When chasing after deals, there’s strength in numbers. Whether you’re Pennsylvania Amish negotiating group rates on healthcare or a conference looking for group rates at a hotel, it pays to leverage the power of  lots of buyers to get businesses to lower their prices.

Now you can get in one some collaborative buying action at Groupon.com. Group. Coupon. Get it? Groupon offers daily deals at unbeatable prices through the power of group buying. How does Groupon work? Every day they post a new deal at a rock-bottom price. The catch? You can only take advantage of it if enough people join Groupon that day.

But it’s no guessing game. The site shows a nice meter with info on how many people have purchased the daily deal and how many more need to in order for it to be fulfilled.

There’s a strong localized aspect to Groupon, with deals presented by area businesses like restaurants, gyms, entertainment venues and sports franchises. When I visited Groupon it detected that I was in Washington, DC and immediately gave me a DC-area deal. Also shown on the site was a widget with local Tweets from the DC area, just for fun. (But not the Debtbeat Twitter feed?)

You can change the city from a drop-down menu of all the places that Groupon operates.

Recent deals in my town included $35 worth of food at Russia House Restaurant (a very popular local spot) for just $15 and a $35 playing card at TopGolf for just $18. I’ve been to TopGolf and that’s a great buy. Unfortunately I would need about 1,000 cards worth of practice to move my golf game from embarrassing to mediocre.

Groupon also tries to foster a sense of community by featuring local charities and organizing support for community causes and through their discussion board. The Washington board is pretty active, showing signs of a growing user base.

So check them out and save some cash, spendthrifts.