Inspired by this site chronicling and totaling the amount of money found on the ground, I am starting a tally of my own. Starting at this point, I am keeping a running total of what I will call “Frugal Funds”. I include in FFs money that I get mainly because I am cheap. Included in this would be promotional bonuses for opening credit cards or bank accounts, money I find on the ground, and those special deals where you get paid to take something, just to name a few.
We will start off with a few rebate checks I had waiting for me in the mail from Christmas break. In November CVS had a couple of deals where they had the Contour and Breeze2 blood glucose monitors on sale at various price points $30 and below. They also put out a coupon for $50 off these monitors making them free in-store. And the icing on the cake was a manufacturers rebate on each for the price paid up to $40 or $50. There was no limit on the number of rebates you could claim. I sent in all of the rebates, blacking out the receipt totals and coupons redeemed, and I received back 5 of the rebates over the break for the pre-coupon amount. So after 4 checks for $30 and 1 check for $9.99, less a total of $2.05 for the stamps…
$127.94 – 2008 YTD Frugal Funds total
Not a bad way to start the year!
[...] Started out 2008 with $127.94 in “Frugal Funds”! Blogroll [...]
Requesting rebates on items you got for free by obscuring the fact that you didn’t pay for them is known as “fraud” or “theft.”
It’s great to save money, and you have some good tips, but please don’t steal or advise your readers to steal. There are many good ways to save money without being dishonest.
I’d argue that this isn’t fraud, as in this instance you are paying for the item and have a receipt to prove it. The only wrinkle here is that you paid with a coupon rather than cash. I’ll concede it is at least a gray area. I guess each shopper should evaluate it for themselves and do what they feel is right.
As an FYI, the idea of obscuring the coupons and purchase price originally came about on SD because the avid CVS shoppers would buy these and pay using ECBs. Because the ECBs are reflected on the receipt as store coupons it would reduce the total paid. Often the rebates would be denied because the manufacturer would just look at the ending total not realizing that the listed “store coupons” were essentially gift certificates. This was the solution to get around the manufacturer’s stupidity.