Before we hit Black Friday & Cyber Monday, I wanted to post about something which I think is going to be incredibly helpful to you, if you haven’t already signed up for it. It’s called UPS My Choice, and it’s a new FREE service from UPS that allows you to manage all the items being shipped to you at a level UPS has never before offered.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come home to see the little yellow and white UPS stickies on my door, instead of the wonderful widget I was hoping to find delivered to my doorstep. It’s frustrating, not having a job that allows me to take deliveries at the office, but I know I’m not the only one in this position. Enter the solution I’ve been waiting for for years: UPS My Choice.

My Choice not only has tracking, it also lets you know when your UPS packages are due for delivery A DAY IN ADVANCE, and allows you to authorize delivery without a signature. Translation: NO MORE YELLOW & WHITE STICKIES! If you happen to have an Amazon Prime membership, you’ve probably noticed that all of your deliveries come via UPS (at least mine all do). The hassle savings on these deliveries alone made it worth my time to sign up!

But there are other great features; for example, I know I mentioned that they let you know about your deliveries a day in advance. What’s really nice, though, is that they notify you via your preferred method – email, phone or text. So if you’re not the type to check your email every day, but you always have your cell with you, you can get a text. Don’t have a cell or an active email account? They’ll call ya! I like that they’ve geared this toward more than just the younger set.

But what if you’re having something big and expensive delivered, and don’t want it left on your front porch all day? They’ve got that instance covered as well, and two different ways! You can either have your package delivered to the nearest UPS Store, or choose another address (say, a neighbor who’s a stay-at-home mom?) and have the package delivered there. I don’t know about your local UPS Store but mine (and all the ones I’ve ever had occasion to use) have reasonable hours like 8am-7pm, that let me swing by after work and pick things up. I can see where this option would also be happy if, for instance, a package you were expecting didn’t arrive before you were slated to leave town for the holidays; then you could just re-route it to a nearby friend’s house to wait for you until you get home.

Now, all of the above is, as I said, FREE (although if I understand correctly the changing-the-delivery-address option might have an additional fee). Interestingly, they also offer a “Premium” membership level that adds a few more niceties. Like telling the driver where to leave your package (why leave it on the rainy front porch when the back porch has a roof over it?) and getting a confirmed two-hour delivery window. Upgrading is an option once you’ve finished your registration. I didn’t bother with it, as the fee was $40 per year, but I realize everyone has different needs, so I did want to mention it just in case.

There was also a little bonus I noticed on the confirmation screen; look at the top right of the Confirmation screen once you’ve finished registering, and look for a link that looks like the one at left that says “Download Coupons.”

I’m betting that these coupons will be the same all over, but just in case they aren’t here are the coupons I was able to print (and they’re a .pdf, so I was also able to save):

• 25% off packing service (this will come in handy during the Christmas shipping season!)
• 25% off printing service (if you do holiday newsletters, you’ll love this)
• 3 months free with a 1-year mailbox agreement (probably not for most people, but hey, if you happen to need it, why not save?)

Naturally, these are all redeemable at my local UPS Store.

So if you want to save a lot of time, hassle & frustration this holiday shopping season, make sure you sign up for UPS My Choice now, so that when you need it, it’ll be ready and waiting for you!

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Here’s a memorable government statistic on the state of the American family: The average American family (which consists of 2.5 people, and makes a sum of money each year that’s just short of $65,000) spends nearly $6,500 on food each year – or, $1 out of every $10 they make. This family also walks around with thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and pays $750 a year in interest, penalties and fees. If only there were way for those families to eat as well as they have been doing, but only do it for 10% less, they could cover those credit card overheads with no effort. So here are some ways to save money, tips on supermarket shopping methods that should help you free up that 10% for other kinds of expenses, and complement your couponing prowess.

To begin with, you need to be looking for things to buy that’ll help you cook from scratch. There was a survey a few years ago in the Washington Post that found that people who struggle with very low income levels tend to spend a disproportionately large part of their incomes on ready-made processed supermarket foods. In the section where the article discussed ways they could save money, tips they offered pointed out that they cooking from scratch could help their financial lives immeasurably. Cooking at home is far less expensive, and far healthier. Whatever assistance the processed food aisle provides at meal time, there is a hefty charge for it that they add on – for ready-grated cheese, pre-sliced pickles, diced chicken, bread crumbs, you name it. If for instance, you pass over the regular rice for the boil-in-the-bag, you could pay several times the cost of regular rice. The same goes for the new “microwaveable bags” of frozen vegetables. Save money and carcinogens by buying larger bags of veggies and nuking them on non-reactive glass or ceramic plates and bowls.

If you are thinking about how to visit the supermarket and save money, tips that will really make a difference will almost always mean changing well-entrenched habits. For instance, if it’s a family tradition to go all together to the supermarket to stock up for the week because it’s fun for the kids to ride shopping carts in the aisles, that could easily work against you; lots of people end up picking expensive snacks a lot of the time because their kids are right there, and they insist. Leaving the kids behind can be a difficult habit to start though. How about buying bottled water? To some people, this super-expensive supermarket habit is really all about feeling good about life, feeling pampered; it’s a habit that has to go. Paying two dollars for a couple glasses of water that should be free can quickly add up. If it’s about purity for you, consider investing in an under-sink reverse osmosis filter. It’s what Mr. Wonderful and I have, and it actually does pay for itself over its lifetime (not to mention keeping oodles of bottles out of landfills!). And of course there is the big one, eating less meat. Vegetable protein is much healthier (meaning fewer medical bills); and it’s cheaper to boot.

No save-money tips list would be complete without a creative set of suggestions on changing things around in the kitchen. A lot of waste, for instance, occurs through badly preserved leftovers. Easily spoiled stuff like sour cream needs to be stored in kitchen containers. It’ll keep longer. It’s easy to leave cookies and the like lying about in their store packaging; it takes effort to find a jar to put them in; but they will retain their taste longer this way. If you have half-used semi-hard cheese rolling about in one of the shelves in your fridge door, lightly coat the open end with butter to keep it from going moldy. And sometimes, you could save money altering recipes and substituting expensive stuff for similar tasting cheap stuff – carrots for zucchini for instance. You can also use less cheese in a recipe without changing the way it tastes. Recipes will often round out measures to make it easier on the cook. So you could make changes without changing anything important. The bottom line is that if you wish to save, money tips to do with being more responsible are hard. Changing comfortably entrenched habits can be the difficult; but it could be an investment in your health and your pocketbook that make the effort seem worth it.

P.S. I didn’t want you to think that I had forgotten the Sunday Coupon Inserts…they’re coming soon!

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