Cheatham County Exchange
ASHLAND CITY WEATHER
physicians-mutual-dental-insurance-banners

Ms. Cheap: Coupon books and cards save you money and help schools




City Saver books include lots of buy one, get one free offers at restaurants, retailers and attractions in Nashville and surrounding communities.Mary Hance / Main Street Nashville/Murfreesboro Post

City Saver books include lots of buy one, get one free offers at restaurants, retailers and attractions in Nashville and surrounding communities.Mary Hance / Main Street Nashville/Murfreesboro Post

The arrival of fall brings out the coupon books and cards that students and their families sell as fundraisers for everything from band and playground equipment to computers and student trips and other extras for their schools.

As Ms. Cheap, I love taking advantage of these money-saving deals, especially when I see that my modest investment of $20-$25 can not only pay off handsomely for me as I save on food and entertainment, but also help the schools, which can always use a little extra funding.

Here are a couple of products being sold in the Midstate as fundraisers.

City Saver books

Since 2002, City Saver has been helping schools raise money by connecting families to local merchants with their popular coupon books and smartphone apps. Over $15 million has been raised for schools and nonprofit organizations, which receive 40%-50% of the book’s sale price.

The deals are mostly buy one, get one free offers at restaurants, retailers and attractions in Nashville and surrounding communities, including Mt. Juliet, Franklin, Murfreesboro and Hendersonville, along with a few half-price offers, including one to the Nashville Zoo.

Mary Hance Mary Hance Mary Hance

Mary Hance Mary Hance Mary Hance

A few BOGOF examples include Vui’s Kitchen, Cafe at Thistle Farms, Green Hills Grille, Merridee’s Breadbasket, Baskin-Robbins, lots of pizza places, Madame Tussauds, Adventure Science Center, Frist Art Museum, the Nashville Ballet and the Nashville Children’s Theatre.

There are also discounts at retailers including Ace Hardware, Phillips Toy Mart, Kid to Kid, Sport Season, TwiceDaily, Plato’s Closet and Play it Again Sports, and entertainment like bowling, golf, gymnastics, trampoline parks, archery, climbing and more.

“As always, our book is packed full of buy one, get one free discounts to some of the top restaurants in town,” City Saver founder Tom Beach said. “And don’t forget when you purchase a book, you get free access to our popular City Saver mobile app, which allows you to redeem all of the great City Saver offers from your smartphone,” he said.

He said his team is also “excited to have the Nashville Predators back on board as a sponsor, and they will be giving City Saver customers exclusive discounts on tickets this fall.”

Jonathan Bowman, development director at Lighthouse Christian School, which has sold the books for years as a fundraiser, said the funds have helped with many school projects and even provided scholarship money to help a student attend the school.

Plus, he said the City Saver books are a good value: “Personally I’m not a ‘coupon’ guy. However I decided to use the book last year, and the app tells you how much you save. I had saved over $200 in the first five months — nearly 10 times the cost of the book.”

You can buy the $25 book from several local schools or from citysaver.com, which will send it to your home. Beach said that when someone orders a book from the website, they can credit a local school.

He said his company does not publish the names of the participating schools, but buyers can email him (tom@citysaver.com) to find a school near them that is selling the book.

Smart Discount Cards

Innovative Funding has been offering its wallet-sized Smart Discount Cards for 27 years, but this year there are only cards for a fraction of the counties that it usually features.

President Ben Edwards says this fall’s limited edition of Smart Cards cover Rutherford County, Sumner County, Dickson County, Coffee/Bedford/Franklin counties, Putnam County, Cumberland County, White County and Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The $20 cards offer 100 repeat offers and 80 coupons from the local markets. Fifty percent of the purchase price goes to the schools that sell them.

Edwards noted that the cards can be purchased only through schools in the featured counties and not through his office as in the past. “Call local schools and look for Smart Card signs at the schools,” he said.

Mary Hance, who has four decades of journalism experience in the Nashville area, writes a weekly Ms. Cheap column. She also appears on Thursdays on “Talk of the Town” on NewsChannel 5. Reach her at mscheap@mainstreetmediatn.com and follow her on Facebook at Facebook.com/mscheap.

Leave a Reply