Step 1 of Canadian Couponing: Get the Flipp app!

Okay, so seriously, who doesn’t have the Flipp app yet? Who doesn’t know what that is?

Raise your hand. Admit it. 

 

If you are reading this, then you absolutely should have the Flipp app because you’re looking to save some money. If I left the house with nothing but this app, no coupons, no pre-research, nothing else but the app and some money, I KNOW I would still be able to save some. Before continuing with reading, download the app and follow along with me! (There’s no kickback to me, and no need to really “sign up” for anything)

 

Summary of what the app does:

-Holds all flyers for everywhere closest to you, and then some stores that are a little bit further. Grocery, Furniture, Technology, etc

-Allows you to “favourite” a store flyer to easily find it each week

-Has a search function which allows you to search for a store flyer, for an item, or for a coupon

-Items are tagged with brand and description (both “milk” and “Neilson” will bring up the same product)

-Allows you to “clip” an offer or sale that you think is a good price, and they all go into the “clipped offers” section

-Allows you to make your own shopping list right inside the app, and then shows you how many offers in the flyers match that item (this week “Eggs” gives 20 sale deals)

-Has a section for Coupons. Select the coupon you want and send it to your email to print

-Has coupon match-ups for the coupons in their database. Before you leave the house to shop, this is a one-quick glance to see if there’s anything here you’d want to buy so you can print the coupon while getting your shoes on

-Gives you the option to connect an account and sync loyalty cards to the app. Imagine not having to dig for that one loyalty card to scan in your wallet, and just click on this tab in the app! Air Miles, Aeroplan, CAA, Canadian Tire money.. It’s all here 

 

All of this allows for quick and painless Price Matching when you shop at an applicable store (Walmart, FreshCo, No Frills, etc all price match), as you don’t carry around 10 unruly newspapers or have to flip through every page to find where that one deal was. It gives you access to all of the sales on that week for everywhere around you, and gives you no excuse to not save some money!

 

Every single item I am about to put in my cart gets searched on the Flipp app first. I might think it’s a good deal where I’m standing, but searching it on the app will find it cheaper somewhere else and I can quickly and easily price match it for added savings (or it reaffirms that yep, that’s a good price). 

 

It’s also good for checking to see if you can double dip on your coupons. On Thursday when the flyers come out, I will search the name of every coupon I have in my binder to see if there are any sale deals I can pair with my dollars off papers. This is how I can get items for free, as I can see something is one sale for $1 and I have $1 off coupon for it. Consider that deal clipped and cashed in on on my next trip!

Spin and earn free money with Qriket app

You know me, always a fan of the get-rich-quick schemes that don't cost me any money to start.. Here's another one!

I googled phone apps that make you real money. There are a bunch! Most of them require you to answer surveys and stuff, but I wanted one that took no brainpower. This one seems pretty simple, and everyone that has posted about it seems to like the real money you can steadily get. 

Let me prelude this with Ive had it for 2 days. But in 2 days I have $2.45 real dollars (that I can cash out into PayPal when it gets to $5 I think. Easy! 

The Game

Meet Qriket. Pick either blue or yellow and spin the wheel. If it lands on your colour, you get the 5, 10, 20 cents. I've heard-tell that it also jumps up and down to $1 and $2 in a spin. 

Get More Spins

There are a few ways to get spins. 

When you first get started, plug in my referral code at startup: Use the code D73E9F to get 25 free spins http://qriket.com/invite/D73E9F

You'll want those 25 spins, trust me!

Thereafter it looks like there are four ways to get more spins:

1. Spin locator

This thing shows you all the places that will give you 1 spin for every $1 spent at their place (mostly food). Most of them are in Toronto and none are near me unfortunately 

2. Buy Qriket gear. 

Buying a hat or shirt with the logo on it will come with a bonus spins code. 

3. Follow @jcomparel on Twitter or Instagram to get freebies he posts.

All of these codes go into the top little spin redeem button

4. Have your friends use your referral code when they download the game and you get $1 for every joinee. Don't forget to use mine! - D73E9F  http://qriket.com/invite/D73E9F

I hop on once a day, watch all the ads and spin 10 times. I go up at least .50 every day, so I will hang tight and see where I am in a couple weeks. Don't forget to use my referral code if you've found this info helpful!

My last shopping trip - free is good!

My last shopping trip was pretty fun so just wanted to share it here. I went with my roommate and we both spent $50 each. It was kinda fun to see the differences!

Him:

Meat meat and meat

Pizza

Lettuce

Rice

.28 cent noodles

Canned Beans for a chili

Orange juice

Chips

And Shreddies which we price matched for $1.88

So, he got food. $50 doesn't go very far for food anymore it seems, so this was actually really good as it was a week if lunches basically. 

