October 2023 Frugal Chatter Thread

[Ciel21]

Canadian Tire Money earning fans_this weekend is 20x/30x pts time at Party City locations. Also on qualifying tire purchases from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23 (Monday). Check weekly flyer for details.

[crafter]

@crafter and anyone else considering the trek to NF. I arrived at 7:40 a.m. ( store opens at 8, there were just 4 people in line??? )
I smelled a rat! How could only 4 people have come out. Well, we found out once they opened the doors! Turns out you DO NOT get handed a $10.00 G.C.
It's a printed $10.00 off coupon ( which is still nice BUT.....you have to spend $50.00 to get the $10.00 off. )
It was a good thing I was planning to spend close to $100.00 as I had put off shopping for a few days. I put approx. $53.00 of groceries in the cart, at checkout the cashier scanned the coupon, so $43.00, then I used $40.00 in points. Loved that OOP. I was handed the free chocolate bar.

While bagging my things I told the cashier I was going to come back into the store to shop after I loaded these in the vehicle and I would be spending a minimum of $50.00 on that order, so could you give me a coupon for that order please?
He looked scared....asked his co worker and she said " only one coupon per customer! " .



Whatever! I trekked over another NF ( not that far ) and while traveling the aisles I bump into a young shopper who had just been at the first NF.
We started to laugh ( great minds think alike ).
She had NOT planned on a $50.00 shop, in fact she was insulted by the whole T & C . They were not spelled out very clear imho. She bought a small
item and got a free chocolate bar.
Most of us thought the $10.00 discount would be handed out with no purchase to the first 100 people.
Maybe there is No purchase needed for those chocolate bars? So she left as I was calculating my items to reach $50.00.

A short while later she comes running up to me and hands me a discount coupon and said " they're running out of them! ..here! use mine, I won't! ha ha
Then she told me that when she came back in the store she told a cashier that she had to give this to her " friend " .....what a hoot! I went shopping and made a friend.
I wonder how she even GOT that coupon. Maybe the 2nd NF store was less strict with them?

Either way imho this was a stupid promo for most people. I saved $20.00 on 2 $50.00 shops, which is good but not everyone does a large shop.

Oh what an adventure you had this morning @walkonby DH and I loved the way you recounted your story. I hope you enjoyed your free chocolate bar and congrats on saving $20 on $100 spend this morning!
@Skippy yes those were fun days back then strategizing a $10 spend at Sears and theBay Hard to believe Sears is gone now. I used to work part time in their store catolgue department.

Well I stayed up past midnight to try out this magic hour that everyone has talked about. I opted to shop online which is my first time ever ordering from shoppersdrugmart.ca. It would definitely appeal to a person who's into beauty products or buys a lot of over the counter health stuff. I filled my cart and slowly emptied it as the evening went on. I probably could've done better with points deals but I stocked up on things like Dove soap, vitamins and some normal bathroom kind of stuff and a few stocking stuffers. I was hoping that they would offer things like detergent, Lysol wipes, etc but didn't manage to find them anywhere.

The order hasn't been processed yet so I'm not really sure how many points I'll end up with.
$120 pre tax spend
The email receipt shows this but I don't think it factors in the 5x pts for a PC card plus
Regular Points+ 1770
Bonus Points+ 39630TOTAL POINTS+ 41402

I have a few bonus points from this week's offers
the 2% pts from PC MA
PLUS the 5x points I think lol

[crafter]

Good Morning Everyone,
Anyone else really suffering from Fall Allergies? I am waking up so congested each morning it is insane and I look like I am crying but it is just my eyes watering. Hoping these allergy pills kick in soon.

Last night well I made dinner, I cleaned the kitchen and got all of the hand dishes done. There is one pan I need to put in the dishwasher because it needed to soak.

I did not get as much done after dinner as I had hoped. I hoped in the quiet after work hours I could have knocked out a few work things, but that did not happen. I had also planned to update my budget, and record all my receipts and everything but that did not happen either.

Kind of felt like I lost time after dinner last night, we had dinner and all of a sudden it was 7:30, still had the laundry to fold and I wanted to get to bed early.

Need to get my butt in gear and knock out my to-do list.

Happy Saturday

Hope your allergies improve. I find closing the window at night helps.
I'd also suggest trying a different brand of allergy pill. I use Reactine and never had luck with Aerius. I think everyone is different.

