Today's Great Deal: Thrift Store Shopping

My family and I went thrift store shopping today, I think we've gone so much lately that we've really gotten all we can get for the time being. There are really only a few other things I'm looking to pick up that is second hand, but have had no luck finding them. Garage sale season is coming up shortly, so I'm thinking I'm going to take a second hand shopping break until then.

Today we went to Talize where all blue ticketed items were 50% off, unfortunately the blue ticketed items were few and far between. From Talize I bought a shirt/dress, can dispenser and camping pan. After that, we went to this little thrift store, I can't remember the name of it but all the proceeds go to the Surrey Memorial Hospital, where we picked up the jars, jar accessories, salad spinner and mini cake pan. Considering we spent just over $15.00 for everything it wasn't at all a bad trip.

How We Save and Spend

My husband and I use to be poor, so poor that we couldn't afford to buy cheese for the first two years of our marriage and had to be really creative when planning a date. I remember a time when I was the only one working, sometimes I'd come home from work sobbing my eyes out because I was only given 20 hours to work that week. Those were hard times, and I honestly think we suffered way more financially then we really had to. There are however more ways to save money now, than ever before. I could talk all day about how to save money and live a better life, but for the sake of putting my thoughts into one entry I'll just list off a few things.

1) Use Coupons! - These things are everywhere (especially for you Americans). You can find coupons in newspapers, order them online and have them mailed to your door, print them out from your computer, call up your favourite company rave about their products and see if they will send you coupons....etc. Coupons are no longer just for food and deodorant, you can get coupons for museums, attractions, oil changes and the list goes on. Using coupons was our first step in saving money, over time it really makes a difference.

2) Getting Cheap Clothing - For our children there are a few different things we do to save money on clothing. We go to thrift stores, kids swap meets (which for us seem to give us more for a lot less than the thrift store) and go to the many garage sales in the summer. If we need something that we weren't able to find second hand or just want to buy a few new items for the kids we go to Gymboree when they are having one of their many sales (their quality is amazing, almost guaranteeing it will be passed down from oldest to youngest), Old Navy and GAP clearance sections and every other store on boxing day. My husband and I don't go through clothes nearly as fast as two toddlers, but we have the same shopping habits when it comes to buying clothes (generally), we just do it less frequently.

3) Saving Money at the Grocery Store - Besides using coupons there are other ways to get a deal at the grocery store. Many times food that is about to expire either that day or the next has a 30-50% off sticker on it. If you have a freezer (which I highly recommend and many times can be obtained free from craigslist) you can throw so many things in it. Milk freezes well, so does cheese, butter, bread.....etc, there is no reason to pay full price for these things all the time. Ask the manager or supervisor when your grocery store does their markdowns so you can be there to catch the good stuff (assuming you're like me and don't have a paying job).

4) Vacations - I love vacations, although who doesn't?! Since we are not rolling in cash we have to be very careful with what we do on our vacations. As it stands now, if we want to go on a vacation every year it means no flying. Plane tickets, airport tax and little things like taxis and buses from spot to spot is just beyond our budget right now, so we do road trips. We save for each vacation starting a year in advance, we may not know where we will be going or for how long, but getting away from it all is incentive enough. All of our coins, well I should be saying my coins since my husband only uses his credit card go in a "vacation" jar, so does the money from bottle returns, any mail in rebates or things we sell on craigslist or at a swap meet. When our kids get a  little older I'd like to take them to Disney Land, I don't know if our financial situation will improve or God forbid get worse so I'm saving now, not in the way of money, but in airmiles. Airmiles is a great rewards program, it's free to join and lately more and more stores are apart of the airmiles program including Toys r Us and Michaels.

I think because I still have so much more to write, I will be doing a "how we save and spend" part two and possibly even part three and four. Nonetheless, these are some of the things we do to save so we are able to spend.

Today's Great Deal: London Drugs

London Drugs is a Canadian drugstore (and more) that is found only in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. London Drugs is the only store in Canada that allows coupon stacking, as far as I know and has it in their written policy. Although, the coupon stacking rules use to be a lot more relaxed last year, you can still get some great deals if you have the right coupons.

Most of these coupons came from different issues of Smart Source coupons that are found in the Saturday paper once a month or so, while others came from Websaver and promotional offers. 

Everything you see in the first picture cost me $2.93 including tax and gave me a coupon savings of $24.97, I'm smiling ear to ear. 

Today's Great Deal: Thrift Store Finds

I love thrift store shopping, it's fun searching for treasures and finding things you haven't seen since childhood. The only thing I don't like about thrift stores is how incredibly expensive some places like Goodwill and Value Village have become, looks like both these stores have become a giant corporate affair. 

Early today my family and I went out to have our children participate in a university study. I love going to these things, the university is about a 30-40 minute drive away but the kids get a free book and we all get to spend part of the day in an area where we don't usually head out to too often. We made it a plan to check out all the thrift stores, or at least as much of them as we could while we were out. Somehow... and I know this is my fault, (I may have not written down the exact address) we couldn't find the address to the first thrift store, but it was no big deal and instead of really searching it out we got out of the car and went for breakfast. After breakfast we spent sometime walking around looking at some shops, there were some really great boutique stores, but no thrift stores to be found. We had given up on our plan and after enjoying the morning we headed off to another thrift store, only this time I actually knew the location of it. We must have only been driving for three minutes when you wouldn't believe it, a whole row of thrift and consignment stores. Ack! Well they had to wait, we had passed them at high speed and we had other things to do with our day, yes we had to make our way over to that other thrift store.

Heading over to the thrift store I had in mind was the best decision, it's a good thing we didn't stop off at those other stores we drove by (although maybe if I had gone in I wouldn't be saying this now...). This thrift store was having a renovation sale and everything was 30-75% off. It was the last day of the sale so everything was really picked over and the store was quite busy. Still, I managed to pick up ten children's books, a pair of jeans and a funky shirt for myself, the shirt reminds me of something a farm girl might wear and I think it will look cute with those jeans I picked up. I wasn't really keeping count of the price of these things, I was thinking everything would be about $10, but no it was less. I paid $3.50 for everything, I think this is the best deal I've ever gotten on second hand items and as we left the store I told my husband I felt like I just robbed the place. Ha, these kind of prices for second hand items should be the norm, not the exception.