Mine:

3 bags of price matched smartfood ($2 each!)

2 bags price matched Tostitos 

Milk (we go through one of these bags a week)

Pop pop and cans of pop (altogether like $5)

New Nestea blackcurrent pop and coupon

Chocolate milk

.28 noodles and 2 cans of Italian wedding soup

Lemon liquid

2 bottles of laundry detergent which was price matched, couponed AND rebate app'd

2 bottles Vim which were price matched and couponed

1 bottle Palmolive which was price matched and couponed

2 vileda scrunge boxes plus a coupon

Restoralax bottle and coupon

Frank's Red Hot sauce and a full value rebate form filled out

2 Crunch bar sets and a coupon

2 bundles of organic bananas for $1 (clearance rack but they are perfectly fine!)

So from all this, I got free stuff!:

The Tide deal was probably the best as it was a money-maker. I price matched it for 3.99 each, then used a coupon that was $5 off when you buy 2. On top of this, Tide was also on one of the rebate phone apps for buy 2 and get $5. I have requested that cheque in the mail now!

The vileda scrunge and the Vim were coupons for buy one get one free. Great deals when the items go on sale. 

Restoralax coupon was for the full value of the item, after I wrote in to the company saying I liked their product  

The two Crunch bars were a coupon from Nestle when I wrote in complaining about some really funky Smarties I bought (and didn't eat). They sent me a $2 off coupon, which I used on 2 $1 Crunch bar packages. You can see below the coupons, plus a free sample and coupon I received in the mail the same day. 

The Frank's is a current promotion for a full value rebate of any of their bottles. We were out so it was great timing!

Then yesterday I dragged my roommate out after work to grab something else we are out of: bottled water. 

The store had a one day only deal coupon which I pulled from the web and printed. They have their case of 24 waters on sale for $1.97 (which in itself is a good deal), but the coupon gave a buy one get one free. We walked out of there with 4 cases of water for under $4. 

Something to note for the word "free" though..  Usually you still need to pay the tax. Unless the coupon states otherwise, tax is not included. For the restoralax and the 2 crunch bars which I did in one transaction, I still had to pay $1.53 I think it was. All for the tax man. 

Happy shopping!

Coupon Match-Ups - (Flipp app just got better!)

So I had a lot of excitement this morning when I updated my apps. One that got updated was my favourite must-have-while-shopping-app, Flipp, who have added coupons and coupon match-ups to their app. 

Whoooppeeeee!!

So what are coupon/flyer match ups? Basically, they're someone else doing the work of looking up what sales and coupons can be used together for the best bang for your buck! In one of my first blog posts I explained how I'll sit down and do the work of comparing apps to coupons to flyer prices to see where I can double or triple dip on deals.. But there are a lot of sites and people who will do this work for you to save you valuable time. 

Below are three examples. In all three cases, the coupon they mention is usually clickable and printable right from their list. I'm not saying this method should replace all of your flyer scouring though, as many times you will have a stash of coupons that you printed last month that are no longer active to print, so they might not show up in these kind of match-ups. 

Flipp app

Check out the deal for Clear Care that I will be buying two of tomorrow!

Do all of your flyer searching, coupon matching and now coupon printing in one spot. Their coupon match ups actually provide the coupons to download. Simply click on the coupons you want to print and email them to yourself to print. The best part? Coupons are the same ones that are on SmartSource.com but you do not need to be signed in to print them. This allows you to print the same coupons twice through both spots :)

MrsJanuary

This site is basically good for everything.

The team are pretty dedicated and pretty on top of things, so they are usually quick to put up match ups. A lot of the time the coupons are clickable as well, and will take you to where they can be printed from. I like this match up site as well because they also let you know of rebates on the cash back apps (like Zweet in this screenshot) that I've mentioned in another blog post. 

Canadian Free Stuff

Another site good for most things. Similar to Mrs January, coupons will be clickable from this site too. 

Anyways, three good places to start!

Time is of the essence when it comes to coupons and deals!

Watching a lot of court shows lately and in a court of law, this is an important line to add on any contract. What it means in the law system is that a person can't take their sweet time for years, it means they need to pay back your loan to them as soon as possible.

Couponing is much the same. If you don't make the time to go and buy a good deal, you'll miss out. Case in point, tonight's couple items...

