Coupons

The easiest way to be a cheapskate is to use coupons. There are a lot of different types, and many places to get them. And there is no stigma in using them, really! Nobody has ever made a judgemental comment to me about using a stack of coupons at the grocery store. Besides, whenever I do worry that somebody might think that I’m cheap, I hold my head high and think – “yep, my kid’s gonna be able to go to college without a bunch of student loans because I’m a cheapskate!”

There are coupons for groceries, cleaning supplies, dog food, etc. I think most everybody who has gotten a Sunday paper has seen them. But did you know that you can also get coupons for restaurants, entertainment, professional services like dry cleaning, oil changes – and even jewelry? I just got my 25% coupon from Hannah D’s (http://www.shophannahds.com/) today. My mantra is “Never pay full price for anything when you can get a discount.” A discount can be a sale, a coupon, or – my favorite – using a coupon on an item on sale!

I’ll talk about my coupon strategy in the next couple of blogs.

The Grocery Game

One of the things I do on Sunday afternoon is log onto The Grocery Game (www.grocerygame.com) to see how much money I’m going to save on groceries this week. The first four weeks are free for a trial membership, then something like $7.50 per month. It has been worth every penny. There are free websites out there, and I will get to those over the next few weeks, but since it's free for the first four weeks, you may try this site to get your feet wet into the world of couponing.

Terry (that's the owner of the website) has a crew of folks that scour the grocery ads and match them up with manufacturer's coupons or other savings to help you maximize your grocery dollars. There is also a fantastic blog that talks about some of the best ways to save and stockpile (I'll talk about stockpiling in a later blog). She has a checklist for the stores you subscribe to, and you can select only the items you want to purchase, then print that list to take to the store with you.

If you do subscribe, please use my email address as your referral - torimiller AT yahoo DOT com (of course, you will need to use the standard email address format - I didn't want to put the email address in this blog and have it detected by spambots).

Blessings in the Dishwasher

As we were getting the the dishwasher ready to run yesterday morning, Steve commented that he had just emptied the dishwasher the previous morning.

I got to thinking out loud about what a blessing it was that we had had enough food to eat that we had made that many dirty plates to wash in less than a 24-hour period. Steve commented that it was a blessing that we know how to shop for and then prepare good nutritious food for our family, when so many people spend piles of money at restaurants instead of preparing it at home.

Then I got to thinking that we are REALLY blessed that we didn't have to wash all those dishes by hand......