South Florida on the Cheap

The latest craze in the money-saving world is the group coupon — or Groupon, the name of the biggest group-buying site.

If you enroll at www.groupon.com, you get an e-mail with each day’s deal, usually 50 percent or more off the goods or services of a local business. When you sign up for a deal, you enter your credit card information. If enough others sign up, your card is charged and you are e-mailed a coupon to print out and take to the establishment. If there aren’t enough takers, the deal is off and your card is not charged.

This week, Groupon offered a $140 jewelry-making class for $45 and $45 worth of children’s goods at a consignment store for $19. Other recent deals have been for restaurant meals, portrait photography, yoga classes, laser hair removal and membership to the Miami Art Museum.

Most of the deals are in Miami-Dade, but there are some in Broward. So far, Groupon is in about 50 U.S. and Canadian cities. The company, which started operating in 2008, is based in Chicago.

Groupon has spawned several competitors including LivingSocial, which says it is coming to South Florida, BuyWithMe and DealOn. I recently was followed on Twitter by a site called FortLauderDeals, which sounds similar but is not yet in operation.

Some of the sites give you points, money or free deals for signing on more people. Of course, you can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter. LivingSocial will send the deals to your mobile phone.

I can’t give you a personal review of Groupon, or any of the other services, because I have not used them yet. Some of the deals sound great, but it’s only a great deal if you’re sure you’re going to use it.

Ordinarily, I’m not an enthusiastic user of coupons. Lots of them are for packaged foods I don’t use, I’m feeding only myself, and I often can save by buying the store brand.

But, in the name of research, I decided to try clipping coupons. I followed some of the techniques recommended by serious couponers, such as stockpiling coupons until items went on sale.

Finally, I got my first big score: two pints of Starbucks ice cream, normally $3.91 each, for $1.91 total. I was able to do this because Publix accepts two coupons on buy-one-get-one items. And I had two $1-off coupons. According to Web coupon mavens, Winn-Dixie also accepts two coupons on BOGO items.

Don’t ignore the coupons hanging on the aisles or stuck on products. I once found $1-off coupons on packages of frozen foods that were already two-for-one.

If you want to get really serious about matching coupons and sales (called “stacking” in couponer lingo), you can subscribe to a website such as South Florida’s Prudent Patron (prudentpatron.com ) or Saving Moms Money (savingmoney.com). For $5 per store, you can subscribe to the Grocery Game (thegrocerygame.com), which provides additional analysis and information.

Last week, I got my second big “coupon stacking” score: two half-gallons of Smart Balance milk, normally $3.59 each, for $1.59 total. The milk was BOGO and I had two $1-off coupons.

I don’t know if I’m saving quantities of money by stacking coupons, but occasionally I get a big thrill.

If you have favorite money-saving strategies, e-mail me at teresa@floridaonthecheap.com, and I’ll share them in a subsequent column.

We have learned to look for coupons when we do online shopping. But we often don’t think of looking for online coupons when we visit local attractions. We should. The weak economy means many of our local attractions are offering frequent discounts, deals and coupons, most on their websites.

Here are some current deals:

• Get a Summer Savings Pass for $54.95 and get unlimited visits to Miami Seaquarium, Miami MetroZoo (now Zoo Miami) and Lion Country Safari through Sept. 30, plus one visit to Wannado City. If you already have an annual pass to one of the attractions, you can get the Summer Savings Pass for $29.95. www.Summersavingspass.com

• Moms Miami has a Summer Fun Pass that gives mom free admission to a host of South Florida attractions and plays with two other paying guests. The deal is good through Aug. 31. www.momsmiami.com .

• Jungle Island in Miami has a Power of 10 deal that expires day: $10 off plus a free annual pass for the rest of 2010 with each paid admission. www.jungleisland.com .

• The Miami Seaquarium is running an “Everyone’s a Kid” deal that provides for $10 off adult admission through Sept. 30. www.miamiseaquarium.com .

• Lion Country Safari near West Palm Beach has a coupon for $8 off each person in the vehicle good through July 21. There are also coupons at Publix for $6 off. www.lioncountrysafari.com .

• Flamingo Gardens in Davie has a coupon for $2 off adult admission and $1 off children’s admission, with no expiration date listed. www.flamingogardens.org .

• Butterfly World in Coconut Creek has a coupon for $3 off, good through Aug. 2. www.butterflyworld.com.

• Fairchild Tropical Garden has a coupon for $2 off admission on its website. The coupon is good through July 31. www.fairchildgarden.org.

Most of the deals can’t be combined, so if there are two deals for the place you want to visit, you’ll have to pick the one that’s best for your group.

When these deals expire, check for new ones. Fall is the slow season for many local attractions.

The New York Times recently ran a story on “cat-ios” — screened enclosures that give cats a taste of the outdoors while still keeping them confined. The ideal “cat-io,” of course, is a large screened porch or pool enclosure, and if you have one, I’m jealous. So are my cats.

