tilapia and chicken in convenient, single serving packages, but you had to buy in bulk and it was not cheap. Most shopping stops would set us back $400. Worse, when we moved a few weeks ago and had to unplug our extra freezer, in which I’d stored all of this bulk fish and chicken, I found pounds and pounds of frozen fish that I had had great intentions of cooking but never got around to doing so. Now, these once-gorgeous fillets were white and freezer burned. I’m afraid to add up how much I ended up throwing away in unused fish.

One of the last conveniences that I think is about to go on the chopping block is the delivery dry cleaning services. About two years ago we started using a local company that picks up and delivers our dry cleaing every Monday and Thursday, because my recently promoted husband couldn’t get away with polo shirts at work anymore. He was now expected to wear a shirt and tie on most days, and since we couldn’t remember the last time we’d used an iron–or even where it was–it was time to start sending out Bill’s shirts. Mind you, using this service is not tremendously expensive: we spend about $1.25 per shirt and send out, maybe, 10 shirts a week. However, in the course of this move, a couple of things happened.

1) We found the iron

2) We forgot to notify the dry cleaning service of our new address and two weeks went by without any shirts going out.

3) Because two weeks went by without sending Bill’s shirts out, I had to wash them.

And an amazing thing happened: we discovered that if you wash dress shirts, and throw them in the dryer for 10 minutes, you can take them out when they’re slightly damp and hang them up to dry. Once dry, they look almost perfect. I especially love using this technique on Bill’s no-iron shirts from Jos. A. Bank, because they really do come out of the dryer–and then dry on the hanger–looking as if they’ve been pressed.

Today, the dry cleaning service finally figured out our new address. I didn’t have any shirts to give to them, and I should probably give them a call and ask them to take us off of their route. I know it’s not earth-shattering to figure out how to launder a man’s shirt but having been sucked into the convenience of the dry cleaner doing this dirty job for so long, I’m amazed that I can do it just as well and at a considerable savings.

One of my favorite shopping inventions in the recent past is the gift card. I love to give them as a gifts and I especially like receiving them for birthdays, holidays and other special occasions. There’s nothing like the joy of shopping on someone else’s dime.

For a long time, though, I would get a gift card–and then promptly forget where I’d put it. My kids, who also love receiving gift cards, would lose them as well. Or I’d put one gift card in my wallet, store another in my sometimes purse and another in the center console of the car. Sure, all of these gift cards were “safe” but none of them were practical or easily accessible if I wanted to use them.

Now that we are Suddenly Frugal, it’s critical for us to use gift cards and other valuable coupons if we want to keep our shopping costs to a minimum. To help us be able to use gift cards at all times, my husband Bill came up with a brilliant tool: the gift card wallet.

Basically, what we’ve done is created a wallet in which we store all of our gift cards. We also keep in this wallet any store membership or affinity cards that help us to get discounts when we shop, and we’ve stashed any “frequent buyer” cards in there, too. Ideally, we will always have our gift card wallet with us so that, whenever possible, we can cut our spending by using gift cards.

Today was a perfect example of how that wallet can help us out. Annie and I went to Target to pick up some necessities for camp, which starts tomorrow. We purchased shorts, Croc-like shoes, reusable water bottles and more. We were able to shave $56 off of our bill, thanks to two Target gift cards that we’d had since Christmas. Because Bill had organized our gift card wallet, we knew where they were before we got to the store and remembered to use them when we got to the checkout line.

I’m thrilled that we’ve got all of our gift cards in one place. Now I’m just going to have to remember to switch the gift card wallet if I decide to take another purse the next time I go shopping.

One of the cool things about our new house is it is around the corner from our public libary. Literally, around the corner. I just measured the distance with my car’s odometer (I was running a non-walkable errand and figured I’d see exactly how far away the library is from the house), and it’s 3/10 of a mile from my driveway to the library’s front door. Now we have no reason not to take advantage of one of society’s most cost-effective resource for readers–the library.

I realize that when it comes to money-saving advice, saying “Take out books from the public library” doesn’t seem to be fresh or revolutionary advice. According to the American Library Association, Americans made a cumulative total of 1.3 billion library visits last year. But for this family of four, which spent close to $800 on books last year, it is a revolutionary concept.

For years we’ve been lucky enough to be this way–when we wanted a book, we bought a book. Whether it was going online to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or popping in to a local branch of our favorite bookstore, a book was always an indulgence we allowed. As I mentioned we spent almot $800 on books last year.

