The Capitalist Maven

This week one of the local grocery stores is having another Catalina deal, buy $20 of Proctor & Gamble products get a $10 off your next order coupon.  Pretty good deal especially since you only need to spend $20 at “regular” prices and many of the items are on sale.  Normally I can just do the shopping myself but since I have no idea what kind of Olay and Covergirl products my wife is going to want, I took her with me.

First we end up parking and using the door furthest from the health and beauty section, this leads to us coming in and walking past the overpriced flowers section.  “I want a tulip” she says.  “That’s not what we came here for” I respond.  Needless to say a tulip ends up being the first thing in the basket.  I try to walk quickly to the health and beauty section but notice that she’s stopped and looking at some chocolate bunny’s on the display.  Fortunately we have plenty of chocolate at home, so none of them end up in the basket.  We finally make it to the Olay section and she looks straight to one of the most expensive items on the shelf:  a $25.99 moisturizer.  “Is this what you normally get?” I ask.  “No last time I got that $11.99 green bottle over there” she responds.  After the 20% off sale price and the $10 Catalina, it ends up being $10.79.  It’s less than the green bottle so I agree.

We then check out the Covergirl section to see what she likes there.  Here the sale is 30% off plus the Catalina so some great deals are possible.  I tell her to pick out a combination of things she likes that add up to $20.  Eventually she settles on some things she likes.  Then it’s off to the checkout, again I try to walk quickly.  Again I look back and find her looking at some fancy decorated cupcakes strategically placed on a low table (right at eye level for the kids).  These $1.99 each cupcakes intended to catch the eyes of 4 year olds had ensnared my 31 year old wife.  I think the look on my face was enough to get her to move on.

So we end up spending $36 on the cosmetics, some cat food, and a tulip, nearly half the monthly grocery bill and have a $10 catalina to save for next time.  Was it a good deal?  We’ll see if she actually uses all of the cosmetics…

Jon Budget, Deals

One of our local grocery stores, Shaw’s, has recently started frequently running Catalina promotions again.  Last month it was Conagra products, now this month it’s Kraft products.  I thought I’d mention it because it points out just how much these promotions can save.

Normally Shaw’s is the most expensive grocery store around.  If you go there and buy stuff that is not on sale, you pay top dollar.  These super high prices are what make them work so well for Catalina promotions.  Despite the wording of the deals, they are nearly always based on the pre-sale price of the item.  So the Oscar Meyer Deli Creations that are on sale for $2.50 count as $4.99 (regular price) towards the promo.  So buy 5, plus a filler like Plantar’s Trail Mix for $1.25 and you reach the $25 threshold.  Total spend $13.75, but then the Catalina machine starts printing… drum roll… your $10 catalina.  So for $3.75 net, you have $27 worth of food (not that I would every pay $27 for this stuff).  There are scenarios using coupons to get your net even lower.

Also there is currently a promotion for Heinz products.  Check out Slickdeals.net or hotcouponworld.com to get the full info.  Obviously this is a somewhat advanced form of couponing, since you must do math and buy from a specific list of products.  Get the wrong size or something not on the list and you might not get your $10 back.  But with practice most people can learn it.

Jon Deals

Somewhat surprising to me, a post I did on Catalina grocery coupons seems to be a big traffic source from Google.  So I thought I’d do a post giving some more info on what I know about Catalinas.

There are 2 primary types of Catalinas, abvertised and unadvertised.  All Catalinas require that you scan your store card during the transaction.  The store circular will tell you how to get advertised Catalinas.  For example it might say “Spend $20 on Proctor and Gamble products and get $10 Off Your Next Order (OYNO).”  So if you go to the store and buy the required products, a Catalina coupon for $10 ONYO will print out.  While not stated in the circular, it appears that you only need to spend $20 based on the non-sale prices of the items.  So if the toothpaste is on sale for $1 but is regularly priced at $2, the $2 counts towards the $20 required spend.  Those that are quick with math probably already see the trick here.  If you buy 10 toothpastes for $10, you’ll satisfy the $20 required minimum spend, and trigger the printing of a $10 OYNO coupon.  Effectively you got those 10 toothpastes for free.

