More Than a Little

This post is brought to you by my dad, who is a follower of this blog.  He reminded me a while back that you can save a lot of money just by using less of the things you already use.  It’s great that you can get shampoo for pennies using coupons, but the longer you use that same bottle of shampoo, the less you spend overall.  The classic example is the “lather, rinse, repeat” slogan on shampoo, and how it was added as a marketing ploy to sell twice as much rather than because you actually need to wash your hair twice.

Laundry detergent is something that I personally always use less of than I’m supposed to.  I used to use cloth diapers for my daughter, and one of the ‘rules’ of using cloth is that you cannot under any circumstances use as much detergent as recommended.  Soap residue  affects how well the diapers work.  When you see half the recommended amount remove poop from the diapers with no trouble, it’s hard to justify using the full amount to clean clothes that aren’t as dirty.

This attitude will save you a lot of money in the long run.  It won’t seem like much, but when you apply it to ziplock bags and paper towels and toilet paper and body wash and toothpaste and dishwashing detergent and milk for your cereal and paper and everything else, it will save you tons.

What do you use less of? What do you think is going “too far”?  I have seen frugal internet communities speaking seriously about using less water and therefore saving money by not showering very often.  I personally think that is going TOO FAR.  ;)

Now that I think about it, this post is totally an endorsement for not cleaning your house very often. Save on cleaning supplies! :) Do it for your wallet.

Sign up at Gluten Free Circle to receive free gluten-free product samples and coupons mailed to you.

As much as I like getting free samples, especially with only a small amount of initial time invested, I’ll leave this one for the people who need it. :)

Enjoy!

Advance has an interesting deal right now, 1/25 – 127.  If you spend $100 (online), you’ll get a coupon by email for $50 off your next purchase of $50 or more.  Free shipping applies to all orders $75 or more.

I think the beauty of this one is that theoretically, you’d be getting free stuff if you buy something you’d have to buy anyway.  If you don’t happen to have a large expensive car part that you need right now, then you can consider it 33% off if you want to take the opportunity to stock up on car supplies–that may or may not be worth it to you.

Advance Auto Parts – spend $100, save $50.

Big Lots has a 20% off coupon available right now.  It’s good through January 31.

Get the coupon!

Big Lots sells furniture, and we have been sorely tempted to buy a new couch there when these coupons have been released in the past.  It’s probably good that we don’t have a truck to get one home. :)

Last night, we went out to dinner at Chili’s.  We hardly ever go there but I had read at slickdeals that they’re doing a promotion for two meals, an appetizer and dessert for $20. That’s a pretty good price for a meal like that, so we thought we’d go.  Once we got in there, though, there was absolutely nothing about it on the menu.  We started looking at other options on the menu since it wasn’t available.

When the waitress (finally) arrived to ask for drink orders, I asked her about the promotion.  She said that she thought it had already ended, but it was still in the computer so she’d bring me a menu of the eligible items.  So she did, and we ordered food (which turned out to be quite good!) and we had a lovely lovely evening.

Also, before this dinner event, I sent my husband to CVS to pick up Pepsi while I went to Walgreens with the baby, and I actually combined this lovely evening with drugstore shopping. How much better does it get?  I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of the heaping pile of stuff we bought at Walgreens, though. I had a LOT of RRs from the Bayer monitors to use.  It mainly went for Pepsi products (we are stocked up through approximately August, and we drink quite a lot of it..if that tells you anything) and a humidifier.

Anyway, my point is–it doesn’t hurt to ask, in situations like this.  The worst they’re going to say is no, and you just might get what you want.  And for the record, this was just posted about at slickdeals so I don’t think that it’s an ended promotion, regardless of what our waitress said.  Feel free to try it out in your area.  I was pleased to see that the options on the menu were actually good ones–it usually feels like those special menus have less appealing entrees than the real menu.

I have officially lost my mind, thanks to Ana at Knock Off Wood. Apparently, I believe that I should begin building furniture.  Look how gorgeous that furniture is!  She posts free plans for ‘knock off’ furniture from Pottery Barn and West Elm and a bunch of other places.   She makes it look so easy!  As it happens, we are short on good furniture in this household but we promised we wouldn’t buy anymore junky particleboard stuff, and that means that we don’t buy anything because it costs too much.

I have a starter project in progress, which is the first step in re-doing my daughter’s bedroom–it’s more of an art/craft project than a furniture project, but I did use the bandsaw all by myself so I think it counts.  (I have a bit of an advantage over many people who get the odd hankering to do something like this–I’m married to a luthier–which is a fancy name for someone who builds instruments. He has lots of big tools.) I’m still working on the finishing stage so I won’t post any more details until it’s done but it’s looking so cute and I wouldn’t have done it if not for this site.

