Money Talks

All The Things

TW was hoping we were only going to go to the library and the Dollar Tree today. Hahahaha. She blanched when I listed all of the places we were going. In order:

– Post Office
– Bank
– Library
– PetSuppliesPlus
– Dollar Tree
– Staples
– Ace Hardware

She got a little excited about the Ace, until I told her we were NOT BUYING ALL THE THINGS and I didn’t even want to look at ALL THE THINGS. It was touch & go for a few minutes but I did actually get her out of the store in less than ten minutes with the two things that were on our list. (Related: Why is dirt so freaking expensive?)

The most annoying bits were the Post Office (duh, but also my fault because I filled out the customs form incorrectly the first time, sigh) and the Staples (where the people are very nice but they charged us more for the breakfast sandwich maker than the guy quoted TW — so we had to exchange it and let him ring it back up at the price he quoted her.) Good news from Staples is that our store is not scheduled to close. Thank god. I need my free paper and batteries, though it’s been awhile since I got free batteries, darn it.

Because we did all of the running around today and because there’s nothing on sale at CVS or Walgreens that I want tomorrow, we are HOME for the duration of the weekend. TW and RJ are happily making a mess in my kitchen and I’ve got a load of laundry in the washer.

I have big plans to get some more spring cleaning done — and also to maybe watch something that is not Dawson’s Creek… more on that later… maybe.

All The Things Read More »

I’m Not Afraid of the Dark, But…

I really hate it when TW gets into “money saving via conserving electricity” mode. It happens a couple of times a year and it makes me nuts.

I’ll leave the room for one minute and come back to find the lights off.

It’s 7pm and she’s turned all of the lights in the house off, except for those in our bedroom — and dammit, I can turn them back on again when I head back to my computer for a spam run or to the cold room to take the dogs out or the laundry room to do the laundry or the kitchen to clean the Ninja that was too hot to clean when I did the rest of the dishes. But I DON’T WANT TO.

It’s annoying. I’m always holding a book and often holding a coffee cup as I pass through the dark rooms. There are dogs underfoot. There are dog toys on the darn floor. Even ONE light left on would be useful. Just one, then I could safely navigate half of the way through the house and hit any other light I needed to hit as I go.

Haven’t we switched to CFLs? Which means it’s cheaper to leave the lights on since odds are high someone’s going to need them within 15 minutes… and the off and on shortens the life of the CFL… Oh shoot. I just looked up. The office lights are not CFL. If I switch them, would she stop turning this light off? Or should I just ride this storm of money saving madness til the end. It probably won’t last long… and I won’t trip over a dog and kill myself in the dark before she gives up on the idea… right?

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People Are Unreasonable

We went to Target this morning, just to grab some of the Christmas clearance stuff — and found ourselves with an overflowing cart. This is why we don’t go to Target very often and why we never go with a vague list of what we are looking for.

But that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the woman checking out in front of us. She had a ton of 90% off Christmas clearance stuff and she really flustered the cashier — when something didn’t ring up 90% off, she SWORE it was in the Christmas clearance area and so he kept having to over-ride the price. A couple of times I was tempted to say — no, it was in the area that they are beginning to stock NEXT to the clearance area… but I kept quiet.

She also kept taking things off of the belt saying she’d gotten more than she needed. Sometimes after he’d already scanned some, so she kept asking him to make sure that he’d scanned only the number of items that she really wanted. She was a mess. Really.

At the end, he totaled her up and she insisted he had rung up the wrong price for one item or maybe he had rung an extra one up… he tried to get back to the list of items rung up and… lost the entire thing. Poof. Empty.

The cashier called for help… but no, there was nothing that could be done. The woman was livid. She didn’t have time for this… the floor person (where’s Michelle to tell me what these people are called) offered to ring it all up and have her come back later and just pick it up and pay for it at her convenience. No, she lives a half hour away and did not want to come back.

