A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. Jonathan Swift

It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.
-George Horace Lorimer

Hi ya'll.  Hope your day is going better than mine.  Using my coupons at Walgreens, I had to get rain checks on several items (no big deal).  Mary, my cashier was very kind and helpful (unlike the last cashier at Homeland...see previous post).  However, when I got home and using my online banking, found that they had charged me $29.74 (which was correct because I saved over $22 using coupons with sale items). But then they deposited the money back into my account. Huh? What? Why?  So I called the store to alert them to the possible problem.  They were as confused as I.  To make a long story short, if it doesn't sort itself out, when I go into town next week, I will pay them again and maybe this time they will keep it.  My bank lady said she had never seen such a thing!  You know weird freaky stuff happens to me a lot.

If only this were the end of my tale of woe!  My final stop of the day was K Mart (right after Wal Mart).  Having not had time to eat today, I was feeling a little weak!  They overcharged me on an item (which I caught) so I had to go to the service desk to sort it out.  The moment I looked into my purse, a sick feeling came over me (and it wasn't from not eating). 

My car keys weren't there!  Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!  But the correct answer was oh, yes!  Locked in the car was the ONLY key!  After saying a few choice words regarding my ability to leave the house unsupervised,  I called my brother, the long suffering David.  Oh, Good Grief!  He's 30+ miles away instead of being home in Muskogee where I need him to be.  No help there this time!  Shoot, shoot, shoot!  My only other option was to call my long suffering daughter, Becky, who works in Okmulgee for Creek Nation, to come and get her deranged Mother  before she collapses  from the heat and starvation. 

Feeling faint, I went back into the store.  In my younger days, if I had swooned, someone (good looking man) would have caught me before I hit the ground.  But nowadays, being a little old silver haired lady, most men would have left me laying and stepped over me. Growing old sucks sometimes!

(now back to my LindaDrama). And what to my wandering and desperate eyes did I see?  A neighbor who just happens to be a former employee of a wrecker service which also opened car doors!  THANK YOU GOD!  I WILL BE GOOD FROM NOW ON!  O.K. I WILL TRY TO BE GOOD FROM NOW ON!  I'm not going to tell you how he opened my locked car door using bits and pieces of stuff he had in his truck (can't contribute to any possible Grand Theft Auto you know) but in less than five minutes this cleaver man had my door open!  I was truly amazed at what I saw!  I didn't know that could be done!

But anyway, here is the breakdown on my coupon activity today.

Walgreens:

Carmex/New Lime Twist           $1.50 but I received $1.50 in Register Rewards to be used on my next trip.

2 Frito/ Lay Chips                     $4.29  Buy one get one free so $2.15 each

Charmin Ultra Soft 6 double rolls=12 regular rolls    $4.00-.25coupon=$3.75 or.63 each for double or if       they were single rolls .31 each

4 pack Energizer Batteries        On sale for $2.99-.75 coupon=$2.24 or .56 each

Bounty Paper Towels  6 rolls    On sale for $5.50-$1.00 coupon=$4.50 or .75 per roll

Cover Girl Liquid Makeup    Buy one get one half price   so  $11.99 + $9.99 for Mascara=  $21.98 - $5.00 for half price Mascara - $2.50 coupon  =   $14.48 for both

Bottom Line:  Spent $29.74 (which they accidentally gave back to me) but saved $22.51 using store coupons, sale items, register rewards ($5.00 from previous savings trip) and coupons.  (Also got rains checks for 30 oz. Mayo on sale for $2.49 (with coupon in Sunday's Walgreen Sale Flyer) -$1.00 coupon = $1.49 each with a limit of 3 and a 4lb bag of Domino Sugar $2.49 with Walgreen's coupon - $1.00 coupon = $1.49 each with a limit of 3.