So, my recommendation for today is to go check out her blog–Knock Off Wood. Parents of young children, I particularly enjoyed the posts about Grace’s Town. Now THERE is a fun-looking toy. :)

Big Lots has Surf and All on sale this week for 2/$5. (All 2X, 50 oz or All 3X, 32 oz or Surf 3 lbs 12 oz.)  That’s actually a pretty decent price on its own.

But! Take the Big Lots sale paper to Wal-Mart or Target and price-match the Big Lots sale, and then you can use coupons to make it an even bigger savings!   (Big Lots doesn’t accept coupons.)  There were $1/1 All, $1/1 Surf and $3/2 All coupons in a recent insert–probably the 1/3/10.

Buy 2 All, use one $3/2 coupon = $1 each.

Buy 1 All or Surf, use one $1/1 coupon = $1.50 each.

Remembering that $3/1 Surf coupon fondly right now… it’d be lovely to make this a MM, wouldn’t it? Still–good price on detergent.

(I have ten copies of each coupon, which would be a total of forty bottles/boxes of detergent.  That would be a bit of overkill, I think, but it’s nice to be well-supplied, right?  hehe.  Don’t worry, I won’t be buying that many!)

I have a confession to make.

I don’t track any sort of financial savings/earnings.

I used to. I used to have this super-complicated budget spreadsheet that I maintained for a couple of years.  I split up every dime we earned and logged it into this spreadsheet by date and category.  I was splitting up every receipt into about ten different categories… and calculating tax for each one. It was super-cool and also a lot of work.  The reason I quit doing it is that I kept falling behind.  I was still doing it when I started couponing, and splitting up those receipts became absolutely impossible. I mean, I’d have a receipt that said that I paid $46.23.  Then I would have to remember that I was getting $35 in rebates, $2 in Register Rewards and I paid using a gift card that I had earned from the previous month’s rebates, so my out-of-pocket was sort of zero, but sort of $7.23.  Then I would have twelve different items in that order, and how could I easily say what each one really cost?

I’ve thought for a long time about how I could come up with any sort of useful statistics about this hobby. I’ve tried using several of the spreadsheets that other deal bloggers use.  None of them make sense for my particular situation–namely, I don’t buy this stuff just for myself. I am still planning on doing my yard sales this year.  Most of the time, I don’t even know when I bring something home if I’ll keep it or if I’ll sell it or give it away.  Plus, I buy a lot of stuff that would artificially  inflate my numbers.  For example, the regular price on a diabetes monitor is like $80.  My receipts will tell me that I have saved $129.98 or something silly, when in fact, I haven’t really saved anything.  I wouldn’t buy that item if it didn’t give me some sort of special benefit, and I’d never pay that much for one even if I did buy one.

And yet, I think I’m missing out by not tracking more of my expenditures and incomes.  If you don’t have a goal or a way of measuring a goal, then you’re not going to give it everything you’ve got, right? So, my new goal is to break even, so to speak.  My plan is pretty simple–I want the things that I buy (groceries, toiletries, household supplies, etc) for both myself and for the purpose of reselling to balance out against the income that I generate.  I’m going to count most things that I would buy at a drugstore or Wal-Mart or grocery store, excluding say, appliances or electronics or car maintenance supplies  or  maybe gifts.  For drustore shopping, I will count out of pocket expenses only–thus increasing the likelihood that I will actually keep up with this.  The Register Rewards and Extra Care Bucks will be discounted from the calculations–I mean, I’ll use them in future transactions, thereby bringing the cost down, so it evens out in the end.  Rebates I will add back into my pool of available money as income, just because it will be simpler that way.  Other income will include things like online offers, credit card dividends, yard sales, eBay sales, freelance work, etc.

This method clearly wouldn’t work for someone dedicated to a firm monthly budget, or who uses the envelope system.  In our house, though, it’s just not as set in stone that we will spend a certain amount on groceries in one week or month anymore.  We used to have $300 as our food budget, but that was before coupons.

I’ll be honest with you. I have no idea if this will work, if it’s far from obtainable or if it’s way too easy.  Judging from the last working budget that we had (before couponing), this should be quite easy to accomplish, and I’ll need to adjust it to make it more challenging.  I hope!   If that happens, I’ll add categories of spendings to be included (say, restaurants) in order to make it a little more difficult.  In a way, I’d rather fail the challenge than make it too easy–at least that way, I’d still be striving to meet my goal.

I think that the benefits of this method will be that it will inspire me to work harder to both save more and earn more, and it will also allow me to track my shopping trips quickly and with a minimum of fuss.  It also makes sense, in a way, to consider all of my income-earning activities, as a stay-at-home-mom, as part of my household budget.  At the end of the day, money in and money out data should be more useful than a somewhat arbitrary number representing my savings.

