Twenty (20) Items You Should Never Have to Pay For

Since I've been couponing about six months now, there are some things that I'll never have to pay for again, simply because I can get them for free with coupons. Everyone has a CVS, Walgreens or Target near them and most of these items can be had for free by stacking store coupons with manufacturer coupons, or using the CVS Extra Care Bucks (ECB's) or Walgreens Register Rewards (RR) that are essentially money back and many times give you overage or extra money back so it's a moneymaker.

 

Its important when you coupon, to NOT be brand loyal – If you only will eat Hunts Ketchup, instead of Heinz or whatever brand ketchup is made by, you're costing yourself money. You need to be able to brush your teeth with any of a multitude of brands of toothpaste like Arm & Hammer, Crest or Colgate. If you can't bring yourself to do that, go ahead SPEND MORE OF YOUR MONEY.

 

Anyway, here is a list of items that you should never have to pay for, or if you do it should be a very small amount, like less than a quarter each.

 

1. Toothpaste – on BOGO at Publix a few times a year, stack with coupons and get it free. At CVS or Walgreens you can get free toothpaste usually every other week with the ECB or RR and a coupon.
2. Toothbrushes – CVS and Walgreens are the best places to get these regularly, but they limit quantities. Kmart has double coupon deals where you can stock up, and Target will stack their store coupon with manufacturer (MQ) coupon to get for free. Publix seems to rarely have toothpaste deals unless you can use the Target coupon stacked with a Proctor & Gamble (P&G) coupon and its on BOGO. Then you can stock up.
3. Dental Floss – Easy to get all the time free with P&G coupon stacked with Publix or Target store coupon, or with Walgreens coupon.
4. Bandaids – Johnson and Johnson always has high value coupons that stack with Publix advantage buys, at least quarterly. Also good item for double coupons at Kmart where they double up to $2 coupons.
5. Deodorant – Most brands Dove, Sure, Degree, Suave, Gillette all can be had for free at all stores, usually involves stacking coupons. Remember those coupons in Walgreens ads are store coupons and can be stacked with a MQ. Plus this is a good thing for the homeless give away box, as are all the personal care items.
6. Razors – Oh this is a fun freebie because they cost so much, but they are easy to get for free with the high value coupons out there. Most often found at Target or Walgreens, stacking a sale with a store and MQ coupon.
7. Air Fresheners and Candles – P&G is big with high value coupons available on the internet and email, lots of free or BOGO coupons to be had, stack with a Publix advantage buy or Target sale.
8. Shampoo & Conditioners – Suave, Dove, Pantene, and many others I can't remember are often on sale for a fair price that you can stack a store and MQ to get for free at Walgreens, Target or Publix.
9. Makeup and Tools – Publix is notorious for offering Maybelline, Cover Girl, Revlon and Max Factor store coupons that can be stacked with MQ coupons, and then wait for the store Advantage buy to get lip gloss, tweezers, mascara and nail files for free.
10. Yogurt – match a MQ coupon with BOGO at Publix for free yogurt, usually once a month.
11. Salad Dressing – when the high value Kraft coupons come out in the summer this is the time to stock up, the coupons are scarce now, but the BOGO deals are still out there. We're still using our supply from May of this year and I'm hoping it lasts. I didn't realize how long in between those great $2 coupons. So, its off to trying other brands that stack with sales.
12. BBQ sauce – this is an easy freebie to get all year round. Lots of brands, notably Kraft, Uncle Rays. Stack a coupon with BOGO to get free.
13. Mustard – usually Frenches is the freebie to get fairly often. The coupons aren't that high value, but stacked with a BOGO deal or Walgreens deal, you can get for free.
14. Cereal – Usually need to start with a good sale like $2.00 box or less or BOGO, and stack a Target coupon with MQ coupon at Publix. This week you can get GM and Kelloggs and Kashi cereals for free with combining printables off the internet. I think we got about 14 boxes of cereal yesterday for mostly free when we shopped at Publix.
15. Tomato sauce or paste – there are always $1 Muir Glen internet printable (IP) coupons, and the sauce is 0.89 so it's a moneymaker any day without a sale. Paste is 1.09 so it costs nine cents.
16. Pasta – combine a BOGO with MQ coupon to get this product for pennies.
17. Pet Food and Treats – These go on BOGO often at Publix, and on sale at Target and the coupons available are high value and BOGO. It's easy to frequently stack a Target BOGO with a MQ BOGO and get all of them free at Target or Publix. Brands available all the time are Pedigree, Chef Michael, Purina, Friskies.
18. Paper Products – free Chinet plates, Dixie, Hefty can be had by combining a great coupon with store sale, or even regular price. Also possible to get toilet paper, paper towels and napkins really cheap at Walgreens and CVS by matching the sales with ECB deals and coupons.
19. Reusable shopping bags – look for peelies or store coupons, I have dozens of these and have never paid for any. Publix has a cute new holiday bag out, and GM has peelies on their products to make it free.
20. Instant Potatoes – these are often BOGO and can be matched with a  coupon to get for free.

