October 2009 Archives

Recently our old refrigerator finally gave out, so I have been a frugal shopper in trying to get the best price for a new one.  We needed a stainless steel model within a certain height and depth range, so picking out a new one was actually pretty easy since there are only about four that exist on the planet that we could fit in our kitchen without remodeling and tearing out the existing cabinets.  Of these four the cheapest one looked nice, had a decent capacity, and had a good repair record on Consumer Reports.  So with a little online searching, and hours of reviews of height and depth specifications, I'd found the one for us. The next step was to get the best price.  Here are the steps I took:

1. I entered the model number into Google and found the prices at various comparison shopping sites, including Google shopping.  A lot of places I'd never heard of were pretty cheap and there would be no sales tax getting it from out of state. However, I have had enough problems with misdeliveries and malfunctionings on appliances in the past to want to go with a local store. If you are more of a large appliance risk taker than I, your rock bottom prices will probably be at some online stores in New Jersey that you never heard of before.  Order it and good luck.  However, if you are more of the cautious type like me, you may want to order your refrigerator locally. Then read on.

2.  I checked the price of my new appliance to be online at Sears, Costco, Lowes, Sam's Club, Best Buy and Home Depot. Sear's had the best price at $1,742.  (Now I know that is not a particularly frugal price, but remember it is still much cheaper than remodeling my kitchen to fit in a standard size refrigerator at a lower price point.) These are all of the stores in my local area that will price match each other.  They will not price match Internet ads from out of state.

3. Next I went in person to Home Depot but they could not order the brand I wanted.  I followed this with a trip to the local Best Buy store.  Best Buy offered to match the Sears price online, but would not give me a better deal. Next I went in to Sears to find out their best deal and they would not budge on the price.  They said if I could find it cheaper and in stock at a local store they would match the price, but other than that it was no refrigerator deals for me that day.

3.  Next I tried all of my special shopping deal programs. My Discover Card, American Automobile Association, Entertainment Book online and Border Rewards program all have partner deals for shopping at various stores where you can get 5% or more discounts as long as you make your purchase through their online links.  I checked all of them for discounts with Best Buy and Sears, and came up with a winner.  My Border's Rewards Perks program has an appliance discount program with Sears.  I called a toll free number, gave the woman my appliance model number and coupon code and was quoted a price of $1,672 plus free delivery after rebate.  Woohoo!

4.  It took me probably 15 minutes to check my different online shopping programs for appliance discounts and I ended up saving $130 on my new fridge.  How cool is that?

5.  I paid for my fridge with a rewards back charge card for an extra 1% back.

If you are not already a member of Border's Rewards program, you may want to sign up.  It is free to join and besides the shopping deals, you get coupons for up to 40% off on books and related items online and at their stores.

Check out the cool tips from the Carnival Of Personal Finance - The Halloween Edition.  My post on "Are Rechargeable Batteries Cost Effective?" has been included.  Yeah!  It is my first blog carnival.

Ebates currently has an offer on Costco memberships.  It expires 12/31/2009. It costs $50 to join Costco.  This offer is good if you either join Costco as a new member or upgrade a current membership.  Ebates is free to join and they give you cash back on your online shopping.  Basically Ebates has an affiliate program with different merchants like Costco and they share their commissions with their customers.

If you join or upgrade your Costco membership through the Ebates offer, Ebates will give you cash back of $1.75.  The catch is that you have to have a minimum of $5.00 in cash back for Ebates to cut you a check, so this offer only works if you use Ebates for other online purchases.

Beside the cash back from Ebates, Costco will give new or upgrading members coupons worth more than $50 including:

1. A free rotisserie chicken.
 
I don't usually buy this item at Costco but I'm guessing this is worth about $5.

2. Free photo processing.

We just print our own pictures on the PC printer, except for one of my kids who is taking a photo class, but he has to develop his own pictures anyway as a part of the class.  So to me free photo processing isn't worth anything.

3. A two pound bag of coffee.  The brand is Cosco's house brand, Kirkland signature.

We only drink instant, organic coffee so to me this isn't worth anything. I don't normally even buy ground coffee, but I would guess this is worth about $7 to people who like to drink generic ground coffee.

4. A 48 pack of AA batteries.

Name brand AA batteries go for around $1 a battery at warehouse prices, but the house brands are usually considerably less.  I couldn't find a price for a Kirkland AA batteries online, but the Member's Mark brand AA batteries at Sam's Club sell for around $10 for a pack of 48 single use batteries.

Then they offer the nebulous "and more" which could be more of the above or totally worthless stuff.  Who knows?  They also say they will give you multiple certificates to give as gifts, but they don't say what the certificates are for.

So is this s good deal?  If you were going to join or upgrade your membership anyway, then sure, anything extra that is free is worth it.  

If you are a current member, is it worth it to upgrade?  Maybe.  The Executive membership costs $100, $50 more than the standard membership, and gives you 2% back each year, so if you spend a lot at Costco, then the upgrade can pay for itself even without the free coupons. Personally, I've started buying more at Sam's Club, because they have this new service called Click N' Pull. This service allows you to place your order online and then they assemble and put everything in the cart for you.  You get an email when your basket is ready for you. So you get warehouse prices with a concierge shopping service. That is a neat feature that is hard to beat, and as far as I know Costco doesn't have anything comparable.

I still keep my membership at Costco because I like their optical department, and we have enough myopic people in my family that the Costco membership fee is worth it just for that, if nothing else.  Other than that, these days I'm personally a Click N' Pull shopper at Sam's Club. 

