artofthecoupon.com

Welcome back!

This is part 1 of a series I’ll be doing this week on How to Make Homemade Cheap Easy Healthy alternatives to a lot of common (and unhealthy and expensive!) products we use in our homes. These are a few of my favorite “recipes” for cleaners. (more…)

For those who aren’t familiar with the Extracare program, let me give you a brief summary of how CVS-ing turned into a verb, and why there are a select few of us who frequent the store 3, 4, 5, even upwards of 6 times a week. (more…)

We’re going to be buying a house within the next year or so. As we consider taking on this additional (and large) amount of debt I’ve been doing research into how to pay it down faster. There are a lot of disputes on the wisdom of this. Many argue that mortgage debt is good debt, that money is better invested elsewhere, that we should take advantage of the tax deduction that comes with mortgage interest

However, I’ve decided that we want to pay our house off early anyway. My ultimate goal is to be totally debt free, so that everything I love is truly mine and so that I never have to face worries about where my next mortgage payment is coming form (like so many people do today!). So, I’ve been looking at different ways in which we can eliminate this debt quickly, and I have found a few different methods or theories. (more…)

I had a nice morning this morning and it didn’t cost me anything. I woke up and packed a breakfast and lunch for Neff. I do this every morning. He would prefer to buy his lunch (and breakfast for that matter!), which of course I think is a huge waste of money. The unspoken compromise we’ve reached is that I’ll wake up and pack a breakfast and lunch, and he’ll take it and not buy anything :). (more…)

There are some things I do to save money that I don’t love- foregoing shopping and limiting my Sushi intake for example. But there are also some things that I started doing to save money that have had the side benefit of improving my life or the lives of my family members.
(more…)

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I feel a need to shop. The thrill of going out into the world, finding shiny new items and making them mine is just sometimes too much to tame. And I know I’m not alone here. I’m convinced that this Urge to Shop which many woman (and even some men) seem to possess stems from our natural hardwired tendency to hunt and gather. We no longer need to go and track food, or to forage for berries so we fulfill this same internal drive by heading to a strip mall and hunting down the latest and greatest in whatever items catch our fancy.
(more…)

Once in a while, usually near Christmas time, I’ll hear a terrible story on my local news. It usually begins the same way… there was a great sample sale, or a door buster, or a limited amount of X item sold at some great price. And it usually ends the same way too… video footage of a crazy old woman with wild eyes beating another with her purse as she desperately tries to grab a scarf; or fathers in the toy aisle each grabbing on side of a box and tugging like a couple of dogs who got ahold of a sock in their teeth.
(more…)

I started using coupons seriously in March of 2007, approximately 1 year and 4 months ago. I was inspired by an MSN money article called Secrets of Superstar Grocery Shoppers, and by reading about the great deals people were getting at CVS. On Sunday, I dutifully bought my paper, clipped my coupons, made my list, and headed out to CVS. Now, less than 2 years later, I buy 4 papers a weekend. I do at least 8 transactions at CVS a week, not to mention approximately 4 weekly trips to Wal-Mart and assorted other grocery and drug stores. I am what you might call a Coupon Addict.
(more…)