October Brag

Yesterday, I made my 5th or 6th trip of the week to Publix to use that wonderful $4 off GM store coupon to get more booty. It was totally a coupon run to either stock up or get rain checks and since it was after work my mind was still sleepy and I forgot THE GOLDEN COUPON RULE. In case you can't pull that little rule out of your already cluttered mind, the rule is make sure you have more items than coupons otherwise your transaction will require a supervisor override. Since I was stacking the $4 Q with MQ coupons and I didn't get filler items, the clerk had to call over the manager. He was cool no big deal, it was all legit (ALL my transactions are).

 

So its taking a little longer than normal and I was done bagging and signing, and a gentleman was behind me in line. He had seen me unpack my cart and it filled up the whole belt and then he saw the pile of coupons and then started peering over my shoulder at the total going down and down and down. When the total was final, the clerks are supposed to read you your receipt and tell you how much you saved at Publix, so she says "you saved 90.14 today" (I paid $15.15) and hands me my receipt and I walk away with all my bags. I heard the guy behind me ask the clerk in amazement, "How much did she save??". It was one of those very few times when I felt proud to coupon. Most of the time coupons are a game to me, its fun. Sometimes, they're a hassle and they make me pissy. Sometimes they make me feel smart, and sometimes they make me feel like I'm being perceived as poor. It's actually amazing how wide a range of feelings one can get from coupons.

 

Anyway, my main brag is to celebrate couponing for about 6 months now and my system just seems to run itself with less and less time from me - or maybe I'm just more efficient. My stockpiles are TOTALLY stocked and I have learned to pass up purchases (even if they are free after coupons) if I don't need the stuff. Our total grocery bill for the month of October was $183,  but then I returned dog food that the dog is allergic too (I had purchased in Sept) for a $81 credit, so the net total was $102. I don't have all my receipts itemized so I don't know how much I saved, but I'm sure it was a lot (maybe $700-$900??) based on how full my cupboards, freezers, fridges and spare room are!

 

So, there - I'm bragging and I'm proud! 

Publix Sneak Peek 11/05-11

Go HERE to see the sneak peek at BOGO deals for Publix next week.

Publix Deals 10/28, 2 money makers

People have been asking whats coming up at Publix as far as deals.

 

For the Publix ad sneak peek at Hot Coupon World GO HERE

 

There are a couple money makers you can do at Publix this week too.

 

1. In Ad Qs (starts Thursday): $4.00 Off the purchase of four General Mills or Nature Valley Products, 5 oz or larger.

Muir Glen is a General Mills product and the tomato sauce is priced at .89¢ and the tomato paste is $1.09.
Use four $1/1 Muir Glen coupons from the Better At Home Booklet and the in ad Publix coupon for some major overage (if your store allows).  There are also several Muir Glen IP's available: HERE on the left side of the Muir Glen Facebook site 

So the math works like this 0.89x4=$3.56 - 4 ($1/1) = -0.04 minus the in ad coupon $4 = $4.04 overage.

