The Ultimate Boxing Day Shopping Guide

While I'm not the biggest fan of Boxing Day/Week shopping, I will be the first to admit that you can get some really good deals at this time of year. So many flyers, e-mails, promo codes... it's a lot to research if you are looking for a particular type of deal. To make things a little easier, I will be posting links to Boxing Day/Week flyers and promotions over the next few days.

Please check back regularly: I will continue to add links as I come across them.

Please note that businesses highlighted in yellow are Air Miles partners. Sign into airmilesshops.ca and redirect to the retailer's website to earn Air Miles on your purchases.

Boxing Day/Week Flyers and Promotions

Aeropostale (Dec 26th only; Promo Code: "10HOLIDAY" for $15 off $100 purchase ending 1/7)

Amazon.ca (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $25)

Apple Canada (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $75; earn 2x the Air Miles on the iPad2)

Banana Republic.ca (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $50; save up to 50% on select mens and women's styles + an additional 40% off select styles promo code: BRC40SALE)

Best Buy (Note that there is an in-store and online flyer; input your Postal Code to get your local version)

The Brick

Brown's Shoes (up to 70% off)

The Bay (advance list thanks to Smart Canucks.ca) (Air Miles via HBC Rewards Redemption)

Canadian Tire

Chapters.indigo.ca (10x the Air Miles + 3x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $25; Promo Code: OLDEC11 for $5 off online purchases) 

Additional Deals:

• Some recent bestsellers for under $10 until Jan 1, 2012
• $20 off Kobo Touch + 3x the Air Miles (expires Dec 31, 2011)

Cineplex Store (2x SCENE Points and up to 65% off your purchase)

Danier

Dell (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011 + 3x the Air Miles until Jan 6, 2012) 

Promo Codes:

• "Save $50 on all Home and Home Office Laptops and Desktops when you spend over $999.99" Promo code: HRMWV2N$0803TT (expires Jan 15, 2012)
• "Save $200 on all Boxing Week Blowout PCs when you spend over $2199.99"                  Promo code: 5XRZHPQ83W23FD (expires Jan 6, 2012)
• "Save $25 on all Home and Home Office Laptops and Desktops when you spend over $599.99" Promo code: KSFSVXZ9TL6NL3 (expires Jan 15, 2012)
• "Save $100 on all Boxing Week Blowout PCs when you spend over $1399.99!" Promo code: 34JT4S5TWG3X1H (expires Jan 6, 2012)
• "Save $100 on select Dell Canada Desktop and Laptop Systems when you spend over $899" Promo code: NCB47MS8??$911 (expires Dec 29, 2011)
• "Save $50 on select Dell Canada Desktop and Laptop Systems when you spend under $899" Promo code: FH4NXZC84LTF9Z (expires Dec 29, 2011)
• "Save $150 on all Boxing Week Blowout PCs when you spend over $1799.99" Promo code: 2CK14$Q5LM5L1F (expires Jan 6, 2012)
• "Save $150 on ALL Home and Home Office Laptops and Desktops when you spend over $1799.99" Promo code: 2CK14$Q5LM5L1F (expires Jan 15, 2012)
• Other possible promo codes here

Ebay.ca (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011)

Eddie Bauer (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011)

Future Shop (Note that there is an in-store and online flyer; input your Postal Code to get your local version)

The Gap (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $50)

HMV

Home Depot (possible promo code for free shipping here)

Home Outfitters (Air Miles via HBC Rewards Redemption)

Home Sense 

J.C. Penney (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011)

Leon's

London Drugs

Lowe's

Old Navy.ca (10x the Air Miles + 2x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders.over $50)

Roots (10x the Air Miles + 3x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; up to 50% off + an additional 20% off select items; see roots.com for restrictions; possible promo codes here)

Sears.ca (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; other possible promo codes here)

Sephora.ca (10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; free shipping on orders over $120 CDN until Dec 31, 2011; 
Additional Deals:

• Free Holiday Sample Kit with any $25 purchase until Dec 31, 2011: promo code "PREPKIT"
• Free skincare sample bag with 7 of Sephora's best-selling skincare samples (until Dec 31, 2011 or while supplies last): promo code "SKINSTARS"