[Ciel21]

@crafter Hope all goes well with your online Shoppers order. Keep tabs if you get a delivery notification that it's by Penguin Express or similar. You would not want your order left by the roadside rather than in the mailbox or door because then you need to hustle to collect it before someone else does (if there is snow on delivery day...when I found printer cartridges in our ditch because driver would not take his sneaker clad feet up our driveway which was unshovelled).
Perhaps it'll ship by Canada Post-more reliable though delivery agents seem to be randomly going to the mailbox for small parcel dropoffs and not necessarily the door.

[barbis9]

Did a couple of errands before returning to do a second cleaning of the headstone with some suds. Hudson Bay does not have any packaged Jockey underwear except about 10pkg that are ripped or open in a little table near cash. Ditto socks except for one style of Hot Sox (blue dots with word Pop!) and one fuzzy beige/white kind near centre of store. No pantyhose either. But I was told that the store receives clearance stock weekly so it'll be worth checking it again. I did pick up another Elita camisole with shelf bra as it was the only XL on the rack and there was a 20% off discount.

The 7-11 near Burlington Centre carries GoodCall ($2.5 and $5)and CICI $5 long distance calling cards. New twist-customer has to verify prepaid card amount after cashier enters card as purchase item. Never did that before but it's like a security step. The accessible door side is CLOSED/Locked despite a handwritten sign saying Use other door (which I took to mean one of the two doors opens-nope, had to walk to back of store and enter there (no accessible door button there). I told someone on staff as that could be an issue for someone.

Dropped off sweaters and small accessories at a donation centre. Noticed Burlington has same issue as Hamilton with e-scooter users and cyclists riding past people on sidewalks while there is a perfectly usable BIKE land on Fairview St. On a westbound bus trip, I saw a gas scooter type motorbike on the sidewalk (by Mapleview Ave) before driver redirected bike onto the road. WOW-where are the bylaw officers?

Taking a shortcut through Jackson Square, I decided to look at some of the Farmers Market. It was fairly quiet. I bought a $4.99 box of blue plums because I have a craving for them or using them in plum platz. I saw $9.99 seedless watermelon at a different vendor's booth. The Ridge Road Winery is only at the market on Saturdays.

I missed the Ancaster bus after I got off the 5A bus into town so I walked to the parking area of the Memorial Arts Centre, took a quick look down the length of the property and found a bench (chip lunchtime). So glad I had some Gatorade on hand.

Wish I had brought some 3in1 oil or WD-40 to use on hinges and metal surfaces of the candle holder. I did not wipe down the surfaces after cleaning with water/suds but given that temperatures dip low at night, it might be worthwhile to oil the metal to slow down deterioration. Clearing out the melted beeswax-let me tell you that a point end of a wooden skewer helped to break up a large chunk of wax under the holder so I could take out small pieces with two skewer section through the openings or slide smaller bits out the side. Think the game Operation and you get the idea. Just glad that task is done!

In Burlington you can ride your bike or scooter on the sidewalks.

[barbis9]

@coupongirl I too am dealing with depression, the colder, rainy weather sure doesn't help. I hope you feel better soon.

[crafter]

Was it on those Sat mornings when Sears staff would open bright-eyed and bushy tailed doors to customers at 7:30am???

On the topic of Air Miles-when Sobeys was still with Air Miles, I had earned Air Miles on the day's shop even though I redeemed 95 points to knock $10 off the purchase total. So you should be able to earn and redeem on Staples shops plus Metro and anywhere else.
Sobeys used to take 3 weeks to give me my Air Miles bonus miles and regular miles in the first two or three months of shopping there with AM cardand once their program got an idea of my shopping patterns, my Air Miles bonus or otherwise miles usually showed up about 5-7 days later in my Air Miles account
I remember such promotions!

lol yep it was bright and early so it was quite a feat to get our teenaged girls out of bed for it.

P.s. AIR MILES has a flash offer for 200 pts when you spend any amount at both Walmart and Amazon via airmiles
or 100 pts when you spend any amount on either or.

I did the Metro one yesterday. I'll have to wait a bit before it shows

Have a good afternoon!

[crafter]

@crafter Hope all goes well with your online Shoppers order. Keep tabs if you get a delivery notification that it's by Penguin Express or similar. You would not want your order left by the roadside rather than in the mailbox or door because then you need to hustle to collect it before someone else does (if there is snow on delivery day...when I found printer cartridges in our ditch because driver would not take his sneaker clad feet up our driveway which was unshovelled).
Perhaps it'll ship by Canada Post-more reliable though delivery agents seem to be randomly going to the mailbox for small parcel dropoffs and not necessarily the door.

Thanks for the heads up on the delivery. We're lucky, we live in a little retirement community off on it's own so it's fairly safe. Our Canada post person rarely delivers to the house so it will probably end up in the Superbox.

