by Sarah Deak (Mom of four SVDPRS students)
Like many Moms, I have many jobs. I have my career as a map maker, I have volunteer positions in which I participate, and I am Mom who buys all the things my family needs, including what the kids need for school, sports, and gifts, etc. I like to think that I help my family’s bottom line by getting the best prices possible, so I use different websites to save money and get the best deals.
A classic example of this is clothes shopping. Our family needs clothes of all kinds. We need uniform pants and shirts; we need uniform socks. We need clothes for play and clothes for church. I make a list of all the things I need for each kiddo and get to my laptop. First, I look at Rakuten.com and run a search for children’s clothes and they list stores, their rebates, and what coupons are available for you to use. I also look at the ShopWithScrip.com to see what e-gift cards are available. Then I load up my cart and purchase an e-gift card from Scrip, and I make my purchase. I get the school a rebate from Scrip, and I get a rebate from Rakuten. It’s an overall win/win situation!
One of the best things I have ever learned when shopping is, make a list and stick to it! If something you see is not on your list, DO.NOT.BUY.IT. This is especially helpful when food shopping for my large family. We do a lot of meal planning, so we make our weekly menu and then make our food shopping list. We make sure that we have all the things on the list that we need before we get to the store and we shop only from the list. We use an app called Wunderlist to store our lists. That way we have it on our phone and can’t accidentally forget it on our way to the store! Once we are there, we use the Shop with Scrip site to buy an e-gift card so we can pay and the school gets our rebates. With our monthly grocery bill, our children easily hit $400 mark to earn their dress downs.
Finally, another great way I have found to save money is to use Groupon! Now I just found out that Scrip has an e-gift card for Groupon! Using Groupon gets you new and old experiences, for a lower price, and using the Scrip e-gift card gives the school a rebate. Another win/win!