Shoppers Drug Mart

Sony Style Canada:

• Spend $99.99 or more before tax and receive $5 off
• Spend $249.99 or more before tax and receive $15 off
• Spend $499.99 or more before tax and receive $40 off
• Spend $999.99 or more before tax and receive $100 off
• Promo Code for the above four deals: "SONYVIP". Expires Dec 31, 2011

The Source (10x the Air Miles + 2x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011)

Sport Mart

Sport Chek

Spring

Staples.ca

Suzy Shier (50% off all fall merchandise in store and online)

TigerDirect.ca (10x the Air Miles + 2x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011)

Town Shoes

Toys "R" Us (10x the Air Miles + 2x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011; possible promo codes here)

Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale is already on! 10x the Air Miles until Dec 31, 2011. Free shipping on orders over $100 (Promo Code: VS100)

Vision's Electronics

Walmart.ca

Winners

Zellers (Air Miles via HBC Rewards Redemption)


Also, check out the Airmilesshops.ca 25,000 Air Miles Reward Miles Contest. You'll earn 10, 25, 100 or 1000 reward miles just for playing to be credited to your account as long as you make a qualifying purchase of $40 or more within 5 days (before December 31, 2011). A great way to get a few extra bonus Air Miles on your purchase!


Until next time, happy holidays! Thanks for reading!

Young Professional Savings Tip: Consider a Tax-Free Savings Account

Video courtesy of YouTube and Scotiabank 

With the new year upon us, now is a great time to check your Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) balance and examine if you've utilized your annual contribution room of $5000. No funds to add? No sweat: unused contribution room can be utilized in future years. The sooner you use your contribution room, the more your TFSA can work for you. Just remember that if you've made any withdrawals from your account(s), you cannot replenish this contribution room until the year following that in which the withdrawal occurred.

If you don't already have a TFSA and want to learn more, check out the above video (happens to be from Scotiabank, although you can setup a TFSA through most banks). I think it does a great job of explaining the basics and any financial advisor would be happy to assist with specific questions. It's really important to be familiar with the "rules" so that you don't contribute too much in a calendar year and wind up paying a penalty. To learn about the rules governing TFSA contributions and withdrawals, speak with a financial advisor and/or consult your bank's website as well as that of the Government of Canada.

A few cool things I've learned about TFSAs:

1. If you turned 18 prior to 2009, you've accumulated $5000 of contribution room each year since 2009. You didn't need to open a TFSA in order to accumulate this contribution room. If you turned 18 in 2009 or 2010, you accumulated contribution room from the year you turned 18 onwards.

2. You can hold more than one TFSA account at a time but it is up to you to ensure that your total contributions do not exceed your contribution room so as to avoid receiving a penalty. You can use this opportunity to take advantage of higher interest rates at one financial institution without withdrawing funds from an existing TFSA at another (which could impact your contribution room in a given year). While it is possible to transfer TFSA funds from an account at one institution to another, it can come with an undesirable transfer fee. You might examine how a late-December withdrawal from an existing TFSA account followed by an early-January deposit to a new TFSA account could help you avoid the transfer fee.

3. Whenever possible, take advantage of new TFSA contribution room as soon as you receive it (January 1st of each year). Doing so will help you maximize the amount of interest you can earn over time.

4. TFSAs can be a good home for your tax return. If you are making RRSP contributions, you might consider the domino effect when planning for your TFSA:
- How much of a tax refund are you expecting to receive?
- How does this refund amount compare to your contribution room?
- Assuming the tax return will be coming in a few months, what can you contribute to your TFSA in January?

Again, I am not a pro at TFSAs nor do I claim to be. It can be a really helpful savings tool and not enough young professionals know about it hence why I thought it would make a good topic for a blog post. Have questions? Connect with your bank or a financial advisor. You will be on your way before you know it!

