A few ideas for living frugally

[helper1]

First buy an entertainment book at www.Entertainment.com for $10
Buy one get ones to many restaurants, Movies for 6 bucks and all sorts of entertainment buy one get ones. ANd the dominoes deal that the person below talks about.. you can that buy one pizza get one free anytime with this book.

Secondly. Dump your longdistance service and set up a prepaid online calling card account. I call anywhere in the US and Canada for 1.9 cents a minute using callingforcheap.com

Finally print coupons from www.Smartsource.com and other online places and get them doubled and tripled.

THe diet coke with splenda two L coupon here.. http://www.dietcoke.com/notLoggedIn.jsp
I just brought 10 of them to the local pricechopper and they doubled them. I walked out of that store with 10 FREE two leaders. You can only print two coupons per comp, but I have one at work and home. My wife has one at work and we had my parents print a couple for us to.

[Snoopy2645]

Heres a few things I do. I havent paid for movies in 6 years I do rebate things to get free movie tickets last month walgreens had it where you buy $50 or $20 in p&g products & get free movie tickets. I get free long distance online I havent paid for that in 6 years either. And as for eating out I do mystery shops to get my meals paid for.

I also do alot of coupons but have no doubles anywhere around here so I buy trial size items to make items free.

[Fern]

I used to print coupons from places like smartsource but found a number of supermarkets don't take them, don't trust them becus it's clear they're printed on a computer.

[cicy33]

I also cannot use printed coupons here. Although I think that kroger is a possibility again! I cannot seem to find the movie ticket thing here more than once in a blue moon, got to do the Looney tunes one. Mypoints has one but it is for AMC theaters which of course we don't have here! Bummer. There are many benefits to living in a smaller place but there are also some disadavantages! My area to try to save some money besides coupons is to take a bottle of water instead of buy stuff at convenience store.

[claricem75]

You definitely have to be weary of online coupons. Use them, but don't always expect them to be accepted. I've actually used Sonic coupons for buy one get one free a lot for when I eat fast food with my husband.

Invest in membership clubs for things like toiletries and vegetables. I've found that to be incredibly helpful!

Clarice

[cheapbastard]

We haven't paid for movie tickets for a long while either. We collect hot points on our credit card purchases (this is in New Zealand). One of the things we get with our points are movie tickets.

I must also support the use of calling cards. We use the Kia Ora Card (in New Zealand) and pay 5 cents per minute to anywhere in NZ and 7 cents per minute to Canada. These rates are 24/7 so we don't have to worry about peak time. The rates are much cheaper than the bigger carriers here.

We are also able to get free stuff by logging into an auction site called www.auctioncity.co.nz . You don't even have to buy anything. We log in everyday and get auction points. These points are then used to get products from the site. We have gotten an electric knife, a watch, make-up, 2 computer games, and a newton's cradle. A great way to get free stuff for just a few minutes a day.

[cicy33]

I went to this site to join but when I put in my address it won't let me edit the country so I guess it is only good for people in New Zealand. oh well.

[catlover15]

I've tried smartsource. Thanks for the idea!

[shawni]

I'm not sure if I got this here or somewhere else, but for those Entertainment book fans...here is a free trial

http://www.entertainment.com/freetrial/

[sweeps]

The Entertainment book is definitely the way to go. A Buy 1 Get 1 at just one restaurant can make back your money.

Occasionally someone collecting money for charity will come by with a coupon book for local merchants in exchange for a donation. Often those are good deals too -- plus the money goes to charity.

Speaking of charity -- when making a donation (e.g. Katrina relief effort), always look for dollar-to-dollar matching. We donated through the Ellen TV show site so our donation was effectively doubled.

[StressLess]

Shawni - Thanks so much for that free trial link. I'm already registered with my regular email address, but I was able to use my yahoo mail account to sign up. They don't ask you your name or anything--instant free access to 3 coupons. I wouldn't want to abuse it, but it looks like you could keep signing up for 3 coupons at a time with different email addresses, indefinitely!

I'm getting ready to buy the 2006 book, but am waiting for the best deal on it. After Nov 1 when the coupons in the old book run out, maybe I'll sign up with my work email address to get a few more coupons to hold me over!

[cicy33]

I wish I could use this entertainment book. I looked into once but it wasn't good for places in my area. We don't have a lot of variety here. I also wanted to do restaurants.com but again, not for anything in my area! total bummer

[anewshka]

Free movies? Do what I did...go to work at your local video store! I work at Blockbuster just 1 night a week and get 2 free rentals every day AND get the New Releases a week in advance for screening!!

[niki_the_tiger]

How far into the year does Entertainment book start getting cheaper? Cuz right now it is $30... and there really is not that much in my area. In fact, we do most of our stuff in the next state over, so I would probably buy that one (NH).