The second type of Catalina is unadvertised.  It’s based on what you are buying now or what you have bought in the past, remember you need you use your store card to get Catalinas to print out.  Because we have a cat, we buy cat food at the grocery store.  2 weeks ago I received a Catalina that told me of another promotion.  Buy 12 cans of Friskies get a $2 OYNO, buy 24 cans get a $5 OYNO.  Clearly they are tracking my purchase history as I’ve never received a Catalina for dog food, diapers, or Ex-Lax.  They know I don’t have a dog, a baby, and I’m not constipated, though I’ve seen Catalinas left behind for these items.  But the coupons they do print out are sometimes quite good.  I received a coupon for $1.50 off 1 Classico pasta sauce which is 50% off regular or even better if the sauce is on sale (I theorize that this catalina printed because I bought Ragu in the past).  I received another for $1.50 off Ball Park hot dogs, which again is pretty darned good when the hot dogs are on sale for $2.50.

So there you have some more info on how Catalina grocery coupons work.  If anybody has anymore information be sure to share.

Jon Deals

I recently found out about another cashback rebate site:  Cashbaq.  This one seems relatively new to the party but does offer some particularly good percentages on certain sites.

First an overview.  I have posted in the past about how cash rebate sites work.  Basically the process is you sign up with the cashback site before making an online purchase.  Then you find the link for the store you want to purchase at using the cashback site.  You click the link, make your purchase, and approximately 60 days later you get a percentage of your purchase back as a rebate.

So here is how I took Cashbaq for a spin.  Entertainment.com was (is still maybe) having a special to get the Boston book for $20 with free shipping.  Cashbaq offers $10 back per book purchased.   So I linked through Cashbaq and got my book for $20, in approximately 60 days I should have $10 back from Cashbaq.  As a bonus, they give new members an extra $5 the first time they cashout.  So I’ll be getting $15 back from a $20 purchase.  Plus I’m getting my 2009 Entertainment book, which hopefully I’ll use more completely this year…

I noticed a few stores that seem to be good cashback deals compared to Fatwallet.  Buy.com and Staples both have 3% cashback on Cashbaq vs 1% and 2% on Fatwallet.  Priceline (my favorite site for getting cashback) is still a better deal on Fatwallet, however.  So have a look for yourself and compare for the places you shop, Cashbaq may offer you a better deal.

Jon Deals

While this is somewhat old news on the deals front, I haven’t yet mentioned it.  Microsoft’s Live Search is offering some pretty good cashback deals for online shopping.  Their merchant list is very good, though they are missing the travel sites (Priceline etc.) which is why I haven’t tried up until this point.  I recently ordered a scanner from Newegg.com and figured now would be a good time to try Live Search since they are offering 3% back vs. Fatwallet’s 1%.

I registered for the cashback program at search.live.com and found my scanner through Live Search.  I clicked on the link and then went to Newegg to complete my purchase.  Sure enough 15 minutes later I have an e-mail from Live Search saying I have earned cashback.  Very Nice!

It remains to be seen how long the cashback levels stay as high as they are.  If they stay high for a while there is no doubt it will become very popular.

Jon Deals

I’ve mentioned Priceline in my blog before. I mentioned how they are great for booking airline tickets because there is no booking fee and you have the ability to earn 3% cashback through such sites as Fatwallet. $400 airline ticket = $12 in cashback. I’d also like to comment about their bidding process for hotels.

The way Priceline works is that you don’t know what hotel you are going to get. You might have a pretty good idea, but there are no guarantees about which specific hotel you will get. You bid choosing an area and star level and Priceline will come back and tell you whether your bid was accepted. They encourage you to make your true maximum bid by restricting your ability to rebid. Your reward for going through this process is some very nice hotels at substantial discounts.

