When trying to build our nursery a few months ago, I was constantly scanning Craigslist for items to put into the room.
I found a Dutallier Glider for $50 (these normally retail around $400 and can easily resale around $250).
A full pack n play system for $30.
1960s solid wood dresser for $30 (I stripped and refinished it for a total cost of around $100 for an awesome piece of furniture)
My wife also found a Saarinen tulip table and four chairs (which can retail in some stores for anywhere between $1000 and $3000) at a garage sale for $225. She bargained them down to $175.
I had them in my hands 18 hours ago. Was in the Goodwill Store in southern Denver. At the cash register were several wicker baskets oveflowing with readers. Had I been able to find my current strength? I’da been all over them. 1.99 a pair. I paid 14.99 in BJ’s last June for a 3-pack.
Love Goodwill stores. I’ve gotten almost all of my shirts, most of my pants and quite a few polartec fleece pull-overs. Average price of all? 4.99. Lots of shirts are 2.99, some pants are as high as $ 7.99. Yesterday I found two pair of dress pants and a great royal blue polartec fleece pull-over.
Just wanted to bump and say I got my Zennioptical glasses today and they’re great. I mean, they don’t look AWESOME but they look very good. And they fit and y’know, I can see out of them. And I don’t have a headache like I did with my old glasses. They came just as I got a (suspected, I’m seeing the doc tomorrow) corneal abrasion, so I have to wear 'em.
Thanks to Sattua and everyone else for the recommendations! In spirit of the thread, today I got a Nike Dri-fit shirt for $16.50 new with tags on Ebay; it retails for $30 and Zappos had it for $25.
Just back from buying the week’s groceries. Some of the notable bargains, using coupons and store loyalty card savings:
Eight boxes of GM cereals for a total of $6.70.
6-packs of 24-oz. Pepsi products: $1.90 each. (Normally, if purchased individually, these sodas would be about $1.50 per bottle, and hubby and I are practically addicted. I love my Diet Dr. Pepper, and he drinks a Diet Mt. Dew or two per night to stay awake on night shift.)
Buy 2 frozen pizzas (not my first choice, but the kids love 'em,), receive free box of TGIFridays appetizer, New York garlic bread, AND Otis Spunkmeyer frozen cookie dough. With coupons, bought 4 pizzas, 2 appetizers, 2 boxes bread, and 2 boxes cookies for a total of $16.86.
5 quarts of organic reduced sodium chicken stock for $.68 each.
Two packs disposable diapers for $3.99 each - the hypoallergenic cotton ones that don’t irritate baby’s skin, at that!
CVS Pharmacy has a program similar to Rite-Aid’s. Just yesterday I picked up an rx that normally costs me $30 (until I just lost my health insurance). Due to the savings program, I got my refill for free.
I had been eyeing some specialty fun fur fabric at the fabric store for months, but it was $25 a yard. Went in for some fleece, and decided to wander through the store, and here the fun fur was in the clearance rack! yay! I checked the end of the bolt. O_O $1.98 a yard! Yay! So I bought the rest of the bolt. Only amounted to about 2 yards, and I have no idea what I’m going to make, but it’s mine!
Bought two new iphones for $100, usual price = $100 each.
The basic service charge for one iphone = $100. 24% company discount + 75% family plan discount = $90/month for both phones, combined, or $45/month per phone, 55% discount.
Waited until bakery closed, got 12 doughnuts with 50% discount, bakery lady must have thought I was cute or something so she gave me an additional discount for 66% off.
10 32oz Powerade at 10/$8, or 40 cents per 32 oz bottle. Regular 32oz bottle is $1.75, for 77% discount.
I caught a cold, so I was going to buy Sudafed at $8 per 12 doses, or 67 cents per dose. Bought 20 doses of generic instead for $9, or 45 cents per dose, 33% discount.
In stores that have them (Kroger does, for instance), I love checking out the discount rack at the bakery! These are always fresh-baked-in-store products, at very deep discounts. At my local Kroger (well, it’s 25 miles away, but it’s as local as major grocery stores get around here. . .), everything on their discount bakery rack is 99C. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve found: a large box of M&M cookies, normally $4.89; a loaf of good Italian bread studded with big chunks of roasted garlic, normally $3.89, and a loaf of good French bread with Gruyere cheese baked in, normally $3.89. So, let’s see, all three things at normal price would have cost me over $12.00, and I paid a total of less than $3.00! Oh, and last time I was at Kroger, I was looking at fresh-cut flowers (love to keep 'em in the house!) and found roses on a ‘Manager’s Special’ (which means they were getting too old to charge full price for); a dozen roses, normally $12.99, $5.00! Score.
Our Kroger family store does this as well, the best deal is when it’s a bag of 12 assorted sandwich rolls for .99-1.49. They freeze great, you can use one at a time from the freezer which is fantastic for living alone or w/ a 2 person house.
I had tw coupons for 64 oz. bottles of juice for free and one for a free 32 oz. bottle of coffee creamer. When I got to the sotre, boxes of crispbread were $1.25 with your card, and they all had $1 off coupons on them
Years ago I was the music director for a community theatre. The orchestra manager went to retrieve the instrument parts that the group owned and found all of the woodwind parts missing. I think that that was 7 parts.
She estimated a full set of parts to be about $450 from the publisher, and under no circumstances would they sell just individual parts. Since we had almost no budget, we were in a real bind.
The OM came up with a stroke of genius. She asked a neighboring theatre group if we could borrow their parts. Yes they would, but they didn’t call it borrowing, they called it renting. $300. For the entire set. Oh well, we had to do it, even if it meant that half of the cast would do without costumes.
On a whim, I decided to call the publisher. We could buy the entire set for $150, or individual parts for $10 each. I decided to go with the individual parts.
So I saved the group $230 and we got to keep the parts.
We have a couple of textile warehouses here that are open to the public. One of them is huge and a dangerous adventure because the fabric bolts are everywhere. But you can score big time. Through judicious sale and coupon shopping there, I made a Renaissance costume for about $6.
I also managed to create curtains out of Oshkosh B’gosh bolt-end fabric from from another wholesale/remnant outlet.
