Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Small Victories

I have a friend who is big into couponing. She can go into a grocery store and come out with $600 worth of merchandise, yet pay only $75. She carries a 3 ring binder, indexed by category, filled with trading card protectors that are stuffed to the gills with coupons. It's amazing. Awe-inspiring. And a lot of work. I don't have the time or inclination to be that fanatical about couponing, so I have to settle for small victories. Here's my victories for this week. Giant had individual packs of Stride gum on sale 3/$2.00. I had a $2.00 off coupon.
So I got these FREE! SCORE!

Even better - Giant is running a sale on Luden's cough drops 10 packages for $10.00. You must have their store card to get this price, but you don't have to buy the quantity, you can buy any quantity and it is $1.00 per bag. I have a $1.00 off coupon. Cool. But - I ALSO have a coupon that allows you to DOUBLE your $1.00 off coupon.

Meaning Giant paid me $1.00 to take these off their hands! Now my thrifty friend would have had ten or twenty coupons like this stuffed in her binder and would have really made a profit "buying" these - but you can't get away with that around here. Giant limits you to four doubling coupons per household and it's tracked by that card that you have to use to be entitled to the sale price. Plus, you have to purchase at least $15.00 worth of stuff after all discounts to use the doubling coupons, so they are guaranteed a $15.00 purchase for their $4.00 in doubling coupons. Ah well, I'll take the small victories.

Speaking of small victories - here's another one. I've been faithfully going to Curves three times a week (well, most weeks) and working out pretty hard when I'm there. I'm not eating everything I want either - but I'm still gaining weight. I know this is simple math. Burn more calories than you eat. Ugh. So on Friday, I got re-acquainted with Treadmill. I haven't visited poor Treadmill since this time last year when I first started training for the Breast Cancer 3Day. Treadmill paid me back for my neglect by totally kicking my ass! I made it 5 minutes and .25 miles before I was winded. Which means Curves is NOT meeting my needs for cardio workouts, no matter how hard I'm pushing myself there. So now I'm at war with Treadmill. I've challenged myself to go just another minute or another tenth of a mile each day. Monday I made 6.5 minutes, .35 miles. Okay, it's a very small victory, but I'll take it!

Here's today's results. 7.5 minutes, .4 miles. Take that Treadmill! Ah, small victories.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to go Cheri! Just watch out . . . those small victories are addictive . . . . and, it was $125 for $600 groceries,not $75. :-)

Anonymous said...

I love coupons. I don't do nearly as well as Krystal, but every time I save $8 at Target or whatever amount at the grocery store, I feel good about it. That's $8 I wouldn't have in my pocket if I hadn't taken the time to clip the coupons, and couponing is really pretty easy!

Good luck with your treadmill quest. I have been trying to keep up with a particular exercise program, too, and every day, the argument goes on in my head: "I could skip it today, right? What's it going to hurt?" But then I try to remember that I love myself enough to do the work. Not sure if I love myself enough to pass up a doughnut, but we'll see, lol.