 

2. Anytime as long as you can get the coupon - quick Go HERE to print a $4/1 any Knox product coupon. The Knox gelatin (usually found in the jello section) is around $1.50 (or less) at Publix so it is possible to get overage (if allowed by your store). Use ZIP code 30187. $2.60 overage

Crappy Crapper

We're moving along in the bathroom and the tile and toilet is the next thing going in. The crappy thing about the toilet, besides being that it's what you crap in - is the poor workmanship we've experienced. We've decided on an American Standard brand toilet since we thought it was good quality and easily available. Plus its the same brand as the toilets at my work, and the mall and everywhere else. You probably haven't' noticed brands of that kind of stuff, but when you're remodeling you tend to notice things like that.

 

So its time to stage the supplies for the next phase of the project and we pulled the stuff out of boxes to inspect. Well the first bowl had a blemish right on the front lip that you would see ALL the time, the enamal wasn't coated there, just a grey rough spot. So back in the box it goes to get returned. We checked the bowl for the other bathroom and that ones fine, so we can keep it. The tanks were both okay.

 

When we returned the toilet to Home Crappo, we got another one. There were 3 to choose from and the other two boxes appeared to be returns. We paid the $84 for the bowl and opened it up in the parking lot to inspect. You guessed it, another manufacturer defect - this time a crack patched in the bottom of the bowl. Right where you would see it all the time, except if it were covered up with poo. It went right back to the store, so now we have no bowl for the 2nd bathroom. More shopping required. Again.

 

What pisses me off is that companies are cutting back staff and crap is getting out of the plant, into the truck, and onto the store shelves. Then we consumers have to deal with defective merchandise. We've never really had to deal with the extent of defects that we've seen in bathroom cabinets, toilets, fixtures, tile and other supplies. The same thing happened to a friend who recently remodeled, three different toilets before they got one that wasn't defective.

Free Photobooks, Free Tshirt and Free Drama

I have acquired many Shutterfly 8x8 photobook codes for a free book ($29.95 value) that I most likely won't use, so I'm offering them up for my readers. If you want a code, let me know. It will cost $7.99 for shipping, so its not really free. The codes expire NOV 15th, so if you get some great Halloween pictures it might be something you want to make a book out of. You can email me HERE if you want a code.

 

There is also a new offer out there to to get a free Tshirt from Marlboro by signing up and logging in your account. Its something to do with make your own brand and you can design your own Tshirt logo using your initials. I made on for Scott using his favorite race car numbers rather than his initials, and it may be kind of dorky, but we always need shirts to do lawn work in. Besides next year I can wear it cause it'll be my age. That would be really cool to walk around in a dumb shirt with my age blazoned on the front. Oh well, a free shirt is a free shirt. Be fore warned to sign up you do need to provide your birth date and driver license number so they can verify you're old enough.

 

Now for the free drama. Actually, I hope the worst drama is behind us with the remodel. The plumbers picked up their check without ripping up the pipes so maybe they got over it. Scott is still really pissed and talks about doing mean things to them. I've just been posting negative reviews of their company and services on the internet. There are several sites that more informed consumers use in their project research so I'm hoping my experience will help others avoid dealing with the plumbers.

So the handyman has been working on the walls trying to put up the electric, fix the pipes that wouldn't fit behind the backer board cause the plumbers didn't really care what the hell they were doing on day 2 when they were goofing off. He's discovered something, that we figured was kind of weird when we were tearing down the walls - they're not square, or straight or anything having to with geometry, except maybe sin and cosine curves. Or maybe an arc cosine curve too. When we were hammering the tile and concrete we noticed that in some areas the walls were 1" thick concrete, other areas were 1/2" thick and some were much thicker, maybe 2" or more. Well, that made it easier for the original installation of the tile walls so that the tile would appear to be flat on the walls. It was flat on the concrete but not the walls. The poor handyman now is going crazy trying to get the walls level in preparation to lay tile. They are really groovy walls, with lots of variance. I guess these old houses didn't need to worry about flat, straight, square walls since none of the walls have drywall, they're all stucco.