She decided they should just ring up one item at whatever she believed her total was… $74 and change, though the last total I saw was $89.67 but whatever… the guy said, no I don’t think we can do that. We need a record of exactly what you bought… she asked to speak to the manager.

The dude called the manager, explained what happened, asked if they could just ring up one item… while they waited for the manager to find out if there was a way to retrieve the entire order, the guy said we can offer you a percentage off of this order if we have to ring it all over again.

The woman said fine. I want something for this inconvenience!

The manager came back and said no, we have to ring it all up because we have to know exactly what was sold — and I was saying, “DUH”…

The woman said WELL I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS AND I WANT SOMETHING FOR THIS INCONVENIENCE! and she started to pull items out of the cart back onto the belt.

At which point I said, is it possible for you to re-ring this at customer service since you’ve already held this line for a half hour? The guy said, yes — of course, you’re right, we’ll move to an empty aisle at which point the woman yelled, “FINE BUT I WANT SOMETHING FOR THIS!” as she walked away fuming.

Who would ever believe that you could just ring up some random item for some random amount of money and let someone walk out of the store with hundreds of things. They have an inventory to deal with, ya know? And if she hadn’t been such a butt about her order in the first place, the cashier probably wouldn’t have gotten flustered and hit the wrong darn key and she’d have been out of there in a decent amount of time rather than adding 20 minutes for ranting on top of re-ringing her entire order.

They do not pay those poor Target employees enough to deal with asshole customers — don’t be an asshole at checkout, ‘k?

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Thank You, Coupon Bloggers

Seriously. I cannot imagine shopping without coupon bloggers. Mostly Rachel, at Mashup Mom, but I do still look at Southern Savers and Totally Target once a week or so, too.

Without them I wouldn’t have bought $75 worth of gift cards for $55 on Sunday. Not to mention the $45 in free products from CVS. Or the 2 bags of DeLallo pasta from Whole Foods today for $1.75. Or the deals coming to me for Christmas gifts from all over the darn place (including new laptops we desperately needed.) And the $40 of free food we’ll be buying at Jewel to finish off the shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Or… the list goes on, really.

Yay for coupon bloggers!

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Raise!

I thought about keeping this a secret because the fewer people who know about the great gift card deals the more likely I am to get a good gift card deal. But nah, I like Raise.com too much to keep it a secret.

Also, they seem to alert Facebook every time I make a purchase so it’s not much of a secret now is it?

Seriously, it’s a pretty good deal if you shop regularly at places where gift cards are available… I go to Starbucks three times a week so it makes sense for me to buy a $100 gift card for $87 since I am going to spend that $100 anyway, right?

Same for places like CVS, Petsmart, Walgreens, etc.

I spend money in those places regularly and consistently. And, there are some places that I only shop at right before Christmas, and I always shop at those places — Michaels, K-mart, Kohl’s — so it makes sense to buy a gift card for less than face value and use those for my holiday shopping.

I am very thankful to Raise for raising my savings a wee bit every month.

Pay attention to whether the card you’re interested in is an e-card or a physical gift card… it might make a difference to you, it might not. Just make sure you know what you’re buying before you buy it.

PS. Those links are referral links so if you click and join, I do get credit. I have no idea what kind of credit, I just know there’s some sort of credit. If you don’t want me to have credit for you joining, it’s ok — just strip the referral off before you join. You won’t hurt my feelings. If you do join, I hope you find great gift card deals, too.

Oh, you can sell gift cards there as well. I have no idea how that works but if you have giftcards that you won’t use, then maybe this is your chance to get something for them? Try it out and let me know how that part of the site works.

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I’m Thankful For My Prius — Even If It Means I Don’t Get a Free Coffee

We usually get gas at the Navy base because gas is a good 20 cents a gallon cheaper and we’re out there anyway because a lot of things are cheaper at the Navy base. It’s a bit of a drive, with construction traffic and bad weather, but it’s worth it. Usually.