Now, by embracing the public library next door, we might just have found an excellent way to keep on reading while keeping our book costs in check. Well, that is, as long as we borrow and return responsibly.

You see, when I went to the library with Jane this afternoon to get her a card–and me one, too–the library’s computer system reminded me that at one point I did have a library card. If I wanted a new one, I had to pay a $3 card replacement fee. Fine. Sure. Whatever. Then the system showed that back in 2005, I’d taken out three books and two videos (for the kids, of course) and hadn’t returned them on time. So I’d had fines accruing in the system for two years. That meant that in addition to paying for my replacement card, I needed to fork over $13.50 in fines as well. All told, I paid the library $16.50 today, and I hope never to spend another (unintentional) dime there again.

This actually turned into an interesting lesson on money for Jane. I explained to her why I needed to pay the library this money. I also explained that now that she had a library card and was respoinsible for it, that she, too, could be liable for late fines if she didn’t return books on time. And if she did accrue fines, it would be coming out of her own pocket, not mine. I’m hoping that Jane will do a better job of staying fine-free at the library than I had.

So from here on in, if I want to read something–magazine, newspaper or book–I’m walking that 3/10 of a mile to the library. I’m holding my husband and the girls to these expectations, too. The only exception to the rule will be if and when I get a bookstore gift card as a gift. Though if I’m really going to be frugal about our new lifestyle, I’ll save that gift card, not for buying a book for myself but for when I need to buy someone else a gift–and want to get him or her a book. That would be a great way to do some necessary shopping without putting a dent in my own budget.

When we were getting ready to move from our old place, we knew that there was a ton of stuff that we wouldn’t need in the new place and/or didn’t want to bring with us. These were things both big and small, and not quite right for selling on eBay. However, before I put everything on the curb as trash, I wanted to see if I could turn some of it into cash.

What worked best for us was using Craigslist, which if you don’t know by now, is an online bulletin board for buying and selling and dating and swapping and getting a job and more. Craigslist divides its boards by geography so that if you’re looking to buy or sell something locally, you can search on the Craigslist nearest to you.

According to Craigslist protocol, when you’re selling something, the buyer and seller meet at a mutually agreed upon location to complete the deal. There’s no shipping involved. This cuts down on the schlep factor for both parties. Also, there’s the convenience factor. I knew that I didn’t want to travel far to get rid of my stuff, and I knew that my buyers probably felt the same about buying.

The first thing I successfully sold on the “For Sale” section of Craigslist was a Fisher Price plastic toy box, which we must have had for 10+ years. My children had long outgrown it, and after a good washing, it was ready for a new home. I brought the box outside to take a digital picture of it—ads sell better with well-written descriptions and good-quality pictures—and within a day, I had a dad of toddler willing to give me $20 for something that had been sitting in my basement for over a decade. We agreed to meet at a public park, where my older daughter happened to be having a softball game one Friday evening, and found each other via cell phone. I practically skipped back to the softball game, with the crisp $20 in my hand, the transaction was so easy.

Our next Craigslist sale was our wooden playset. Built to look like one of those roadside Taj-Ma-Playgrounds you see for sale these days, my husband actually constructed it of scrap lumber, albeit pressure-treated scrap lumber so it would hold up to the elements. Again, I took a digital picture of the playset, plus provided its dimensions in the ad so people would have a sense of whether or not they need to rent a truck to take it home. (It was too big to fit in the first buyer’s extended cab pick-up truck so he went home empty-handed.) In this instance the buyer had to come to our house for the transaction, and I just made sure that, for safety’s sake, that it was daylight and my husband was home when they came by. A local family, which did rent a truck, paid $75 for the playset.

The last thing we sold before our move was an old gray filing cabinet I’d had since graduating from college. For a young single person just starting in the writing business, this clunky, musty filing cabinet worked just fine. But once I set up a real home office, that filing cabinet got demoted to the basement, which is where is stayed for eight years. With the move on the horizon, I knew I didn’t want that cabinet coming with us. So again I turned to Craigslist and, long story short, a twenty-something came to my home late one afternoon, and paid me $15 to take away a filing cabinet I was planning to throw away.

All told I made over $100 on stuff that I considered to be junk. These days I’m looking around the house, which is still overflowing with boxes, and wondering what else I could sell on Craigslist to bring in some extra cash.

