My New Hobby: Coupons, Promotions, and Free Stuff

I am bursting with awesomeness over some recent savvy shopping I have recently accomplishments. Here I share them with you. (If you decide to get in on any of these sweet offers, please refer me so I can get rewards for recruiting you!)

1. I am in Ellen’s wedding this coming January. She wants us to wear gold, closed toed or peep-toed shoes. She send us some beautiful choices from various places, but shucks they were all $60 or $70 bucks each. Every week I receive an email from Shop It To Me, a site that shops your favorite online retailers for sales in clothing/shoes in your specific sizes. I get sale items from JCrew, Ann Taylor Loft, Banana Republic, etc. sent right to my email. I hadn’t bought anything that I’d seen on there yet, but that exact week Ellen emailed us about the shoes, what was on sale at Old Navy but gold high heels at only $10! Score! I ordered them along with a few other cheap tops since I was already paying the flat rate shipping. Got the package today, tried them on and they fit great! My smaller right foot slips out just a bit, but I’ll put some kind of pad in there to fix it.

2. My sweet friend Charissa told me about MyPoints which everyone should do if you like free giftcards in the mail. The basics of it are that you get points for reading advertising emails they send to you – you really don’t even have to read them, just click through to the site and then delete them. Also you get points for clicking through their site before you go to an online merchant to make a purchase. For example, before I made my sweet Old Navy purchase, I went to the MyPoints site, searched for the Old Navy link, and clicked through to the website from the MyPoints link. The promo for Old Navy was something like 3 or 4 points per dollar spent. So not only did I get my cool gold heels (+ extras), I also got 91 points towards a gift card redemption. (Giftcard redemptions run ~3500 points = $25 gift card).

3. I do the office supply ordering at work. MyPoints has a great deal for Office Depot, which is what we already use to order our supplies online. I asked to be in charge of the ordering, so I could clickthru MyPoints before and rack up the points. So far it has been great – I have already gotten a free gift card out of it. We order so much paper, I usually get either 500, 1000 or even 2000 points per order!

4. Also, I have been scouting the web for promo codes for Office Depot after seeing an advertisement for a free gift with purchase. So far I have received (with $100 or $75 purchases) the following: A free picnic coffee tote bag with stainless steel coffee mugs and vacuum flask ($60 value), A free red tote bag which I used this past weekend on our trip to Jeff’s Graduation ($40 value). Coming in the mail is a free 2GB mp3/4 player, which looks like a shuffle knockoff in the picture ($70 value). And while placing all these orders, I am still racking up the MyPoints to get free giftcards.

Maybe some of you think this is nuts but I am flipping out with delight. I also started clipping coupons and scanning all the weekly Wal-Greens, Target, and local grocery adds for deals to match up with the coupons. When we move in June, I am going to ask if Bill and Sally will give us their coupon section of the Sunday paper every week, so I won’t even be paying the $1.50 for the paper. For some reason, CVS only has locations east of the river, which sucks because they have a cool coupon program I wish I could get in on.

Cream colored ponies

Yesterday I wrote this haiku for Dan about myself while at The Daily Bread:

My wife, the raptor
She eviscerates strudel
I get the entrails

(It was my secretary's day strudel, thank you very much!)