For the last several months they’ve done this thing where you get something free when you fill up — a fill up is 7 gallons or more — and I’ve never managed to put that much darn gas in my car so I’ve never gotten that free slurpee or cup of coffee. Darn it. I thought this week that was going to change.

Because last week we didn’t go to the Navy base at all, so we didn’t fill up the gas tank. It was still only at about a half tank but I figured it would be close… since I usually put in a little more than 3 gallons in every week and we skipped a week plus we had to do the whole O’Hare run a couple of times… surely I’d hit the 7 gallon mark…

Except I forgot they changed the promotion to $5 off of a $50 NEX purchase with a fill up of $25 or more. I still thought I might make it but I knew it would be close. And then I noticed the price of gas. It had dropped more than 20 cents since the last time I’d filled up there. Still, I thought, maybe this time… maybe this time I’ll get there.

Alas. No. $24.01.

Everything conspired against me. I swear.

Oh well. I’m still thankful for my Prius even if I never get a free drink or a coupon for the NEX.

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I’m Thankful for Amazon Prime

I remember when I first got Amazon Prime, I thought it was kind of silly and maybe a waste of money. Years later, it turns out it’s not.

Amazon ships quickly but they really really ship quickly with Amazon Prime. Sheesh.

I ordered a gift for JMP (or maybe for his dad?) yesterday at like 5:30pm – it was in the Lightning Deal box. The gift showed up today at about 1pm. How crazy is that?

With as much stuff as I order from Amazon every year, it totally pays for itself without even thinking about Amazon Prime movies we’ve watched via Roku.

Thank you Amazon Prime. You’re one of my favorite things.

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Ouch: On Crock-Pots, Band-Aids and Hyphens

It is still cheaper to buy a replacement crock for a crock-pot than it is to buy a new crock-pot. This disappoints, TW. I don’t know why since I like our crock-pot.

(I find it difficult to hyphenate crock-pot, don’t you?)

When you’ve sliced open a couple of finger tips on the crock-post stoneware, you should really put band-aids on them if you’re going to paint a couple of pages in your altered book. Or if you’re going to use gesso and chalk pastels in a couple of pages of your altered book. It kind of hurts to scrub the paint/chalk out of those cuts.

I should have listened to Ken Jennings when he said I should keep my cuts covered and moist rather than listening to TW (and my own hatred of band-aids.)

(Band-aid is another word I have trouble hyphenating.)

~~

If you broke the stoneware in your crock-pot, would you order a replacement stoneware or buy a new crock-pot?

If you cut a couple of fingers on the stoneware of your crock-post, how long would you leave band-aid(s) on the cut(s)?

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Poop

I’m grouchy. Getting rid of my cleaning ladies will do that to me. I really like my cleaning ladies.

Unfortunately, we really need to spend less money and we’ve made so many cuts in so many other places… this is the only thing left to cut. Darn it.

Kind of fitting that we made the decision to do that and then immediately following that decision, we both had to clean up poop. Not that I’d have left anything like that for the cleaning ladies — I’m very conscientious about the messes I leave for them and the messes I clean up so they aren’t faced with them. Still, fitting. Very fitting.

I’m going to miss those cleaning ladies. I’m going to miss them a lot.

Blah. Hmph. Poop.

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Couponing Fun: How Much Did I Spend?

I ran into Dominicks (which is a Safeway brand store) while TW was getting her hair cut. I used no paper coupons, just the store’s savings card offers that I pre-loaded before I went to the store.

Here’s what I bought:

$60 worth of iTunes gift cards (2 3 card multi-packs)
1 gallon of 1% milk
1 quart of coconut milk eggnog
1 pint of whole milk
2lb block of sharp cheddar cheese (not from the deli, just from the dairy case)
1 bag of Lays potato chips
1 case of Mountain Dew
1 case of Pepsi

How much do you think I spent?

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