Are you feeling the itch to save a lot of money legally and  embrace the art of couponing (the other legal currency)?  Just be warned, once you get the hang of it, you will become a coupon addict and your children will become coupon orphans as you clip coupons and organize coupons and search for coupons on-line and.......well you get the idea.  This is all a wonderful puzzle to me.  I love playing find the hidden object games and this is the same only the hidden object is a coupon to match the sale item.  Try couponing if you dare but I must warn you, life will never be the same once you start to see the really long register tapes with a hefty percentage saved on each trip.  We all want something that money can buy so why not save our way to that dream

Now this is Simple Living at it's very best! Each time I go couponing, I know that I have learned some lessons and will do better next time.

I saved $11.91 on pet food at Wal mart today.  When you've given a home to as many lost animals as we have, you have to save as much as possible and still provide quality food.  Not an easy task! Wal Mart is not my favorite place to shop because they try to distract me and sell me impulse items.  Big Mistake!  I no longer distract or impulse to their great dismay I am sure.  I go with a list (well prepared ahead of time), coupons in order, and stay focused.  The last is the most important to saving time and money.  They pay millions of dollars to people to learn how to get our hard earned money but I am willing to spent my time learning how to defeat them legally.  So, Wal Mart, you can kiss my grits! 

Gypsy was a neighborhood stray.  Now she is my loyal and faithful guardian angel.

Pushka showed up one winter's day and liked our Harmony Acres.  So he stayed.

Mischief and Pickle are Gypsy's boys.  They went to see Stacey (our beloved family vet) and came home missing their tails and other manly parts.  They still can't figure out why Stacey took their tails but they want them back.

Sophie purred her way into the house and the next thing I knew, I had a sleeping buddy.  She's kind of weird though.  Pulls my hair in the middle of the night.  It's rather startling!

At first she was just outside "porch kitty" and then she became inside "Molly".  Being one-eyed gets a lot of sympathy from Becky.

Maggie stays mad most of the time because there are cats in her bed, on her bench, next to her Becky and trying to eat her Cesar's!

Izzie and I just try to stay out of everyone's way!

Grabby Britches just wants to be everyone's friend.  She is the one that gave me cat scratch fever last year.

And then there are the weinners!  Need I say more?

Tomorrow, I have Homeland in my sites (that cranky cashier had better be on her toes) and my coupon binder (3 inches isn't really that big? Is it?) organized and ready to go.  So many nice cashiers have commented on how organized I am.  I don't tell them about my OCD and AADD which won't allow me to be any other way.  It's our little secret.

Couponing 101.....Addicted to Saving

If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.
 Benjamin Franklin

 Hi ya'll.  So much to catch you up on!  I am all about saving money whenever I can.  Even Simple Living folks have to eat and feed their animals (hard to believe since many people think we are a different species)!  So, there is a new money saving hobby on my horizon.....wait for it......wait for it......extreme couponing!  There I said it.  This is something that I thought only a special kind of person could do.  Ain't so!  In the time it takes me to sew a new pillow, I can clip and organize my coupons (with Becky's help of course). 

Sorry, we'll have to continue later.  Boss just called and needs me to work today and I still have to run into Muskogee and then feed animals, shower, dress and find a good attitude before I go.  Talk to you later.

Sorry folks! "Talk to you later" has now been a couple of weeks!  My world seems to be spinning faster and faster (and I like slow and easy).  Anyway, back to my "adventures in couponing".  I love it!  I so love it!  Hello, my name is Linda and I am absolutely, positively, unquestionably addicted to couponing! 

This not so new (but the cool thing to do now) kind of currency is even better than the American dollar because my store (Homeland) doubles the face value of the manufacturer's coupon up to one dollar.  So, if I have a coupon for one dollar, it magically becomes two dollars when I use it according to the fine print on the coupon and before the expiration date.  Ain't that peachy?  Just a note if you are new to couponing:  under no circumstances can you photo copy the coupon.  It is illegal and will bring down the wrath of the legal system upon your head.  Bottom line:  don't do it!  There are far too many legal ways to optimize the coupons without going to jail or paying a huge fine.

I have two favorite sites that I visit daily.  krazycouponlady.com got me hooked!  She has all the basic free down loadable binder categories for creating your very own coupon binder (my household savings Bible). Then we have the local (Tulsa area, Sarah Roe) moneysavingqueen.com which has matchups (weekly sale items matched up with coupons) which saves me a lot of time.  There are also weekly menu plans using the items purchased with coupons.  What a deal! What a deal!  It is like pushing the easy button on savings. 