[lilo0003]

@Ciel21 hubby repairs broken laptops and gifts the refurbished ones to people in need so we had a lot of dead laptops and chargers. I was glad to drop them off and OMG I tried to go to Costco in Burlington and was again reminded why I never go there, I drove right out of the parking lot. I stopped at Shell for my 5th purchase and was immediately rewarded with 100 AM I do love how fast they pay out. I would have liked to wait until Monday as I have the 1 air mile for every litre of gas but I was almost empty.
It was a good day for using points and coupons which is a nice change. I even had 4.00 for checkout 51. I need a few things at RCSS so I told DS2 to meet me at the cash. I really need to started taking advantage of his discount.

[SassyAshley]

@barbis9 *HUGS* hope you feel better soon.

[coupon girl]

Barbis-thank you hope you are feeling better .I am trying looking for the fun things in life like my 2 granddaughters sleeping over the other night and i had 3 sets of people on 3 different days coming for a visit last week .

So i think my depression is lifting a bit ,i still have my health problem this problem i have usually takes a month to heal,so time is my friend.

Popped over to shoppers to get the coffee they had on sale .
Then popped into walmart and got my halloween candy spent $33.00 i think that is enough 100 mini bars,40 small rice krispies ,sour sticks 40, suckers 21 the girls and i got into them the other night lol and 40 mini gummies .

Looked at the clearance at walmart and got a box of york gold black tea 80 reduced to $4.48
(4) kashi bars 2.97-buy 2 save 3.00=1.47 each .

Got hubby a mcdonalds coffee and muffin deal for me (i ate the muffin on the way home) coffee was for him 2.98 and i won a free sandwich and a drink a few weeks back -not bad.

[crafter]

@Barbi s hope you feel better and @coupon girl good to hear you're feeling a bit better, I hope you heal quickly

Well we managed to get a lot done this afternoon. Replaced all the hangers in the front hall closet with plastic ones that a neighbour gave me. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my old wire hangers had for years.
I washed clothes and 2 duvets, we cleaned and dusted around our bed, flipped the mattress around and now we're going to try to make coca cola chicken (well in our case Pepsi heh heh). Just gave my pup a bath (saves about $30 doing it at home and he's short haired).

Then I was browsing through my Rakuten account looking at past transactions and thought, hmm, I haven't rec'd a cheque in ages. Well of course not, I changed the option to an Amazon gift card. It turned out that I had a gift card code sitting there for $10.34 that I never used. Perfect timing to use that along with my $5 gift cert from Receipt hog for Black Friday.

Time for a glass of wine. Cheers!

[coupon girl]

Neighbour who is 70 called me over this afternoon for a visit ,she had her knee replaced 3 weeks ago .So i took my own tea over so she wouldnt have to get up .It was nice chatting for an hour and a half.

[lilo0003]

@lilo0003 Welcome back to Ontario! Your sons will be very popular on the marriage scene when they are ready to settle down! They will have high expectations of their prospective spouses as well (maybe strengths in other domestic areas so they share the household chores and outdoor maintenance/vehicle washing etc.). Brave of you to drive back. The flight option might be better during the wet and wintry season when conditions allow. Someone I knew who drove to Nova Scotia and back said never again with the dark twisting roads and rains-white line fever or similar variant. She said she'd fly out next time (though I am aware that Westjet has cut some of its Canadian routes recently).

I will never make the drive from October to April, the trip through New Brunswick would kill me, I already panic in the rain. I drove through the whole province on the way back because the scenery is beautiful but the hills and twists make me anxious unless I am driving.
I scored an amazing deal when I picked ds2 up, PC brand pasta sauce, mushroom one only was 1.14. Best before date is 06/24. I may go back for more. This is an awesome price for the food bank.

[walkonby]

P.s. AIR MILES has a flash offer for 200 pts when you spend any amount at both Walmart and Amazon via airmiles
or 100 pts when you spend any amount on either or.
I did the Metro one yesterday. I'll have to wait a bit before it shows

I logged into airmilesshops.ca ( as you are required to do first ) then bought dry cat food from WM and a cute 2 pce. set of pj's ( for me ) from amazon. ( $34.00 total, for both) free delivery on the pj's...I already wore them! ( fast 1 day delivery ) and I picked up the cat food from WM. Who knows when I'll see that 200 AM? Fingers crossed I guess.
Documenting every offer, then the purchase, saving receipts and writing down any phone calls with CS reps is sadly what is required.
Didn't James Comey do that with his meetings with Trump? Contemporaneous Notes . Now there's a phrase eh?