How to Keep Track of Your Discounts
Stever’s 4 easy ways to get the most of your money by tracking discount cards, coupons, and memberships.
Reader Liz is suffering from discount overload:
“I get discount offers for retailers, restaurants, and movie theaters; through my employer, my gym, my auto club, and my professional organizations. When it’s time to make a purchase, I am so overwhelmed by which discount to use and where, that I usually say to heck with it and pay full price. Help!”
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Liz, you’re everyone’s favorite customer. Retailers and manufacturers love giving out discounts. They know the psychological mind-control benefit of the discounts will keep you coming back, a slave to their manipulation, a mindless buying zombie (meaning no offense to zombies, of course. It’s not their fault they’re mindless). Retailers also know that most of the time, you won’t use their discounts because you’ll forgot. They get the best of both worlds, like any good, co-dependent partner. You give them your business, and they don’t even have to put out.
But you don’t have to let them win!
Remember: Keeping and tracking discounts takes work. Only do it for large-enough discounts. If you’re looking at 30% off a $200 purchase, go for it! Five percent off a $7 purchase? Don’t bother.
And now, here are my 4 Quick and Dirty Tips for getting the most of your discount offers:
Tip #1 – Make a Spreadsheet
If you really care about squeezing every cent out of your discounts, do the legwork all at once. Schedule a couple of hours. Review all your discount cards and memberships, and list the discounts in a spreadsheet. In column 1, put the kind of the product,(“car rental,” or “hotel”). In column 2, put the brand name (“Enterprise Rent-a-Car” or “Hilton”). In column 3, enter the discount card (“AAA Membership”), and in column 4, the discount amount (“20% off on Saturdays”). If two different organizations give discounts for the same item, enter two separate lines.
Once you’ve entered everything, use your spreadsheet’s Sort function to sort the spreadsheet by column 1, and then subsort by column 2. Now all discounts for similar services are next to each other. All your car rental discounts are visible at a glance. Within the car rental section, all your different discounts on Enterprise are next to each other. A quick glance at column 4 will help you choose your best discount for Enterprise, or for car rentals in general.
You’ll have to review this yearly, since discounts often change.
Keep a second spreadsheet in the same workbook that lists websites for online discount stores. If you have credit card points redeemable in a special online store, put the URL in the second spreadsheet. You’ll go there for your pre-purchase research.
Tip #2 – Always Keep Retailer-Based Discounts at Hand
Some discounts aren’t for a product category, they’re for a certain retailer. My grocery store has a “frequent buyer” card. It gives me a discount in return for letting them track everything I’ve ever bought, cross index it by my name and address, build a comprehensive psychographic profile of me, and sell that profile to malevolent forces with shadowy intentions.
Discount cards like this are almost always available in keychain size barcode tags; use them. Keep store discount cards on your keychain for the stores you really use. Remember, you’re selling your soul for these discounts, so make sure they’re substantial.
I persuaded several stores to give me a discount card without giving them my name and address. I still get my discounts, and my profiling fears are soothing. But this is unfortunately not an option at many stores.
Tip #3 – Keep One-Time Discounts in a File
Some discounts are only good once, like coupons and Groupons. I keep those in an envelope that lives within arm’s reach. When I know I’m going out to buy a product, I quickly riffle through the envelope to double-check possible coupons.
My friend Caroline lists her coupons in an online Google Docs spreadsheet. She shares it with her family so anyone making a purchase can quickly find out if there’s a coupon they can use in the envelope.
I keep my less-commonly-used coupons and cards in a physical file. See my episode on storing credit cards and gift cards for details.
Tip #4 – Go Shopping For What You Need, Offline and Online
If you have a specific purchase in mind, do your online research. Comparison shopping can sometimes save more than any discount! If you want a specific product, quickly log in to any purchase sites you’re a member of and research the product’s price. Just run down the list of sites on page 2 of your spreadsheet.
As for keeping usernames and passwords, I don’t have a general solution. Since I don’t really care if my account on discount sites get hacked—what’s an intruder going to do, get my 10% discount on kibble? Oooh, scary!—I use the same username/password combination for all my discount sites. I do not use that username/password for any other sites, though, and I never allow those sites to remember any credit card numbers or other sensitive data.
The Bottom Line
Discounting is a great way to save money, as long as you do it efficiently. Index long-term special offers in a spreadsheet so you can find them quickly. Use keychain tags for places you shop often, and a coupon file for one-time discounts. Use a spreadsheet to find your discounts quickly, and to make it easy for the whole family to share discounts.
Have any other coupon tricks? Let us know in Comments. Email questions and comments to mailto:getitdone@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. Find out more about me and my services at SteverRobbins.com.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
RESOURCES:
- /productivity/organization/how-to-organize-your-credit-and-gift-cards – Episode on organizing credit and gift cards
Dollar Sign image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