Rechargeable Batteries Provide Electrifying Savings

Kids and all of their toys and gear can use up a dry cell battery faster than most moms can say "turn off that Xbox and do your homework." According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's web site, Americans purchase nearly three billion dry-cell batteries every year to power products like cell phones, toys, lap top computers, tools and portable radios. The vast majority of these purchases are single use batteries. If you want to be a frugal consumer, be aware that one battery that is rechargeable can substitute for hundreds of single use batteries.

One Rechargeable May Save Up To $500 Over Its Life Span

So let's do a little math to see how much you can save by using rechargeables.  As of this writing you can buy a regular, name brand AA alkaline battery in a bulk pack at Sam's Club for about $1 a battery. You can buy a rechargeable AA battery at Sam's Club in a bulk pack for around $3 a battery. If we use estimates previously published from Uniross, a rechargeable battery maker, we can assume that each rechargeable lasts the life of 500 single use batteries. This means that each rechargeable AA battery you use instead of a disposable battery may save you $497 over the life span of the rechargeable battery.

Or to put it mathematically:

500 single use AA batteries @ $1 each = $500

1 rechargeable battery @ $3 = $3

Difference = $497 savings

Return on your $3 investment: 16,566.67%

Kind of beats putting the money into CDs, doesn't it?

If you live in state with a high sales tax, the savings are even greater. Sales tax on $500 worth of disposable batteries in a location with a 9% sales tax would be another $45.00, while the tax on the $3 rechargeable battery would be 27 cents, for an additional savings of $44.73.

Please note that these calculations do not include the cost of the battery charger, which would be a small one time expense for the first year. You can buy an inexpensive battery charger from Amazon or Sam's Club for about $10 - $15. You only need one charger for all of your rechargeable batteries, so this cost is pretty nominal on a per battery basis.

Good For Your Wallet, Good for the Environment

As an added environmental benefit, by using rechargeables in every appliance where it is practical and properly recycling them, over your lifetime you will be keeping thousands of single use batteries out of landfills.

We still use single use batteries in our smoke detectors because they last longer than one charge life of a rechargeable battery. No one wants to risk having a smoke detector lose power, so this is one are where you don't want to be penny wise and pound foolish. However, since we've never had a catastrophic Xbox controller failure at our house (at least not from my perspective), devices like these are perfect for utilizing rechargeables.

Some people also recommend single use batteries in emergency flashlights where there may be a long period of time between uses.  I solved this problem at our house by purchasing power failure nightlights that plug into the wall outlets turn on when the power goes out. I also purchased several wind up flashlights to keep around the house.  So now when we have a power failure at night the emergency nightlights turn on automatically, which gives us just enough light to stumble through our house trying to remember where we last left the wind up flashlights.

According to the Food CPI and Expenditures table at the United Sates Department of Agriculture's web site, per capita spending on food in the U.S. in 2008 was $3,832.  Of this total, $1,973 was spent on food prepared at home and $1,859 was spent on food prepared away from home. If you multiply $3,832 X 4, then a family of four would be expected to spend $15,382 per year on food, including both grocery store and restaurant expenditures. Food prepared at home only would be $7,892. ( Of course, this cost would vary from family to family depending on factors like the regional prices of food in your particular geographic area and the ages of your family members.) Visit my main site for tips on how to reduce your grocery bill.

In a separate study from the U.S. government's Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average "consumer unit" of four spent $9,478 on food in 2008.  Of this amount, $5,478 was spent on food at home and $4,000 was spent on food away from home.

Just for grins, the average of the two study results for a "consumer unit" of four comes out to  $12,430,  for the total amount spent on food, both home and away. If we only consider food prepared at home (what most normal people would simply call groceries), then that amount averages out to $6,685.

According to an article at MSNBC, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates about 12.5 percent of the average family's spending goes toward food, while the Department of Agriculture puts the figure at 9.8 percent."

How much do you spend on groceries?  

Last fall when my husband lost his job we were doing everything we could to save money, including getting all of our gas from Costco. Now that he is working again and we are back to two incomes, time is a big issue for us.  Today I needed to fill my minivan up with gas, but I was torn on whether to take the easy, albeit more expensive way, and fill up at the corner gas station, or drive the extra few miles to go to Costco to fill up.

Today thrift won out over laziness and I ended up filling my van up at Costco.  Regular gas at Costco was $2.89 a gallon. When I got home I checked www.gasbuddy.com for local gas prices at the corner gas stations. The cheapest price in my area for gas was $2.89.  The most expensive was $3.15.  The station near my house was $3.11. 

So the Costco gas was the cheapest, and the other stations with prices as low as Costco tended to be, not surprisingly, the ones located near Costco.  The difference in the gas price per gallon between Costco and my corner gas station today was 22 cents.  I bought around 16 gallons of gas, so my savings today from going to Costco to fill up were $3.52.

It takes around ten extra minutes to go to Costco and back for me, plus a little extra gas to get there and back, plus some wait time once I'm there because the line is inevitably longer there than at the corner gas station.  So the bottom line is that since I'm self employed and time is money for me, I probably make more money getting more work done and going to the corner gas station than making a special trip to Costco just for gas.  However, if I can fill up at Costco on days I'm shopping there for groceries anyway or in the neighborhood doing errands, then it is probably worth the stop. Visit my main site for more ideas on saving money on gas.