الأحد، 30 سبتمبر 2018
31 of the Absolute Best Freebies We’ve Ever Found Online
Always take the bite-sized morsel of bourbon chicken. Always. Every single time. You don’t even have to be hungry. Right?
The point is, we all love free stuff. But not all free stuff is worth loving.
We’re always finding freebies — from email newsletter perks to free stuff on your birthday — but we decided it was time to round up the best of the best.
After extensive research, our crack staff of freebie-ologists have put together this sweet list of quality freebies for you. Only the finest freebies are allowed in this list. From coffee to coconut oil to diapers, here’s the ultimate list of our favorite free stuff online.
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1. Free Ice Cream
We’ll never, ever pass up an opportunity for free ice cream. If we ever do, you should go ahead and start making our funeral arrangements. This is free ice cream we’re talking about!
When you download the Slab Happy Rewards app from Marble Slab Creamery, you’ll get free ice cream just for signing up. After that, you’ll earn points for each dollar you spend, and you can cash them in for $5 off future purchases.
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2. Free Price-Drop Monitoring (and Refunds!)
It turns out deleting your emails could be costing you money. Intrigued?
One of our secret weapons is called Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It's free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.
Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Paribus will help you get compensated.
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3. Free Credit Score
No, really. Hear us out.
If you’ve ever tried to get your credit score, you know most services make you sign up for a trial or charge you an outrageous amount of money. But it’s your credit score! Where do they get the nerve?
Credit Sesame will give it to you for free. And it takes about 90 seconds.
You’ll also see a credit report card, so you can check for errors. Finding and correcting just one could give your credit score a significant boost!
How do you know if your credit score is where it should be? Compare it to others' in your situation!
Status Money is an app that allows you to anonymously compare your financial situation with your peers without asking those awkward, prying questions. Tap into this database and you’ll be able to compare your income, debt, interest rates, credit score, spending… you name it.
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4. Free Godiva Chocolate
Free Godiva chocolate — what could be better?
We’re pretty sure free Godiva chocolate is handed out every day in heaven. Probably those chocolate salted-caramel truffles.
Even better: This offer isn’t a one-time deal. Once you sign up, you get free chocolate every month at participating locations, plus birthday chocolate!
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5. Free Scratch-off Tickets
There’s something so satisfying about those gas station scratch-off tickets — scritch scritch scritch scritch — but it’s better to avoid them because, well, that’s not Penny Hoarding.
Instead, try scratching free tickets through an app called Lucktastic. Every day, it releases a new assortment of digital scratch-off tickets. Lucktastic says instant wins range from $1 to $10,000. You can also earn tokens, enter contests and play games.
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6. Free $10
We all shop online to save time and save money.
Go through Swagbucks next time you shop online, and you’ll save even more on purchases at some of your favorite sites like Amazon, Target, and Old Navy. Plus, you’ll get a $10 bonus with your first purchase of $25 or more at a participating website.
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7. Free $10 for Sharing Your Receipts
We know it sounds strange, but Ibotta will pay you cash for taking pictures of your grocery store receipts.
Here’s how it works:
Before heading to the store, search for items on your shopping list within the Ibotta app. When you get home, snap a photo of your receipt and scan the items’ barcodes.
Bam. Cash back.
Ibotta is free to download. Plus, you’ll get a $10 sign-up bonus after uploading your first receipt.
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8. Free $5 Worth of Stocks
If you’re like most of us and wish your money would just take care of itself, consider starting an investment account through Acorns.
You can start small and stack up change over time with its “round-up” feature. That means if you spend $10.23 at the grocery store, 77 cents gets dropped into your Acorns account.
Then, the app does the whole investing thing for you — and you’ll get a $5 bonus when you sign up.
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9. Free Baby Diapers
Is your family growing? Create a Target baby registry to get over $100 in free baby stuff!
Even better, when your due date is eight weeks away, you’ll get a 15% discount on any items remaining on your registry.
One of the highest-rated diaper-loyalty programs is Huggies Rewards. When you buy Huggies diapers or wipes, pull up the app on your phone and snap a photo of your receipt. Get points that you can redeem for diapers, toys, gift cards and more — starting with 500 points just for signing up!
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10. Free Financial Assistant
Not everyone can afford pricy help managing our finances. Instead, we call in the bots. Here are two of our favorite free helpers:
Download TrueBill, an app that’ll negotiate your bills, cancel unwanted subscriptions and refund your bank fees. On average, Truebill customers get $12 in credits off their cable bills each month.
Trim is an all-in-one money-saving tool that lives in your computer or smartphone. When you sign up with your email or Facebook account, you’ll gain access to a number of powerful features, including its debt payoff calculator. Once you land on a monthly payment you can handle, mark your debt-free date on your calendar and plan to celebrate!
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11. Free Coffee
Want to try a bag of some of the best coffee in the country — completely free?
You can get a 2-ounce trial of Blue Bottle’s famous beans for nothing at all.
It’s part of their monthly subscription service, so you’ll need to enter your credit card info, but you’ll get an email before Blue Bottle charges you and sends you more coffee. Just cancel your subscription if you don’t want to keep getting coffee.
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12. Free $36 in Amazon Gift Cards
Yeah, that’s not a typo. If you’re a regular Amazon shopper, you can earn money each month by contributing to research to help companies understand what people are buying online.
Download and connect Shoptracker to your Amazon account. The company will instantly send you a free $3 Visa e-gift card, plus another $3 for every month you submit your info to the app. Use it for a year to earn $36!
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13. Free Baby Gifts
Expecting? Join Enfamil Family Beginnings to get up to $400 in free gifts and a chance to win a $25,000 scholarship for your baby*. Your gifts will include things like coupons for baby necessities, free samples of Enfamil formula and other goodies.
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14. Free (or Discounted) Prescriptions
Are you running to the pharmacy every month or so to refill prescriptions? We found a new service that could simplify your life — and save you a little money.
Phil is a prescription refill service that delivers your prescription right to your door. It talks to your insurance company to handle payment issues and renew refills so you don’t have to.
Plus, as a new customer, you’ll get up to $30 off your first prescription.
Phil partners with local pharmacies to have your prescriptions delivered. You’ll keep your insurance and the same copay you’re paying now. Partner pharmacies pay to use the company’s software, so there are no extra fees for you.
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15. Free Baby Shoes
Is there anything cuter than baby shoes?
That’s a firm no.
Little Wanderers, an independent retailer, stocks some adorable footgear — and you can snag a pair for free by using our code PENNY1.
Choose from some fringe boots or a pair of high-top sneaks. There are even some miniature snow boots with fur. So cute!
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16. Free Branding Checklist
If you’re ready to get a freelance or small business off the ground, branding and consulting company Braid wants to help.
