November 2, 2006


OK, OK, so it’s not the giddy days of savings I had back when I had a functioning kitchen. Boy back then I’d serve nearly free Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter meals. No skimping either, we were living pretty big time with name brand this and that sides and I’d cook everything from scratch.

Since hubby moved me here with no kitchen, really, a microwave and that’s about it I haven’t been able to live the glory life of WOW look how much I saved. I’m hoping this kitchen thing will be short lived but heck it’s been like this for about two years now. Long Story!!!!!!!!!!!! I really miss using coupons to make money stretch and when I first married my husband about 4 years ago he would just argue me down about using them. I shouldn’t have listened. I guess I finally bought into hey Cathy we have good jobs we don’t need to do that anymore. I put aside the satisfaction I felt about being able to save money to save his feelings.

Anyway, I recently tried going to CVS pharmacy thing. My first try was buying some Aquafresh toothpaste, Airwick oil, Airwick night-light warmer, and some Sunsilk Shampoo. Well let me play infomercial queen with you. “How much would you pay for all that?” $5, $6, $7? How about $2.74 including tax? You see the Sunsilk shampoo was $4.49. Well normally I wouldn’t pay that much for shampoo. Even hubby would have said that was extravagant. Well I was able to get $2.60 off even though I didn’t have my card yet because the cashier let me use hers. Oh well they said I would have to pay full price the first time I used the card and then the ECVs would come with later purchases. So that brings the shampoo down to $1.89. Still my husband would give me a look if I asked him to spend $2 on shampoo. He loves Suave and heck I do too. Nothing wrong with it and they have some pretty good ones. What he didn’t know or realize was that I spent only 39 cents on the shampoo because I had a coupon for $1.50 off Sunsilk shampoo and that’s pretty good. As you can see already the discount I got for that one purchase alone would have paid off my bill.

My Airwick nightlight warmer was a fun purchase. We just bought a travel trailer and I thought that we could use it to keep it fresh in there. It cost $3.50 of which I paid none. Once again coupons to the rescue, I had one for a get one free so therefore no money shelled out. The oil actually cost more because that was $1.99 which came down to 99 cents after the coupon. The toothpaste I could have done better on because it was $1.99 and the coupon brought it down to 99 cents. It is 6.4 oz and it is Aquafresh so I went for broke and threw caution to the wind and spent the 99 cents.

I went home that night all excited about what I was able to do. I felt that rush I used to feel when I walked out of the store a winner. I tried to show what I bought to my husband and explain how I saved money and what a great deal I made. He just rolled his eyes mid-way through the conversation and told me that I hadn’t taken into account any of the cost of my time. His big spiel is that the cost of my time is WAYYYYYYYY to valuable to cut out coupons. No one gets rich cutting coupons he lectures me. When I talk about putting the savings into the bank he rolls his eyes yet again and lectures me about how I should start my own business and how if I became a realtor with my spare time I could become a millionaire. He never hears me when I say I’m not interested in sales or my own business only the sound of his own voice and how much of a waste of time what I’m doing is.

So now I’m here in a blog jumping around for joy in my own little world about how much I saved at the store because it means something to me.


November 11, 2006

It’s me again and now I finally have in my possession my CVS card. Unfortunately hubby came with me to go shopping. Gosh it’s kind of sad when you hear him tell it. “Cathy, I hardly get to see you and when I do I want to spend time with you. I always imagined when I got married I’d spend time with my wife. I guess you are happy when I leave you alone.” One might feel sorry for him or then again one might say, excuse me but can I have a moment to breathe?

I work full-time as a high school teacher. Very stressful!!!! I teach vocational students and that can be very rewarding but it can also be very taxing. I need to decompress when I come home. Darryl is an engineer. He goes to work and then comes home and tries to devise a million ways to become rich through real estate. He imagines he may one day be Donald Trump and it annoys him to no end that I have no interest in becoming a real estate agent, a land lord, or real estate investor. I have only to look at what a mess he’s made of us trying to sell our old home and being in urgent need for us to move before we sold the other house even though I didn’t want to. Now here I am in this house with crap all over the place I’m not allowed to touch until he is ready to do such and such and worse of all no kitchen. I had a very nice kitchen thank you very much in my old home. Not anymore. I wait and wait and wait and here we are still paying two mortgages for what it would have cost us to buy one really nice brand new house with all the bells and whistles. No I’d have been happy just staying in the old house.