I bring up the topic today because I just booked part of my honeymoon using Priceline. While a substantial portion of the honeymoon will be paid for by Marriott points, for our days on Kauai and Oahu I went through Priceline. Kauai is somewhat of a difficult animal for Priceline because #1: it’s a small island and #2 most of the nice properties are timeshares. What’s left is 2 hotels in the resort category and 3 in the 3-star category. Because all the hotels are very nice in the 3* category there, that’s where I bid, getting the ResortQuest Makaiwa for $100 a night, a discount of $20 a night over the AAA rate. I’ll get 3% of the total cost back in cashback + I saved $80 over just booking the hotel straight out. In Oahu, I did somewhat better since nicer hotels are far more numerous, getting the Hyatt Regency Waikiki for $130 a night, a $71 a night discount from the AAA rate.

There are various tricks of the trade to Priceline, which you can learn at betterbedding.com or biddingfortravel.com. At these sites you can learn how to “rebid” and see other posters winning bids to get an idea of your price range. You can also learn what hotels are known to be within a zone, so you can have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

I’ve successfully used Priceline for stays in Orlando as well as many smaller cities, each time receiving a substantial discount over the best available rate. Do some research and I’m sure you’ll be a Priceline addict like myself.

Jon Deals, Travel

So I mentioned before in this post, that I have used restaurant.com to get some great deals. Well apparently for one day (8/8/08) only, they are offering their best deal ever: 80% off. The website is really slow, but I managed to get in my order for 2 local restaurants. A $25 one for $2 and a $10 one for $0.60. Not bad at all. If you have a Fatcash account over at Fatwallet, you can get some of that $2.60 back if you link through.

The coupon code is “FIRST”.

Enjoy!

Jon Deals

This weekend I visited Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT. They have been sending me $25 free bet coupons all summer and I have been wanting to take them up on the offer. Unfortunately the casino is 100 miles away from me, so even if I win the bet it doesn’t pay for gas. That’s why I was happy to find a local bus company that offers trips to the casino for $30. For your $30 you get a free buffet coupon ($18) and 3 $10 free bets on Wheel of Fortune or Sic Bo (Boggle as my friends like to call it). Basically you get your $30 returned to you, so it’s a free ride. They have similar deals on so-called “Chinatown” buses for $15 with the same gift at the casino but I’ve heard you get what you pay for with these… I wasn’t about to try the “Chinatown” bus by myself.

So I caught the bus at 8:00am about 1 mile from my house and arrived at the casino 2 hours later. The bus was not crowded, quiet, and the A/C worked great. They handed out the coupons as I got off the bus and off I went to use up the coupons. I looked all over for Wheel of Fortune and couldn’t find it. I asked at the Player’s Club booth where it was. The nice lady pointed me in the right direction but offered “Those coupons are also good for Sic Bo right over there, it’s alot of fun too.” Having never played Sic Bo, I went over to the empty table and asked the dealer for an explanation. “Choose one of these boxes to place your bet and it will light up if you win.” I responded, “OK which box is the even money 1:1 payout?” “The Big or the Small”, he responded. So I put the first coupon on big. “You win.” So I tried again on big. “You lose.” And one more try, “You lose.” 1 out of 3… Grrr… Stuck on the wrong side of my expected return of $14.58. In retrospect I am glad the lady sent me to Sic Bo as the house edge is lower than Wheel of Fortune (”Not even the Rain Man can beat the Wheel of Fortune”) but nonetheless I was a victim of probability and failed to get my expected return. Better luck next time.

So, off to the Blackjack table to use my $25 bet. I find an empty seat and place my bet. First card dealt to me, an ace, awesome. Second card… a f$%^*& five. Dealer’s card, a face. So I draw out to what ends up to be 20. Dealer turns over the hole card, another face. A push. The shoot runs out so I have to wait for a shuffle, grrr. This time I draw out to 19. Dealer ends up with another 20… Damn it.

So, off to the craps table to actually gamble some money instead of coupons. After an initial bad start, I’m up $150, and 3 hours (and many beers) later I cash out for a $175 gain. By this point I’m starved so, off to the buffet. I’m glad I didn’t pay $18 for it. The only really good things were the roast beef and creole seafood stew. So I ate lots of those and lots of dessert which was also good.