Sign up for its email list to get a free copy of its branding checklist to help position yourself as a creative expert.
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17. Free “Support the Troops” Sticker
Show your support for the U.S. military with this free “Support the Troops” sticker from “Military Times.” You can choose from a sticker or four window clings.
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18. Free Onesies
With Custom Snappies, you can create your own design for a onesie that will express as much fun and attitude as your little one does. Get two free Custom Snappies with the promo code PENNY1 at checkout. You’ll just pay shipping and handling.
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19. Free Pancakes
Who doesn’t like pancakes? IHOP has pancakes. If you join the chain’s e-club, called Pancake Revolution, you get a free stack of Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity Pancakes. You get the same thing on your birthday, and on each anniversary of signing up.
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20. Free Kind Granola Bar
This is #kindawesome.
This free Kind granola bar isn’t necessarily a freebie for you, but a gift you give to someone else for being kind. Get it? You’re doing something kind for someone who did something kind — paying it forward without paying a thing.
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21. Free Pizza
You can get a free personal one-topping pizza on your next visit when you sign up for Chuck E. Cheese’s More Cheese Rewards program.
In addition to free pizza, you’ll get a $10 reward for every three visits when you spend over $20 and unspecified treats on your birthday and half-birthday.
Everyone forgets the half-birthday.
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22. Free Shampoo
If you sign up for Pantene’s email list, the company will mail you free samples of shampoo and other products.
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23. Free Beauty Consultation
Try out a free beauty consultation at Aveda, which advertises “free services for hair, skin & spirit.”
This will likely be a 15-minute facial, or makeup or hair session at your local Aveda, where you can get a stylist’s opinion on which products are best for you.
If you buy something there, ask for some free, trial-sized samples as a bonus.
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24. Free Dog and Cat Food
No longer content with only feeding humans, Rachael Ray is venturing into dog and cat food these days. Her “Nutrish” brand is gourmet, natural, nutritious pet chow.
You can request a sample of her dog or cat food here.
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25. Free Baby Leggings
Head over to BabyLeggings.com and throw a pair in your cart. At checkout, just use the code “PENNY1,” and you’ll only have to pay for shipping.
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26. Free Roast Beef Sandwich
Hungry? Arby’s has an email list. If you sign up for it, you’ll get a free Roast Beef Classic with the purchase of a drink. (Arby’s will also send you coupons.)
This is one of the only offers on this list that requires you to buy something to get something else for free. But hey, you’re going to need something to wash down your free roast beef sandwich.
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27. Free Samples
Like to try new things?
Sign up to be a “Pincher” with PINCHme, and you’ll get a free box of samples of your choosing every week. In exchange, you’ll share your opinions about the new products you try.
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28. Free Dunkin
Do you run on Dunkin?
Join the DD Perks program to get a free beverage when you sign up and on your birthday. Plus, you’ll earn points for every purchase and get a free beverage for every 200 points.
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29. Free Access to National Parks
Every year, the National Park Service offers free days when all national parks, monuments and historical sites offer free admission.
In 2018, for example, the free days were scheduled for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the first day of National Park Week, National Public Lands Day, and Veterans Day.
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30. Free Baby Diapers and Wipes Bundle
All babies do is sleep, eat and… yeah.
If you’re a parent, you could definitely use some free diapers from The Honest Company. The company will send you a free trial box of diapers and wipes as part of its subscription program.
You’ll just pay $5.95 for shipping, and you can unsubscribe before your first shipment if you don’t want to continue to get the bundle every month.
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31. Sephora Beauty Products
Oooh, Sephora.
Become a “Beauty Insider,” and you’ll have your choice of a free beauty kit from Fresh or Marc Jacobs on your birthday.
* Enfamil fine print:
NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Open to legal U.S. residents 18 and older. Void where prohibited. Promotion ends on August 31, 2018. Odds of winning depend on the total number of eligible entries received. For full Official Rules click here. Sponsor: Mead Johnson & Co., LLC, 2400 West Lloyd Expressway, Evansville, IN 47721.
We received compensation from the maker of Enfamil in consideration of this post.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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How Informational Interviews Can Help You Find (And Land) Your Dream Job
Have you ever wanted to change careers? If you’re like 75% of 30-somethings out there, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” And that’s okay. The average worker has 10 to 15 job changes throughout their career. Career changes can be out of necessity, i.e., you were laid off or hit a glass ceiling. Sometimes they […]
The post How Informational Interviews Can Help You Find (And Land) Your Dream Job appeared first on The Work at Home Woman.
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Don’t Get Blindsided by These Retirement Risks
Retirement planning doesn’t let you just run out the clock; any number of threats can turn a winning plan into a loss.
Unforeseen circumstances are the downfall of any great retirement plan, and they don’t all have to be tragedies. Unexpected deaths can wreak havoc on retirement and estate planning, but so can an unexpectedly long life. Meanwhile, a changing economic climate leaves retirement funds vulnerable to an increased cost of living. So how do you combat these changes?
We talked to Thomas Walsh, a certified financial planner with Palisades Hudson Financial Group in Atlanta, who brought four key retirement threats to our attention. He also laid out strategies for dealing with all four while not deviating too significantly from a retirement plan.
1. Premature death of a spouse
It isn’t something that most people want to think about, but premature death doesn’t only affect estate planning, inheritance, and succession planning (if you own a business), but financial planning in general. Funeral costs and outstanding debt need to be dealt with, but the loss of a partner’s Social Security checks or private pension can make that a lot more difficult. “Many people don’t consider this,” Walsh says.
Solution: Changing the plan, with the help of life insurance
The Social Security Administration provides online tools to assess how your benefits may change due to the death of a spouse. Survivor benefits help, but only if you’re age 60 or older or caring for children under age 16. Meanwhile, you may actually have to give back some of the deceased’s benefits.
If there’s still other income (like a salary or a pension) that can’t be replaced, you may have to do some math and determine just how much you’ll need to cover the shortfall. “Life insurance can be used to make up for the loss of a spouse’s pension income,” Walsh says, but no one plan works for everyone. For younger couples, Walsh recommends inexpensive term life insurance. For people past 65, however, cash-value policies such as whole life end up being more affordable over the long term.
Just make sure you’re communicating the whole way through. If one of you is more financially savvy than the other, that person is going to want to make sure their spouse is taken care of. Provide routine updates and maintain a list of all checking, savings, investments, and credit cards, as well as an estimate of each account balance, Walsh says.
