Special Offers, another excellent site that lists coupons and special discounts, has a wonderful page devoted to the world of using these codes. If you’re curious where they come from, how to use them, and why they sometimes fail to work, all your questions will be answered here. There’s also a page of printable coupons you can use for groceries at your local store. We like the fact that Special Offers puts free shipping deals into their own category rather than lumping them in with coupons for discounts.

Last but not least is Rather Be Shopping, a site run by a man named Kyle. Like the others, he posts current coupons for all of the big retailers, with “Deal of the Week” and “Coupons of the Day” featured. Unlike the others, his site has a more human touch. He even writes a verbose, folksy blog.

Frequent Shopper Rewards (aka Cash Back clubs)

As if saving on your purchase and/or having it shipped free of charge isn’t enough, there are merchants who will kick back a percentage of each sale to you, through programs you enroll in online. Fat Wallet’s Rewards program tracks what you earn from their so-called “Cash Back Stores,” merchants who have agreed to rebate a percentage of the sale to you. Participating retailers include Apple Store, Buy.com, Circuit City, Office Depot, Target, Wal-mart, and lots of others, although each company returns a different amount. For a list of what they’ll give back, visit their itemized list. Ebates.com is another site for earning cash back.

The idea of earning while you spend gets even better at Upromise, where the money, because it goes toward your kid’s college education, grows without being taxable. (You must open a 529 savings plan, which you can start for as little as $50 per month and into which you can sweep your Upromise merchant rewards as well as your own money.)

The folks at Schoolpop raise funds for targeted schools and nonprofit organizations by having shoppers in the program select where they want their cash-back to go. For example, if your son goes to the College of Little Means, he and all of his friends and their families can sign up to give their merchant-donated rebates (from their shopping sprees) to the school.

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