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How to Save Money and Time on Stuff You Buy and Never Leave Your House

Feb 28th, 2017

Don’t you love going to the grocery store and loading up your cart with the toilet paper, paper towels, diapers and dog food? By the time you’ve got these in the cart, there’s no room for the groceries. Or how many times has this happened? You get an email from home that you’re out of dog food and can you please pick some up on the way home. You likely just want to get home and don’t want to stop anywhere.

Many times in today’s society we pay more for convenience. It comes down to a trade-off between your time and your money. What if I told you that you could save time and money. You don’t have to make the trade-off. You can have both! You could be done with hauling a 30 pound bag of dog food out of the store with your other 12 bags of groceries.

It’s called Amazon Subscribe & Save and it’s awesome. Here’s how it works. When you order from Subscribe & Save it means you will purchase the product(s) and have it delivered on a regular basis from monthly to every 6 months. You automatically save 5% on each item on the plan and if you have 5 or more items per month on the plan you can save 15% per item. Plus Amazon Prime members save 20% on diapers. Your items are delivered with free standard shipping and if you’re a Prime member you get free 2 day delivery.

Set it and forget it is not just for your investments. You can set and forget your Subscribe & Save too. Login to your Amazon.com account and go to Subscribe & Save. Set up your products and delivery schedule and it all happens automatically. You don’t have to go in and order it again next time. You’ll get a reminder email prior to your order being shipped where you’ll have a chance to edit it before it goes out. Want to skip the toothpaste this month? Just click the skip button and it’s removed for this month but it’s still on your list and it will be ready to go again next month. If you have something you only use part of the year you can cancel it from your list at any time and re-start again later.

It’s especially useful for things you use on a regular basis but may not get on every trip to the grocery store. Things like Kleenex, deodorant, toilet paper, toothpaste, dishwashing detergent and hand soap, just to name a few. You’ll never run out of toilet paper or dog food again. It just shows up on your porch. No more late night runs to the drug store to pick up that item you forgot you were out of. No more lugging heavy bags of dog food or huge rolls of toilet paper that take up half your grocery cart. Think about this. You put the dog food in your cart at the grocery store or pet store. You take it out of the cart and put it on the belt at checkout. You take it out of the cart again to put it in your car and then you unload it from your car at home. You’ve handled that dog food four times by the time you get it home. Compare that to it just showing up on your front porch on a schedule that you select and it’s cheaper than you can buy it at the pet store.

It’s not just convenient. It saves you money. Not only do you not have to drive to the store, most of the items you buy from Subscribe & Save cost less than what they cost at Target or Walmart or the grocery store.

Some things I’ve found aren’t available on Subscribe & Save or there isn’t much cost savings. For these I’ve found the subscriptions at Target.com to be a good value. It works very similarly to the Amazon program. The items you’ll find at Target’s subscription service that are a better value than at Amazon or that aren’t available at Amazon are Tide laundry detergent, Downy fabric softener, Bounty paper towels and Secret deodorant. I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I know of.

Forget paying more for convenience. Amazon Subscribe & Save is a good investment of your time and your money. You can shop from home, make your life easier and save money .

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