If you pay bills online, keep a list or file with the logins and passwords for each account to avoid late payment penalties and missed payments. Keep a file for your important documents like insurance policies, wills, and powers-of-attorney. Make sure your spouse knows your financial adviser, tax preparer, attorney, and insurance agent. Unfortunately, they’ll be some of the first people your spouse has to contact after you die, so it will be helpful if you’ve already made the introduction, Walsh says.
2. Health care costs
Just about every retirement survey conducted by financial firms finds that people underestimate what they’ll need to save for health care and don’t seem to realize how much health care costs are going to rise. Medicare plans, including Medigap and Medicare Advantage, don’t cover most long-term care, dentistry, vision care, hearing aids, eyeglasses, or private nursing. Prescription drug coverage also has a caveat for the most expensive drugs, which means you could pay up to $5,000 annually. Meanwhile, medical cost inflation regularly outpaces standard inflation.
“If you face a major medical issue or need long-term care, you may have to spend your savings at a much faster pace than you expected,” Walsh says. “I’ve seen many clients unintentionally low-ball their estimated medical costs in retirement because they’re in perfect health at age 55. But health can change quickly, especially in old age.”
Solution: A health savings account or other tax-advantaged account
The biggest upside to a health savings account (HSA) isn’t simply saving for future medical expenses: It’s the combination of the immediate tax deduction for your contributions and future income tax exemption on withdrawals for qualified medical expenses.
However, to qualify for an HSA, you must have a high-deductible health plan, and you can’t be on Medicare. The minimum annual deductible is $1,300 for self-coverage and $2,600 for family coverage.
While employers typically offer an HSA as part of a health care package, any qualifying individual can open an HSA with banks and insurers that offer them. If you don’t qualify, retirement plans like IRAs, Roth IRAs and 401(k)s basically perform the same function. To keep up with health care costs, though, Walsh suggests keeping a diverse portfolio with at least a portion in further diversified stocks.
3. Inflation
Inflation has averaged roughly 4 percent a year over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (though it’s held under 3 percent so far this century). Using the longer-term model, $1 today would buy only 46 cents worth of goods in 20 years.
Solution: A diversified investment portfolio
Walsh suggests a mix of stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). How much you’ll invest in each varies by your risk tolerance.
Also, resist the temptation to abandon stocks completely during retirement. “Being too conservative with your investments during retirement is a mistake,” Walsh says. “If you have all of your savings in low-yielding investments like bonds or CDs, it will be difficult to keep up with inflation.”
Stocks will offer the best long-term returns but are more volatile year to year. You can manage that risk by putting together a mix of U.S. large-capitalization, U.S. small-cap, international, natural resources, and real estate investments. By building your portfolio with mutual funds and ETFs, you tamp down on risk by owning thousands of individual securities across multiple asset classes.
4: Outliving your savings
Your chances of living longer increase as you age. For example, according to the Internal Revenue Service’s life expectancy tables, a 30-year-old is expected to live to age 83. Yet, if you’re 65 years old today, you can expect to live until age 86.
Solution: Periodic planning
Take stock of your health and investments, but also take a glimpse at those IRS tables every so often. They won’t gauge exactly how long you’ll live, but they’ll give you some idea of what to expect and how to plan. As Walsh says, the effectiveness of your retirement plan is only as good as the assumptions going into it. If you underestimate how long you’ll live, you’ll end up shortchanging yourself.
“Hopefully, you’ll live happily to a very old age. Give yourself some cushion and save and invest with that in mind,” Walsh says.
More by Jason Notte:
- What You Don’t Know About Insurance Is Costing You
- When Whole Life Insurance Doesn’t Last Your Whole Life
- To Catch a Scammer: Here’s How Credit Hackers Try to Steal Your Money and Identity
The post Don’t Get Blindsided by These Retirement Risks appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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السبت، 29 سبتمبر 2018
Books with Impact: Triggers
The “Books with Impact” series takes a deeper look at specific books that have had a profound impact on my financial, professional, and personal growth by extracting specific points of advice from those books and looking at how I’ve applied them in my life with successful results. The previous entry in this series covered Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
I first read Triggers about two years ago… and it was one of those experiences where I could tell that the book was meaningful, but it simply wasn’t the right moment in my life for the book to click with me. I did my usual routine with nonfiction books, which is that I highlighted it like crazy as I was reading it, let it sit for a few weeks, and then went back through the highlights, writing down the ones that were still jumping out at me, and writing down my own reflections on those thoughts, too. Then, for whatever reason, I put those notes and thoughts aside and didn’t think about them any more.
Then, several months ago, one of my favorite podcasts released an episode where they discussed the book in detail. After listening to that discussion, I went back and looked through my notes on it, and something clicked this time. I reread the book and, after my second time through it, something clicked, and it nudged me to put the principles into practice on something of a trial basis.
It’s been a pretty stunning success, and I’ve moved on to trying to use them on a much broader basis in my life. I can feel the impact of this book constantly in my life right now, and I wanted to share it with you.
Triggers is fairly well summarized by its subtitle: Creating Behavior That Lasts – Becoming the Person You Want to Be. The core idea of the book is that virtually everything we do is made up of a sequence of behaviors that are triggered by our internal and external environment. Something inside us or outside us triggers a thought or a behavior, we execute that behavior, and then the cycle loops.
The problem is that we’ve built a life out of a complex set of triggers and behaviors and changing them is incredibly difficult. It’s a mix of changing the actual triggers in our environment – adding new ones, reducing or eliminating old ones – as well as changing the behavior we have in response to those triggers.
Goldsmith’s basic model is this: an event of some kind (the trigger) happens, we have a cascade of thoughts (often mostly subconscious, but some conscious), and this often results in us taking some kind of action (or non-action) in response.
A concrete example is probably a good idea here.
Let’s say I’m driving along in my car and I drive by one of my favorite independent bookstores in the world – Plot Twist Bookstore in Ankeny, Iowa. (Please, if you live in central Iowa and like books, stop in there if you get a chance.) The triggering event, for me, is getting close to that store – I notice the sign, or I simply realize by other environmental triggers that I’m close to the store.
Inside of me, a series of thoughts occur, most of them subconscious. I’m deliberating whether or not I should stop at Plot Twist and check out their selections, which comes with a real risk of buying a book or two, or drive on by and get to my destination. Being in that location is the trigger, my conscious and subconscious mind percolate with thoughts, and out comes a decision – I decide to stop in for a few minutes and see what’s on the shelf.
Another example: let’s say I’m walking through the kitchen, headed for the bathroom on the south end of the kitchen, when I walk by the fridge. That trigger causes a subconscious thought process, one that I am barely even aware of – am I hungry? is there something yummy in there? – and I take action on it by raiding the fridge or by continuing onward to the bathroom.
The core of his argument is that, if we want to change the actions we take in order to elicit better behavior, we need to find effective ways of either changing elements of our environment – which we have limited control over – or, more importantly, altering that cascade of thoughts in response to a trigger.
