Went and used more of my coupons for beans. Bought 18 cans. Effectively was paid $3.18 to take them home with me!

Did I ever mention how much I love coupons and sales?

Oh and a friend bought my lunch today. Free lunch and free stuff. Life is good!

Bought:

9 cans of Heinz Beans
dozen eggs
2 2pks onion soup mix
Splenda (200 pkg)
Milk (2L)
Oatmeal Packages
Shampoo and Conditioner (Herbal Essence)
Gel and Hairspray (Herbal Essences)

Used about $24 in coupons, spent $8.98

Couponing can really pay off some shopping trips!

Cleaning out my cupboard I found an old container of Tetly herbal tea. I don't drink much herbal tea and had no idea of how long I had had this.

They send me back an email the next morning that was very useful

The shelf life of an unopened box of tea is approximately 2 years. The production code number indicates when the box/canister of tea was produced. If you have a canister, this number may be found on the bottom of the canister, and if it is a box, it is on the side panel of the box. For example, for the production code number that you have quoted, "3362", the "3" indicates the year, so the tea was produced in 2003. The "362" indicates that it was packaged on the 362nd day of the year (approximately December 28th). Therefore, the canister that you have
has passed its shelf life. Due to the sensitive nature of tea, once the box is opened (cellophane removed) the teabags themselves are very susceptible to picking up other odors or flavours. Therefore, in order to prevent the tea from becoming "tainted" by absorbing a foreign odour,
or from becoming "stale", we strongly recommend to our consumers that tea be stored in an air-tight canister mmediately upon opening, and placed in a cool, dry area.

This information allowed me to go through my tea stash and ditch most of it. I'm not in a phase where I'm drinking flavoured tea so there isn't much point keeping it around. When I buy it in the future I'll likely buy 2 or 3 individual bags from the bulk food store rather than box that I'm not likely to finish.

I didn't ask for a coupon or expect to get one - and I didn't.

I've been giving more feedback to companies lately! Seeing what their response is.

Nestle - feedback on their Tollhouse Cookie dough with brownie bits ice cream. While up to nestle quality it was not what I thought I was buying. i wanted cookie dough ice cream and this was more like chocolate with bits of indistinguishable chocolate in it. So I wasn't very happy about it and send them a note. They sent me a coupon for $1 off my next purchase and a standard letter about sending stuff to quality control and thanking me for my feedback.

I will likely give the coworker the $1 coupon as she has kids and unless I want a "wide load" sign on my butt I don't need to be buying more ice cream.

I went to a website yesterday that had wee window pop up to say that they would send you a free product coupon in exchange for completing a short survey.

I filled it out. Then for some reason clicked back and realised that the offer ended in February.

I then tried to complete a form to send a comment to the company to tell them about their outdated web page. I tried to send it twice but have no idea if it went or not.

Had this been some small mom and pop company I wouldn't be so annoyed. But this was Alberto Culver (hair stuff). I really think that multinationals with mega staff and budgets should be able to keep their websites up to date and have response forms that work.

Got my interest cheque in respect of my last month's rent payment - $61 - Yeah it is rent on my money but still nice when the landlord sends me a cheque rather than me sending him one.

That will happen again soon enough - the first is not that far away!

Dang it! Dang it! Dang it!

If its not enough we all have 5 million passwords to remember now we have to remember security questions too.

Obviously by the tone of this post I am not going a good job of this.

Now I'm locked out of my checking and savings accounts.

The food basics (a basic sort of grocery store - a cross between a regular grocery store and an aldi) near me is closing.

The guy who decided what goes on the signs for the store closing wasn't the sharpest. The signs in huge lettering had store closing Thursday March 24th.

I don't know if another store is going there or if that location is just gone! Too bad I liked that location cause it was handy, had good hours and was never too crazy.

A friend and I share a subscription to a dinner theatre. Being the thrifty souls we are we go midweek so it is only half the cost it would be on the weekend!