I’m going to try this for a month or two and then re-evaluate, and fine-tune the goals then.  I’ll post my progress as I go.

My husband and daughter stayed home and played in the snow while I drove  out of town to hit a few drugstores. I really meant to go to Rite Aid and it turns out to be the one drugstore I didn’t go to.  Ooops!  I had an pretty hot shopping day.  I was feeling so darned good about myself that I called on my way home and arranged for a date at Longhorn.  Expensive but delicious! 

Walgreens

(not pictured: two more Aquafina waters that had already been carried into the sunroom to be put away. Too heavy to lug them back just for the sake of a photo!)

Total OOP: $24.32 (2.74, 3.46, 3.96, 1.20, 1.20, 3.00, 7.74, 1.02)
Total RR Used: $43 (10, 5, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 2, 2, 10, 3)
Total Spent: $67.32
Total RR Received: $119 (5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 5, 5, 3, 10, 5, 5, 3, 1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 1, 2, 2, 1, 5, 5, 6, 3, 5, 5, 6, 1)
Total Cost: $51.68 profit

This was the result of shopping at several stores, so no need to fear that I am roaming the countryside, demolishing the stock at all of your neighborhood Walgreens.  I even left sugar testing kits in stock at every single store!  ;)  Right now, if you buy one of each in a transaction, you get two $5 RRs and one extra $3 RR. Since I used coupons to make them all free–that makes it a pretty hot deal.  For some reason, I don’t even have to pay tax on them anymore. If you purchase another qualifying item, you get a $6 instead of a $3.  The last two stores I was in had the Bayer crystals above on clearance for $2.19. I didn’t have any coupons with me but it was still profitable to buy them.  If I had just bought those monitors and Bayer crystals, I would have had $80 of profit. :)

The other thing to mention about this picture is that you should never believe everything you read on the internet.  I am occasionally guilty of just compiling my shopping lists and not noticing if something corresponds with reality.  I had read somewhere that the Sensodyne was $3.49. After a $1 coupon and $2 ad coupon, that would make it $.49.  I rarely see this on a good sale, and people have asked me for it at my yard sales, so I figured I’d get it.  Turns out that they were $4.99, not $3.49, making those toothpastes $1.99 each.  Terrible!  I will live with the loss, though, especially considering that the day was very profitable anyway. I was planning on selling them for $2 each anyway, so at least I’ll get my money back, assuming they sell (and I think they will.)  I could return them but I don’t want to be obnoxious.

CVS

I also hit a CVS on impulse.  It was the nicest CVS I have ever been into!  Large and spacious and with actual merchandise on the shelves!  ;)   I have one tiny CVS in town and one in the next that I hit occasionally, and other than that I have only walked into maybe one or two others, so I don’t exactly have a lot of experience to draw from, but they’re all tiny little stores. By the way, if you’re in a nice store, complimenting it to the cashiers makes them much friendlier.  I never say it if it isn’t true, but I make a point of telling them if it is. 

Anyway!

Total Spent:$1.75 (1.75, 0)
Total ECB used: $23.49 (2.49, 4, 5, 12)
Total ECB received: $32 (2, 6, 12, 12)
Total Cost: $8.51 profit

My husband just groaned and said, "More Soy Joy?? Ugh!"  hehe  The Oust is a fantastic deal right now.  $3.99 each and you get $3 back per bottle–plus a B1G1 coupon came out in last week’s paper. 

It was a good day.

Do you ever feel like you are annoying the crap out of someone when you check out? That is pretty much what my shopping trip today felt like. It’s not that she was extremely rude, she was just completely blank. Ahh well.

Spent: $45.96 (33.72, 11.24, 1.00)
RR used: $8 (5, 3)
Total OOP: $53.96
RR Received: $47 (10, 4, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 4, 2, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1)
Total Cost: $6.96

Have you ever been in a Walgreens? Picture all of that stuff heaped up in one of their tiny little buggies with a two-year-old in the front seat, plus two bulky jackets and my purse. I looked very comical. It was almost embarrassing.

I was very happy that they had four Aquafina in stock. This week, they’re on sale for $3.99 after the in-ad coupon. They’re $5.99 regular price. There’s a $10 when you buy $20 Pepsi product RR going on this month. So-$5.99*4=$15.96-$10 RR=$5.96 for four. $1.49 each! I am ashamed on an environmental and financial level to admit that we drink bottled water most of the time, and Aquafina is my favorite.

I still can’t believe that it’s possible to shop like this, and this isn’t even one of my better trips.