It makes sense. A lot of triggers in the environment are things that we can’t really change – sure, we can change a few things, but not everything. I can’t move the location of Plot Twist Bookstore (though I can, on occasion, drive a route to my destination that doesn’t take me anywhere near Plot Twist). I can’t really move the location of the fridge (I can use another bathroom, but… really? I’m not going to do that.) Goldsmith is fine with using some environmental changes to nudge things in a better direction, but the focus of the book is on that cascade of thoughts – the ones that take us from “trigger” to “action.”
Goldsmith spends perhaps the first half of the book setting up these concepts, as well as discussing the inherent difficulty of adult behavioral change.
The real problem is that we usually don’t recognize the vast, vast majority of the triggers in our environment and how we react to them. Instead, we walk through life being constantly nudged by triggers in our environment that nudge our behavior. (This is why advertisement and marketing is so effective – it’s all about nudges and altering that subconscious thought in response to a trigger just a little bit, just enough to get some more people to make a purchase.) We operate through inertia most of the time, almost on autopilot, bouncing from trigger->subconscious thoughts->behavioral response over and over again almost without recognizing it at all.
The revelatory point in this entire book boils down to one simple thing: the only way we change those subconscious thoughts and behaviors is through a truly effective feedback loop on our behavior. We need to be giving ourselves constant feedback on how well we’re doing with the changes we want to make in our lives.
Goldsmith offers an incredibly effective way of developing this kind of feedback loop for ourselves that hinges on a few key principles, two of which I really need to highlight here.
First of all, you should be judging your effort, not the results or the specific steps you took. Not every day is made the same – there are simply some days where you can’t make it to the gym because of other responsibilities. The question is how much effort you put into physical fitness that day, not whether you did some specific thing or achieved some specific result.
Second, this process tends to work best with an accountability partner of some kind who’s on board with helping you. That’s because it is easy for us to lie to ourselves, but much harder to lie to an accountability partner. I have a friend with whom I’ve been doing this practice for a while, and I’ve also been sharing the resulting data with a small group of close friends on a private website. Having others aware of what you’re doing adds the additional pressure of public humiliation to the equation.
Goldsmith calls this practice the “Daily Questions.”
Daily Questions
The daily questions are simply a series of questions intended to help you specifically evaluate the effort you’re putting into making a particular behavioral change happen in your life.
It starts with simply making a list of behaviors you want to change. This is different than a list of goals. For example, saying “I want to lose 20 pounds” isn’t a behavior you want to change. “I want to eat less food on impulse,” however, is a behavior you want to change, or “I want to eat smaller portions at meals” or “I want to eat a much higher proportion of vegetables” and so on. These behaviors certainly can overlap with goals, but the purpose here is to alter your behavior in such a way that the goal becomes a more or less inevitable outcome.
So, let’s say that the five behaviors we wanted to change are:
1. I want to eat mostly vegetables in my diet.
2. I want to improve my physical fitness.
3. I want to stop spending so much on coffee.
4. I want to read more.
5. I want to be a better listener for my close friends.
Goldsmith strongly recommends that being happier should be one of your behaviors that you want to change, simply because a happy mindset is one that makes all other change easier, that most people actually have a lot of things to be happy about in their lives even if they don’t think so, and that happiness is a conscious choice most of the time. So we’ll add that as a sixth one.
The idea of daily questions is that, as a daily practice, you ask yourself a simple question about how you did regarding that behavioral change today.
So, you might have these six questions at first glance:
1. Was I happy today?
2. Did I eat mostly vegetables today?
3. Did I improve my physical fitness today?
4. Did I control my spending on coffee today?
5. Did I read more today?
6. Was I a better listener for my close friends today?
Remember, however, a good daily question is focused on your personal effort to change this behavior, not on the yes/no completion of a specific step.
Goldsmith offers a brilliant formula for this: simply start each question with “Did I do my best today to…” So, your six questions might look like this:
1. Did I do my best to be happy today?
2. Did I do my best to eat mostly vegetables today?
3. Did I do my best to improve my physical fitness today?
4. Did I do my best to control my spending on coffee today?
5. Did I do my best to read more today?
6. Did I do my best to be a better listener for my close friends today?
Each evening, you simply go through each of those questions and answer them with a score on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how well you think you did on each one. Did you regularly try to be happy by thinking positive thoughts about situations and seeking out some things that made you joyful? You’d probably give yourself a pretty good score. On the other hand, if you downed a bunch of steak for dinner and left vegetables on your plate, your score for the “eating vegetables” question is probably pretty poor.
The nifty part about this is that it’s not about results, which can easily be affected by – and blamed on – the environment. Rather, it’s about your effort, which is strictly on you.
Think back to Goldsmith’s model for how we behave. We are triggered by things in our environment, go through a cascade of thoughts, and that results in behavior. The entire purpose of the “daily questions” is to nudge that cascade of thoughts, to focus solely on the first part of that equation that you control. It prevents you from simply blaming your environment for terrible behavior because, in the end, you chose that terrible behavior. Being at a steakhouse did not force you to eat a giant steak and no vegetables; rather, your own thought processes and choices did. If you had put effort into change there, you would have ordered a large salad and maybe a small steak instead, or ordered a meal, eaten the vegetables and just a bit of the steak and taken the rest with you, or simply asked your friends to eat at a different restaurant. That’s the “effort” – better thoughts you have and better actions you take as a result.
Giving a low number as a score for a particular question at the end of the day feels pretty awful, and that itself becomes a pretty strong motivator to do better, especially when you’re reporting that score to a friend.
How I Practice the Daily Questions
Surprisingly, Goldsmith really doesn’t offer a good methodology for actually doing these daily questions and making it into a daily practice. The one model he clearly gives in the book is simply having a friend ask you these questions each day, which doesn’t necessarily work for everyone’s life. He makes offhand mention of emailing his self-scores to people, but, again, he doesn’t quite put forward a model for doing it.
Over the last several months, I’ve worked out a system for doing this that has worked well for me, and I want to share it here.
First of all, I did a trial run of this in June with a few behaviors, then changed it up and decided to do this for 90 days with several behaviors in the third quarter (July through September). It helped a lot with the things I wanted to work on – some finance related, but many addressing other spheres of my life. For the next quarter (October through December), I’m going to do it again with a somewhat modified set of questions based on what I want to work on now.
So, here’s my system.
One of the first things I do each morning is to simply review the behaviors I’m working on. This is basically the “daily questions” written down as a series of statements.
Today, I will do my best to be happy.
Today, I will do my best to be humble.
Today, I will do my best to control my food intake.
