Step 1: Sign up for a rewards card at your local staples and create an online account.

Step 2: check your e-mail for coupons and print them!

Step 3: walk into staples with 10 used ink cartridges per month (this is their limit).  You get $2 each for these per month as a store credit.  The coupon arrives to your mailbox.

Step 4: make sure that all of your coupons are correctly accounted for.

Step 5: make sure you mail in or submit any coupons you may have online.  (Be careful of fishing sites the best thing to do is go to your favorite search engine provider and type "Staples Easy Rebates"  It should give you a link to https://www.stapleseasyrebates.com/  Anyvariation of the name between www. and .com is a phishing site which tries to either give you a download for a junk program you don't need or tries to take your information.

Step 6: smile as you have saved money.

Here is a real life example of what I did today.  I went online and printed my coupons.  I had 1 for 20% off any item, 1 for 50% off a particular product, 1 for $20 from my ink recycling last month and 1 for a free ream of paper (with rebate.)  I needed a carpet for my computer chair.  They didn't have the Avery labels that were 50% off and I really did not care for them so I did not ask for rain check.  I gave the 20% off any item to another customer.  I used the $20 coupon, gave in 1o ink cartridges and got the ream of paper and handed in the coupon.  My original receipt reads that the carpet costs $29.99, of my $20 coupon -$16.22 was applied to it.  The ream of paper costs $6.99 so they applied -$3.78 to it.  The subtotal was $16.98 plus $1.38 in tax.  The total was $18.36  I handed in a $20 bill and got $1.64 in change.  I walked out the store and realized he didn't apply the coupon for the free paper so I walked right back in (don't be ashamed to ask for your money.)  My next receipt reads as follows.   $3.47 returned to me in cash.  $3.78 returned in coupon form.  Then I had to repurchase the ream of paper.  $6.99  plus tax came out to $7.56.  However $6.99 of that gets returned to me in rebate form.

Summary

Original Purchase Price of Items including tax:                 $38.36

My $20 coupon from last months ink recycling:              -$20

My rebate that I will get in 4 to 6 weeks:                                -$6.99

My coupon that I will get for this months ink recycling: -20

Total from today's trip to staples:                            $-8.63  It's like I went shopping and got money for it.

By the way it took a lot longer to write this blog post than it did to go shopping.