Online coupon website attracts bargain-hunters

Proud Victoria penny pinchers Lina and Steven Zussino have taken their lifestyle online and are using social media to make and save money -- and to help others do the same.

Their free website, www.groceryalerts.ca, is bringing the practice of clipping coupons into the tech age with Facebook, Twitter and an iPhone application as wary shoppers are careful with their cash in the wake of the recession. Canadian consumer prices in May were up 1.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to the latest data released by Statistics Canada this week.

Shoppers using www.groceryalerts.ca can print coupons, read flyers and product reviews, see the latest discounts and use a new coupon tracker on Facebook to figure out how much money they saved.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/business/Online+coupon+website+attracts+bargain+hunters/3194387/story.html#ixzz0roqhoTDk

SOurce: http://www.timescolonist.com/business/Online+coupon+website+attracts+bargain+hunters/3194387/story.html

Coupon redemption climbed to 3.3 billion in 2009 Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/07/1998067/coupon-redemption-climbed-to-33.html#ixzz0r3

While the tight economy truly sucks, we're seeing one big advantage: Many consumers have returned to the frugal ways our grandparents used during the Great Depression. Such practices as re-using plastic bags, limiting or abandoning credit card use, and using coupons to stretch our budgets have become ingrained.

In fact, coupon use has grown so monumentally the statistics for 2009 are staggering.

Coupon use grew to 29 percent, the first annual increase seen since 1992.

More than 3.3 billion coupons were redeemed in 2009, for a total savings of $858 million.

Nearly 30 percent of people surveyed by Promo P&I Newsletter in 2009 said they made a special trip to a store to use a coupon.

This trend started in October of 2008 - coinciding with news of the U.S. financial crisis - and led to 15 months of double-digit growth.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/07/1998067/coupon-redemption-climbed-to-33.html#ixzz0r3hhB1xT

Some things do come for free, right to your mailbox

Most of us who are committed to stretching our grocery budgets have got the hang of finding, clipping and using coupons. But to take the art of saving money further, try signing up for freebies.

That’s the message this week from Crystal Paine, the blogger behind Money Saving Mom and a self-taught home budgeting expert. “I used to think signing up for freebies was a waste of time,” she writes. “It seemed like signing up for freebies meant spending lots of time searching online and filling out forms, all just to get tiny little samples of stuff I didn’t need and wouldn’t use in the first place.”

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/home-cents/some-things-do-come-for-free-right-to-your-mailbox/article1600854/

A struggle to eat in Toronto’s food deserts

A new policy paper from the Martin Prosperity Institute analyzes the growing number of “food deserts” — areas where residents do not have easy access to good quality, affordable food. It estimates that only 51 per cent of Toronto’s population lives within 1 kilometre of a grocery store.

Food deserts are most pronounced in the inner suburbs and the city’s 13 priority neighbourhoods, such as Lawrence Heights, Flemingdon Park and Steeles-L’Amoureaux.

The inner suburbs, once home to middle-class families with cars, are now filled with low-income families, often new immigrants, dependent on transit or walking. Picking up food is daunting, especially for seniors and disabled residents.

For Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare, the solutions lie in better planning: “Nothing in the Planning Act demands a developer to build a grocery store,” she points out, though there are requirements for things like schools.

“As a right of living in a great city like ours, people should be able to walk two blocks from their home and get a full range of foods — fresh meat, vegetables, bakeries — that are not outrageously priced,” said Field.

"I would think that the planners need to work with the private sector to make that happen.”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/yourcitymycity/article/823514--a-struggle-to-eat-in-toronto-s-food-
deserts