Unlocking Benefits Leads to Significant Savings

There seem to be an endless number of offers from every corner of the economic universe designed to help me save money. The only caveat – I need to sign myself up for yet one more thing. One more credit card, add $11 more to my cart to get that $7 shipping for free, subscribe and save. The offers are endless, and in some cases, probably a great deal. However, one of the very first things we did when entering Project Money was to organize our finances, which involved dropping subscriptions, getting rid of credit cards, and reducing online spending. As such, these offers are more bothersome than beneficial.

I have long been dismissive of offers from businesses I use and treat their emails and mailings as spam and junk mail, but as it turns out, there are some valuable offers hiding in shopper rewards programs and valued customer coupons. When we first started looking at where our money was going every month, we noticed the number one cost was food. In the first month of reevaluating our finances, we had nearly $2,500 spent on groceries, eating out and coffee. One of the tools we used to correct that was to pick one grocery store and use their online shopping feature. We were able to see what we were going to spend and adjust it if need be before we got to the check out.

The amount of time I have spent on the Pick ‘n Save app and website has taught me how to use coupons (I had $70 in savings last week) and we have saved even more by using the fuel points program. In September, we spent just a little over $1,000 on groceries and that earned us $1 off per gallon of gas so that saved another $20. This month, those savings will be even greater. I started using the Kroger Pay app which increases the fuel points by 50% and earns cash back on each trip which can be applied to future grocery purchases.

Searching for savings has yielded results on our internet bill, cell phone bill through workplace and first responder/healthcare discounts, cash incentives from our health insurance, safe driving with our auto insurance and changing or eliminating subscription services has saved us $175 a month. Those savings are completely free to us and they also happen to be almost as much as the monthly payment on one of our vehicles, which has allowed us to pay it down much faster than we had planned on.

I have been showing the kids all these tricks, especially the app-based ones, because I wish I had been given the tools to be a careful shopper when I was young. With any luck, they will be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that are so easy to fall into.