Queen of the Discount

 Gamification:  Definition:  "adding game mechanics into non-game environments, like a website, online community, learning management system or business' intranet to increase participation." ...or in my case, "adding game mechanics into not-game environments like saving money....to increase participation." Yesterday, while reading the monthly email that my thermostat brand sends me to tell me that I am thiiiis close being considered (amongst their customers in the area I live) the 'most efficient user' of energy, I started to think about what I could do to 'win' by moving the proverbial needle further along the spectrum to 'most efficient user.'  Needles to say, I bumped the thermostat down another degree (from 61 at night to 60) to see if that does the trick.   In the 12 hours since that email, I've further realized over the course of just a half-dozen-ish blog posts that I regularly use the words 'play' or 'game' whe...

I generally don't advocate for anything 'dirty' when it comes to trying to using hacks for the Discount game.  In fact, that's a general POV on life for me:  be a decent person and do decent things. With that said, there is an email hack that is simple, effective-and incredibly common.  So common, that when I was working in eCommerce, if I had a dollar for every time I saw this happen, I would be rich!  And, while it was a bit annoying (mainly from a customer data management perspective), I never once thought-even as a professional-that this hack was dirty.  If anything, I thought:  fair play on you for figuring it out. So, here you go! We've all been on the websites where, if you sign up with your email -as a new customer-you will get some $ or % off your first order.  This functionality is eCommerce 101, and is easy peasy for any customer to do, right?  Well, here's the hack.  To my knowledge, this only works with Gmail (so, if you're still...

As much as I enjoy 'playing the game' of finding discounts and saving money, there are times when it's just grinding away at the shopping basics:  Buy when something is on sale.  And, if it's a good sale...stock up.  Easy enough, right?  Yes.BUT...how do you know when something is on sale-and how do you know that a particular sales price is a *good* sales price?!?  Well, if you're (a little...) OCD like me, you track prices! Now, I recognize this won't work for everyone or everything:  Sometimes, you can't plan to buy something, and goodness knows that the 3,437 varieties of the same item (ish) on Amazon can make it impossible to compare...but, there are still a few tricks for knowing when to pull the trigger on something-and especially when to stock up.  I'll talk about this concept often on a variety of areas over the upcoming years, but today, I want to focus on one specific area:  Groceries.  Food shopping.   This trick will wor...