Today, I will do my best to minimize my hobby spending.
Those are just four examples that I’m using for my upcoming quarter. I just get out of bed, read through those statements slowly as one of the first things I do for the day, and then start my day. Sometimes, I’ll look at those statements at other points during the day, just to make sure they’re “front of mind.”
At the end of the day, sometime in the hour or so before bedtime, I score myself on a series of questions that mirror those behavioral statements.
Did I do my best today to be happy?
Did I do my best today to be humble?
Did I do my best today to control my food intake?
Did I do my best today to minimize my hobby spending?
I do this in a spreadsheet that I can access from pretty much everywhere. I have a row for each question and a series of columns for each date where I can enter the scores.
For each question, I reflect on the day a bit and give myself a score based on my effort to do better, not necessarily the results. Some days, the environment around me gives me lots of easy reasons to be happy, and on some days, it does not. That means there are days when I feel pretty happy but didn’t put much effort into it, so I give it a mediocre score, while there are other days when I struggle but largely succeed at finding happiness, so I give it a pretty high score even if I didn’t seem quite as happy as I did on the easy day. The difference is effort – did I do my best to do this thing today?
This spreadsheet is shared with a couple of friends who are also sharing their sheets with me, so every day or two, I check their sheets and send them some positive thoughts or questions about their results. (You can share sheets really easy with Dropbox or Google Sheets.) They do the same for me. We have a strong understanding between us that the feedback we give here is never, ever intended to be hurtful, but only helpful, so if the question stings, that’s on us and not on the friend asking the question who is merely trying to help. I try to check their sheets every day if I can, and I make a strong effort to check if I miss a day.
Another key thing that I do is use this information as part of my weekly review. Each week, usually later on Sunday morning, I put aside an hour or so to review several things about the week gone by, use that information to assess how things are going, and think about what I want to do in the week ahead. My “trigger question” numbers for the last few weeks have become a significant part of that review. What do those numbers tell me? They usually make it clear what areas I’m doing well in in terms of my actual behavior and what areas I’m not doing well in, so that might inform things I specifically want to work on in the coming week.
What do the results look like, though?
As I mentioned, I did a trial run of this in June and then spent the last three months practicing this virtually every day. The big areas I wanted to work on were handling day-to-day stress better, improving my professional workflow, and generally feeling better about the state of my life, and the changes in each of those areas have been profound. The last quarter has been extremely trying in a number of ways, but through it I’ve managed to handle a ton of little stressors that have dropped on my plate while, at the same time, drastically improving my writing process and feeling better about things in general.
My focus in the questions I’m using for the rest of the year are around physical health, financial behavior, and building relationships, areas that I feel weaker in at the moment. I’m aiming to try to break out of an easy fitness routine, curb some of my worst spending habits (I’m looking at you, online spending), and work on some of my relationships while building some new ones.
Final Thoughts
For me, the core revelation of this book is that behavior changes only through continuous effort, and frequent assessment of one’s effort is the key to making that happen. Effort isn’t in what one achieves today, but in how hard one tries to achieve positive things in that area of behavior, and honestly evaluating that effort (and sharing the evaluation with friends, if possible) on a frequent basis is absolutely vital.
There are parts of this book that seem to drag on and on, particularly in the earlier sections. They’re focused solely on the underpinnings of all of this – why behavioral change is hard, the entire model of trigger -> cascading thoughts -> behavior, why the part that matters is the effort towards improved behavior, and so on. I first started writing this article as a chapter-by-chapter discussion, but I realized that writing about the early chapters alone would make for some dreadful reading. The thing is, those early chapters are foundational for the genuinely interesting and powerful stuff to come. He spends a lot of time on the “why,” setting things up, before describing the system, and although the “why” parts are pretty dry, they make for a pretty solid foundation.
I’ve been using this system for four months now and it’s really powerful. I feel like it’s been responsible for the most useful behavioral change in my adult life since my actual financial turnaround, and it’s a book well worth reading and putting into practice. I can’t really speak much more highly than that.
The post Books with Impact: Triggers appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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الجمعة، 28 سبتمبر 2018
3 Ways to Protect Yourself From Scammers in Hurricane Florence Aftermath
Officials are warning well-meaning citizens of scams targeting everyone from homeowners looking to rebuild to people wishing to donate toward the effort.
How to Avoid Hurricane Florence Scams
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offered a blog post this month that highlighted some nefarious practices that residents are at risk of encountering in the days — or even the weeks and months — after a storm or other natural disaster. Here’s how to protect yourself.
Protect Your Personal Information
Ask for identification before you share your Social Security or account numbers.
“Scammers sometimes pose as government officials and ask you for your financial information or money to apply for aid that you can request on your own for free,” wrote FTC consumer education specialist Colleen Tressler.
She emphasized that government officials will never ask for money in exchange for information.
Verify Your Contractor’s Credentials
The FTC also warned against debris removal and cleanup scams. Be skeptical of people who promise immediate cleanup or debris removal, and check licensing information before paying a contractor or signing a contract. As with any normal work you’d have done on your property, get a written estimate and signed contract.
Make Sure That Charity Checks Out
What about those wishing to lend a financial hand after a disaster like Hurricane Florence? The FTC says to research groups soliciting donations, and cross-check your research with a database that tracks charitable organizations. Don’t contribute by cash or gift card, but rather, use a check or credit card so your payment can be tracked.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s office told local news station ABC11 this week that it received several complaints about charity scams.
If you suspect a scammer is targeting you, report the incident to your state attorney general’s office or the FTC.
Lisa Rowan is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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New Data Shows That the Online Gig Economy is Much Smaller Than We Thought
Last year, roughly 990,000 people logged on to walk dogs with Rover, build IKEA furniture with TaskRabbit, drive for Lyft or Uber or do a number of odd — or not so odd — jobs through dozens of online employers. About 701,000 workers performed other online-based work-from-home jobs like graphic design, data entry or teaching English to Chinese students with sites like VIPKID.
If you look at both categories of work, they account for 1% of the total labor market. That’s peanuts when compared to some previous research.
Specifically, the BLS refers to this new data as electronically-mediated employment (sigh). Despite the bureaucratic jargon, it does dig deeper into what most folks consider the gig economy than a similar report the BLS released on contingent employment earlier this year.
And here’s another gig-economy myth these new numbers call into question: that these are just side hustles to make a little extra cash.
More than 1.1 million workers do this type of work full time. Only 26% of those who did electronically-mediated work did so as a second job or for some extra cash during the week.
The Penny Hoarder is currently analyzing the underlying survey data for an even deeper look at the gig economy, but there are some things we’ve already learned.
About half of those working electronically-mediated jobs have a bachelor’s degree or higher, which is nine percentage points greater than the economy as a whole.
