A radio reporter took to the streets this week asking people about their shopping plans for the Christmas season. One question he asked was whether they planned any Internet purchases. I was surprised at how many people have never bought anything over the Internet.

When we lived in the city, I just bought a few things on line. There is a brand of nickel free earrings that I can’t buy in stores. I’ve bought lots of my camera equipment from the New York camera stores. We can almost always get a better deal on college textbooks on line than in the campus stores.

But it wasn’t until I moved to the country that I really started shopping on line. I can buy all the basic necessities in the town that is six miles from our home. But, it is a 60 – 80 mile round trip to a city shopping mall. So now I do a lot of Internet shopping. I expect the UPS man to ring the doorbell a couple of times a week.

Whenever I placed an order, I would bristle when I got to the question, “Do you have a coupon code?” No I didn’t, and I wondered where other people got them. Once I called customer service and asked. I got a vague answer like, “Um, well, sometimes we put them in our online newsletters.”

A few weeks ago I stumbled across the source for the coupon codes. There are four websites that have them, and you can get them for free. The first time I tried one, I wasn’t sure it would work. But it did – 10% off my entire purchase, just like that. I don’t think I have paid full price for anything since I found out about the websites. Here they are. The first one is my favorite, but sometimes I have to check all four until I find a code for the store where I’m placing an order.

http://www.retailmenot.com/

http://currentcodes.com/

http://www.rather-be-shopping.com/

http://keycode.com/

In this economy, I’m watching my budget pretty carefully. There isn’t as much “disposable” income as there used to be. This is just one way I can make the dollars go a little farther. That leaves me more to spend on higher quality beneficial food.