A Day of Saving!
Ok so I know you probably don’t care what I do in my day to day life, but I try to share my crazy activities whenever it involves something in this hobby. Here is what my afternoon will probably look like aside from taking my baby to the doctor! I promise you may learn something.
Home Depot
Today I am going to pickup about 400 square feet of flooring that I purchased at Home Depot. I originally found this flooring in a Slickdeals thread and then took the deal even further.
The normal price of the TrafficMASTER Brazilian Cherry Laminate Flooring is $.99 a square foot or $24.07 a case. Last week they offered it for $.57 per square foot or $13.86 per case.
Of course I couldn’t stop there. Before making my purchase, I went to Cardpool and bought just enough gift cards to pay for the purchase at 8.5% off. I also started through the Discover portal and earned 10% back as well. (Discover has gone back to 5% since.)
The Normal Way (I’ll Include the Portal to be Kind)
- Normal Price (16 boxes): $385.12
- Sales Tax (8.1%): $31.19
- Portal 10%: – $38.51
- Cost: $377.80
My Way (Sale, Discounted Gift Cards & Portal)
- Sales Price (16 boxes): $221.76
- Sales Tax (8.1%): $17.96
- Final Cost: $239.72
- Gift Cards Purchased: $240
- Cost of Gift Cards (8.5% discount on retail): $219.60
- Portal 10%: -$22.18
- Final Cost: $197.42
- Savings Over Normal Price: 47.7%
Note: I could have also tried to use a 10% off Lowe’s moving coupon in-store, but some Home Depots aren’t honoring those anymore and the portal cashback gave me the same discount.
This is a powerful example of waiting for a sale and using other methods to stack the savings further. While this isn’t the best flooring ever, it works for our situation.
Staples
As you may have guessed I am heading over to Staples to purchase some Visa gift cards since they are having a rebate deal. Thankfully Staples is in the same parking lot as the Home Depot, so I am not really going out of my way.
Of course it is always best to maximize visits to any store, so I will also be recycling my 20 monthly ink cartridges so I can get $40 in rewards. That isn’t enough though.
You may recall that I am sitting on quite a few Staples gift cards purchased at 40% off. Currently they have a couple of interesting coupons. They have $100 off any iPad Air 2 or iPad Mini 3 and $100 off any PC regularly priced at $499 or more.
The real issue with these coupons is that the restrictions generally kill the deal. The $100 off PC coupon may work for some machines that are discounted below the $499 threshold. I also mentioned earlier this week that iPads in-store are more expensive than on the website. I am hoping to get them to match the website price before applying the coupon. We will see.
Conclusion
With the exception of the Staples Visa gift card deal, none of this has anything to do with travel. Of course no matter how many points you have, travel costs money and finding ways to save on everyday purchases is perhaps the best way to put money back in your pocket.
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I’ve been thinking about an iPad mini 3 myself. What is the in-store pricing, just same as Apple retail? Still $100 off is superior to the online prices. Staples GC score was a good one, wish I could have done it!
iPad Air 2 is $399 and the iPad Mini 3 is $299 I believe after coupon. It was definitely a great deal on the Staples gift cards, but now I have to figure out how to maximize them.
Tom, he buys them used on eBay.
The other day Alaska Air shopping portal was giving 8X for Staples. I purchased an IPad Air 2 with Staples gift card purchased specifically and everything appeared to be OK. The next day I got an email from Staples indicating that the IPad model was out of stock and my order was canceled. Now I am stuck with about $700 in Staples gift cards. 🙁
Wow that is terrible. Staples is not my favorite company and this doesn’t surprise me at all. Hopefully another portal deal will come along of similar value, although that 8x Alaska bonanza was the best I have ever seen.
@Tom hint: ebay
40 Ink cartridges a month?!? What are you printing? You know that ink cartridges are pure profit for the manufacturers.
Lots of profit in ink cartridge recycling… see here for a guide: https://saverocity.com/bighabitat/points-earning-basics/ebay-ink-recycling/
The ibotta app has a $5 rebate when you spend $50 at staples. Worked for me today when I bought $50 in Starbucks gift cards. Not bad for taking a picture of my receipt.
Agreed!
I was able to price match to the website price with a wonderful supervisor and used a good amount of staples rewards $ to knock the price down even further. Unfortunately, you can’t use any coupons such as signing up for emails or text message alerts on apple products. Good luck!
That is still great. Most stores won’t do it. Glad you found a nice supervisor! They can be rare.
Ok. So I follow most of it and that’s great for you! Super Home Depot deal!!!! But here’s my question…. Where the heck do you come up with 20 ink cartridges/month? That’s 5 years of ink for me. I’m not a newbie to MS, so I really don’t think you are running hundreds of dollars a month on ink, so where are you getting the cartridges?
As other have said, eBay. You can buy them in bulk for cheap and turn around and recycle them for $2 each.
Where did you get so many ink cartridges to take advantage of the 20 monthly ink cartridges deal?