Cut Your Grocery Bill In Half! with Stephanie Nelson, The Coupon Mom

 

By  Nathanael Madden, guest blogger

As a couponing mom, there are lots of resources and tools for finding deals at the grocery store, and even sometimes other larger retail outlets. When it comes to travel sometimes it’s like being up a river without a paddle. Here are 10 vacation saving tricks for couponing moms. If you are going on vacation this will be practical and possibly save you enough to go on a second trip with the money saved!

1: TRAVEL SEARCH ENGINES

The commercials are deceiving. Hotel and airfare travel search engines like Kayak, Expedia, Hotwire, and Priceline have catchy commercials and jingles, but don’t always find the best deals. If you want to use one of these, Kayak tends to statistically find the best deals. For airfares the prices are almost identical to actual airline airfare prices, and sometimes much higher. Think about it. The travel search engines are paid by the hotel and airline each time you make a purchase. Anytime there is a middle man it’s always more expensive. Here are some tips:

1. Use Kayak, Expedia, Hotwire, and Priceline to search for the deals.
2. Once you find a deal, call the actual hotel, car rental location, or look up the airline.
3. Tell them the deal you found and see if they can beat it. 

EXAMPLE: Search engines make $10-$50 on your hotel stay.

They make anywhere from $50 on domestic flights to a couple $100 on international flights.

A hotel that shows $60 a night on a search engine might pay the search engine $20. If you call maybe they’ll give it to you for $50.

2: CRAIGSLIST DEALS

If you’re not using Craigslist when you travel you need to! Some of the best travel discounts are craigslist deals. Find discount tickets under the “For Sale – Tickets” section. Under the “Housing” section you can find incredibly cheap vacation rentals on the “Vacation Rentals” tab. Here are some tips:

• Look in your city as well as the destination city. I recently vacationed on a snowboarding tour in Colorado. Ski lift passes can range from $50 – $300 packages. We found all the ski lift tickets on the Denver Craigslist were only $20 off, but we were driving through Kansas City and the Kansas City Craigslist deals were $100 off.

Craigslist deals on vacation rentals are great! You can almost always negotiate. If one listing says, “No,” call the next listing. We got a $300 night stay at Arcadia Coves in the log cabin that Al Capone allegedly hid for $119 on Craigslist. 

3: DISCOUNT DAYS

Can’t find Craigslist deals? Call ahead and ask if they have military discounts, senior discounts, homeschool days, etc. If you’re flexible on your vacation timing you can get crazy deals! We landed $100 ski lift passes for $50 on veterans weekend at Keystone. In Branson, at Silver Dollar City amusement park, there is a discount day’s week called “Young Christians” week. A whole family can save a couple $100.

COMMON DISCOUNT DAYS GROUPS

Small Children’s Week

Veteran’s Week

Christian Week

Senior’s week

4: VACATION SEASON

The best vacation savings saying is, “Go when it’s slow!” Almost every tourist destination has 1 or 2 slow seasons. Find out ahead of time when slow season is. Here’s some tricks:

1. Call during slow vacation season and barter with hotels for a deal. Look up their competition and ask them to beat their competition’s price. Then call their competition and ask them to beat the new deal you just got. Go until you get the bottom dollar.
2. If you call during busy vacation season to get a deal for slow season, they’ll be too busy.
3. If you’re getting more than one room or staying more than one night then use that as a bartering tool. 

5 TWO FREE FLIGHTS

I don’t normally recommend getting a credit card. However, Southwest Airlines periodically gives away two free flights as an incentive to get a Southwest credit card! The rules are you have to spend around $2,000 within the year. Our family easily spends that in rent or charitable donations, so that is our “charitable donations” card. Spend the $2,000 with the card, pay it off on time, and get two free flights! Also, a few penny pincher tricks for Southwest Airlines:

1. If you find a good flight deal on other airlines it might not be such a good deal. Bag fees and flight changes can be ridiculous!
2. Southwest has no bag fees for the first two bags. Check their current policies here.
3. There’s no penalty to change or cancel your flight. Reapply your money towards a future flight. Check current policies here. 

6 DINING OUT COUPONING

When you’re not at home, you’re not a local, and when you’re not a local, you don’t know where the deals are. Well, eating out during travel just got cheaper. Get 50% off or more on dining out couponing by using couponing apps. Here’s 3 dining out couponing sites:

1. Groupon
2. Living Social
3. Sweet Jack 

7: BEAT GROUPON PRICES

The 6^th trick out of the 10 vacation saving tricks for couponing moms is my favorite! Here’s how to beat Groupon, Living Social, and Sweet Jack deals. The offered “deal” is great, but on average Groupon gets half of what you pay and the company offering the deal only gets half of what you pay. Here’s how to beat Groupon prices.

1. Call the company offering the deal.
2. Offer them 75% of the price of their deal. On a $100 deal for $50, you offer them $37.50, and they’ll make $12.50 more and you save $12.50 more. You save $62.50 (62.5%) total!
3. If they say no, ask for a manager, the manager will know the value of what you’re offering.
4. They make more, and you beat Groupon prices! 

8: VACATION USING GROUPON

Currently, Groupon, Sweet Jack, and Living Social don’t just sell vouchers to restaurants, they also offer attractions and lodging deals. Sign up for the Groupon of the city you’re going to vacation using Groupon in, before you go. For example, before a Disney trip, sign up for Orlando Groupon deals, and when you arrive you’ve got dinner show tickets, mini golf passes, water park tickets, lodging, and dining all for 50% off. Use tips above for even better deals when you vacation using Groupon.

9: SPONTANEOUS COUPONING

Sometimes on vacation with extended family they have slightly different spending habits. It’s hard to plan when you’ll stop on your drive to your destination. Also, sometimes plans change and you need a new or extra attraction or restaurant. All of these factors contribute to occasionally needing spontaneous couponing tricks.

1. Hop on the attraction or dining website and see if there’s a web visitor’s coupon.
2. Visit Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Urban Spoon, Tripadvisor or Yelp to find an online deal.
3. As a last resort type in the company name and then “coupon” or “discount.”
4. In spontaneous couponing, always ask staff if they offer any discounts (military, seniors, etcetera). 

10: ASK FOR THE DEAL

I met a man a while back who saved $30,000 a year on discounts. When I asked how, he said, “I ask, ‘What kind of deal can you give me,’ even if I’m at Wal-Mart.” It’s always worth it to ask for the deal. If they say, “No,” it doesn’t hurt, if they say, “Yes,” it pays off! He used the $30,000 to help fund 3 local charities.

The last of the 10 vacation savings tricks for couponing moms is it helps to start bargaining in an already affordable destination. According to a recent study, the top 4 affordable vacation destinations with over 4,000,000 tourists per year in America are:

#1: Yosemite

#2: Branson

#3: Yellowstone

#4: Salt Lake City

 

EXTRA TIP:

Remember when you vacation, don’t forget the real mission, which is spending. Spending time with the ones you love. At the end of life all the money goes back in the monopoly box, while you’re here you make an impact. Hopefully these 10 tips and tricks help you save money towards your passion, your loved ones, and helping others. If this was helpful, share it!

Nathanael Madden is a travel enthusiast and has been to 21 countries and most of the states. He started couponing in college when a local church mom helped show him how. Eventually, he was hired as the Lead Promotions Manager for K-LOVE radio, but still used his couponing tricks, and now works in the travel industry. This year Nathanael has been on 4 vacations, and almost $7,000 of it has been free. Couponing Works