I've been extreme couponing since late August 2009 and I wanted to take the opportunity to recap some of my favorite experiences with coupons.

I've used coupons to literally cut the majority of my grocery visits to under $10, sometimes under $5, and my most favorite, under $1.

1. Free Charmin, My local Kroger (Fry's) had 4-packs of Charmin at 10/$10 and they also quadrupled coupons up to $1. Combine that with the 40+ $.25/1 Charmin coupons that I bought off ebay for $3 shipped and you have a massive supply of TP. I really wanted to purchase more at the time, but I wasn't allowed to (my boyfriend cut me off). This supply lasted from November to mid-April. That's 6 months of not paying for TP. Probably $120 saved.

2. Free Snickers! There was recently a $.50/2 Snickers coupon. Combine that with them usually being 2/$1 at grocery stores that double coupons up to $1. I think I purchased 40 of these on ebay for a total of $6. We are still knee deep...

I'll keep it short. If you really like soda, then you should do this:

$1 off 3 Pepsi Items Manufacturer Coupon here
$1 off Pepsi 12-pk Target Coupon here

At my local Target Pepsi 12-pks are 5 for $10 ($2 each). So after Target Coupons and the Pepsi Manufacturer Coupon it is 3 for $2 or $0.66 per 12-pack. Obviously buy in multiples of 3 for the biggest savings.

If you live in a higher priced region they should still be pretty well priced this week.

Just FYI, Target's coupon policy is one Target Coupon and one Manufacturer Coupon per item. A note though, if you get a stickler cashier, he or she may not let you use multiple Target coupons in one transaction (since they say "limit one per transaction"). But this is not very strictly enforced. If you can only buy them one at a time, then you won't be able to use the $1/3 coupon, but still $1 per 12-pk for me is unbeatable. ^__^

Oh, and the iPhone case that...

CAG is "having a few issues with their image hosting server" so here are the pictures again.

I didn't buy a whole lot on Black Friday, but this is my absolute favorite. It was $3.49 shipped and custom engraved. ^_____^

Well my week started out a little rocky. I had to send off my fairly new DS Lite for repair. The L button on it doesn't work. I've never had any real problems with Nintendo hardware, so I wasn't exciting about going through the warranty process. It is already on it's way back, so I will report it's status on Monday.

After that though, my week really picked up. I had just over $100 in Walgreens Register Rewards, and I cut that down to $21. Concidentally I now have $50 in Amazon gift cards, perfect for Black Friday.

I also picked up my Thanksgiving turkey this week. It was $0.37/lb, making the 12 lb bird I picked up just under $4.50. I read an article saying that Walmart's heavily advertised $0.41/lb was a 10-year low. Just my own comparision, I traditionally just picked up a frozen turkey breast for about $7, maybe 4 lbs. I am only cooking for my boyfriend, so that was our previous more "economical" choice.

There was a Woot-Off this...

This week has been probably my greatest string of shopping trips ever. Just to put things in perspective, yesterday I went to the grocery store and spent 5¢.

My favorite part has been buying 4 packs of Charmin that are $1 and using a quadrupled 25¢ coupon to make them free. I now have a tower of Charmin in my bathroom closet.

I also snagged another 12 months of XBL yesterday for $29.99 at BB. And I happened to also have an old Best Buy gift card, so I didn't have to shell out any cash (thanks Qwest!).

There is also the Glade deal of awesome going on. It has me gaining Target gift cards in increments of $5. I already have $20, and I want to get up to at least $100. Ideally I'd get enough for a PS3, but my boyfriend thinks that's a little too ambitious.

Just a run down of how it works:

Buy any 5 Glade Holiday scented items, get a $5 Target Giftcard
Each item is $2.50

So I buy 10 items, $25.00...

Suspended is such a harsh word. I like that I didn't even know my cell phone was suspended. My iPhone just said "Message Failure" as I tried to send a picture message. A picture message of some freebies I got in the mail.

But now I know that my cell phone has been suspended. I love that AT&T let's you "call" someone. It rings and you get hopeful, then suddenly you hear the voice. "We're sorry your account has been temporarily suspended."

Well at least it's temporary.

And no! It wasn't my fault! I am not responsible for the bill. It isn't in my name, it isn't me. It wasn't me!

This all adds fuel to fire. Here's the story.

My parents got divorced, a long messy 4ish years to settle divorce. After that they finally "moved" on. I think they both went through like 2 boyfriend/girlfriends during that time. Oh well.

So my mother met some guy and got married to him before...

Today I was going over my bills. And it occurred to me that I've checked all of my various utilities/credit cards/etc at least three different times this month. October was so ing long. And yet I keep telling people "wow where did October go?"