 

We're thinking more these days about when to tear into bathroom number 2. Its a bit of a dilemma since both share a common groovy wall, and on one side will be the brand new tile and grout of the tub area, and on the other is the old tile wall and shower wall - both of which need to come down under the force of the rotary hammer and sledge hammer. Scott has lots of power, and if he thinks about the a$$hole plumbers when he's smashing walls, he'll probably break right through the old wall and the new wall Seriously though, we need to remove the old tile before putting grout on the new tile on the other side of the wall, otherwise we'll ruin the new wall. That means..... we need to probably take showers in a plastic bag type enclosure in a demolished room, at least for a couple days. Doesn't that sound fun

 

I know we've deprived you all of seeing pictures of this project but its really not that pleasing to look at. It looks like crap. And it upsets me to see things while they're "in process" between destruction and completion. I remember years ago when my 1988 Hyundai  had a bike rack on top with bikes and we were at a dealership in Indiana, when they drove my car through the garage and ripped the bike rack and bikes off the top of the car. When we got back home and it was being repaired at the dealership, I stopped by since it was taking so long and they showed me the car as they were working on it and I almost fainted. I started crying and moaning and became inconsolable at the state of my car. They had the top half of the car cut apart and peeled back like it had been through the jaws of life. The velour covered seats had welding burn holes all over them and their was metal shavings all over the car. The car was less than a year old and it was trash. But, I got it back and everything was like new, but I'll never get that picture out of my mind how destroyed it was.

 

So I haven't really taken any pictures of our progress. The room doesn't have electric hooked up so there is no light. I try to just walk down the hall fast and not look in that room. It kind of upsets me to see it destroyed. This weekend we'll put the door back in place and close it so I don't have to see it. Its been only 3 weeks and I'm over it, I just want it done, but that's not happening for a long time. Meanwhile, I just try to pretend in my mind, its all good .

Relationships Lost by Being Frugal

Presently we are remodeling our bathrooms and plan to also do the kitchen. A couple weeks ago while removing the bathtub I broke a water line which required emergency repair from the plumbers. We called them and they came out pretty quick (within 3 hours) on a Saturday, and fixed the water break. We also discussed re-piping the house since all the 50 year old water lines were patched and possible breaks in the future. So the last ten days have been taken up dealing with estimates, preparation, shopping and decisions about the re-pipe job. Its finally over and done, but it was a negative experience.

 

I can't help but wonder if we brought it on by being frugal. We felt it would be a pretty easy job for the plumbers since a newer main water line was already to the house. We offered to dig a trench and lay new cpvc around the perimeter to save them time and to save us money. I didn't really like the idea of busting through terrazzo floor slab and stucco walls and having a water line in our closets. We have enough problems keeping them mold free. So we dug up a trench and laid the pipe to the back of  the house. We also bought our own bathtub valves and shower valves so they match, and to save us from the 3x markup on parts that plumbers typically do. So basically, all they provided was labor for 11 hours and lots of pvc and elbow joints, a few shut off valves for sinks and toilets.

 

To make a long story short, they finished most of the job in 2 days and tied in the new pipes. So to save money, we told them we would take care of installing the bathroom valves so they could consider the job wrapped up, please give us a bill. We figured at $85/hr we were in for just over $1000 for labor and the parts at worst couldn't be more than $500, so we calculated about half of the estimate. Boy were we out in left field. The plumbers expected labor of 15 hours to include the time for giving us an estimate, shopping for parts, and driving to our house. They wanted close to $1000 for parts.

 

Well, we were not pleased to be f**ked like this. We told them our expectation and asked them to explain theirs. It got ugly with raised voices, arguing and bullying from the plumber and hostility. They turned it into a totally unprofessional situation, where we just gave in rather than argue with this man. We decided on a number in the middle of the final quote and higher than our expectation, but a liveable price. We felt we were being more than fair, but this man wanted to screw us.