Then I’m off to 25cent video poker to kill some time. Desiring a bit more excitement than Jacks or Better(it’s no coincidence that the abbreviation is JoB), I opted for Double Double Bonus (DDB). It sucked $20 right out of me. I reluctantly put in another $20. Shortly thereafter hit a 4 of a kind, which brought me back to even for the second twenty. 2o or 30 hands later another four bagger. Alright now I’m back to even. I continue as I’ve still got half an hour before the bus is to leave. Sure enough another four bagger. I’m up a solid $20. I then go through another dry spell before cashing out for $42.50, up $2.50. Oh well. At least I recorded some decent cheapskate play to my comp card which should hopefully keep the coupons coming.

After all expenses I was up $155 and a free lunch, not a bad day.

Jon Deals, Travel

I just checked my Fatwallet cashback account balance.  My lifetime cashback has crossed the $100 mark!  This means I have earned $100 for doing nothing more than clicking on a Fatwallet link before buying something online.

Some background for those who don’t know about Fatwallet.  Fatwallet is an online deals site.  They have several forums where people post various deals that they have gotten or are currently available to purchase.   They also have a section called cashback, where many online merchants are listed.  When you click on the link to go to the merchant site and make your purchase, a percentage is rebated back to your Fatwallet cashback account.  When you accumulate a minimum of $10, you can request payment via check (or for any amount via Paypal).

Recently the cashback goldmine I’ve discovered is travel.  Since I do tend to do alot of travelling, it provides a nice way to get some money back.  Most of the hotel group websites are represented along with many of the big travel sites:  Orbitz, Priceline, Hotwire, Hotels.com, Expedia, etc.   Particularly interesting is Priceline, which allows you to book most flights with no booking fee.  Since none of the airlines offer cashback and US Airways even charges you an extra booking fee right now on their own website, Priceline makes a killer deal for air travel.  As an example if you were to book a $200 flight on US Airways, you would save the $5 booking fee by using Priceline as well as receive $6 in cashback.  Not bad for simply clicking a link.

Jon Deals, Travel

Well more accurately, I replaced nearly all the parts. She had been using my Athlon XP 1700 machine that I put together back in 2001. Recently it started turning itself off at random inconvenient moments. A quick visual inspection of the motherboard confirmed my what I suspected: bulging capacitors. It’s a well known problem with PCs from the first half of this decade. Apparently somebody in China got some bad electrolyte and produced nearly all the capacitors used on computer motherboards during that time with it. I’ve actually been lucky to get 5 years out of this motherboard. At some point I will try to get some capacitors and fix this board but the amount of time it will take to do it without special ordering capacitors (expensive) was prohibitive.

So I bought some new parts. I wanted to maximize the value and power efficiency I got out of the new parts. After searching around the web, the hot new chipset for non-gaming systems is the AMD 780G. It’s fast, low power, and actually has decent integrated graphics. While it wasn’t the cheapest motherboard at $89.99, it’s got USB 2, Firewire, eSATA, DVI, and HDMI. She’ll actually be able to watch Blu-Ray on this system when it comes down in price in a few years. And it’s got connections to match whatever Ipod/Camera/Toy she is using at the momement. I matched this with a AMD Athlon X2 4800 for 59.99. I picked up 2GB of DDR2 RAM that should come to $27.99 after rebate. And she really wanted a DVD drive so I picked up a DVD burner for $26.99. Total after rebate shipping $211 for a system that’s easily 6x as fast as the old 1700. I ordered all my parts from NewEgg. They have great prices, fast shipping, and the best selection of computer parts anywhere.

I actually expect this system to pay for itself in a year or 2. It idles at 45 watts compared to over 115 watts idle for the old system. That’s a savings of 70 watts. Since she likes to leave it powered up and available 24/7, thats 70 watts x 24 hours x 365 days = 613.2 KWH a year. At 17 cents/KWH that’s $104 a year. Sure enough, in 2 years her computer upgrade will be free.

Jon Deals