1. Art in the Attic
Many local auction houses have free appraisal days so if you think you have a masterpiece, you can bring it in and find out what it’s worth. William Bunch Auctions in Chadds Ford, PA is having a free appraisal day on April 5th (you need to make an appointment) and Gratz Gallery in Doylestown, PA is having its free appraisal day on April 10th. At Rago Arts in Lambertville, NJ, you can walk-in for a free appraisal every Monday between 1 and 4 pm. Or you can make an appointment for free to have your item appraised, which is what we did with Alderfer in Hatfield, PA a few years ago when we had paintings and posters we wanted to sell.

2. Clear Out Winter Duds
Now’s a great time to review your family’s wardrobe and determine what got worn this winter and what you never touched. Or what you’re not interested in wearing this spring because, frankly, you never got around to wearing it in Spring 2009. Here’s an idea: sell those unwanted items at a consignment or resale shop. Some places in the Philadelphia area to go for cash upfront include Buffalo Exchange in Center City, and the upcoming Just Between Friends consignment show April 15-18 at the Great Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks–you have until April 12th to sign up to be a consignor. Or, you can do a traditional consignment at Greene Street Consignment (they ask for at least a dozen pieces to consider) in Lambertville, Center City or Bryn Mawr. It usually takes 60 to 90 days to get your money for anything Greene Street sells on your behalf.

3. Recoup the Cost of Home Renovation
We’re currently renovating our house, and during demolition, I took the perfectly good things that we no longer wanted and put them up for sale on Craigslist. This included our fireplace mantel and an old vanity from the bathroom. The trick for using Craigslist is to write a clear, concise headline, include measurements of the item you’re selling and always include photos.

4. Get Cash for Old Video Games
If your kids have outgrown their video games or you’ve upgraded your gaming system, there are stores that will buy back your old video games for cash or a credit towards new ones. The stores in our area include GameStop and Game Trader, or you can try Amazon.com’s Game Trade-In program. Also, if you have been holding on to video games from the 1980s and 1990s, you could be sitting on a goldmine: a vintage video game recently sold for $40,000 on eBay so you may want to try your hand selling there first if you search around and think you have something valuable.

(I’ll be sure to post video of this segment as soon as it’s available online.)

Free Food

• Rita’s Water Ice is celebrating the first day of spring (March 20th) with free water ice for its customers. (Last year Rita’s gave away 1.2 million free regular-sized cups of water ice on the first day of spring.)
• I’m not a huge Hooter’s fan, but free food is free food. So, here goes: On March 19th you can get a free appetizer if you download a coupon from the Hooter’s site.

Here are a dozen such benefits you may be eligible for on your 2009 taxes, courtesy of CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business and a leading provider of tax, accounting and audit information, software and services:

1. A refundable “first-time homebuyers’ credit” of 10 percent of the purchase price of a new home – capped at $8,000 – is available for homes purchased between January 1, 2008 and before July 1, 2010. The purchasers must enter into a binding agreement to purchase before May 1, 2010, and must not have had an “ownership interest” in a principal residence during the three years before the purchase.  For purchases on or after November 6, 2009, purchasers must be at least 18 years old and homes must have a purchase price under $800,000.
2. A refundable “repeat homebuyers’ credit” is available for taxpayers who purchase a new home on or after November 6, 2009, and who have lived in a previous home for five consecutive years out of the last eight. The credit is 10-percent of the purchase price, but capped at $6,500. The buyers must enter a contract to buy the home no later than April 30, 2010, and must close on the sale before July 1, 2010.  Purchasers must be at least 18 years old and homes must have a purchase price under $800,000. (Wish this one had been available when we purchased our current house in 2007; we’d lived in our previous house for eight years and would have definitely qualified.
3. Homeowners can exclude up to $250,000 of gain on the sale of their homes (up to $500,000 for joint filers) if they have owned and lived in the home for two out of the five years prior to the sale. The periods of ownership and occupancy do not have to be identical.
4. Homeowners can take the interest on their mortgage indebtedness of up to $1 million as an itemized deduction. The interest can be on their principal residence and one additional residence.
5. For ordinary income purposes, up to $100,000 in home-equity loan interest can also be deducted.  For purposes of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), interest on home equity loans is deductible only if the loan is used to acquire, build or “substantially improve” a home.
6. For 2009 and through 2010, mortgage insurance premiums also are deductible as mortgage interest.  However, the mortgage insurance had to be originally acquired on or after January 1, 2007.
7. Homeowners can also take their state and local property taxes as an itemized deduction.
8. Non-itemizing homeowners can take their state and local property taxes as an additional standard deduction up to $500 ($1,000 for joint filers) on their 2009 returns.
9. If a homeowner’s mortgage debt of up to $2 million on their principal residence is forgiven, as in a write-down or foreclosure, it is not treated as “cancellation of debt income.” This special relief is temporary and is available for six years, retroactively for discharges after January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2011.
10. Homeowners who install certain energy-efficient exterior doors and  windows, insulation, heat pumps, furnaces, central air conditioners  and water heaters can receive a 30-percent tax credit in both 2009 and  2010, but there is a lifetime limit of $1,500 on the credit. (I’ve still got the receipts from the purchase of and stickers that came on the energy-efficient windows–11 of them–and two doors we installed in 2009.)
11. A separate 30-percent credit is available to homeowners who install  alternative energy equipment such as fuel cells, solar water heaters,  solar electric equipment, small wind energy property and geothermal  heat pumps.
12. Low-income homeowners who hold mortgage credit certificates from state  or local governments can claim a tax credit.  Relatively few people  qualify – only about 35,000 in 2007 – but the average credit that year  was over $1,000.