Gift Card Deals at Safeway this week

If you aren't a Safeway "e-mail direct" recipient, it would be a great week to sign up! Doing so will give you access to coupons for the following offers:

25 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $25 Empire Theatres Gift Card (coupon required)

50 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $50 Future Shop Gift Card (coupon required)

50 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $50 Home Depot Gift Card (coupon required)

50 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $50 HBC Celebrate Gift Card (coupon required)

50 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $50 HBC Gift Card (coupon required)

50 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $50 Moxie's Gift Card (coupon required)

25 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $25 Winners Gift Card (coupon required)

25 Bonus Air Miles when you purchase a $25 Golf Town Gift Card (coupon required)

And...

Save $20 when you purchase $100 worth of iTunes Gift Cards (coupon required)

All offers are valid from December 9-15, 2011. See each coupon for rules and restrictions.

In addition to serving as gift cards, you could always use these to facilitate some of your holiday shopping and earn bonus Air Miles in the process.

To join Safeway E-mail Direct, click here. You'll earn 100 bonus Air Miles just for signing up!

Enjoy!

4 tips to help you offset retail markup during the holiday shopping season:

As a young professional who has to closely monitor Christmas spending, I prefer to only give gifts that are meaningful and/or will be frequently utilized. It can be frustrating when your “amazing gift idea” comes with a steeper-than-desired price tag attached. Before exceeding your budget or ruling out your great idea, why not try some of the following strategies? Earlier today, I used these steps to purchase a gift for less than $60 (including tax) that currently retails anywhere between $100 and $180 (without taxes!).

The way I see it: why should anyone pay 2-4 times more for the same product in the same brand-new, unopened condition? Especially when it won’t impact the recipient’s experience in any way? The extra money can be saved, used towards other gift purchases... even taking the gift recipient out for coffee or brunch!

While it’s certainly not possible to find products at such reduced prices in all cases, there is almost always a way to score a deal! The key is to become an active shopper. Here are some tips to help you find the best deals possible on that “perfect gift”:

Step One: Use price comparison websites to identify a price point

The Canada Post Price Comparison Shopper is a website that allows you to search for products and identify retailers offering the lowest prices after factoring for shipping + customs (when applicable). It also uses graphs to illustrate the product’s pricing fluctuation over time.

The website does a good job of presenting information from a number of Canadian as well as U.S. retailers that will ship to Canada. That being said, it is also worth become familiar with other price comparison websites as for whatever reason, some U.S. retailers are not featured on the Canada Post website. Just remember to add duty/brokerage to the total cost of the product if not otherwise indicated.

Pricegrabber.com

Nextag.com

Shoptolt.ca

Shopbot.ca

Dealgenius.ca

Step Two: Search for promotion codes or sales linked to competitive retailers

After searching on price comparison websites, you might think you’ve found the most competitive retailer. Think again. Although useful tools, price comparison websites do not consistently reflect sales and promo codes that can further reduce the cost of the product you seek.  

In other words, the retailer with the third-most competitive offer according to the price comparison website might take first-place after applying a promo code.

After using price comparison to identify 3-4 of the most competitive retailers, I suggest visiting their websites to see if there are any current sales that indicate further reductions on the listed price of the product. I also suggest searching for promo codes that can be used upon check-out. If you’re not familiar with promo codes, they are the online version of a coupon. How to find them:

My personal favourite is retailmenot.com. You can search over 140,000 online retailers! Users post active promo codes; admittedly not all work as described, however visitors can click “green checkmarks” to indicate which promo codes which have worked for them. Results appear to the left of listed promo codes. This gives you a good idea as to whether a promo code is reliable or not.

Step Three: Compare the best retail offer with comparable deals on eBay

Is the item you are looking for available on eBay? What is the average price point? How does this compare with the “winner” from your price comparison website/promo code search? Are the eBay products of the same quality? Would the eBay seller’s return policy meet your needs or those of your gift recipient?

Through eBay, you can participate in auctions and in some cases you can “buy it now” by matching a seller’s desired price. By setting up a paypal account, you can keep your payment information private from the seller. 
As well, you can sign up to receive eBay bucks (2% of your purchase in the form of quarterly gift certificates for future eBay purchases good for 30 days upon issue). See ebay.ca for program details and restrictions.