 

The unpleasantness of  this situation is that we've used these plumbers for almost ten years, as do our neighbors who recommended them to us. The plumber does business with our neighbor who is in the AC business. They are our best neighbors who watch our house, lend us their truck, invite us for holidays, watch our dog when we're away, make us great food and in general are great people. It hurts to know they may be offended if they find out how this deal all turned out. I'm not going to get into the drama with them, but the plumber might say something about how we're cheap a$$holes or something.

 

It's a tough situation to be in when you know you are being unfairly charged for a product or service and its not by mistake. What do you do? Risk the relationship to settle the difference, or just pay it to keep peace. I know we have sometimes forgiven crappy cold chicken wings at our favorite bar and grill, because we go there often and don't want to be known as the complainers. We also have paid more for a service when we have no other choices, or it would cost more to start over.

 

So in our short 3 week time span, this is the second vendor we have pissed off who probably won't deal with us anymore than we would deal with them, just because of price. First the trash haulers who wanted double what they agreed to, and now the plumber who finished the job in half the time quoted (due to our prep and assistance on the job) but wanted the full price. Hope it doesn't happen again. At least our handyman is a good guy who's honest, forthright and reasonable.

U2 on YouTube

In case you decided to skip the madness of the Tampa Concert, or perhaps they are not playing in your city for this tour, you can watch the Saturday night concert from California live on your laptop in the comfort of your own backyard.

 

U2 will stream an entire concert live on the YouTube video sharing site this weekend, the Irish band said on their website. Sunday's show at the Rose Bowl in California is already a sellout, with an audience of 96,000 expected, and U2 said it would be the first time for such a large show to be streamed live.

"The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time," said manager Paul McGuinness in a statement.
"As we're filming the LA show, it's the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 -- this time U2 can go to them, globally."
Google Inc's YouTube will stream the concert across five continents, and two replays will be available after the live feed -- on www.U2.com and YouTube.
The band behind hits like "Beautiful Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" kicked off the U2 360 Tour in Barcelona in June and has boasted high attendances by using a circular platform that can be viewed from all sides of arena.
YouTube has had an uneasy relationship with the record industry in recent years, with labels arguing that popular social networking and online video sites should pay them more for the right to feature their artists.
At the same time they recognize the importance of maintaining their presence on sites that help shape young fans' musical tastes.

A Little More Progress

 

Well you all know we've been remodeling our bathroom, gutted the walls to the studs - only to find we hardly have any studs on the main wall between bathrooms. We've had so many leaks over the years, that it's time for the re-plumbing of our water lines. Unfortunately this makes our $5000 project closer to a $10000 project. The costs are raising everyday that the handyman comes, or we go to the store to get pvc, or valves, or order cabinets.

 

We kind of had a ballpark budget of $5000 for each bathroom, hoping we could actually do both with just 5K. That obviously is not going to happen since the re-plumb will add close to 3K. We've ordered or purchased all the supplies except paint, and lighting for each bathroom, and tile for the shower - so hopefully that won't be more than a couple hundred. We still have a lot of labor to pay for so I'm keeping an eye on it.

 

We got the ceiling re-done yesterday, getting rid of the 50 year old exhaust fan and a heater coil. I can't imagine what they were thinking when they build the house and thought Gee, its cold after a shower or bath, lets install a heater?? When we bought the house 15 years ago, we were kind of scared of using the heater, afraid it would burn the house down. I'll be glad they're gone. So we have a new skylight and new exhaust fan thats installed.

 

This weekend we'll lay pipe to bring the water line to the house, to save the plumbers the effort of digging a water line. Hopefully it'll save us on the re-plumb too. Since the re-plumb has been delayed a week, we've taken the time to shop for things and run other errands, plus go for a walk to Busch Gardens one day. Last night I had a good shop at Publix and spent $34 OOP with a savings of $152 (81%). The lady behind us in line was impressed and asked how we did that. She said she cut coupons but never remembered them or could find them a deal. She thought she was doing good with BIGI deals. I told her to go to my favorite website www.iheartpublix.com to see the matchups and coupon links to print from there. But if you want coupons, you can click on the banner ad above too.

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