I was hoping for the opportunity to go shopping without him so he doesn’t hassle me when I start shopping. If I could describe his perfect wife she would be a playboy bunny (then again most men want that no matter what they look like), who throws around money on things he sees important but not on anything he doesn’t find important. She should be a cross between Mary Kay Ashe, Oprah, and Madonna in her business savvy always looking for the next big idea and never blurting out life goals that might include being a stay at home wife. I’m certain I forgot some things in there but there you go. So we compromise and do it his way which means “Sure Darryl, come with me I want you to come.” The whole way up I had to listen to his spiel about what a waste it was for me to want to be a stay at home wife and how I waste my time nickel and dime’ing coupons when I could be using my time to become rich.

The only happy time I have is those few minutes hunting down the bargain. He rolled his eyes and went over to look at the magazines while I shopped. Heck why even go? Why couldn’t I have just gone by myself? How is this bonding, let’s be together time? Talk about shop therapy!!!! I just need a different doctor one with less supervision and micromanagement!

So what did I buy? CVS was having a sale on their Cover Girl stuff. It was buy one get on at 50% off. I’m not a big make up person but I do need it for work. I decided to get some bronzer for the summer as I already had enough liquid foundation. It was pretty inexpensive at $4.19 a piece. That would mean that two of them would be about $6.29. That would be like paying about $3.30 a piece or about an 89 cent savings. Not so hot really. The thing was I had a coupon for buy one get one free from cover girl and I was able to use that too. The cashier deleted the $4.19 price which means I bought the two of them for $2.10. That’s not $2.10 a piece but for the both of them about $1.05 a piece. In other words I saved about $3.14 cents a piece. Much better I would say.

I was able to buy two tooth brushes from GUM for $2.99 minus the instant rebate of…$2.99 and minus the dollar off coupon.

Already the thrill was allowing me a little escape. I suppose some people gamble, some get high, and some do coupons. Arid deodorant was buy one get one and they charged me $3.29 for one. Which means it was $1.68 each except I had a coupon for $1 off so it was two for $2.29 about a $1.14 each. Score!!!!!

As a teacher I go through a lot of Kleenex. I have students who come to my desk for it all the time and the other day I offered a student some napkins instead and he said “I can’t use that that’s too rough.’ I didn’t have a coupon but it was still a good buy at buy one get one. Normally $2.29 a piece it wound up costing $1.15 a piece

The last thing I bought was some Triametic cold medicine. I will get $2 ECB from that purchase next time I shop but not this time. I did have a coupon for $2. It was on sale for $4.99 and that brought that down to $2.99 without the ECBs. When I factor them in it only cost 99 cents but of course it didn’t reflect on the receipt and that’s part of the problem.

Darryl came to the cash register as he had the checkbook. This is so insane because I did fine for years with a check book and credit cards, excellent credit, never over drawn, etc and I have to have him there to pay for my purchase. He immediately grabs the check and begins scanning it to say what on earth did you pay so much for?

From there we went to Blockbuster to use my coke rewards coupon for two free videos, two free 20 oz cokes, and a bucket of popcorn. I encouraged Darryl to select a movie. He didn’t. They didn’t have much of a choice on the new movies but I went for broke and selected one called Pizza and one called the Notorious Betty Page. I was at least interested in Betty Page because I remember hearing about her years ago. Darryl took me out to dinner at Applebees. Originally he suggested Longhorns but I told him I had a $5 coupon for Applebees so we went there. Oh there he doesn’t have a problem with a coupon. Hahahahahahaaaaa!!!!

We then went grocery shopping at Publix where I was able to buy Pepsi 12 packs 4 for $9 plus you got three 2 ltr bottles for every four packs of Pepsi you bought. Stouffers were $2 a piece and Healthy choice was 50% off and I had coupons for both of them. I sent in some receipts for a rebate on frozen food from publix. I was really uncertain if it was $10 for each $10 or just $10 for $10. Just in case I sent in the receipts for $20. Publix was pretty good last time sending me $30 worth of JC Penny’s gift cards even though I sent them the day the offer expired and they still sent me the gift cards.