And black workers accounted for 17% of the online gig economy, which is greater than their 12% of the overall labor market.
There are still questions about the gig economy’s slice of the U.S. labor market. And now that the government is finally tracking it, we might get those answers soon.
Alex Mahadevan is a data journalist at The Penny Hoarder.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Don’t Panic Yet if Your Public Student Loan Forgiveness Petition Was Denied
The program was established in 2007 to offer student loan relief to public servants; the first “class” of eligible borrowers was able to apply for forgiveness in October 2017. According to the report:
- The department received nearly 33,000 applications from over 28,000 borrowers as of June 30, 2018.
- Of those, more than 20,500 applications were denied because borrowers did not meet the program’s requirements.
- Another 8,100 applications were rejected because they were missing information.
Only 289 applications were approved for forgiveness by the end of June, according to the department’s data report and press release, “resulting in $5.52 million in processed discharges for 96 unique borrowers.”
Again, for the folks in the back: More than 28,000 people submitted applications to have their loans forgiven, but only 96 were successful.
Is the PSLF Program Doomed?
The Department of Education release explained that borrowers whose applications were denied for eligibility reasons have been contacted to see if they qualify for the “temporary expanded” public service loan forgiveness (TEPSLF) program, which may cover borrowers who followed a payment plan that didn’t qualify for standard PSLF.
TEPSLF was created in May 2018 as a second-chance pool for applicants who had direct loans and worked for qualifying employers but were on the wrong payment plan for part of the repayment period. Borrowers who made payments under a graduated repayment plan, extended repayment plan, consolidated standard repayment plan or consolidated graduated repayment plan may be able to qualify for TEPSLF. The $350 million fund is dispersed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Slate’s Jordan Weissmann struggled to get details from the Department of Education about why PSLF applications were denied.
But student loan attorney Adam Minsky wrote on his blog that it’s not time for borrowers to panic.
“So many people were not meeting all of the eligibility requirements back in 2007-2008, as the program was not well-publicized then and [income-based repayment] didn’t even exist,” Minsky wrote. “I would expect the approval rate to go up steadily during the next few years.”
He also noted that it’s possible the 28% of applications that were rejected for errors will be approved once they’re resubmitted.
“Borrowers presently on track for PSLF should continue to keep up with the annual requirements and maintain very good records of their payments and employment histories,” he advised.
Lisa Rowan is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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How to Communicate with Your Customers Effectively on All Your Distribution Channels
As a business owner, you need to communicate with many people on a daily basis.
You’re used to delegating tasks to your employees and dealing with merchants, accountants, lawyers, bankers, and everyone else who makes your operation possible.
Communication skills are also important in your personal life. You need to manage the relationships with your family and friends while running a company at the same time.
But how well are you communicating with your customers?
Effective customer communication is the backbone of your business. Your ability to communicate can make or break your marketing campaigns and determine whether you can optimize the customer experience.
You could have a great product, service, or promotion, but if you can’t communicate these things to your customers, your business could struggle.
The Internet has made it possible for brands and consumers to contact each other from virtually anywhere at any time. You need to recognize this reality and use it to your advantage.
With so many different distribution channels at your disposal, it’s imperative you apply your communication skills on all of these platforms.
I see this particular problem often when giving consultations to business owners. They know how to write a perfect email newsletter that converts, but their Facebook posts are awful. Or they have an awesome Instagram marketing strategy but struggle with blogging.
To be successful, you need to be able to communicate with your customers on all your distribution channels. I’ll explain what you need to do to make this happen.
Create an authentic voice
Your communication style and voice need to be consistent across every channel.
This helps create authenticity. The majority of consumers don’t think that brands are distributing authentic content.
Furthermore, 86% of consumers say authenticity is an important factor when determining whether they’ll support a brand.
What does this tell you?
Your customers want you to be authentic. Establishing an authentic voice will give you a huge advantage over your competitors.
All your content needs to sound as if it’s coming from the same person, even if it’s not.
For example, you might write your blogs, but someone from your staff may be in charge of email newsletters. A third person could be responsible for your social media content.
There is nothing wrong with delegating tasks this way, but it can create a discrepancy when it comes to being authentic.
The best way to overcome this hurdle is establish some ground rules. Create a writing guide that everyone who produces content can reference.
Here are some examples of things you could include in this guide:
- always spell out the word percent instead of using %
- write from the first-person perspective
- use the Oxford comma
You can even take this guide one step further. For example, you could say that every piece of content you produce, whether it’s a blog, email, or social media post, always needs to start with an inspirational quote.
If your writing is consistent, it creates authenticity.
That way when your customers engage with your brand on multiple channels, they’ll feel they’re listening to the same voice.
Monitor your comments sections
Part of having effective communication means being active on as many platforms as possible.
Your increased social media presence makes it easier for your customers to reach you. Don’t worry—this is a good thing.
But if you’re not constantly monitoring your comments, you’re failing your customers when it comes to communication.
Social media is one of the top channels for consumers to voice their complaints.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. You’ve got to understand their thought process and mindset.
They just experienced some sort of problem with your business. It could have been related to one of your products, services, or employees.
On top of the issue, they took time out of their busy day to let you know about it by commenting on one of your social media posts. Even though this comment might be negative, it’s still a good sign.
Why? You haven’t lost this customer yet.
Research shows that 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain. They just leave and don’t come back.
If one of your customers is complaining via social media, you still have a chance to keep their business as long as you respond in a timely fashion.
Studies show that 84% of consumers expect a business to respond to their social media comments within 24 hours of posting.
But this also depends on the platform. For instance, 72% of users on Twitter expect brands to respond within an hour.
I know what you’re thinking. How could you possibly keep track of all your social media comments each day while trying to run your company at the same time?
Those of you who don’t have a social media manager or the budget to hire one need to take advantage of my favorite time-saving social media marketing tools.
Certain tools can notify you whenever someone comments on one of your posts. You can get these notifications on one platform instead of having to monitor each social site individually.
Segment your email subscribers
For your email marketing campaigns to be successful, you need to make sure you’re delivering relevant content to your subscribers.
After all, your customers have different wants, needs, and preferences. It’s nearly impossible to create content that can appeal to all your customers.
That’s why segmenting your subscribers will improve your communication with everyone.
Here’s a staggering fact you need to take into consideration.
A person who works in an office gets on average 121 emails a day. Assuming they work five days per week, that translates to over 600 emails per week and more than 31,000 emails per year.
Now, let’s say you email your subscribers once a week, which is a reasonable assumption.
Your messages are just a fraction of a percent of the total number of emails your customers receive. If your content isn’t adding value to their lives, they won’t engage with it.