Interestingly, soon after this experience, I discovered that my writer friend Jen Miller wrote an article on turning clutter into cash. That article appeared in the June 19, 2007 issue of Woman’s Day magazine. Like me Jen is a big fan of Craigslist but she’s also discovered some other online venues that are worth checking out when you’re looking to get rid of unwanted items. Some of those venues that she writes about in her story, which I never would have consider for unloading unwanted items, include Oodle.com and Half.com.

In my opinion Payless Shoe stores are the best thing to happen to girls who like shoes (me!) and who don’t want to pay through the toes for fashionable footwear (me again!). Sadly, though, I cannot partake of Payless’s bounty because while they carry wide shoes, Payless does not carry double-wide shoes. I am a 8.5EE. What’s also sad is that my tween daughters, who like shoes as much as I do, have inhertited my double-wide feet.

When they were younger and their feet weren’t as wide, we could get away with Payless wide shoes–they were great for their fashion and my budget, especially with the girls’ feet growing so quickly. They usually needed new shoes, because of sizing, not because a pair wore out.

These days, I still try to be budget-conscious about shoes outside of Payless options but that isn’t always 100% possible, given our special-needs feet. Usually, when my girls need shoes, we’ll visit this old-fashioned shoe store in a nearby town–a store that specializes in “hard-to-fit feet.” (That’s the wording they use in their Yellow Pages ad, I swear.) We get their feet measured, and we buy what we need. I usually spend a couple hundred dollars on shoes. Not great, but I know that when I need replacements, I’ve got to get creative with my financing.

Thankfully, the girls’ foot growth has slowed down, so these days when I need to replace shoes , it’s because they wore out, not because the girls’ have grown out of them.

I try to limit those $100+ pairs of shoes to once-a-year purchases, so when I’m in the market for those replacements, I’ll usually take the name of the shoe–manufacturer and style name–and plug it into Google so I can find online stores that carry the same shoes and, hopefully, at cheaper prices. So far, so good.

I’ve had great luck with Onlineshoes.com, which I found through Google. Here, I was able to find my 11-year-old, Jane’s shoes, a Saucony walking sneaker, which I’d spent about $150 on for her original pair. I just ordered my second replacement pair from Onlineshoes.com last week, and I spent $64.99. Obviously, that’s a significant savings over what I’d spent for the first pair. Best of all, Onlineshoes.com offers free shipping.

For my 9-year-old, Annie, who is also wearing Saucony sneakers–but the runnning kind–we’d spent $120 for hers at that traditional shoe store. Thanks once again to Google, I found the same Saucony sneakers at Shoebuy.com for a lot less. Well, they were $84.95, not exactly cheap, but cheaper than $120.

So while I hate having to spend this much on footwear for the three of us, at least I’ve figured out a way to spend a little less on shoes for our hard-to-fit feet.

I mentioned in an earlier post how we were running out of milk, and I was going to use this “I need to pick up milk” experience to see what kind of bargain I could find on milk. Turns out I needed to pick up a few other things, and so I was able to do a cross comparison of prices of five items in five different stores–CVS, Superfresh, Wawa, Giant and Walgreens. I went in looking for a gallon of fat-free milk, fat-free half and half, orange juice with pulp, Thomas’ cinnamon raisin bagels, and coffee. Here’s what I found.

Gallon of fat-free milk
The Everyday Cheapskate, Mary Hunt, had recently written about good bargains on milk in places other than the supermarket, and boy was she right. My local Walgreens was selling a gallon of fat-free milk for $2.93. Unfortunately, they were sold out so I couldn’t take advantage of that bargain. The next best price was back at the supermarket–Giant–where a gallon of fat-free milk could be had for $3.18.FYI, prices in other stores ranged from a high of $4.14 (Superfresh) to $3.39(CVS).

Fat-free half and half
I normally don’t buy half and half to use in my coffee, but with my mom coming for a visit, I wanted to pick up some items that she’s used to having at home, including fat-free half and half for her coffee. (She’s also the reason for my buying the OJ and bagels.) Giant ended up coming out the winner on the price of a quart of fat-free half and half, at $1.89. CVS was also selling a quart at the same price but it wasn’t fat-free. Wawa was even cheaper at $1.29, but again, it wasn’t fat-free. Walgreens didn’t carry half and half, and Superfresh had the fat-free quart for $1.99.

