10% off Target Gift cards.

For today (12/3) only, target is offering 10% off Gift cards purchased online or in store. This is up to $300 per order. It is a great way to either stock up on Target GC's to effectively get 10% off every target purchase for the next year or a great way to buy GC's for friends and family at a discount.

If you have a discover cashback card, this deal can be paired with it to get an additional 5% cashback on target purchases for this quarter for an effective ~15% off (10% discount + 5 % cashback) on future target purchases.

Free $10 amazon credit

This might be targeted, so check your amazon account if you are a amazon prime member and your default card is anything other than a discover card.

Just by setting your default card to discover, amazon will apply a $10 credit to your account which can be used right away. You obviously don't have to use the discover card to pay for your orders, you can always chose another card at check out.

It is a free $10 for a couple of clicks in my opinion. You can go back tomorrow and change your default credit card back to whatever you were using.

Paying less than $6 for movie tickets.

Me and desi girl love to watch movies, it is one of our favorite weekend activities. With the huge movie line up from last summer (Thor,Captain America, Green Lantern, Transformers etc) it can get very expensive for a couple trying to see a movie every other weekend. One movie would normally cost us $23 ($11.5 * 2). I hate to spend that kind of money for tickets (not to mention the $5.5 for a small popcorn and $4 for a small bottle of water).

I started buying ticket packs at the local costco, they sell 2 tickets for $16.5 which takes a few dollars of the original cost of the tickets which is sweet. Buying just a few tickets in a year would be more than enough to take care of our yearly costco membership fees ($50). In august i came across a deal on costco.com, where they were selling a pack of 10 AMC tickets for $62.99 ($82.99 - $20 instant member discount), i literally pounced on that deal :). An AMC ticket for $6.3 meant we would save $5.2 on EVERY ticket or $10.4 every time we went out to watch a movie, sign me up.

Last week costco.com ran the same deal for a couple of days, here is a snapshot -

Needless to say, i purchased another 10 pack set which sets us up for the most part of this year watching movies at $6.3 a pop. What's more i am a member of AMC Stubs, i am not a big fan of this program since they charge you $12 a year just for membership which includes non essential stuff like online stub collection, free upgrades on concessions etc. I was given a one year free trial since i was a previous AMC rewards member, plus early this year they had a promotion where i was able to extend my membership for a year for only $6.

I normally would have opted out, but you earn 1 point for every dollar spend at AMC and get $10 credit for every 100 points earned, which makes this an effective 10% cashback. This is useful to me since i buy a ticket for $6.3 but earn points for the original $11.5 value. So the $63 movie pack gets me another $11.5 in AMC credits after i use them for future use which can be used to buy one ticket at the normal price. Effectively getting me 11 tickets for $62.99 ( $5.73 per ticket). Original cost - $126.5, saving over $60 on something we would do anyway.Not bad at all.

TurboTax Deluxe Fed + EFile + State 2011 PLUS Quicken Starter Edition 2012 For under $20.

I have been using TurboTax for taxes for the last 2 years and both the times i have purchased the deluxe windows download version from amazon for around $45. This is how i ended up getting it for under $20 this year. (If you do not get a price match - your OOP will be around $25).

I found this deal thread on slickdeals and did the following-

1. Get a $25 off $75 Staples coupon at http://www.e-junkie.com/ for $1.85
2. Go to http://www.staples.com/ and add the TurboTax Deluxe Fed + EFile + State 2011 edition to your cart for $49.99
3. Add the Quicken Starter Edition 2012 to cart for $29.99 (but free because they send a $30 prepaid visa card back via Staples Easy Rebates) Total is now 79.98
4. Add the $25 off $75 coupon .

So this made my total $54.98 after applying the coupon. Under the current promotion I will get a $30 Visa Pre-paid card + a $5 Staples GC in mail (It takes about a minute to enter the information in the Staples easy rebates site). I end up with both Turbo tax Deluxe and the Quicken starter edition + a $5 Staples GC for a total of $24.98. Which is a great deal according to me.

