I’m not an extreme coupon person, but I do love the low-effort ways to save an extra $10/month. Here are some of my favorites:
- Most of our groceries come from Safeway and all of their coupons are available online. But who has the time to click through hundreds of coupons? This calls for automation! I previously blogged about how to make a quick button in your browser to click every coupon in a few seconds. This is probably the single most valuable piece of code I’ve ever written outside of work. It saves hundreds of dollars a year.
- For every $100 we spend in groceries, we get $0.10/gallon off of our gas purchases at Safeway. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it does add up, especially with the bonus coupons that give extra gas discounts. To maximize our savings, I only use the gas discounts when filling up the truck because it takes around 20 gallons per fillup while the Escape is about half that.
- The gas savings from Safeway expire eventually so I keep an eye on that and if we’re going to lose some before we can use them for gas, I use one of the “use 7 gas rewards for $10 off your next bill” deals. It’s not quite as good as filling up the truck but it’s better than using it on the Escape.
- Our bank gives us a better interest rate on our checking account if we meet a few criteria every month and the main one is making 12 debit transactions. We use credit cards for everything just for the cash back so I have to plan out debit purchases. Amazon is a great way to knock these 12 purchases out. I hook up my debit card to my Amazon account and then buy 12 $1 gift cards and send them to myself.
- We have splurged on Hello Fresh during the lockdown but it is pretty pricey. We pause it for a few weeks and Hello Fresh sends us a coupon for $10 or $15 off our next two orders. Then we unpause, use the coupons, and pause again.
- Similarly, we limit our streaming subscriptions to only what we’re watching. We burned through a bunch of Netflix shows, canceled the service and then switched to Hulu. As we near the end of some Hulu shows, we’ll flip to another service and watch a bunch of shows there. I keep track in of all the shows we want to watch in One Note and Just Watch.
- There are a lot of credit card rewards out there but we use two specific ones. The American Express Blue Cash card averages just under 2% cash back for us each year. We use that for almost everything except Amazon purchases which all go through the Amazon Visa card. That gives 5% back on Amazon purchases which is impossible beat.
None of these are going to make us rich, but they add up to a decent chunk of money each year and none of them take much time.
COVID-19: Day 262
The current situation isn’t great: since I wrote last, cases have continued to rise. Increased restrictions don’t seem to be bringing the numbers down. The daily confirmed case counts are higher than they’ve ever been around here, but it’s hard to compare the various peaks since we’re always increasing the number of tests being performed. The death count is probably a better way to compare, but it is a lagging indicator. It takes people a while to die once they get it and then reporting takes more time. The chart below (source) shows where it’s at now, but it feels like we’re going to hit close to the peak from March. Hopefully it’s not worse than that. It will be hard to tell because the reporting is going to be wonky during Thanksgiving week because of people traveling, the day off, etc.
Despite the increasing death count, there has been some very encouraging news about vaccine trials and we could be a few weeks away from it being approved for emergency use. In the first world, the rollout could easily take a year and it will take much longer than that to cover the globe. Given that we aren’t frontline medical workers or in a high risk group, I expect it will be next summer-ish before my family gets it, but we’ll be lined up and ready to go when our turn comes. It’s easy for me to get bogged down dreading all the misinformation that’s going to spread causing more deaths because some people won’t get the vaccine, but I’m trying to stay positive. It’s incredible that we can even have the discussion about vaccines already, and I’m thankful for all the rules and regulations that are in place to produce a safe and effective treatment. What a bonus that there are a few vaccines that all look promising. I keep thinking about going through this 20 years ago. How would we have even gotten information about the vaccines? And yet today I searched around for info on the vaccine and was immediately presented with CDC pages including this page for individuals and a deeper page targeted at health care professionals. The road ahead won’t be easy, but it’s the way out of this mess. Stick that needle in me so I can safely leave my home and figure out what our new normal looks like.
Continuing the positive internet news, the seemingly unlikely duo of Bill Gates and Rashida Jones launched a podcast. I’m not all the way through the episodes they’ve released so far, but I’m really enjoying it. Rashida Jones asks the questions we’re all thinking, Bill Gates has devoted his life to global eradication of diseases, and they bring in additional experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. The episodes aren’t all focused on COVID, but the series starts off in that subject area.
On the home front, we had a very different Thanksgiving, but as with all things this year, we looked for new opportunities to make special memories. We made all our favorite foods, baked Christmas cookies and got started with Christmas decorations. We had already planned to do Thanksgiving with just the three of us many weeks ago, but that decision was reinforced by a strong request from health officials to not celebrate outside of your household. On top of that, Elijah has a cold and got a COVID test on Tuesday (a negative result came back within 24 hours) so with all that piled on, we were thankful that we already had plans to stay in our bubble. Christmas will be the same way.
As I wrap up this check-in, I’m taking comfort from Deuteronomy 31:8:
Those words were from Moshes to Joshua and all the Israelites just before they entered Israel. Their situation was so much more stressful and complicated than this lockdown but those same promises apply to us. God is a constant. God is guiding our path. God is here.