Unfortunately, the cost of building one from scratch is prohibitive, and if your cats are like mine, they won’t do a lick of work to help pay for it. But if you have a fenced yard, you can turn your entire backyard into a “cat-io” with less than $100 worth of materials and a few hours of labor.

The basic theory is that you put fencing made of flimsy material atop a regular chain-link or wood fence to keep your cats inside and other cats outside. Because the top fencing material is too flimsy for cats to get a grip on and vault themselves over, they can’t get out of the yard.

The first time we fenced in the yard for our cats, we spent $400-plus on a kit that included fencing material, poles and special gate kits. The second time, we got smart and found instructions online (www.feralcat.com/fence.html) for building the same type of fencing on the cheap.

We took the list of materials to our local hardware store and ended up ordering deer fencing, garden poles, wire and plastic fasteners for less than $100. Two men attached it to our existing chain-link fence in a couple of hours. If I had it to do over again, I would replace the plastic garden poles, which bent over time, with something more rigid.

Trees and dense foliage can provide some challenges, but creativity with chicken wire and deer fencing may overcome them. Be sure to reinforce the area under and around the gate.

All the latest literature says cats should be happy indoors, but mine are not. And if the cat’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy in my house.

Sometimes you find bargains in unexpected places. Or unexpected items at bargain stores.

I have long shopped at Marshall’s, Ross and Big Lots for clothing, linens and other household items. But those stores can also be good places to find fine foods at bargain prices. The selection varies, but it’s not unusual to find gourmet chocolates, fancy cookies, olive oil, coffee beans, tea and muffin mixes.

Marshall’s and Ross tend to have mostly specialty products, while Big Lots also has quite a few ordinary groceries such as canned fruits and vegetables, pasta and candy. A friend recently found a number of heavily discounted organic foods there.

Some of the packages can look a little worse for wear, but the food itself has not reached its sell-by date (though it always pays to check).

As you know if you read my holiday columns, I don’t believe in giving people “cute” decorative items and other stuff they won’t use. I prefer edible, drinkable, usable gifts such as gourmet treats, wine and fancy toiletries — things people would enjoy but wouldn’t necessarily buy for themselves.

Marshall’s, Ross and Big Lots are great sources for such items as well as for decorative baskets, boxes and bags in which to package your gifts.

If you aren’t in the market for gifts at the moment, consider buying yourself some discount coffee or chocolate. You deserve it.

With so many people in South Florida struggling to make ends meet, the last thing you want to do is waste money on food you’ll never eat if we don’t have a major storm — and maybe even if we do.

When you do your pre-hurricane shopping, keep in mind the types of food your family will eat. If you don’t like canned tuna, you may not be willing to eat it just because the power is out.

Consider shifting your summer shopping strategy to keep potential storms in mind:

• Keep on hand a good stock of nonperishable food you normally eat: granola bars, cereal, peanut butter, nuts, individually packaged fruits, crackers, etc. Don’t just set them aside. Eat from your stash and keep replenishing, buying a little more than you would normally.

• Buy food that can be kept for a number of days without refrigeration, such as apples, salsa, carrots, oranges, mangoes and hard cheese. Again, eat that food as you go but keep your stash replenished.

• Don’t stock up on meat, milk, yogurt, frozen foods and other items that spoil quickly once the power is out. Buy just as much as you need until the next time you visit the supermarket. Yes, you may miss a few good deals, but paying a few extra dollars for meat when it’s not on sale is preferable to having to discard $20 worth if the power goes out and your stash spoils. Summer is a good time to “eat down your freezer.”

• Consider things you normally don’t eat or don’t buy but like. For example, I rarely buy peanut butter, but I like it well enough. If I buy a jar and don’t ever open it, I can donate it at the end of storm season. Or make peanut butter fudge. You might put in this category single-serving packages or cans of fruit, jarred pasta sauce or pesto, instant soups, dried fruit, packaged rice mixes (some of these are precooked), canned tuna or chicken and canned vegetables or fruit.

• Buy some treats for yourself. This one is tough, because if I buy chocolate, it will never last until the next storm. Normally, I deal with that issue by not buying it. But when you hit Day 7 of no air conditioning, no TV and no Internet, you are going to need chocolate.

• Watch for sales on individual bottles of water, juice boxes and other drinks. If you don’t use them during hurricane season, start using them afterward.

Don’t forget about utensils. We thought we were prepared for a power failure after Hurricane Wilma because we had a gas stove and could easily make coffee with a Melita filter — except the coffee needed to be ground. We used a mortar and pestle, but after that we made sure to buy a bag of ground coffee if a storm was approaching and then used it, storm or not. Instant coffee and tea bags are also useful.

If you have a gas stove, be sure you have matches to light it. Other useful utensils are a manual can opener, a corkscrew, a bottle opener and paper and plastic disposable plates, bowls and utensils. Save up the plastic utensils you get with takeout but don’t use. If you don’t have a gas stove, consider a grill, especially if it’s something you’d use anyway.

Emergency management officials advise having enough nonperishable foods to feed your family for at least three days. Focus especially on nourishing foods. You’ll need sustenance to clean up the yard.