Where I get the DEALS!

In lieu of this week's Deals of the Week post (which would have been kind of boring -chicken breasts for $1.88 a pound, goldfish grahams for only $.75, bagel bites for $1 - yeah, that's the highlights), I thought I would post the websites that I use to help with the deals, since some of you were asking about that. There's two ways I get good deals, besides shopping clearance racks. The first is signing up for freebies online and the second is reading coupon matchups for individual stores (where someone has compiled a list of things on sale at the store and then tells you which coupon to use to get the item very cheap or free). It seems like there are a ton of websites that do this; these are the ones I use:

Moneysavingmom.com - this is a good site for signing up for samples and other freebies (last week, I posted about two items I got free because of coupons I signed up for online - this is how). Also features weekly breakdowns of the best deals at many stores - I usually look at the ones for Wal-mart and CVS. (Used to look at Target, but sadly, I don't get to go there weekly anymore.) Click on store deals at the top of the site to see the list of all stores covered, and then to view the deals for that store. She also has features/articles about other money-related topics, like freezer cooking or becoming debt free.

Hip2Save.com - also a great site for signing up for samples and other freebies - she usually posts them faster than moneysavingmom. Also has the store deal breakdowns - click on stores at the top.

I use google reader to keep track of the blogs I read, and both of these are in my feed. I try to check them a couple of times a day, because freebie and sample deals run out quick! Obviously, companies have limited supplies of things they will give out for free, and lots of people want them.

Since we moved here, I've also wanted to look for deals at Ingles, the best local grocery store. For deal match-ups there, since it's a regional chain not featured on those sites, I started using southernsavers.com . I don't read this one regularly, I just check it when I need to get the deal match-ups for Ingles.

This takes some time, but it's free and, for me, it's fun.