I've fallen into this weird routine where I measure my life by Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. It feels to me like I've been doing this forever, but I think it's only be like 2 months.

I have slumped into the abyss known as adulthood. The comfortable.

Sure there are quiet surprises, good grocery sales, a lower than expected bill, a sudden break from the hot weather, nabbing one achievement in a game I've been chipping away at for three years, finding something new and different to watch on Netflix.

But seriously, in the bigger picture it's all the same. I told my father at the beginning of October that I'd settled into this life. That what I was living wasn't a transition...

I have been having such a busy week! The end of the month sparked a lot of shopping because I had coupons expiring. Plus I have been working on ODST achievements.

Walgreens has like 7 items that are all free after Register Rewards, so that consumed a little bit of my time. Fortunately the are mostly monthly deals, so I'll be able to make 1 or 2 trips a week just to roll my RRs on further. I currently have $62 in RR. I wish I could turn it into a gift card, but it isn't allowed and I'm not gutsy enough to push it. Maybe if I'm having a good day?

I also had to do a bunch of Target runs. I had some Purina cat food coupons that were expiring and I wanted to get it on super cheap cat food. So what they had was a 3.5 lb bag of cat food (the higher end stuff) for $5.89. I have Target coupons for $2 off and a manufacturer's coupon for $3 off. Combine those and you get $5 off, making it $0.89 a bag. Unfortunately I had to make a few different trips because the cat food...

Well I said I was going to "buy" the whole line and I did. Walgreens paid me to take away all this wonderful nail polish and I happily obliged.

So there are 30 colors, I'm rockin' the crazy yellow color right now.

Oh, and I'm totally loving Amazon for their ODST price drop. I originally used a $5 GC from Swagbucks, so they only charged me $40.89 out the door. And I'll be getting that $15 + $5 back.

I'm knee deep into ODST now, I haven't even tried Firefight yet!

I went to Walgreens twice today. It is about 3 minutes from my house, so no big deal.

I started the day with $28RR. I ended the day with $33RR and all of the following:

It was a good day for Walgreens. I basically made $5 and got all this stuff as well. Yayz.

I'm going to try and buy the whole collection of that nail polish. I think that would be awesome.

Firstly I want to say how happy I am with over the air HD. In July my cable company called me and told me that they had "accidentally" been leaving off $20 of my monthly bill. So after they called, I promptly cancelled. The bill would've been about $105 a month, way too much for me.

So my boyfriend and I made a list of all of our DVRed shows (about 15 shows) and it turned out that all but 2 were available over the air. And those two shows that weren't in the first 15 or so channels were available online. (I also found a handy list from Best Buy that had the preimere dates, times, and channels. About 5 minutes with the list and a highlighter made things a lot easier.)

So we plunged right into life without "cable". We have a $10 TV tuner/capture card and with that we use Media Center to DVR all of our programs. We already have Netflix, so using our Xbox 360 to watch TV is already ingrained. And I have to say that I'm not hating it at all. The...

Man this week has been full of so many ups! I'm still travelling down the world of couponing. I stepped into the world of Walgreens and CVS, but just a tiny bit.

I did a ton of Walgreens runs. I had a bunch of Glade coupons to use. I don't particularly like having my house smell like stuff, but if it's free then why not.

From Walgreens I got all of the following for less than $4 OOP.
2x Glade Sense & Spray
6x Hershey's Candy Bars (the big ones, not king size, bigger)
9x Glade Candles

From Target I got the following for $1.36 OOP
8x Glade Tin Scented Oil Holders
8x Scented Oil Refill Packs
1x AccuCheck Aviva Blood Sugar Monitor (my BF wanted this )


Two pictures of my starting stockpiles. They don't include everything, maybe I'll make this a habit?





FREE from Grocery Stores
6x Dial Handsoap Pumps
5x 4-pk Colgate Wisps...

A few of you were interested in what I had said about couponing. So here are a few links and tips. First, if you don't like your personal email inbox littered with monthly/weekly/daily "savings" tips from the websites you have to sign up for an account with, I suggest making one specifically for coupons.

If your grocery store has a shopper's card, you can go to the following websites and add coupons to your card. When you check-out and buy the qualifying item it automatically deducts.

http://www.cellfire.com/grocery/
http://www.pgesaver.com/Sites/PG_eSAVER/Page/HomePage
http://shortcuts.com/home

Here is a list of printable coupon websites. For my own benefit I have a SteadyState partition of Vista on my PC. It doesn't *always* help, but sometimes it will allow you to defy the 1-2 printing limit per coupon.

http://www.redplum.com/
http://www.coupons.com
http://www.bettycrocker.com/coupons-promotions/coupons/...