Surveys indicate that 73% of marketers say their top priority is to create more engaging content.
Segmenting your subscribers will make your communication with them more effective. Here’s why.
Let’s say you run an ecommerce clothing business. You ship products globally, but the majority of your customers are located in the United States.
Subscribers who are men living in Miami, Florida, shouldn’t be getting the same emails as women living in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Emailing a promotion for bathing suits and tank tops in December to all your customers is not an effective way to manage your communication. But if you segment your subscribers, it will help ensure your marketing emails are more relevant to each recipient.
Add live chat to your website
As a consumer, I love using live chat. It’s just so simple.
I don’t need to pick up the phone, wait on hold, and talk to someone. It also saves me a trip back to the store. Plus, I buy so many things online that it’s not even practical or realistic for me to visit businesses in-person after making a purchase.
Live chat makes things easier. As a consumer, I’m not alone in that preference.
In fact, 73% of consumers say live chat is their preferred method of customer service communication. This ranked as the top option.
Here’s a look at the reasons why people prefer live chat:
If live chat makes your customers’ lives easier and it’s their preferred method of communication, why aren’t you using it?
Some of you may just not know where to start. I get it. New technology can be intimidating.
But you need to be able to adapt and make changes if you want to survive.
Your live chat feature should be easily accessible on your website. Make sure you respond quickly to these messages. Your staff need to be knowledgeable and properly trained for this communication method to be effective.
If you need help setting this up, refer to my guide on how to provide better customer service by implementing live chat.
Use language your audience can understand
This relates to the concept of authenticity.
Your customers want to communicate with a person. It shouldn’t feel as if they’re dealing with a robot or some nameless and faceless brand.
Use language your audience can relate to.
Your content shouldn’t sound like it’s coming from a doctor or a lawyer, even if it is. Speak in terms your customers use every day.
Just make sure you keep it professional. I normally wouldn’t recommend using slang, but there are times when it’s OK if that terminology fits with your overall brand image.
For example, a company that sells surfboards might use terms such as rad, stoked, or gnarly in its marketing emails. This would resonate with its target audience as opposed to a formal greeting, like Dear Sir or Madam.
As far as the exact language you’re using, that’s a judgment call on your part. But I recommend keeping communication casual and conversational.
Make sure your brand message is clear
Why are you in business?
Outside of the obvious financial reasons, you must have other motivation for operating. You need to be able to tell your customers why you exist and how you can make their lives better.
That can be conveyed in your brand message.
But if you fail to communicate your message or if it’s too ambiguous, you won’t have a positive impact on your customers.
Here is a great example of a brand message from TOMS shoes:
Buying products from this company means you’re helping people internationally.
TOMS helps provide those less fortunate with shoes, clean water, vision needs, and safe births. The company even supports a bullying prevention campaign.
The message is clear.
TOMS has a dedicated landing page explaining what they give, and the message is on other parts of its website as well.
You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or affiliated with certain charities to have a strong brand message.
For example, let’s say you have a meal delivery service.
Your brand message can convey something along the lines of helping busy professionals eat healthy.
Once you’re able to identify your brand message, make sure you can display it clearly on all your distribution channels.
Be consistent
Just like authenticity, consistency is also key when it comes to effective communication.
I mentioned earlier creating a guide to keep your writing style consistent on every channel. But you can take this one step further with all your promotions as well.
It all starts with your goal.
Before you run any type of marketing campaign, you need to clearly identify this goal. What do you want the result of this campaign to be?
It could be acquiring more website traffic, adding email subscribers, increasing your social media followers, or driving sales to your newest product.
Whatever your goal is, the easiest way to achieve it is by being consistent on all your channels.
If you run a promotion on Instagram, make sure your website shows the sale too. Otherwise, it can create confusion for your customers.
Take a look at this example from Jetblue:
The company posted this promotion on its Facebook page.
Its fall sale advertises flights starting at $49 one-way.
There are certain restrictions and conditions for the sale. Customers need to book their flights by a certain day and travel within a certain time frame as well. There are even a couple of blackout dates.
Either way, Jetblue clearly communicated this promotion in this Facebook post.
Now if customers navigate to its website, they’ll see the consistency:
As you can see from what I’ve highlighted, the same sale is being advertised.
All the terms and conditions are the same, and the ad uses the same phrase, “Get going, Pumpkin!”
Even though the style, placement, format, and images differ on each distribution channel, the message remains the same.
In addition to improving the way you communicate with your customers, being consistent will ultimately help you increase conversions.
Know which channels your customers prefer
You need to be able to communicate with your customers on all your distribution channels. This should go without saying.
However, it’s important for you to recognize which networks your customers are using.
Now you can prioritize this communication based on the platforms your customers prefer.
For example, let’s say you segment your target audience with generational marketing.
After doing this, you’ve discovered that the vast majority of your customers are Baby Boomers. Now you need to figure out how to reach them.
Based on this research, it wouldn’t make sense for you to focus on Instagram and Snapchat if you’re marketing to Baby Boomers.
This would obviously be much different if you were targeting Millennials or Generation X.
You should still have active profiles on as many platforms as possible, but you need to know which ones are reaching your customers.
Conclusion
Communication is an important aspect in both life and business.
As a marketer, you need to be able to effectively communicate with your customers on all your distribution channels.
Learn how to create an authentic voice.
Monitor your comments on social media and respond to those customers, especially if they’re voicing a complaint.
Segment your email subscribers to deliver the most relevant content to everyone.
Implement a live chat feature on your website.
Speak in terms your audience can understand. Make sure you clearly define and communicate your brand message across every channel.
Be consistent. Figure out which channels your customers use the most, and prioritize those means of communication.
If you follow the tips I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to improve your customer communication tactics across all your distribution channels.
How are you leveraging your distribution channels to effectively communicate with your customers?
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Our ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Coupon Strategy
My recent article on how to find and get the most value out of your local discount grocer led to a lot of great follow-up questions and comments from readers.
One reader, Laurie, wrote in:
What about coupons? I still clip coupons from the Sunday paper and use the Redplum and Target apps to nab coupons. What does your couponing strategy look like?
Sarah and I have tried a lot of couponing strategies over the years. We used to be very adamant about clipping coupons from the Sunday paper and even used a coupon binder for several years.
Over the years, though, I learned several things about couponing.
First, the more time you invest, the more the returns diminish. I view couponing as one of those things where you’re investing your personal time to get a financial return on that time. If you can find a $2 coupon and have it in hand for a minute’s effort, then it’s well worth it. On the other hand, if you’ve already clipped $25 worth of coupons and are spending a lot of time trying to eke out another dollar or two in savings, then it’s no longer worth it.
