Week #23 - Loyalty vs Generics

I'm always looking for a deal, a discount or a savings of some kind. I'll drive a few minutes out of my way to make sure I'm getting the best deal I can on gas and I've been known to come pretty close to totally running out of gas before I finally fill up knowing I'm at the cheapest area station. The way I look at it, all the gas is pretty much the same and I'm not going to get worse gas at Cumberland Farms then I am at A.J.'s Mini Mart. There are a lot of things that I treat the same way, I'll buy the cheapest (used) clothes because I don't really care about brand names and even though it may be sacrilege to many people I don't care what brand of ketchup I have and I'm totally happy with a generic brand.

One of the few things that I have found is not always worth skimping on is Soda. It might be because I'm a big fan and a connoisseur of fine sodas, but to me there really is a big difference from brand to brand and its one of the few things where a generic can really be sub par! Today I stopped at a Tedeschi's convenience store to get a soda and was going to grab a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke which was $1.94 when I noticed that a bottle of the store brand Diet Cola was only .99 cents. I decided to take a chance and I'll be honest, a few sips in I'm not sold! I MIGHT give it another shot, but the odds are better that I will revert back to my usual Diet Coke, or even better is Coke Zero.

So... with that being said, I urge you to not be afraid to try a generic or a discounted product, but even if your as cheap as I am (you're probably not) be willing to admit when the savings is not worth it for the difference in quality and your enjoyment of the item.

Alrighty now...  So here we are on the first Friday of a new month which means my entire paycheck of $615.36 ($39.12 taken out pretax for my 401K) will be going into my checking account to pay my monthly bills, credit card, gas, food etc. The only savings this month will be my $20 vacation savings transfer unfortunately, but $20 saved is better than nothing right!? So here is the weekly wrap up...


Here is the week 23 wrap up:
$39.12 to my 401K
$20.00 to my vacation fund

Which makes the 2013 totals:

$759.30 in my 401K
$460.00 in the vacation fund
$48.05 in the piggy bank
$250.00 in the quarterly loan payment account
$100.00 in my vet bill savings
$858.00 in my money market
$857.99 in my car account

I remember when the only real 'Loyalty Card' that you needed to carry was for Stop & Shop, but now it seems that every single store out there has one and if you don't sign up you have to pay higher prices, you don't get any free coupons and you're generally looked down upon by clerks and customers. With all the different stores out there you need a huge wallet or a janitor size keychain to carry every loyalty card you could possibly need on a shopping trip.

There are few ways to avoid carrying all the cards, I know some stores will look up your 'loyalty card status' with your phone number and there are smart phone apps that will store all your 'loyalty card' info and allow the clerk to scan the screen of you phone. Now I'll let you know what I have done to remedy the situation. There are a couple of cards I use all the time that I carry the full size cards for (Subway, Stop & Shop) but for the stores I dont' visit that often what I did was I took the keychain size ones and cut them so it was almost just the barcode left. Then I took 3 of them and taped them together into the size of one full size card. I wrote on the tape the name of each store and covered it with more tape so it would not wear off. Then I repeated that whole process and taped those 3 to the back of the first three giving me six 'loyalty cards' that take up the space of one single card!

 

 

In the above photo you can also see that on my Subway card I taped the information about how many points you need for each reward. I did this because its not posted in every store and I knew that I would never remember! So now every time I look at the card I know what I can get for free!