This has been a great week for deals. I managed to go on a successful Kmart clearance hunt. I picked up the two items that I absolutely wanted from it, the $15 120 GB HDD for X360 and the $5 512 MB memory card. I also grabbed a $2 extra Wii power adapter.

This past month I have seen like 3 different articles about people who sucessfully coupons to pay little to no money for groceries and household items. I finally decided to take the plung this week and go couponing.

My local grocery store was already having a great sale on a ton of items I was interested in, so I geared up and took the plunge. I started with a $165 cart. By using coupons and the store card I got my total down to $27.07. I got 46 items total, including 4 packs of Mt. Dew Ultra Violet and 3 packs of 24-pack Aquafina. That comes out to like $0.58 per item.

Target also has this coupon out that is $1 off cereal, well it works on those single cup cereals (which are $1 there)...

So I was thinking about taking the potential step of going back to college. I already have my degree (which has proven itself worthless), so I figured what's the harm in getting another one?

The bottom line is I already have a TON of math and physics classes under my belt. I could easily go into an engineering field and finish in like 5 semesters.

The only problem I have with this is tutition monies. My first degree was paid for by a fund set up by my grandparents. But after I graduated, whatever was left, was convinently reduced to half because of the economy (80% is in a crappy mutual fund).

What makes this worse is that I was classified as a non-resident at ASU and that is VERY HARD to change. Because the money I was using for tution was from a trust, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't seen as my own wealth, and therefore attached itself to the state I grew up in.

Now I have lived full time in AZ going on like 5 years now....

I finally received a call from the man who offered me the job. He said that my coursework during college isn't deemed advanced enough for this position. He said I could take 3 math classes and try again. He gave me some advice on which courses he thought were good for me to have under my belt.

I thanked him for the advice. I then told him that I hoped in the future that they were slightly more careful when going through this process. I indicated that I didn't apply for the job, his department found me, interviewed me, and offered me the job.

I said that I was very transparent with my academic record, and that to find out a month after I gave them a copy of my transcripts that I wasn't qualified was shocking.

Overall, I just don't want this to happen to anyone else. It is bad enough that there are several recent college graduates out there struggling. But to give someone a severe sense of false hope is just wrong. And I absolutely think...

So I got an email back from the guy who said my degree didn't qualify for the position. I have a Mathematics B.A, btw.

So he said that I need 24 total Math hours and at least 4 upper division courses. He said that I only have 1 upper division course, which he said was this 400 level class. Now my transcript is littered with at least 5 or 6 300 level courses.

Did I magically drop into another planet where 300 level doesn't count toward upper division? To get my degree the school specifically mentions that there are 3 *REQUIRED* courses which happen to be upper division, and I also *HAVE* to have 4 *ADDITIONAL* upper division courses.

So.... if I have a diploma hanging on my wall that say I have the degree, don't I meet the requirements?

And it just is the case that I email this guy back at 9 am and I call him and he doesn't respond. I just want to take a frakking nap and he won't get back to me.

This leaves a bad...

What happened to Halo? I used to have a full friends list and every time I played would have decent game-related and otherwise conversations with my teammates. It was nice. Everyone had fun, those crazies that shout profanity would be called tools and ignored.

Fast forward to Halo 3 and I still can't find that experience. Everyone always seems so negative. Almost every match I play ends in at least one person quitting. I used to have one playlist that I frequented, but these days I just loaf about.

Is it that everyone is in a clan aka clique? I am not intense enough to want to do that. My skills can be hit or miss, so I don't feel like I can actively contribute to any type of large group of people. And these days it seems to matter more than ever.

I'd just like to find a few people that would enjoy playing the game with me. Who don't mind that I'm not a General. A few people to go through the final level for the Vidmaster Challenge....

The story of my life. I graduated college on 8/8/08. I stopped looking for a job in April. I found a really nice part time job 5 minutes from my house. So at the end of July this guy calls and says he wants me to do a phone interview for a job in NM. I agreed because I thought it would be fun.

So I talk to a few of the people and they decide they want me for the job. That's great, perfect. I say that I'll visit between the time of submitting my name for the job and receiving the formal job offer. Well two weeks later I visited. They say they haven't submitted my name yet, but will do it that day. OK, fine, we're 2 weeks behind, but sure.

I guess I should also mention that they made me take a test and that they asked for a copy of my unofficial transcripts. This was before they "unofficially" offered me the job. I also hand delivered an official copy of my transcripts when I visited.

The last thing I said to the guy who is offering...