Orange Juice with pulp
Again, the OJ is for my mom and she specifically requested the Florida’s Natural brand with pulp. (I was looking for a half-gallon container.) Walgreens didn’t have any OJ to speak of, and CVS carried Tropicana at $4.29 for a half gallon. Ouch. At Superfresh her preferred OJ was much cheaper than CVS, at $3.79, but just like with the fat-free half and half, Giant came up the winner: they were running a special of two half-gallons of Florida’s Natural OJ with pulp, 2/$6 or $3 each.

Thomas’ Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
CVS, Wawa and Walgreens didn’t stock these bagels so the only comparison I could do was between Superfresh and Giant. At Superfresh the bagels were $3.49. Giant, once again, had the best price: $3.14.

Coffee
I’m a big fan of flavored coffees–hazelnut is my favorite–but when mom comes into town, I know that it’s time to get a can of boring old coffee. She’s not a fan of the flavored coffee. Not surprisingly, Wawa sold no cans of coffee, because it’s the place in town where everyone stops in for their morning cup of Joe to go. (By the way, a 20 oz coffee there will set you back about $1.20.) The brand that the other four stores carried was Folgers, so that’s what I used in my comparison so I was doing an apples-to-apples thing. At CVS, you could get two 13-oz. cans of Folgers medium roast for $5.00 (2/$5), or a 39-oz can of the same coffee for $10.99. At Superfresh the 13-oz can was $4.89 and the 39-oz. can was $8.99. Walgreens only stocked the 13-oz can, and it cost $3.99. At Giant the 13-oz can was $3.49 and the 39-oz. can was $8.89. So which one did I buy? None of them. Giant was having a sale on its own brand of coffee, and I was able to get a 13-oz can for $2.00.

I was really surprised that I ended up finding all of the best prices at Giant, because I’d always assumed it was an overpriced market. Of course, if I had been able to get the milk at Walgreens (which is in the same shopping center at Giant), I would have saved $.25. Not much, I know, but those kinds of savings add up.

Probably the hardest thing about this experiment was after I’d decided that I was going to do all of my shopping at Giant, I knew that I couldn’t browse around and see what else they had on sale or what items looked good to me. I put my five “necessities” in my cart, put on imaginary blinders and made my way to the checkout lane. I was able to get out of the store for under $20 (actually, $19.39), and I paid cash.

I’d be curious to hear from folks how the prices on these kinds of things vary based on location. Let me know.

So we’re running out of milk. There’s probably enough fat-free milk in that gallon container in our fridge to eek out one bowl of cereal tomorrow morning, but with two kids to feed before the 8:20 a.m. bus, I’m going to have to go out and get milk tonight.

Mary Hunt, the Everyday Cheapskate, recently shared in her column some great tips on saving money on things like a gallon of milk by going food shopping in a place other than the grocery store. In other words, thinking–and shopping–outside of the supermarket aisle. She suggested looking in warehouse clubs, drug stores and convenience shops for some of your everyday necessities, like milk.

After I drop my eldest daughter at her softball practice tonight, I intend to comparison shop prices for a gallon of fat-free milk. My plan is to visit CVS, Superfresh, Wawa (the PA version of 7-11, for all you folks saying, “What the hell is a Wawa anyway?” FYI, it’s the Native America word for goose, I believe, thus the flying fowl in its logo), Giant, and Walgreens. These are the only stores within a 5-mile radius of my house that have refrigerated cases and sell milk. I’m also going to log onto Shoprite.com, where I usually order my groceries, to see what the going rate for a gallon of milk is there.

It will be interesting to see if Hunt was right. I’ll let you know.

I realize that we are not alone in wanting to live more on less, and I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here at Suddenly Frugal. I’m aware of the now-defunct Tightwad Gazette and the length’s that the “Tightwad” family went to in saving money–no homemade sanitary napkins for me, thank you very much. I also know that there is already a family out there that is known as America’s Cheapest Family, but, in my opinion, they are not representative of the America I know or the suburban life I live. They have 8 kids, home school them all (only 2 percent of school-aged children in America are homeschooled, according to the U.S. Department of Education), and live in the desert Southwest. We, on the other hand, have two kids who attend public school, and we live in the pricey Northeast.

Geography and progeny aside, I doubt that the tightwad or cheapest family has to live with the pull of the aforementioned “shopper-tainment” and what we like to call “The $100 Target tax” (because you can never get out of Target for under $100). So the real challenge for us–and for readers of Suddenly Frugal–is figuring out how you can go about living a “normal” life when you’re on a budget. I really hope we can succeed.