Louisville, Ky. (WDRB) - Sending children back to school can be an expensive venture for parents. In Sterling Riggs' school smarts report--one shopping expert reveals some simple tips to save money for last- minute shoppers.
JCPS teacher and extreme couponer Julia Young is a special shopping agent and knows how to stock up without racking up a big bill. Our mission for the day is to find the best deal on last minute school supplies. Julia believes that we can save 40% today!
With 21 items on the list, she went straight for the best deal first. According to Julia, "Staples often has awesome extreme deals. If you make a $5 purchase. You can get 5 packs of paper for only a penny. Normally they are 99 cents. One penny, it's amazing."
She also recommends reading the fine print in weekly advertisements. Here's a unique way to pinch pennies. Julia says, "A really good deal Staples has going this week, is if you bring in an old binder you will automatically get 2 dollars off any binder you purchase. So a new binder is $4.99 and I'm going to get one for $2.99 because I brought in a beat up broken binder."
And although Staples has some great bargains, Julia pointed out it pays off to shop around for certain items. She says, "Definitely shop around for batteries. You can usually find them for free after rewards. Even at Staples they do that throughout the year. When you find batteries on sale, stock up on them so you don't get stuck paying the big prices."
I asked her for a few tips and here's what she said. "For the average shopper, how do they find these deals? Get the Sunday newspaper. Pullout all the ads and put them out on your table and go through them and highlight the best deals and then you can head to those stores and only buy what's on sale. There are also a lot of web-sites out there that will lay it all out for you."
It took about 15 minutes to find everything we needed to send a 6th grader back to class. It was then time to ring it all up. Our final bill without discounts came to $56.13.
Throw in a price match discount from another store, advertised coupons, the Staples 15 percent rewards card and a nine dollar mail in rebate and our final total comes to $36.89. That's a savings of almost another 20 dollars. Not bad for a last minute shopping trip.
To find more cost saving tips, you can check out Julia's website by clicking here.
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