I have found, over and over again, that if I’m spending more than five or 10 minutes on grabbing coupons for my next shopping trip, I’m very quickly reaching the point where it’s not worth my additional time. Almost all of the value I find in coupons comes in the first few minutes of searching and clipping, so it’s a good idea to stop right then and there.
Second, name brand coupons rarely make an item as inexpensive as the store brand version. If a store brand item is $1.99 and the name brand is $2.49 and I can only find a $0.40-off coupon, then the store brand is still cheaper.
To put it simply, a name brand item has to have a pretty nice coupon for it to be a winner over a store brand item or a generic item. A $1 off coupon might look nice, but if the item is already $0.75 more expensive than the store brand, I’m really only saving a quarter.
Third, there typically aren’t coupons for a large portion of my grocery list. A lot of my grocery shopping is spent in the produce section or the dry good bins section. I do buy some items in the aisles, but a lot of it is household supplies and toiletries.
To tell the truth, most of our coupon use is actually for coupons for toiletries and household supplies, not food items. Most food items we purchase are simply not ones for which coupons are found regularly.
All of that being said, couponing does play a small role in our overall grocery shopping strategy. It’s just not the centerpiece, because the time and effort we would have to put into couponing to actually save a notable amount of money simply wouldn’t be worth it. Why? The other tactics we use save us a lot of money just by default, and the value provided by coupons is eaten up by those practices for the most part.
I refer to our couponing as “lowest hanging fruit” couponing, because we’re really only looking for the obvious wins at a quick glance, because the time invested beyond that never pays off. Here’s how we get to that point.
SnipSnap is an app I use on my phone that pops up coupons automatically upon entering a store. Often, it’ll find things like “30% off any item in this store” type coupons, which is just pure savings. This doesn’t typically happen at my usual grocery stores, but it does happen at a lot of specialty stores, like if I’m going to Jo-Ann Fabrics to pick up some yarn for my wife (who’s a prodigious crocheter) or if I’m going to PetSmart to find some pet food for one of my children’s pets (two of them have quirky diets).
SnipSnap checks my GPS location in the background and, if it sees that I’m close to or inside a store, it checks to see if there are any store-wide coupons available for that specific store and, if there is, it just fires off a popup alert for me. I tap on the alert and there’s the coupon. No effort at all – this is pure low hanging fruit.
Store brand coupons are actually a real thing at some stores, where the grocery flyer will actually have coupons for the store brand version of items. Since I already download the grocery flyer when making my meal plan and grocery list, snagging any coupons that I notice is a good choice.
One store that does this quite often is Target. I sometimes shop at Target for household items and the Target app, which I keep on my phone, typically includes several coupons for their various store brands (Up and Up, Archer Farms, and so on). I check the app as I’m strolling through the store looking for whatever household item I’m looking for, and if they have a coupon for a store brand staple that I know I’ll use, I’ll typically pick it up because a store brand with an additional coupon is usually well below the name brand version. I recently stocked up on dry pasta doing this very thing.
General coupon apps aren’t very useful for me, but I do look at them if I’m standing in the checkout aisle. What I’m looking for are coupons for any name brand items in my cart. I find that about 20% of the time, I find a coupon of some sort, which basically is as good as finding money on the ground in the checkout aisle. I generally use the SmartSource and Red Plum apps for this.
An example: I was recently at the store and needed sugar for a recipe and the C&H brand sugar was on sale, making it the least expensive five pound bag there (I think there’s a store brand that’s usually cheaper, but not that day). As I was standing in the checkout, I flipped through the Smart Source app and lo and behold there was a $1 off coupon for C&H sugar. That’s as good as finding a dollar bill, which is a lot better use of my time in the checkout than looking at the cover of gossip magazines or checking Facebook to see pictures of my neighbor’s cat.
The lazy Sunday coupon flyer is an occasional thing because we don’t subscribe to a print Sunday paper, but if I’m somewhere where there’s a Sunday paper sitting around and I’m just sitting there, I’ll glance through the coupons and grab any that seem like they might be something we’d use.
Something I’ve noticed with newspaper coupons is that, almost always, if you wait two or three weeks, the exact item that you have a coupon for goes on sale at the store before the coupon expires. While I have no evidence of this, I have a feeling that this is a common strategy for food retailers in order to bump sales numbers. They’ll run coupons one week, then work with stores to have items on sale a few weeks later. If you just hold onto the coupon, you can hit both. This often puts the value of the (usually) name brand item well below the store brand version.
I don’t usually have a whole lot of coupons when doing this. The ones I do have are in an envelope and I just check them when I’m making a grocery list, cross checking them with the grocery store flyer. Having a coupon for a name brand item alone is not enough to get me to add that to my grocery list because (a) the coupon alone usually doesn’t make the item much different in price than the normal store brand and (b) there’s probably a sale in that store coming up that I can stack the coupon on, making it actually worthwhile. If that doesn’t work out? I ditch the coupon when it expires – no big deal. This takes maybe thirty seconds when writing out my grocery list.
A final tip: Shop at discount grocers using a grocery list as a starting point. For me, that simple method alone is far better than an extensive couponing strategy. A good discount grocer has strong prices by default and they tend to be super competitive with their store brand prices, which means that name brand coupons really aren’t all that effective unless you’re stacking them on top of a sale already, as I noted above.
To put it simply, I got far better results simply switching to doing meal planning and making a grocery list and sticking to that list than I ever got from just going to the store with coupons and only a vague plan as to what to buy. Also, the cost benefit of switching to a discount grocer for most grocery shopping – in my case, switching from Hy Vee to Faraway – was worth more than coupons ever saved me, even with substantial time investment in the coupons. A third point – buying mostly store brands is a far better money saver than heavy couponing, too.
Not only that, these “low-hanging fruit” techniques give me most of the value I was getting from coupons anyway. Yes, I’m probably missing a handful of coupons that might save me a few dollars all told, but I would spend substantial time finding those coupons, and that’s just not worth it. An easy-to-find coupon that I stumble across in the checkout line that saves me $1 is great; investing an hour to find several $0.50 off coupons that barely add up to $5 in savings is not.
If you’re thinking about couponing, start with smarter grocery shopping strategies first. Make a meal plan. Make a grocery list. Shop at a discount grocer. Buy mostly store brands. Once you have that in place, coupons provide much less value anyway, so stick with the very easy wins.
Good luck!
More by Trent Hamm:
- How I Shop: Specific Tricks for Your Next Trip to the Grocery Store
- $1 Meal Tactics: Saving Big on Food, a Buck at a Time
- How to Identify (and Take Advantage of) ‘Loss Leaders’ in Grocery and Department Store Flyers
The post Our ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Coupon Strategy appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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