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Welcome to The Honorable Cheapskate, part of the Cook's Books web site. I, the aforementioned Cheapskate, am a relatively poor college student who's spent some time looking for moneysaving options. It took me some time to find these gems and I'd like to share them with you. Here, I'll provide you with the best ways I know to get cheap goods and services without getting scammed. Get around the loopholes and enjoy the best the Internet has to offer - for free!

Not everything in life is free (for those that are, check out FreeSkate). This page, CheapSkate, is devoted to getting the things we must pay for at the cheapest possible price. Browse through the categories and options below, then follow the links to get some really good discoutnts on the stuff you currently pay full price for.

CheapSkate: Categories

ValuePass
ValuePass is a program you can download to your computer for free that will generate coupons for the products you are interested in. The PASSport program downloads these coupons (for groceries, petfood, baby items, books, clothing, toys and a whole lot more) to your computer, you print them, and then -- voila! -- you can use them at the indicated retailers. It costs you absolutely nothing to join or use the ValuePass program.

An example of a coupon: $10 off a $20 purchase at an online pet food retailer, with free shipping thrown in. That's significant savings, and there are other offers out there like that if you look carefully.

Supermarkets.com
At Supermarkets.com, you type in your zip code and they'll find a participating supermarket near you (I've got two within half a mile of me). Then, you'll be able to review and select coupon items for groceries, baby stuff, pet supplies and other stuff that's sold in supermarkets. You print out a page with a bar code containing the coupon information and take it with you to the store. When you're at checkout, the cashier will scan the bar code on the page, and -- baddabingbaddabum -- you'll receive these things called "web bucks."

WEB BUCKS? What are those? It sounds complicated but it's really simple. Web bucks (typically 50 cents to a $1 for an item) can be used to buy any item on your next trip to the same store. What's in it for you? The savings! What's in it for the store? They get a return customer.

A really nice feature of the site is that often web buck offers are held in conjunction with regular coupon items you'd find in your sunday paper. You can use both on one item. Last Thanksgiving, I got 50 cents off a coupon for cinnamon AND 50 cents in web bucks for the same item to use on the next trip. The price of the item? 97 cents. This means I actually was paid 3 cents to buy the cinnamon! This is a pretty rare event, but still, there are many times you can rack up the double savings.

What's really cool about this site is that it's completely anonymous. Neither Supermarkets.com nor your supermarket need know who you are. If that's important to you, this is the service to use. The only downside for you is that the web buck items are for name brands, which means that sometimes you can still get generic items for less. As long as you check prices before you buy, there's no way you can lose. Pretty damn cool.