Daily Archives: March 16, 2010

Get Rewarded for Your Goodwill

March 16, 2010
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Donating clothes to a good cause is good for the soul. But when your good deeds net you a reward, well that’s good for your bottom line, too.

Last week I wrote about the 30 percent off coupon that Gap was offering to people who brought in their old jeans to be recycled. This week I wanted to remind people that Goodwill Industries has partnered with Bon-Ton family of stores to reward its customers who make a donation to Goodwill.

Unlike the Gap deal, which allowed you to trade in only one pair of jeans per person for that 30 percent off coupon–and you had to use it to buy a full-priced pair of Gap jeans–the Goodwill/Bon-Ton deal gives you a 20 percent off coupon for every piece of apparel or home textile that you donate. Better yet, you can use your coupon on regular and sale-priced items. You can get an additional discount coupon if you log onto the Million Acts of Goodwill site and report how many items you ended up donating. In return you’ll get a 25 percent off coupon.

FYI, The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. operates 279 stores, including 12 furniture galleries, in 23 states in the Northeast, Midwest and upper Great Plains under the Bon-Ton, Bergner’s, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder-Beerman, Herberger’s and Younkers nameplates and, under the Parisian nameplate, stores in the Detroit, Michigan area.

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The Key to Coupon Stacking

March 16, 2010
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Coupon stacking sounds like some kind of competitive shopping event, doesn’t it? Well, it’s actually a trick that many frugal shoppers use to save the most money at the supermarket. I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t really heard the term before a few months ago but, thankfully, I’d been coupon stacking for quite some time without even realizing I was doing it.

So what is coupon stacking? It’s figuring out a way to use more than one coupon to save money on a single item. “Coupon stacking is when you combine a manufacturers coupon with a store coupon,” says Teri Gault, CEO and founder of The Grocery Game, an online site that teaches you how to best “invest” in your groceries at the lowest prices possible. (My husband is a fan of the site, now that he’s doing our grocery shopping on a regular basis.) That is, you would clip coupons from your Sunday paper, or print them off the web from your favorite coupon site–I like Coupons.com, but know people also use Redplum.com and Smartsource.com–and then you would combine it with a coupon from the store where you are grocery shopping.

For example, many times our local grocery store will have a deal like “Get $6 off your order if you buy six or more products” and then they’ll identify a specific manufacturer. Well, if I happen to have a coupon for that manufacturer and for the product that I can get extra money off of–and I was going to buy it anyway–I end up saving more.

Here’s another way you can use this notion of coupon stacking at a place like BJs Wholesale Club: If buying a three-pack of toothpaste, you can use the coupon that you would find in the BJs booklet mailed to members, plus three coupons from the Sunday circular–one for each individual tube–for additional savings on the grocery bill. Who knew such a combination was possible at a warehouse club?

If you want to coupon stack, this gives you a good reason to cut out and organize your coupons and hold onto them for as long as possible. At the same time keep an eye on your grocery store’s circular for advertised deals. (According to Gault, The Grocery Game often finds out about unadvertised deals, too.) Then when you see those coupon stacking opportunities, you can spring into action!

Let me know what your experience with coupon stacking has been and which online sites you like to use to optimize your coupon stacking!

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