Tonight was Guys and Dolls. I had never seen the performance and really enjoyed it, though I didn't like the voice of one of the singers that much!

Tomorrow morning is going to be painful.

Part of my exciting evening routine is to wash dishes and set up the coffee maker to come on automatically in the AM. Its so nice to wake up to a fresh pot of made coffee!



Anyways, tonight I'm merrily setting up the coffee maker and thinking all is well until a moment or two later when I heard the coffee perking. Setting it all up and then hitting the on button rather than the auto button (the auto button is the one that would have it perking tomorrow morning) is not a frugal activity or a time saver in case you are wondering.. .

Yes, I dumped the coffee and reset up the pot. I really enjoy the hot fresh coffee in the am - and a major money saver as I have pretty much totally kicked the drive though habit.

The official corporate speak is that this isn't really layoffs. While some people (30 in total?) will be laid off at the end of the project it is a "consolidation' project and many of the jobs are relocating to other offices (cheaper rent and salaries in different areas of the company).

There are 40 people in our office that will be laid off including a number that work on our floor. It will not affect our department at all. Some will have on option so officially some will choose to terminate their employment rather than move to a different office. The date this all will happen is between now and the end of 2008.

I don't know who all this affects but I do know at least one person will likely end up unemployed. So while I'm not affected nor is my department it is still sad. We work on the same floor as a number of these people and every few months have a social type event with them (normally a potluck).

There are layoffs being announced at my office today - at least that is what the rumour mill has out.

I'm pretty sure they don't affect the area I work in but I can still feel my stomach churning in worry. My manager is at a meeting about it right now.

A friend who I was chatting with mentioned on the weekend that she had heard we were having layoffs and that a lot of people would be losing their jobs. She knows someone else who works here I think. Not nice when you get advance notice of things from third parties who don't even work for the same compnay before you hear about them from offical channels

Quite often when there are contests that involve food products there is a option for an entry that doesn't involve purchasing the product. Taking advantage of this method of entry can sometimes result in getting a Free Product Coupon - allowing you to purchase the item for the cost of the postage and sometimes a self addressed stamped envelope. This particular offer didn't require the SASE.

So this past weekend I got organized and wrote out 20 entries (the rules allow one request per day via mail) and got them into envelopes, addressed and stamps, that way I can drop one in the mail every couple of days.

I'm planning to pick up a couple of the sauces for myself and likely will give away some of the FPC's as RAOKs.

Can't say I'm impressed!

I just saw a advertisement for a Mastercard on MuchMusic - the Canadian version of MTV. The ad was marketing a credit card to teens. At the end of the ad there was some captioning on the screen about kids ages 13 and up and something about parents needing to give permission.

I think it is a prepaid credit card. But to my mind, teens don't need credit cards before they are able to even properly manage their allowance.

The entire ad is talking about freeing teens from parental control of how they spend their money. Sounds more like a quick way to hook kids into using a credit card to me. Get them hooked on a credit card early and they'll be paying you interest payments forever. Nice eh?

Two thumbs down for Mastercard and MuchMusic

I did my normal Sunday cooking spree today.

So far have made a huge crust less quiche (using up the eggs that needed to be used), with broccoli, mushrooms, cheddar, peppers, onion and garlic. A full crock pot of chili is nearly finished cooking and I made up a huge batch of broccoli salad (with red onion and cheese).

Still on the agenda are "healthy shake" chicken thighs (using cornmeal and spices rather than shake and bake) and to make up the cole slaw mix I have.

I'll be eating well next week.

Used $9 worth of coupons today. Effectively got two products for free (it is sweet when the coupon covers the sale price of the product) and got some other items for about 1/3 of their regular cost.

Cashier credited me with $7.60 in coupons. I'm still not quite sure how she did that when being given coupons as follows:

3@$2.00
4@$0.75

Ended up making a trip to the customer service desk for a cash refund of $1.40 to get things straight.

Its really wearying to have to argue and be so on top of things when using coupons. Still my entire order came up to $24 so I did some nice savings on my items.