In addition to eBay, there’s always local flyers classifieds to check, for example:

·      eFlyers for local businesses

·      Local newspaper

·      Kijiji.ca

·      Facebook marketplace

·      Craigslist.ca

It’s always wise to exercise caution with sharing of personal information when interacting directly with a seller. It’s worth checking these postings though: you might be surprised by all of the great deals you can find!

Step Four: If you can’t lower the price, try to select the deal that offers the greatest amount of loyalty points

Can’t find a product at the price-point you hoped for? Perhaps you can leverage the additional cost with the value of loyalty points accrued as a result of making the purchase. In addition to typical credit card points, here are several ways to accrue significant bonus loyalty points:

Airmilesshops.ca: By inputting your Air Miles account number, selecting the desired partner retailer and redirecting to the regular website for that company, you can earn many bonus Air Miles on your purchase. 

Check back regularly for multiplier events! For example, a retailer might normally offer 1 Air Mile for every $20 spent. Frequently there are 2x, 3x, 5x and 10x the points events! Now is a great time to visit airmilesshops.ca as several retailers are offering 10x the points (until December 8, 2011).

Tip: Register for the Airmilesshops.ca Holiday Contest. You’ll earn 10, 25, 100 or 1000 bonus Air Miles on your next qualifying purchase ($40 or more). See airmilesshops.ca website for contest details and restrictions.

Aeroplan.com offers an eStore as well that operates in a similar way.

Costco.ca is offering 1 Aeroplan Mile per dollar spent on Costco.ca until December 11, 2011. To register your Aeroplan card with Costco.ca, visit here.

You might be pleasantly surprised by how many points you can accrue on a single purchase: in some cases it’s possible to earn more than 1 Air Mile per dollar spent.

Anyways, this has been a longer blog entry: congrats for making it this far! I hope this is helpful information and that you learned something new.

Some other helpful tips as you shop: 
Carry your smart phone or tablet while you shop. You can quickly check price comparison websites and determine whether the in-store price tag is competitive. I once saved myself from spending twice as much at Chapters by purchasing a book online… ironically from chapters.indigo.ca (combining online price + irewards + promo code + free shipping) 
Smartcanucks.ca. If there’s a sale, coupon or deal to be had, this community of Canadian shoppers will know. 
Know your retailers inside and out. For example, if you’re an Apple fan, it’s good to know that:
- They only have sales once-a-year on Black Friday
- They offer educational discounts to students, teachers, faculty and staff of colleges and universities
- You can earn Aeroplan Miles and Air Miles on purchases made online at the Apple Store provided you sign in and re-direct from the appropriate website
- Sometimes Apple participates in multiplier events associated with the above loyalty programs (eg. timing your purchase with the Air Miles10x the points event on now until December 8, 2011)
- When new models are introduced, older versions are often discounted
- Apple offers refurbished products at reduced cost (see website)

And after all of this… of course, some of the best gifts can’t be purchased or wrapped. Time spent with family and friends doing a favourite activity. Personalized craft projects and photo albums.

Good luck with your search for the “perfect gift”. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Shopper's Drug Mart "Spend your points" event on through Sunday, December 4th

Photo credit: Shopper's Drug Mart (e-flyer)

Have you checked your Shopper's Optimum Card balance recently? If you have at least 30,000 points to spend, you might want to head to Shopper's tomorrow (Sunday) and pick up some household items or gifts.

During the "Spend Your Points" event,

30,000 points will get you $60 off your total bill (for an added value of $20)

50,000 points will get you $125 off your total bill (for an added value of $40)

95,000 points will get you an extra $250 off your total bill (for an added value of $80)

Also a good idea to check the e-flyer before you shop. There are some good deals this week. For example, several varieties of John Frieda hair care products are on sale for $7.99 + 15x the Optimum Points.

For additional information and restrictions, consult the Shopper's Drug Mart flyer and website.

I really wish I had 95,000 points to spend!

You're never too old to sit on Santa's lap

As the holiday shopping season gets underway, thought I'd share this enjoyable You Tube video from Improv Everywhere.

Good luck to all with your adventures at the mall!