Living Large on a Limited Budget
I have updated my coupon database. You can view it by clicking here.
These coupons are from my Sunday papers, beginning March 1. Yours may vary depending on where you live. Feel free to check it out to see if it can be a help to you!
To find out how I use this database and organize my coupons, go here.
I had to chuckle when I found these three ice cream offers shortly after writing the last post. I haven’t decided yet if it’s irony or the hand of God. =)
One of our favorite rites of passage each spring is our first trip to the ice cream store. We have a great mom and pop ice cream store up the road that promises heaping scoops of decadent flavors for lower prices than the national chain stores.
This past weekend was glorious and we upstate New Yorkers emerged from our dens, squinting at that unfamiliar bright orb in the sky. Finally…
I mentioned the ice cream store to Wes and his arm twisted quite easily and painlessly. So we packed up the boys and happily made the short trip.
Since I’m a creature of habit, I opted for my two favorite flavors: peanut butter cup and cookie dough. Does it get any better than that?
And then it happened. The unthinkable. A few licks in, those two beautiful scoops of ice cream slid right off my cone and plopped into a heap in the dirt. I was horrified.
So I hopped back in line, empty cone in hand, and waited to tell my tale of woe. Surely, they would understand my dilemma and place two more fat scoops of ice cream on that cone, right? (I’d be happy with even just one…)
I was wrong. When I finally made it to the window, the teen-age girl inside listened to my story with a blank look on her face and said, “You’ll have to pay for it.”
Would you believe me if I told you I teared up a bit?
I don’t know if it was the fact that we had left the rest of our money in our car across the road or that I didn’t feel like I should fork over the $2 that could be spent elsewhere. Or possibly it was the injustice of it all. (It became obvious to me that this wasn’t my fault when I saw someone else lose their ice cream just minutes later. )
I certainly don’t know what the typical protocol is when it comes to this dilemma. Possibly this is a national standard. But it simply didn’t feel right to me.
So, my question to you all is this: What would you do if you faced this dilemma? Would you simply walk away like I did? Would you ask to speak to a manager? Or maybe you agree with the store’s policy?
I certainly don’t plan on boycotting the store or sending hate mail. I simply will be extra careful licking my ice cream cone the next time we stop in.
Epilogue: My super kind husband gave me the rest of his cone that day. My hero.
It’s always Money Saving Monday around here. But we thought we’d continue this feature in order to highlight some of our favorite deals we’ve seen this week.
It’s a lovely day here in upstate NY…thus the name of this edition!
Did you know that Redbox offers a free rental code every Monday? Today only use code: 4CW33N to get a free rental! This can be used once per debit/credit card, so you can rent more than one for free by using different cards!
To use the code, select ‘Rent with Promo Code’ before selecting your movie.
Stop by next Monday, and I’ll have a new code for you!
Welcome to the weekly Cha-Ching Challenge!
Would you like to join us?
Simply copy and paste the image above (or the html code below) in a post detailing all of your savings for the week. Each week I will choose one participating blog to highlight right here on Cha-Ching on a Shoestring. Please be sure to leave your comment no later than Sunday (4/26 at 12 p.m. EST).
Here are my savings for the week:
Savings from coupons and store sales: $69.92
Savings from cutting costs: $30.00
Savings from shopping the deals: $59.20
TOTAL SAVINGS: $159.12
TOTAL SAVINGS FOR THE YEAR: $1063.33 (WE BROKE $1000!)
HOW DID YOU DO? Leave a comment with a link to your blog and let’s celebrate our savings! Be sure to add a link to this post to your blog so others can join in.
Here is the html code for the button above:
<a href=”https://chachingonashoestring.com/2009/04/25/chachingchallenge/” title=”Cha-Ching Challenge“><img src=”https://chachingonashoestring.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/button-challenge-125.png” title=”Cha-Ching Challenge” /></a>
Sign up for Huggies Enjoy the Ride Rewards program and enter code: WPBXZ-RDDNS-PPPGB to receive 2 additional points.
Note: A friend e-mailed last night to ask where the codes are on the diapers. After tearing my sons Pull-ups package apart, I realized that indeed, there are no codes on the diapers. I did some investigating and it appears that the codes are only going to be found on Huggies advertisements and e-mails from the company for now. Let me know if you have heard anything differently!
You can read the first part of this series here.
I’ve always been a fan of the “This is Your Life” concept. If there were a made-for-tv movie highlighting all of the events in my life leading up to my current state of frugality, I think it might look something like this.
Cue soundtrack. Cut to slideshow of old family pictures. Begin voice-over of Kaley speaking.
The early years–I’m the one with the finger in my mouth
“I grew up poor.
Wow, that feels weird to say. I think I had no idea how poor we were. My parents worked hard to find creative ways to keep us from feeling poor. And rarely did we talk about money being tight.
But, the salary of a small country church pastor is small and our family was large, so we were definitely poor.
If I had to do it all over, I think I might grow up poor again. (Although I might choose to be filthy rich the third time around!) For a lot of reasons.
First of all, I learned how little I really needed. Cut to scene of young girl sitting contentedly on ugly orange carpet. I was the kid who wore her sister’s hand-me-downs with pride, had no hate about the ugly orange carpet in her teeny tiny bedroom, and was completely unfazed by the fact that the guy she dated in high school had a brand new red sports car. And I promise I wasn’t weird.
I also learned that I liked to save my money. At some point when I was younger, my parents gave us a set of three envelopes to keep track of our money. We labeled them Savings, Tithe, and Spending. I would separate any money that I earned into those three envelopes. My favorite envelope was the one for savings. Maybe I was secretly hoping to save enough to replace that ugly, orange carpet…I don’t know.
Being poor also meant that I saw God provide for me a lot. When I was in college, my parents moved overseas to become missionaries in Korea. So our family’s pay scale changed from poor to dirt poor. To be honest, I’m not sure how I was able to afford college. But, over and over, God showed His care for me in the form of financial provision.
Cut to scene of college-aged girl in line at the grocery store, searching through her purse. Whether it was the $.25 that I found on the day that all I needed was a quarter or the $100 bills that would show up randomly from a secret provider or the woman behind me in line at Kroger who paid for the rest of my grocery bill when I didn’t have enough money–I knew my lack of funds was not a problem that was too big for God.
There were a few things that being poor did not teach me, however. Learning to be wise in my money management was one of them. Cut to scene of girl standing in the middle of a bank, crying. Loudly. The day that I stood in the middle of my bank sobbing uncontrollably because I had bounced my first check was one evidence of my lack of money sense. (I’ve always felt sorry for that poor bank teller.)
Cut to scene of girl devouring a pack of Twizzlers. I also signed up for a credit card in college because by doing so, I would get a pack of Twizzlers. By the time I was done with college, that was the most expensive pack of Twizzlers I have ever purchased. I had a good chunk of debt and little idea of how to get rid of it.
Then I married Wes.”
To be continued…