My first week of serious couponing, I saved over 50% on my groceries and banked (savings account) over $75.  Can somebody give me an "atta girl"? I rock!  I consider couponing my second part time job and with a far better reward for my efforts and a really nice boss (me).  Then there is the "helping others" aspect of couponing.  When I use coupons and store rewards to "purchase" free tubes of toothpaste, shampoo, razors and many other items, I then can donate them to family, friends, church and other non-profit organizations without blowing a hole in my budget.  It's a little bit more complicated, but Walgreens is the best place for these items (they do not double coupons). If you aren't excited about couponing yet, someone needs to check you for a pulse. 

You know by now that I love books.  Hold in my hand, made of paper, feel the love real books.  To increase my knowledge of couponing, I bought and strongly recommend the following book to help you get started:

There is also the magazine for couponers called All You available at Wal Mart or by subscription. There is also a website allyou.com  Look in your Sunday Newspaper for coupons and store sales flyers.  Our grocery sales begin on Wednesday, so I look online at the sale flyer for Homeland.  The moneysavingqueen.com does the matchups for me.  At the grocery store the coupons that print out at the end of the sales (white with red stripes down both sides) are called catalinas and are based on what I purchased.  Look at the fine print because one of mine said $2 off 2 coconut milk but in smaller print it also listed Almond Milk which is what I had just purchased.  I also have two $1 off single item of the milk which will make my next purchase 2 x $3.89= $7.78  without coupons.  Then I apply my coupons.  $2 off  for 2 half gallons of milk catalina coupon = $5.78  Then I use my two $1 coupons which are then doubled to equal $4.  So my final cost for two half gallons of almond milk is  $5.78- $4.00 = $1.78 or .89 cents each.  How cool is that! Some cashiers say I can do this, some say I can't, so I need to check the store coupon policy before I go again. (I use a handheld calculator because the side of my brain that is suppose to do math does not work very well).

Stay with me here, and I will show you how to use coupons much more effectively.  Shopping with coupons has quickly become a Simple Living mindset.  My favorite savings (and there have already been many of them) was buying Pilgrims Pride chicken breast.  Homeland had the chicken on sale for $1.29 per pound.  The Queen did the matchup for me and provided a link for a $1 off coupon (they will usually allow you to print the coupon twice).  So here is the math:  Package #1 was $2.88. My pilgrims pride coupon for $1 is doubled to equal $2.  My first package cost me .88 cents.  Used the same method for my second package priced on sale for $2.90.  Apply coupon (which magically doubles) and my final cost for the chicken was .90 cents. 
So  4 1/2  pounds of chicken breast for $1.78.  Are you feeling the obsession yet?

Like anything new, I wanted to take it for a test drive.  So small purchase first to find my footing.
4 boxes of chocolate cheerios, 4 cans progresso soup, 2 laundry soap, 5 lbs apples, 1 small bunch of bananas.
$16.99 (taxes included in this) until I added fruit which rarely has coupons available.  Saved 56% on this one!
Plus a Catalina coupon for $2 off two almond milk and $1 off four lean cuisine (will use this one when they go on sale again, usually 4-6 week cycle).

Saved 52% on this one.  Banked $75 in savings account from both of these!

This is not really magic.  It just feels like it.  If a math idiot like me can do this so can you.  If you are willing to learn a new way of saving money, take the time to clip and organize, shop with a new mindset, then you too can be a money saving queen in your household!  My coupons can let me be in control of how much money I spend on groceries, beauty supplies, household items and much, much more.  You can do this but you can't do it effectively if you only spend 5 minutes preparing for your shopping trips.  Take control of your money and then you can take control your life (at least financially).  Happy couponing from Harmony Acres and Simple Living! 

If you can, you will quickly find that the greatest rate of return you will earn is on your own personal spending. Being a smart shopper is the first step to getting rich.

~ Mark Cuban