novathrifty

Here are the best deals I saw at Magruder’s this week:

Filet Mignon Beef Tenderloin – $5.99/lb

Thanksgiving Turkey – preorder at $.79/lb (limit 2)

Sweet Potatoes – 2 lbs for $1

Potatoes (Russet, White) – 2 10 lb bags for $5

Gold Pineapples – 2 for $5

Cranberries – 2 12-oz bags for $4

Apples (many varieties) – $.77/lb

Pears (D’Anjou, Bosc, Bartlett) – $1/lb

Also check out the circular in the Wednesday Post for a coupon for FREE Cambridge Thames Butter Cookies with a $35 purchase.

*Magruder’s is a locally-owned grocery store with locations in Virginia, DC, and Maryland. You can find their nearest location here. Their weekly circular is in the Wednesday Washington Post or on theirwebsite.

Many apologies for the light posting over the last couple of weeks – I’ve been a little sick and also pretty busy, but I’ve missed you guys a bunch! Thanks so much for sticking with me. I hope to be ramping things back up in the next few days or so.

In the meantime, don’t forget to print this month’s new coupons from Coupons.com.  I’m excited about the $1 off Special K Blueberry and the $1 off Snuggle Fabric Softener.  I’m hoping that a Super Doubles week will be coming up soon to make these into some good deals!

I was a little surprised at the results of my recent Harris Teeter poll on which you prefer: Triples or Super Doubles (I guess that’s why it’s good for me to ask!).  By one vote, you guys chose “I like them the same.”  Second place, with 37% of the vote, was Super Doubles, and Triples were third with only 27%.

Personally, I prefer Super Doubles week.  The coupon inserts in the Washington Post tend to be heavy on the $1 off coupons, so I think that we get better deals around here when they double!  And I’ve gotten used to the free Dannon Activia, Wholly Guacamole, and Starbucks Frappuccinos!

In recent months we’ve gotten the best of both worlds, but I’ve been checking the forums and blogs and it looks like Super Doubles is probably a no-go for this month.  Honestly, I’m a little relieved—one week a month of super-savings is about all I have the energy for!  But it’s possible that this could all be a ploy by Harris Teeter corporate to throw us off the scent of another Super Doubles week, so I’ll keep an eye out and let you know if anything changes.

And one quick reminder: the last day of the month (September 30) falls on Wednesday this week.  If you have any coupons expiring that day, you’ll need to get to Harris Teeter on Wednesday to take advantage of next week’s sales!  I’ll see you there!

I’m really curious to know what you guys think about this:

Loyal Readers:

I’ll be taking the rest of the week off from the blog—somehow I got unlucky enough to have planned my vacation during Harris Teeter Triples Week!  But I’ll try to enjoy it anyway :)

Have a great weekend, and I hope to return to a regular blogging schedule on Monday!

My mom is visiting this week, so we decided to spend the day at one of my favorite places in the greater DC area: Tyson’s Corner Mall.  I had quite a successful day of shopping (more on that shortly), and learned about a way to save money while cleaning out your closet and contributing to those in need:

Between July 27 and August 13, Tyson’s Corner is sponsoring The Great Denim Event. Donate new or gently worn denim to benefit Habitat for Humanity, and you will be rewarded with “special offers.”

It isn’t completely clear to me what these “special offers” are, but I’m assuming that they are the ones listed here.  There are some pretty good deals, like $10 off a $50 purchase at Express or Aeropostale, or $20 off jeans at Gap.  If anyone tries this and figures out exactly how it works, please let me know!

On to my shopping trip.  Here’s what I bought:

West Elm: I received a coupon in the mail this week for $25 off with no minimum purchase.  I looked around for a  while for something that cost approximately $25.01, but eventually decided to buy this very very soft cotton throw to give as a wedding gift next month.

Victoria’s Secret: I received a coupon in the mail for free panties (up to $7.50 value) plus $10 off your purchase with no minimum purchase.  So I bought the panties plus some body mist.  This was very exciting: I have been boycotting Victoria’s Secret since the racy mannequin scandal of 2005 (yes, I’m kind of a prude), and the only thing that I have really missed was the Strawberries and Champagne body mist.  It was all totally free, including tax.

Madewell: I love this store, and can occasionally find some great deals on the clearance racks.  I got a shirt, originally priced at $78, marked down to $7.50.  I wish I could find a picture—it’s a sheer button-front that will look great with a cardigan well into fall.

