Dollar Tree Takes Coupons?

Dollar Tree recently opened in our small town of 15,000 people. A few years ago, we didn't even have an Albertson's or a Starbucks. Now we have even more places to shop for great deals that stretch our family budget without driving all over the county.

If you have ever shopped at the 99cent store, Dollar Tree, or other dollar stores, you have definitely noticed that the quantity you get for $1 is often small, and therefore, not worth the extra time to go to an additional store for your weekly shopping. However, once you know the prices you normally pay for staple items (after coupons), you can do the math and see which items are a deal at Dollar Tree.

Some of the awesome items we purchase here are party supplies, gift bags, school supplies, some name brand toiletries, cleaning supplies and lots of food items including our favorite brand of canned spaghetti sauce, tostada shells, eggs, stick butter, ketchup, mustard and tons more.

Dollar Tree recently announced they take coupons. That's right! Everything is one dollar and they take coupons as well! I'll post again when I take my couponing skills over there!

Shoguns Restaurant vs Benihana

My friends and I went to Shoguns to say farewell to a friend who is moving out of town. We had heard it was like Benihana but less expensive, so we were anxious to compare for ourselves.

We made a reservation, were seated promptly and had excellent service during the 3 hours we were there. The menu was excellent and my vegetarian friend was so excited to see vegetarian options on the menu.

Our chef was skilled and fun, the food was amazing, especially the onion soup and garlic shrimp. They even broght out a dessert to our friend who is moving, and they sang a "syonara" song for her.

Overall, the prices were slightly lower than Benihana,
but the service, food and fun atmosphere were comparable, so I recommend going to whichever is a closer drive for you :-)

$0.88 Medication? What?

I wonder if you know this secret I found at Wal-Mart, yes Wal-Mart. As you may know, we are living on a teeny tiny budget. Therefore, when I see a sign for 88cents, I do a double-take no matter what section of the store I'm in. Since my dogs are allergic to the entire outdoors (at least it seems that way), they take an allergy medication. We have purchased it on petmeds.com and it was a great quality and price. But when I ran out, I needed some fast and saw this awesome section at Wal-Mart

Amazing right? Medications are so expensive, so we tried the "compare to Benedryl" for our doggies, and honestly, for my allergy issues as well. What do you know, it works just like the expensive stuff. I hope Wal-Mart keeps this section forEVER!

Comparison Shopping!

Do people still comparison shop? Or do they spend the time comparing prices for large purchases only? Well, my husband and I finally bought smart phones and he downloaded this awesome app from Amazon.com where you just scan the barcode of an item while you are shopping, and it tells you how much you can buy it for on Amazon.com

So one of our teenager needed volleyball shoes and they were $87 at the sporting goods store. He used the app and saw they were $67 online. Armed with this info, we knew we could find them cheaper, and we had a coupon for $20 off a $100 purchase at Sports Authority, so we went there to check the price for the Mizuno volleyball shoes.

The price was $70 but had a sign that said $59.99. My daughter also needed some warmup pants and they were 20% off. Here is the coolest part. We went to check out and found out the sale sign on the shoes was placed wrong, but the manager offered to honor that price.

So we ended up. getting $39 off our purchase: 10 off the shoes, 9 off the pants, and 20 off the entire purchase! Don't forget we also saved $7 on the shoes compared to he online price, so that is a savings of $46, all because we decided to shop around and use an in-store coupon. Woohoo!