I saw on Saturday that a couple of my e-rebate apps had scrubbing bubbles items on it. One was a buy two SC Johnson products and get $3.00 back and another app had buy any 2 scrubbing bubbles bathroom and get $4.00 back. Combine that with a Food Basics deal for $3.00 a bottle, and that's pretty good. Combine THAT with a manufacturers coupon I printed from online I had for buy one get one free, and now that's a great deal. 

Couldn't bring myself I go out to grab any of these this weekend and went out tonight instead. Well one of the apps was sold out tonight, so instead I got two bottles for $1. Still good, but we all like the idea of being "paid" to take stuff out from the store. 

Another of tonight's deals I missed the boat on was Pledge Floor cleaner. One one of the apps for $7 back a bottle, and I have a manufacturers coupon for save $5 each. Walked down the aisle and ran into a lady who was very excited to see a "fellow couponer" and asked if I was in on the Pledge deal. I said I hoped so and she said, yeah this was her third lap going to different cashiers to get the deal. Of course, when I got to the spot on the shelf she had cleared the shelf of all pledge products. Whomp whomp. 

So, note, another good tip is to make your shopping day either Thursday or Friday, when most of the apps have just refreshed their deals. After the weekend, all the other die hard couponer a have cleared the shelves and the available deals from the apps. 

Step 2, App's that give cash-back

So your binder is organized and you are ready to go.. But first, lemme take a detour..

On my iphone I have 6 money saving apps that are easy and actually work. I've tried to think about how these apps actually make any money on their end, but the opportunity here for everyday people like us to save a couple bucks a trip is offered, and you bet I'm taking it!

The idea behind these apps is to influence your purchases to try a certain brand or item. You go shopping, come home, open the app, and submit photos of your receipt to redeem offers like "Get .25 when you buy milk" or "Get 1.00 when you buy any 2 Febreeze scented sprays". Click on the things you bought in that trip, hit send, and wait for the approvals. All of these apps will send you a cheque when you reach a certain amount in your account, and I recently received my first $20 cheque from one of these apps. Easy, quick, and another few cents saved. 

Oh, and the apps will give you the credit no matter what you paid for the item. As long as the item is easily identified on your receipt, you will get the credit. This means you could use a coupon on the item in store, then come home and redeem it on the app (maybe making the item free). 

What I use, in order of preference :

Checkout 51 - good combination of generic items (buy any milk, bread, apples) with brand names we actually want to buy from. Large selection, and this changes every single week. They've also started bonus offers recently, where buy a couple of specially flagged items and get bonus credit back. This is who I got my first cheque from.

Zweet - again, lots of generic items and brand items. Weekly turnover of offers. Difference here is you also get Zweet points for purchases too, which after 650 points you can redeem as charity donations, gift cards and such. 

Snap (by Groupon) - same as the two above, except I find their deals run out quickly. Any generic deal is gone the same day, and what is left is sometimes not a favourite brand. You can also only redeem some offers once (like milk), like, ever, but they usually have high value credit backs for the items that are there. 

Save.ca - this app isn't the best to be honest, but every once in a while they get a couple good items on it. I believe they say their offers change weekly, but you can probably check it once a month as 75% of the deals stay the same. For sure, the website version of the this site is better for printing coupons!

CartSmart - same as save.ca. Okay for some offers, not so great for most.

Changio - this is an interesting app that does points instead of money, but for everywhere including groceries, fast food, department stores and restaurants. It also has a "scan" feature that awards points without having to buy the item (like scan this product's barcode in the store and get 5 points). I've just found this app and it will take me a long while to get up to the redemption point, but you need 2000 points to basically redeem anything. It's a great app if you are going to that place anyways (restaurants and fast food are my major go-to's), but I wouldn't structure my buying plan based on it. 

So those are the "redeeming" apps I've been using. On top of those cash-back apps, I also have a couple other apps that are geat:

Flipp - so my half hour of research a week is basically on this app. There is an awesome "search" function that will search for a keyword amongst all active flyers in your area. So you need a bathroom cleaner this week, and you have a coupon for Lysol?.. Plug "Lysol" into the search area and it'll show you results of that search (where it's on sale), what flyer they're in and more. It even allows you to "clip" the offer to a shopping list, which I use religiously for price matching (freshCo and Walmart both will price match based on digital flyers). Great app, highly recommend. 

PC Plus - if you shop at any of the stores that accept this points program, then you need the app to "load offers to the card". Basically, it'll award you extra points for select purchases, which you can redeem later at checkout for cash (I think it's in $5 increments). Sobeys and a couple other stores have similar rewards cards, which take no time to sign up for and to beep through at checkout. It all adds up!

Hope that covers all the digital pieces. Even if you don't do the physical couponing, these apps are a nearly effortless way to get a couple bucks back on everyday purchases.