Buy necessities at a discount- not a referral link

[BikeFanatic]

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if we could start a thread where people can  place their found ( non referral) links to discounts for everyday stuff we need. There is a wealth of knowledge here in the MMM forum about how to hack everything for a discount and I was hopping there could be one spot to check everyday so we can pool our hard work and knowledge, for each others benefits.
I say no referral links however because then the thread becomes self serving and people will post just so They can benefit only themselves , as oppose to everyone.
 
For example today I was Emailed a Scoola.com coupon code of 50% off plus free shipping - Scoola is used clothing online. Some are new with tags, and proceeds  benefits schools. With 50 % off you can get a few items, plus they always offer me credits after I buy. They have a lot of nice women's clothing  I noticed,  esp under the the banana republic tab, and then tons of kids, and a few guy stuff. After my order they sent me a referral code that you can send to your friends and  you will get 20 R$ credit if they buy. Then you could send it to your spouse or spam the universe but I was hoping we could start a thread without that.

Here is the code for 50% off and free shipping

SPRINGBRK

And just to get things rolling I will add a few of my found gems, Giftcargrannie - a search engine for gift cards, I don't buy unless it is a big discount like 15-25% off. Some sites will email you and extra 5% off once you buy once. I use it for necessities only  or big purchases. AT the top you can sort by best deal, than on the side by type. This is a search engine  and you then go to the retailers site. I used to buy giftcards on EBAY but auctions run up the price so high. Giftcard Grannie  hack helps me reach the minimum spending on my credit card hacking, and I only spend on cards I can use like walgreens,  Petco,  Lowes and at  15-25% off. I have had great luck with them and the amounts are accurate and the cards do work. However you should test them within 90 days to take advantage of the 90-120 day guarantee for the various card vendors.

Any one else care to share specific opportunities,  or general strategies for already frugal people to save extra money?

[EnjoyIt]

I tend to get my gift cards mostly from raise.com

I then go to rebate portals and make my purchases through there.

Just last week I bought 2 months of dog food from pets mart. 22% gift card plus topcashback.com portal cash back of 8%. That is 30% off.

Did the same thing with lowes when I needed a new grill.

[Vanguards and Lentils]

I have been using raise as well. I like it compared to other gift card marketplaces because you can set alerts by discount percentage - I can get an email sent to me when there is a McDonald's gift card at 25% off face value, for example. I don't like that there seems to be fraud going on at raise. After 8 gift cards purchased YTD, I have had 2 of them mysteriously have their balance become $0. It wastes my time to have to call and get a refund. I haven't had this issue with discounted gift cards sold on amazon or ebay, so I will probably only buy gift cards from there going forward.

Also, thinking about discounts in terms of percentages, rather than dollar amounts, causes people to act irrationally sometimes. In total, I've "saved" about $80 from this year's discounted gift card purchases, and while that's certainly better than nothing, many other changes are higher impact. E.g., eating out less, switching cell phone providers, etc.

[GreenSheep]

Before I buy anything online, I check retailmenot.com for coupon codes. I've saved a decent amount of money over the past couple of years!

[a-scho]

I have been using raise as well. I like it compared to other gift card marketplaces because you can set alerts by discount percentage - I can get an email sent to me when there is a McDonald's gift card at 25% off face value, for example. I don't like that there seems to be fraud going on at raise. After 8 gift cards purchased YTD, I have had 2 of them mysteriously have their balance become $0. It wastes my time to have to call and get a refund. I haven't had this issue with discounted gift cards sold on amazon or ebay, so I will probably only buy gift cards from there going forward.

Also, thinking about discounts in terms of percentages, rather than dollar amounts, causes people to act irrationally sometimes. In total, I've "saved" about $80 from this year's discounted gift card purchases, and while that's certainly better than nothing, many other changes are higher impact. E.g., eating out less, switching cell phone providers, etc.

I've bought many cards from Raise and have had an issue with a couple of them. I make sure I only buy cards that I will use completely within three months, so if fraud happens, it falls within their 100 day guarantee and I'll be refunded.

[johnny847]

I like gift card wiki a lot better than gift card granny for comparing discounted gift cards. It's a much cleaner website. I often buy discounted gift cards from cardpool and ABC gift cards.

There's a new app for this called GiftMe. The way it works is different - they only have electronic gift cards that are delivered instantly. This way you can buy them right in the check out line at a store. You tell it how much you're spending and it will search for a combination of gift cards that add up to close to but not over what you're spending. This way you never have to keep track of any gift cards either! It's a great app.

I use cash back monitor to compare shopping portals. I've had good experiences with splender, topcashback, active junky, shopathome, and Mr rebates.

I use the cartwheel app at Target to get extra discounts on some stuff (it's basically like coupons). But you can use it without planning ahead for it - it has a Barcode scanner so you can see if there are offers for anything you were planning on buying. I often scan stuff before I head to the checkout line to make sure I haven't missed any discounts.