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.

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!

***UPDATE***
The folks at Dunkin Donuts provided this list of locations participating in the free coffee Mondays.

The kitchen, down to the studs.

This weekend we finished up spackling in the dining room, leaving it to be the last room we have to paint from our renovation. This means that once it’s done, I can put away the drop cloths and painting rollers for good. I painted the new kitchen earlier in the weekend, and helped Bill to finish installing the cabinets. On Friday we both took the day off so we could choose and order our countertops (black granite). A few weeks before that we’d sheetrocked the new kitchen, including taping, spackling and sanding, plus Bill installed new hardwood floors all throughout the new space.

Perhaps in reading this you’re hearing a cash register ring in your head for each thing we accomplished in the addition. We did spend money on supplies, to be sure, but it’s amazing how much we saved by doing so much of the work ourselves. In fact, here are 5 ways we’ve managed to save $35,000 on our remodel:

1. Ripped out the old drywall in the kitchen and installed new. Had we hired someone to do the job, we would have spent: at least $2,500.
2. Installed hardwood floors in the newly remodeled space. Had we hired someone to do the floor install, we would have spent: $5,100
3. Put in the new kitchen cabinets. Had we had Lowe’s or Home Depot, or another home improvement company install the cabinets, we would have spent: at least $25,000 (this is for the install alone; the cabinets cost is separate.)
4. Painted the new space. Had we hired someone to come in and do all the painting, we would have spent: $2,100.
5. Went to a wholesaler/fabricator for our countertops. Had we just ordered our granite countertops from a home improvement store, we would have spent: $1,000 more on the same amount of granite

With numbers like this do you think you would jump in and try some of this, to save the big bucks, too? I’m so glad we did. And I can’t wait until the house is done and we can say, “Hey, we did this all ourselves.” Now sure it would be nice to have had someone do all this at once and be done with it, but I know I wouldn’t have wanted to spend that kind of cash to get the job done.

Free Food

• I am so down with this freebie: free coffee (iced or hot) at Dunkin Donuts on Mondays in March. I love coffee and I love freebies. And there is a Dunkin Donuts within walking distance of my house. Nice! (Thanks Cities on the Cheap for heads up on this deal via @CitiesCheap on Twitter!)
• Stop by an Edible Arrangements location on Sunday, March 14th and get a free piece of dipped fruit. Yum!

And consumers are going to feel the tomato pinch soon enough, if they haven’t already.

Which brings me to this post’s point: if ever there was a time to grow your own tomatoes, now is that time.

Tomatoes are some of the easier vegetables to grow, especially now that all you need to do to grow them is hang them upside down, a la the Topsy Turvy Upside-Down Tomato Planter. I’ve seen people “hanging” their tomato plants from fire escapes, porch railings and hanging plant holders.

If I wasn’t starting a garden with three friends, and planning to plant tomatoes (along with many other vegetables, on which we hope to save a lot of money), I would definitely get one of these. (And no, the company isn’t paying me to suggest this product. However, the link above does go through my Amazon Associates account.) I mean for less than $20 (shipping included), you could get a season’s worth of tomatoes. These days restaurants are paying at least double that for one case of tomatoes.

Of course, waiting until your locally grown tomatoes are available is also a smart cost saver.

How are you planning to save money on vegetables that may cost more this spring?