Going Shopping This Weekend? Do Your Homework to Find Good Deals

Save by checking coupon Web sites and making stores your Facebook "friends."

March 26, 2010— -- My assignment? Find the best deals out there for this weekend.

Here are the deals I found, and tips on how I found them.

Follow deal bloggers on Twitter or on their Web sites. Let them do the coupon-stacking work for you. My favorite is Erin Gifford's Coupon Cravings.

For example, click HERE for a 75-cents-off, printable coupon for Colgate toothpaste.

Check to see if your grocery store will double or triple coupons, like the southern grocery chain Harris Teeter. It could be a very attractive deal.

Check Coupons.com every once in a while.

An interesting find on the Web site was this offer: In 48 states, Rite Aid will give you a $25 gift card if you transfer a prescription to its pharmacy chain.

Friend your favorite stores and brands on Facebook. Bloomingdales is offering 20 percent off this weekend. You would have heard about it if you were one of the store's Facebook friends.

Check deal-of-the-day sites. They can sometimes be a deal of the minute. Woot.com is having Friday what it calls a "woot-off." It is selling off the stragglers in its inventory.

The deals are very good, but they may only be available for a few minutes, so check back often.

I talked to the Woot guys and they told me about some of the outrageous deals: a Dyson vacuum cleaner that retails for $499 is being sold for $279, plus $5 shipping. The cheapest I could find it online was for $340.

More Weekend Deals

Check the newspaper. It's old-school but you can still find a lot of deals. For example, a deal on cardigans from Old Navy -- cardigans that were $26 will be sold for $15, and smaller-sized girls' sweaters will be $10 -- is in this weekend's circulars.

Use coupon code aggregators. My favorite is Savings.com. Input the coupon code "friends25" and get 25 percent off a pair of Reebok sneakers. The sneakers, originally priced at $74, are on sale for $54. I used the coupon code and I got them for $41 plus tax, for a total of $43. Shipping was free.

Blippy.com: This is a new social media site that is a little out there for me, but here's the concept: People sign up and agree to share information about their purchases, either by linking their online accounts at Netflix or eBay or by giving Blippy.com information from their credit card statements.

That seems a little crazy but it is fascinating to see what other people are buying and sometimes you see a pretty good deal.

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