I bought a Christmas shirt for my son at The Children’s Place on Friday for $1.99. And I owe it to Google Calendar. I’ve mentioned before that I love to buy my kids’ clothing at The Children’s Place. In September I bought $75 worth of school clothes on clearance, used my rewards card, and got a $10 coupon in the mail for use before November 30.
It was a great deal. The clothes I bought were an average of $4 a piece. I completely outfitted my son for the fall. And I got a $10 off any in store purchase to boot. Not bad.
But there was a problem. When I received the coupon at the end of September, I didn’t need anything from The Children’s Place. In the past, before I was so concerned about saving money, I would have filed the coupon away, with every intention of using it. But I probably would have forgotten.
Knowing myself as well as I do, I decided to enter the coupon expiration date on my Google Calendar. Sure enough, I completely forgot about the coupon. But Friday morning when I got my daily Google agenda in my email, one item said, “Use TCP Coupon”. I dug out the coupon, and sure enough, it expired that day.
So I drove down to the mall and found the cutest blue and green plaid shirt in my son’s size for $11.99 on clearance. After the coupon, I spent $1.99. And here I thought Sam would just wear one of his regular school/church shirts for Christmas. The shirt isn’t too Christmas-y, so he will be able to wear it beyond Christmas too.
After my success at The Children’s Place, I went home and cleaned out my coupon file. I go through my grocery coupons once a week, so I don’t worry about missing those coupons. It’s the irregular coupons, which are usually much higher in value that I tend to forget about.
So now I have a $10 off $40 Office Depot coupon and a great coupon for portraits at Sears entered on my Google Calendar. When the coupons are almost ready to expire, I will get a notice in my email box. And if I need something from Office Depot, I know that will be the time to buy. If not, I’ll pass. But at least I’ll have the opportunity to decide. It’s much better than looking through my coupon file the week after I buy something at Office Depot to find a great coupon that expired the week before.
Google Calendar isn’t just for keeping track of schedules anymore. You can use it to save money too!
Do you have any good ideas for organizing and keeping track of your coupons? I’d love to hear them!
Photo by yezi9713.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:36 am
I love Google calendar! It gets me to take my meds, it reminds me when to pay bills–it’s so handy!
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:45 am
I’m sold. I’m gonna look into Google Calendar and see how it can help me. Thanks!
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 am
I’m going to have to check it out. I need all the help I can get to get more organized, and haven’t used Google calendar before.
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 am
@Mrs. Micah - Don’t you just love it when your calendar tells you what to do?
@Free From Broke and Erin - Let me know what you think if you decide to try it!
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:31 am
You have been Tagged! Just wanted to let you know that I tagged you, check out about it at my blog!
http://www.mommygetspaid.blogspot.com
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Children’s place is one of the stores where I buy my kid’s clothes the season before too. They have great deal and great coupons. Their outlets are pretty good too.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I do that with my Outlook calendar…some of the weirdest things pop up as reminders…LOL! I have stuff like “Time for Shyann to take a shower” “1 day and 6 hours left before Black Friday Shopping” so it would not be a stretch for me to enter coupons!! Thanks!
December 4th, 2007 at 5:24 am
I am a google-nut and I am always amazed at all of the wonderful features in all of their products!! I have saved a lot of $$ and time because of Google!!
December 4th, 2007 at 6:56 am
I’ve never used Google Calendar for coupons — though that’s a great idea…but I do use it to remind me of my bill payments (and when I want to put up certain blog posts!) every month and it works like a charm.
It also saves me about $15 each year because I used to buy paper planners but have no need now!
December 4th, 2007 at 7:43 am
I’m a bigger fan of 30boxes.com. It was there first and is still the best in my opinion.
December 4th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Hmmmm. I haven’t heard of 30 Boxes. I’ll have to check them out, too!
December 4th, 2007 at 9:54 am
i don’t understand people… any calendar for the same use has been around before google calendar or whatever.. people are stupid, they always fall for the hyped
December 4th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Personally, I like Outlook because I use it all the time for work. I normally use it for all the important events, on and off work. Using it for coupons deadline reminder is not my cup of tea, but I am glad it worked well for you. This just remind me to use my calendar more.
As for going around and calling people stupid, I think that’s just juvenile — just because they think differently, doesn’t mean they are stupid. They are just different.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
@xluciferx - I appreciate your point of view, but please do not call people stupid here. I appreciate discussion and different points of view, but name calling isn’t welcome here.
That said, if a regular paper calendar works for you, I think that’s great. I don’t always remember to check my paper calendar, though, so an email reminder of something from Google works much better for me.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
@Pinyo - I used to use Outlook, and I liked it a lot, but I’m always switching back and forth between computers. I’ve found an online calendar works much better for me, because I can access it from either computer.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Hey xluciferx, would appreciate it if you could put a link to your blog article on using a calendar and how it helps you. Would love to read your perspective.
“Stupid is as stupid does”
December 4th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
OH MY Goodness! I may actually remember to use some of my ecoupons now!!! Thank you so much for the wonderful idea!!!!!! I just started my own google calender and am going to enter all my coupons when I get them!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
December 5th, 2007 at 1:15 am
sounds like the combination of priceAmbush.com and google calendar might be really cool in hunting low prices
–shelly
December 6th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Great idea for using coupons before the expire. Our system is currently just to file all our coupons in a small accordion file. When we need to buy something, we thumb through the file to see if there are any coupons we can use.
This way, we save money when we’re ready to buy instead of thinking of ways to spend money just to use a coupon. (Of course, I hate to miss out on a good coupon by a couple of days…)
November 20th, 2008 at 11:21 am
There is so much on Google that I think people don’t even don’t have an idea what is there.
Great post!