I have a couple of Macy’s coupons for my daughter, which I’ll be giving away as a gift to her for Christmas.
One is the $25 discount for one bag.
The other is the discount for a full-size purse.
The coupon for the full-sized purse offers $30 off a $150 purchase, and the coupon for a purse offers just $10 off a full size purchase.
I figured that my daughter could buy one bag and save me a little bit of money, so I gave her both.
But I didn’t have enough coupons to give both bags away.
So I thought I’d give one to her as a token of my appreciation, and give the other as a bonus.
My daughter has been asking me how much money I have, and I’ve been asking her how much I have saved by not giving her any of my coupons.
She’s a bit puzzled by my explanation of why she would want a coupon, so she has been telling me about the “free” bag that I gave to her, which is a pretty great deal.
The $25 coupon offers a $50 discount off the purchase of $150.
This discount is for a $15 purchase, but that $15 discount can be extended to $20, $30, $40, $50 or $60 for a total of $100.
So, my daughter saved $5 on the purchase (not including the $10 coupon) with the coupon, and her savings came to just over $10.
(I am assuming she was using the coupon with her credit card, but I’ve not done a test.)
This makes a lot of sense, so let’s dig a little deeper.
If I give my daughter the coupon that offers a discount of $25 off $150, she will save $4.
That’s a lot less than $5, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
I’m using a standard calculation, so this is what my daughter would need to do.
She would have to buy a full bag of $50-$150 (excluding the $15 coupon) and then pay for a bag with the $20 coupon.
She might also have to pay extra for shipping if she wanted to save $5.
I’ve included a table with this calculation in the image below.
My mother is not using the full bag because she has a full purse, but she would have the option to pay less if she likes.
My daughter is saving $4 by buying the full $150 bag instead of the $5 coupon.
That’s not the worst-case scenario, but if you are in the same boat, you’ll need to figure out how to figure that out.
(The $15/bag savings is for the $150 purse, so the $30 savings is the same for both.)
If you can figure out the math, this works out to a savings of about $7 per month, or $8.30 per year.
If you’re saving that $7, you have a little more than a year left to save money and get ahead.