While i was checking out, i checked the price of TurboTax Deluxe on amazon.com, and it was $39.79 so i did a quick web chat with a staples CS rep. She was ready to Price match and give me a $11 discount, but then i could not use the $25 off coupon since my total cart value was below $75, so i ended up adding a random item for $5.99 so that i could make use of the coupon.(This item had another $ 2 off which was added later on- it is the kleenex tissue box pack of 3 if someone is interested in doing the same)

So, there i ended up getting the TT Deluxe + Quicken + $5 Staples GC + Kleenex tissue boxes for $19.6.
($49.99 + $29.99 + $5.99 - $25.00 - $2.00 = $58.97 - $11.2 price adjustment = $47.77 - $30 + $1.85 = $19.62 )

Another $2 Amazon mp3 credit.

Seems like amazon releases free mp3 codes around product launches. They just announded the "fire" tablet today. They have another $2 credit for mp3's out there too.

Go to this amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000296831.
Click on "Enter Your Code".
Enter "FALLMP3S".

As easy as  that - $2 credit for mp3 downloads. That is 2 free songs, since each song is usuall $0.99.

Free $2 Amazon mp3 credit.

Go to this amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000296831.
Click on "Enter Your Code".
Enter "CLOUDMP3".

As easy as  that - $2 credit for mp3 downloads. That is 2 free songs, since each song is usuall $0.99.

LivingSocial - Fandango.com, 2 movie tickets for just $9.

I came across this exclusive link via an employer website. This is really great value considering you pay $9 for two tickets (each ticket can be upto $15 including the fandango charge). We recently watched a 3D movie using a previous such deal for just $10.50 ($9 for the deal + $1.5 additional) which would have cost us $31.50 instead. Pretty sweet.

Here is the link to todays deal - LivingSocial, 2 Movie tickets for $9.

$25 Restaurant.com coupon for $3

restaurant.com usually has $25 gift certificates for a low price of $10. Every now and then they have additional discount codes to bring the price down even further.
Use the promo code FORK to get an additional 70% off to get a certificate for just $3.

Never be shy to ask !

Happy new year to everyone. I hope 2010 was good for everyone, and 2011 will be much better.

One of my favourite places to eat is chipotle, i am constantly amazed at how i can get the same combination of ingredients and yet not get bored of eating it even after so many years. I guess its the freshness and flavor that they pack in their simple food - which makes it so fresh and tasty every time.

Chipotle is one place though, which never gives discounts, so i was pleasantly amazed when recently a newly opened chipotle sent us a "Buy one get one free" coupon which was valid till dec 31. A combination of being caught up in finishing work, holiday shopping and travel meant i could not go to chipotle before the coupon expired.

We finally ended up going yesterday, and for good measure i took the coupon along just in case. Me and desi girl got our generously filled, flavor loaded burrito bowls and when we got to the counter i see this cashier in not such a good mood - one part of me said "don't mention the coupon - he could end up insulting you for trying to use it even though it says valid till 31st in bold right up front" and that's what desi girl would have told me too, but i still went ahead and slipped him the coupon mentioning that i was away so couldn't use it earlier. He simply said "Fine, i wonder why u didn't use this before" and rang it up for us. So there - this was another case of getting something by asking for it, and not shying away.

That is one thing i believe in - be it finance or any other part of life, there is no way you will find out if you can get something from someone, unless you ask.

Is Groupon really worth $6 billion, or more?

Groupon is a popular online coupon company. According to Forbes.com, it is the fastest growing company ever, beating the likes of amazon.com and eBay.com.
It works on a simple concept - It extracts deep discounts of as much as 50% from major retailers in return for promising to deliver a minimum number of customers. It then engages Web surfers in a game of sorts, telling them they must get as many people as possible to respond by a deadline in order for everyone to get the discount. Groupon gets half the sales dollars, and the client gets to market its products, while paying very little money up front.

While that is good business, i really can't seem to understand how Google valued it at $6 billion, what's more the people at groupon think they are worth much more, and have reportedly rejected that offer and might plan to have an IPO next year. I personally haven't seen one really good deal at a place i would spend money anyways on groupon. They do have some coupons to SPA's or Outdoor activities etc, but i am not sure how many people would line up for those over an extended period of time.
They do not have any inherent technology, they seem to have a large database of consumer email id's and sales representatives going after local and national merchants,whats more there are a ton of similar sites like LivingSocial.com.

It is also a so called social site, i don't see how it fits in the social networking world though. It will be very interesting to see how this groupon story pans out, it could be the next big thing (though i would not bet my money on that happening) or simply fizzle out. Only time will tell.