End of the Week Wrap-Up

Happy Weekend!  Did you enjoy Mr. Saver’s LED bulb post this week, and did you guess that his educational background is in the computers & engineering field?

We finished out the week with money to put back into savings.  Some will be set aside for an Amazon Subscribe and Save order that will hit in a few weeks.  For information on saving money using Subscribe and Save, see these earlier posts.  The rest of the money is for long-term savings.

The main reasons we spent less this week were simple meals at home and a return to work for me meant little time to get in trouble anywhere else.  I have to admit, being back at work after a summer off is a harder adjustment than I remembered.  It isn’t so much the process of getting out the door, making lunches, and so on, but more my own expectations about what I can accomplish at home.  I have another week of simple meals planned, and I hope I can eventually get back to making more interesting meals.  My family, however, would be happy to eat eggs, hot dogs, and pea soup for quite some time!

I did get away to the mall for a bit this week before picking our daughter up from school and treated myself with my birthday money to a really good nonstick pan from Sur la Table.  I also was pleased to buy our daughter her Halloween costume – Athena, Goddess of Wisdom.  This gal loves to dress up from any historical period.  While saving money is quite a thrill for me, I try not to let my spending muscles atrophy too much, especially when I can buy something that will be really enjoyed.

We have about $100.00 in our “Family Fun Money” budget line and are trying to decide as a family whether we want to buy the game “Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries” with it.    My daughter said she would like to go to Montana instead, but I’d say our fund is about $3,900 short on money for that.  Any Ticket to Ride fans out there? To me, a game is always a good investment.

How was your week?

Black Belt Savers Only: Locking in Low Prices Using Amazon Subscribe and Save

Mrs. Saver is itching to get back to her blog, so this is Mr. Saver’s last day guest blogging about Amazon’s Subscribe & Save (“S&S”) program.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

To appreciate today’s S&S strategy, you need to understand the anatomy of an S&S order.

1. When you first order a product through the S&S program, Amazon immediately places an order for the product.
2. The order is listed as “Shipping Soon” but the shipment doesn’t occur until about five days prior to your monthly scheduled delivery date.
3. For subsequent future deliveries, Amazon will automatically create an order for the item about 12 days prior to the delivery date.  Like with the initial order, this new order will be in “Shipping Soon” status until about five days prior to the delivery date when the item will ship.

Why is this important?  Because your price for the product locks in when the order (or automatic re-order) is placed.  Since Amazon’s prices fluctuate frequently, you can save money by watching the prices of your S&S items leading up to their shipment.

For example, say you ordered a water filter through S&S for $11.40 on May 23 and your delivery date is June 15.  On June 2, you notice that the item price has dropped to $9.60.  What do you do?

1. Go to the S&S page and cancel your subscription to the product.
2. Doing this is supposed to cancel the associated order, but I never trust this so I manually cancel the order too on Amazon’s “Your Orders” page.
3. Now go and resubscribe to the product, and you will lock it in at the new, lower price.

You can use this strategy prospectively for re-orders as well.  If you see that one of your S&S items has dropped in price, you can lock in that price by canceling and then restarting your S&S subscription to that product.  If the price is exceptionally good, you can even consider increasing the quantity of what will be delivered.  I did this recently when the omega-3 packets I normally buy dropped from $26.50 to $21.00.  Today, those same packets are back near $26.50 in price.

One final caveat to be aware of with this strategy: you cannot lock in the price of a product more than one month prior to the product’s scheduled delivery.

Thanks for sticking with me over the past three days.  I hope you found this topic useful.   Keep on saving!

Using Amazon Subscribe and Save, Part 2

Mr. Saver is here again to talk a little more about Amazon’s Subscribe & Save (“S&S”) program. You can view yesterday’s Intro post on the Subscribe and Save program here.

First off, let me say that you can save money with the S&S program even if you use it in its most basic form, which is to:

1. order the products that you normally use,
2. set them on a reasonable recurring delivery schedule, and
3. then wait for the products to arrive.

However, you can save more money if you give your S&S account a little TLC.

The simplest way to save money with S&S is to try to ensure that you have five or more products being delivered in a single month in order to get a 15% (rather than the standard S&S 5%) discount.  Regardless of the schedule you initially set up when you first ordered your S&S product, you can easily change the next delivery month for the product by going to your S&S page (you can access this by clicking on “Your Subscribe & Save Items” under “Your Account” on the Amazon home page).

The S&S page displays all the products you are currently subscribed to in the program.  To the left of each product is the product’s next delivery date (e.g. “June 15”) and the delivery schedule (e.g. “1 unit every 4 months”).  By clicking on the “Change” button to the right of the delivery schedule, you can change both the delivery month and frequency.

Once you have a little experience with the S&S program, you will find your own best rhythm to the shipments.  For me personally, I have found that bimonthly shipments work best to keep us well-stocked.  Mrs. Saver may occasionally say these bimonthly shipments keep us TOO well stocked, but we agree to differ on this issue.

In tomorrow’s blog post, I will explain how you can lock in your best price using S&S.

How to Save 15% with Amazon Subscribe and Save

“Honey, the Amazon order is here!”

By Mr. Healthful Saver

It is my pleasure to guest write the Healthful Saver blog today and give Mrs. Saver a day off.  Like Mrs. Saver, I love to save money, but I readily admit that I don’t like to work hard to do so.  One of the easiest ways I have found to save money is Amazon’s Subscribe & Save (“S&S”) program.

If you shop at Amazon at all, you have likely come across items offered in the S&S program.  The program includes household items that one buys routinely throughout the year like vitamins, shampoo, and water filters.

When you purchase your first item through the S&S program (by clicking the “Subscribe” button), you choose how often you want to receive the item (e.g. once a month, once every three, etc.) and which day of the month you want your S&S items to arrive.  You can easily cancel the subscription later or change the frequency so there is no danger in buying something via S&S, even if you are not sure if you will want to order it more than once.

All items ordered via S&S are discounted 5% off normal Amazon prices and come with free shipping.  If you have five or more S&S items arriving in a single month, you instead receive 15% off the normal Amazon prices for all those items.  Amazon will ship all those items to you in one box and they are, in essence, passing the savings along to you.

With the discounts, the prices in the S&S program range from so-so to very, very good.  In general, I find the best deals are on products that I would normally need to buy in a speciality or health food store.

While the S&S program is simple, there are some strategies to help ensure that you get the lowest prices.  I will discuss one of those strategies in tomorrow’s post.