Deal Diary exists for one reason: groceries, bills and everyday life cost more than they used to, and most money advice online is either boring, condescending, or a flat-out scam.
We are not a hustle. We will not tell you to start a business, flip anything, or manifest a windfall. We find the small, real ways to keep more of the money you already earn, which mostly means cashback apps, coupon stacks, grocery timing and the money you are quietly owed. Then we read the fine print, and write down what we found in plain English, including the parts that make the deal less exciting.
Everything here is written for one person: someone in the US running a household on a real budget, who has about four minutes and no interest in a lifestyle.
What we believe
- Saving beats earning schemes. A dollar you do not spend is worth more than a dollar you chase, and it arrives with far less risk attached.
- No hype, no shame. Money is stressful enough without someone implying you are behind. Nothing here assumes you have spare hours, spare cash, or a spreadsheet habit.
- The catch goes in the article. If the fine print undercuts the deal, we say so in the piece itself, even when it costs us the commission. A guide that hides the payout minimum is worse than no guide.
- Plain English, always. If a tactic needs a 30-minute video to explain, it is too complicated to be worth your evening.
- Small and real beats big and theoretical. We would rather tell you about $40 you can recover this week than $4,000 you might make in a year that never happens.
How we research and write a guide
Most of what makes money-saving advice wrong is not bad intent, it is staleness and second-hand sourcing. Somebody writes a number, forty sites repeat it, and nobody checks whether the retailer changed the policy two years ago. So we work to a few fixed rules.
- We go to the primary source. Retailer coupon policies, app terms of service, payout thresholds and government program pages come from the company or agency that publishes them, not from another blog’s summary.
- We publish the terms next to the offer. Advertised rates are ceilings. The cashout minimum, the hold period and the exclusions decide whether the money is real, so they go in the same guide rather than being left out to keep the pitch clean.
- We date what changes. Prices, policies and app behavior move. Where a claim depends on a policy that could be revised, we say where to check the current version yourself.
- We label examples as examples. Where a figure illustrates how a mechanism works rather than what you will get, it is marked. Your store, your region and your household change the answer.
- We say when we do not know. A guide that admits the pay varies is more useful than one that invents an average.
Every article is reviewed and edited by a person before it publishes. Where a piece has been substantially updated, that is reflected in the guide rather than quietly patched.
What we do not do
The boundaries are as much a part of the editorial position as the topics.
- We do not republish weekly circulars. Store flyers change every seven days and are already on the store’s own app. Reprinting them adds nothing.
- We do not give financial advice. Nothing here is investment, tax or legal advice, and we are not licensed to provide any of it. Guides describe how programs and offers work, not what you personally should do.
- We do not promise income. Survey panels, product testing and paid research pay modestly and unpredictably. Any site quoting you a monthly figure is guessing or selling something.
- We do not fabricate proof. No invented subscriber counts, no made-up testimonials, no screenshots of results that did not happen.
- We do not charge for anything, ever, in the benefits category. Government assistance, grants and unclaimed property are free to apply for. We point at the official program and nothing else.
How we make money
Two ways, and we would rather you know both up front.
Affiliate links. Some links on this site are paid links. If you sign up or buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That is what keeps everything here free to read with no paywall and no subscription. A commission never buys a recommendation, never changes a ranking, and never removes a drawback from a guide. If the best answer to a question is a free tool we earn nothing from, that is the answer we publish. Read the full affiliate disclosure.
Display advertising. The site is also funded by display advertising. Advertisers have no involvement in what we write and no advance sight of it, and we do not accept sponsored posts or paid placements in our guides.
The free daily email is the main thing we ask for in return. It is free, it carries the same standards as the site, and there is a one-click unsubscribe in every message. We do not sell or rent email addresses. The privacy policy covers what we collect and why in full.
Corrections and accuracy
We get things wrong sometimes, and policies change under us constantly. If you find something inaccurate, out of date, or a deal that no longer works the way we described, tell us and we will fix it. Email is the fastest route, and the contact page has the address and what to include.
Substantive corrections are made to the article itself rather than buried, because the point of a guide is that the version you read is the version that is true. If a tactic stops working entirely, we would rather remove or rewrite the guide than leave it earning traffic.
Who is behind this
Deal Diary is founded and run by Priya Desai, who started it because the genuinely useful money-saving advice was buried under hustle culture and affiliate spam, and someone had to write the version that just tells you the number. She covers cashback apps, price tracking and smart shopping, which is to say the tactics for never paying full price on something you were buying anyway.
She is joined by two writers. Hannah Brooks covers groceries, meal planning and everyday budgeting, working from the position that the biggest savings come from boring things done consistently and a solid grocery plan beats a clever spreadsheet. Renee Carter covers coupons and freebies, digital-first, with no binders and no extreme hauls.
It is a small, independent operation. There is no media company behind it and no anonymous content mill. Deal Diary is published from the United States and everything on it is written for a US audience, so prices, programs and retailer policies are US ones unless a guide says otherwise.
Where to start
If you are new here, the three guides that do the most work per minute spent are cutting your grocery bill, stacking cashback apps so one purchase pays twice, and finding the subscriptions still quietly billing you. The free kits are the short version of the same material, with no signup required.
Got a question, a tip, or a deal we should look at? Get in touch. We read everything.