PETCO: I stopped there on the way out to buy some dog food for my puppy and was thrilled to find a Try-Me-Free rebate form on a 5 lb bag of Science Diet Nature’s Best dog food.  That’s a $16 savings on high-end dog food.  Hooray!

Have you scored any great shopping deals lately?  I would love to hear about them!

Here’s the second of my periodic reader polls:

If you do, feel free to leave a link in the comments so that I (and everyone else) can check it out!

Thanks for reading NovaThrifty!

If you are one of the first 10,000 to register, you can receive a free Pack-and-Go Gift Pack from Ziploc which includes a full pack of Ziploc Sandwich Bags and one small Ziploc Fresh Shield Twist ‘n Loc Container.  Limit one per household.

Thanks Josh!

I would like to get to know my readers a little better, so I’m planning to have a series of quick polls over the next few weeks to learn more about your interests and, hopefully, make this blog more useful to you!

If you consider yourself a “regular reader” (I’ll leave it up to you to define this), I would appreciate your help by answering the quick poll question below:

Thanks for your help! Please feel free to email me any time with comments or suggestions. I really love hearing from you!

Stop by any Chick-fil-A restaurant for Cow Appreciation Day on Friday July 10 fully dressed as a cow and you will receive a free combo meal.  You can use this costume kit to get started.

If you show up partially dressed as a cow, you will receive a free entree.  Rules as to what constitutes full and partial cow attire are here.

You can find your nearest Chick-fil-A here.  I would definitely recommend calling ahead before showing up all decked out!

If you haven’t already registered for Swagbucks, you only have a few hours left to get 5 Swagbucks for signing up with promo code CASHISKING (it expires at 12PM PST).  You can read my short review of the site here, and can sign up by clicking on the banner at the bottom of this post.

I have been meaning to draft some posts for a while now to share some simple ways that I make and save money online.  While you won’t likely get rich from any of my suggestions, they are all easy ways to pick up a little extra cash from home, with your laptop, in your pajamas, while watching TV.  So why not try them out?

So I’m starting today with Swagbucks.  This is a search engine—powered by Google and Ask.com—that allows you to win points (or “Swagbucks”) by searching the internet.  You can redeem these points for prizes, gift cards, and cash.  The best prize (in my opinion) is a $5 Amazon.com gift certificate—I earn several of these each month, and almost never pay full price at Amazon anymore.

If you use Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can install a Swagbucks search box in your toolbar that makes searching easy and convenient.  And by following Swagbucks on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, or subscribing to the monthly newsletter, you will get access to periodic “Swagcodes” put out by the Swagbucks team that allow you to rack up points even more quickly!

If you’ve been waiting to try Swagbucks out, now is the time!  If you register with the promo code CASHISKING (case sensitive), they will you will start out with 5 Swagbucks.  The code expires July 6 at 12PM PST (or 3PM here on the East Coast), and works for new subscribers only.  You can click the banner below to sign up:

My husband says today’s Pearls Before Swine strip reminds him of me.

I generally only get one or maybe two copies of the Washington Post each Sunday.  I’ve been intrigued by the idea of purchasing coupons from a coupon clipping service for a while, and I’ve decided that Harris Teeter’s Super Doubles week is the time to try it out.  I had heard good things about The Coupon Clippers, so I decided to order a few coupons from them.

Here’s how it works: you search the website for coupons that you’re interested in purchasing.  Most are marked down significantly below the face value of the coupon, like around $.15 for a $1 off coupon.  You have to spend at total of $3 on coupons to check out, and you are charged a modest (around $.50) administrative fee plus $.44 postage.  My total cost was $4.02 for coupons with a face value of $23.50.  If they all double, they will be worth $47.  That seems like quite a bargain to me!

The big question will be whether the coupons will arrive in time for me to use them at the Harris Teeter Super Doubles sale.  My receipt said that they will ship on June 26 (Friday).  They should arrive in 2 or 3 days.  That means that if all goes well, they will arrive by Tuesday and I can spend them on a Tuesday evening trip. I’ll let you know whether it works out!

I tried to choose coupons that I will likely use anyway, in case they don’t arrive in time.  If you’re interested in trying it out for the Harris Teeter sale, you should definitely order today!  There are some good ones available, like $2 off Starbucks Ice Cream (making it $1), $1 off 2 Bumble Bee Tuna Pouches (making them $1), or $1.50 off 1 Dawn Pure Essentials (making it $.29).

