A typical shopping trip

Very quickly, here's the normal shopping trip do's I do!

1. Peruse the flyers. I like paper flyers for the initial deal search, but for ease of price matching, I view and clip the good offers to the Flipp app. All the stores I've been in so far accept the app flyers for price matching. 

2. I will start a list on a piece of paper of the items I want to buy, with additional columns for: "coupon", "price match" and "app rebate". I'll make my shopping list on the one side and then fill in the columns on the other side as I go through the next steps. 

(I had two (3!) totally free items on this list with coupons :) )

3. I'll cross check great deals with my coupon binder. In a few cases I'll have a coupon for the item already on my shopping list and can get a double deal. I'll also add items to the list and do the Flipp "flyer search" for buy one get one coupons or high value coupons ($3 off coupon and maybe the product is on a great sale that makes it $3). 

4. Go through my 6 rebate apps and see what items are offered there that I should jump on. Again, write down any items on my shopping list that catch my eye (like milk). 

5. Again check and see if there's a coupon for any of the app rebate offers. I love when the stars align and I'll have stuff written in every one of the columns for a triple deal!

To be honest, I usually spend about half an hour doing all the above. I try to keep my shopping list rather small, but over $60 worth (you'll see why later). 

6. Shop! With my phone and clipped Flipp offers and my coupon book and my  paper shopping list, I say yes to a shopping cart! I try to shop on Sunday morning, when the Sunday drivers are in church and everyone else is recovering from Saturday night. The lines are short before 11am and the cashiers don't give a whole lot of trouble to you with coupons if there's no one in line behind you. 

This usually takes me 30-45 min to do everything. I'll shop the aisles too looking for clearance items or other sales I might not have seen. I'll take coupons out of the book to use and put them all together in one slot on the first page. Makes the end checking out easier. 

7. Pay. Laying items out on the conveyer is the most stressful moment. I'll usually group things by the column(s) I have on my sheet. Items at full price or only on the app go first, which allows me to tell the cashier that I have price matching and coupons in this purchase. Then, usually just coupons next, item with the coupon on top. Then, price matching items/and coupons. These are showing an item, showing the item on the Flipp flyer, then handing the coupon. While they're reading the coupon, I can have the next Flipp flyer item pulled up on my phone. 

8. Double check receipt. Yep, I'm one of those people who will stand at the end of the cash out aisle looking at the receipt. Doesn't take me long to make sure that all of the full price items came up correctly and that the number of coupons I have on my list equals the number of -$.00 items on my receipt. I put the receipt somewhere easy and home I go!

9. Once home and unloaded into my kitchen, out comes the Neilsen home scanner. Enter the details of who and where, then start scanning items and entering any sale prices. I keep the receipt out to remember everything as I go item per item, and as I put away each product. This takes me 10-15 min to get everything scanned and away. Finish off by putting in the total paid, and then I usually press send on the Neilsen scanner to transmit the data. 

10. The table is cleared of product and only the receipt is left. I'll sit down then and do the rebate apps. If your receipt is over $60, then you can enter the Checkout 51 contest they have every week, and then sometimes a couple apps will give you .25 for receipts over $50 too. I'll scan the receipt for each app, select the items, and I'll usually keep track on the back of my receipt of what I've claimed (.25 milk, .50 bread, etc). Apps usually take a couple days to process and approve your claims, so just scribbling them on the back of my receipt helps me remember what I'm still waiting on (and makes me feel proud that the $60 receipt is actually $59.50 haha). This doesn't take me long at all usually, and every nickle helps. 

I'd say a shopping trip like this is 2 hours, which isn't for me a big deal, especially compared to people who take those two hours just wandering the store for product, who don't price match or coupon. :)

Nielsen Home Scanning program

Companies are all about research, finding out who buys their products and when. Those cash back apps feed back information back to the suppliers, and this Nielsen program is using the same rationale. There have been a bunch of instances where I've seen companies quote stats taken from this system. 

I applied on their website and then waited to see if I was part of a demographic they were interested in. I was and they sent me information to sign up. In the mail came a box with a little unit in it, including a base and a handheld scanner. Plugged the base direct into the router and I was ready to go. 

Basically without going into too much detail, you are supposed to scan and send in your purchases. Every purchase. They have a hundred+ stores in their unit that cover almost every store you could be spending money at. Gas to groceries, pet food to online shopping. They want to know what you buy. 

When you enter a purchase by scanning the item's barcode, it'll ask if you used any deals, options like store sale, manufacturers coupon and more come up. Some stores you shop ask you to input the price of every single item while others just want the total bill at the end. It'll take us few extra minutes to input our purchases before we put them away in the house. The handheld can also be taken with you, in your purse or such, if you are bad at keeping receipts like I can be sometimes. 

Some items that can't be scanned as they have no barcode, you scan a pre-created barcode on a sent sheet. This include stuff like gas, restaurant and fast food, vegetables and fruits and more. I'll admit our house scans the take out barcode far too often!

They run on weekly schedules, so the idea is you send in all your purchases before the cut off day. They are/did run a promotion that if you scan and send in your purchases all 4 weeks of a month they would send you a gift card. This is still ongoing, and a good incentive to stay on top of the day of the week. (I did and got the prepaid MasterCard for $15) :)

Every transmission of purchases earns you points. I think it's 150 points per week if you send in your stuff. All of these points gather in your account to later buy stuff. Their rewards shop looks similar to the air miles one. I believe one of the cheapest rewards on there is at 5000 points, and I'm currently sitting at around 3500 myself :) 

Nielsen will also run surveys and questionnaires to get bonus points. Typically taking 5-10 min to do, you'll get 200 bonus points each. They will also ask about things they are trying, like keeping a food diary for a week (with cash rewards) or opting in to try their new mobile scanning system. More bonus points come from your "anniversary" date each year, with the number of points rewarded going up each year you keep the system. 

No cost, just some extra time. I think it's a worthwhile thing to look into.