UPDATE: One quick reminder: Harris Teeter’s coupon policy states that they will only double 3 coupons per like product (I’m assuming this is per day).  If you’re ordering today, you’ll likely only have 1-2 days to use them on this sale.  Keep that in mind when deciding how many of each coupon to order!

So have you tried the Coupon Clippers?  What did you think?  Am I going to get my coupons in time?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

If you’re like me, you have a few stacks of documents lying around that need to be disposed of.  On Saturday, you can take them to the NBC4 Safe & Secure Community Shred from 8AM to 11AM at Northern Virginia Community College in Annendale.  They will accept up to five boxes of documents (no CDs or credit cards).  This is a great way to get rid of some unwanted clutter while protecting your identity!

More information and directions can be found here.

Sorry for the shortage of posts today!  I have been blogging from the beautiful Jersey Shore this past week, where I enjoyed a relaxing vacation with my husband and family. We drove home today, and I just arrived to an inbox full of deals and a house that’s still a bit of a mess.

But I wanted to share a tip with you that I discovered while I was gone.  On Sunday, I picked up a local Jersey Shore newspaper and was thrilled with what I found.  First of all, it contained the Red Plum insert (which is hit and miss around here) as well as the SmartSource and P&G.  But the best part was that each insert contained a slightly different selection of coupons than the ones carried by the Washington Post.  In most cases, the coupon values were a bit lower.  It’s counterintuitive, but lower coupon values are helpful for us Northern Virginians because at least four of our local grocery stores—Harris Teeter, Safeway, Giant, and Shoppers—double coupons every day.  And both Harris Teeter and Shoppers often triple.  So a $.75 coupon is often much more valuable than a $1 coupon.

So while you’re at the beach or visiting family this summer, pick up a few local papers—you’ll very likely profit!

On Wednesday May 20, Kerastase, in conjunction with local salons, is offering a complementary salon treatment and blow dry!  Book your appointment now!

You can find more details here, including a list of 7 treatments that you can choose from, a list of local salons that are participating (there are a bunch in NoVa!) and a coupon to print off and take with you.

If you take advantage of this offer, don’t forget to tip your stylist on the full value of the treatment!

Thanks Money Saving Mom!

Check out this article from Smart Money on warehouse clubs.  It has a great chart comparing the cost of common items at Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale to grocery store prices.

The bottom line: Sam’s Club generally (though not always) has the best prices.  But note that the grocery store prices listed are non-sale prices.  You can often do better by waiting for sales at the grocery store, then pairing them with coupons.

I have been a loyal Costco shopper for a while, but I’m thinking that maybe I should try the other two.  You can get a free one-day pass to Sam’s club here (there’s on in Woodbridge), and a free 60-day pass to BJ’s here (locations here).

Do you have a favorite warehouse club?  Please share in the comments.

I have long been a fan of Wise Bread, the personal finance blog that offers practical, clever, and often quirky tips for money-saving and bargain-hunting.  So I was thrilled that the writers were kind enough to give me a copy of their new book, 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget, to review.

I’m a personal finance junkie; I spend my days scouring websites for bargains and tips on how to stretch my budget just a little bit further.  So I wondered how much I could learn from a book that spends 300 pages on such a broad topic.  This will be a great book for the newbies, I thought.

But I was impressed by the number of practical, easy-to-implement, and not-so-obvious tips that I found throughout the book.  Like how to make a fruit salad glaze from inexpensive wine.  Or how to use milk to treat a sunburn.  There’s a whole section on creative ways to save money using ice cube trays, and another on toilet paper usage.

My favorite sections were the ones that gave suggestions on how to live well on less. Wise Bread’s philosophy—and mine—is that you don’t have to suffer to keep to a budget. The book is filled with tips on how to waste less and make the most of what you have. It’s a great pep talk for those of us who strive to live simply and debt-free.

The final third of the book—which discusses personal finance and investing—is a little ambitious.  It’s hard to cover such sweeping topics in 100 pages.  But it does give some useful starting advice to those looking to begin a money-management plan, like “6 Tips for Following a Budget Without Breaking Down in Tears” and “9 Signs You Need To Fire Your Financial Planner.”

This book is a quick and easy read.  It is organized into lists and doesn’t require long stretches of attention.  It would be an easy read on the metro or by the pool, and would make a great gift for a college graduate.

If you get a chance to read it, please let me know what you think!