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Blog: If Your Money Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy
 Shopping Secrets…Food, Glorious Food!
It was a very short time ago we could get eggs for less than a dollar now they are two and a half dollars! What is going on! It is very unsettling when you are trying to buy your groceries and you can only buy half to maybe three fourths what you used to for the same amount of money. Our favorite cheap restaurants have even upped the prices on their menu items. So how do you make some good meals at home and go out and enjoy yourself? Well, I may have a few suggestions…I'm not a big coupon person so I have to find other ways to compensate and try to use coupons when I can. Here's some ways to save big on a smaller budget.
Grocery shopping is a necessary task for every household. Here are some things I've been doing that have really saved a ton of money, like $40 a month in just one way! If you don't like to clip coupons the easiest place to go is somewhere like Aldi's. They don't even take coupons there. You put twenty-five cents into the top of the cart to unhook it from the other ones so you will bring the cart back to where it belongs, it saves them money from hiring someone to collect carts and they pass the savings onto the customer along with boxed stocked shelves, again to avoid hiring more employees and you bag your own groceries, again to pass the savings on to you. Yes, it really is great stuff they have there! I buy most of my staples there for up to dollars less per item than the commercial grocery stores! They also have some great fit and healthy products, great snacks for the kids, produce, and frozen items not to mention milk, eggs, bread, cheese and the list goes on and on. It really saves a lot of money and it's a smaller store so I can be on my mission of getting food and getting home!
Coupons can be helpful too. The best one I love to use every week is ones I receive for every week of the month from Bloom Grocery Store for $10 off a $35 dollar purchase per week. They have the scanners you can even scan everything you're putting in your cart and gives you the total so you know how much you're spending. This is where I go for baby food and some of those items Aldi's may not have. I got my ham for Easter basically free! After using this coupon every week that is $40 I save a month on groceries…that is a lot! I mostly use coupons for items that are already on sale and get the extra off, that way I feel like I'm really getting a good deal. Same for household items, you can always find coupons in the Sunday paper for good name brand cleaning items.
My husband love to go out to eat. My mom just called me yesterday about a website that was is Reader's Digest called www.Restaurants.com that is great. You pay $10 for a $25 dollar gift certificate for a local restaurant that they have listed there. You buy it online, print it off and you can use it that day! In fact that's exactly what I did yesterday and we used it last night. We got to try a restaurant we've never been to before, that was really good by the way, and will definitely use it again. I even told two friends about it yesterday. Check to see if there is any good dining places listed in your area, it's worth it! Also the mailer coupons you receive about once a month can really save some cash too. We always get a local coffee shops coupons and we use them and still get to go out for a good cup of coffee but for less. Look for early bird specials and those fund raising cards that have discounts on them for local merchants. A little can add up to a lot. Keep track of how much you save when you do try some of the things and it will motivate you to keep doing them.
If you have any good websites you go to for coupons, I have seen advertisements for couponbug.com but have never gone there to use it, or good websites to go to for the above item let me know so I can pass it on to my readers.
Here's to saving money and living the good life!!! (Even if it's beginning to cost a fortune, let's try to still live great on our budgets!)
Live the Good Life, Triste
posted on: 4/2/2008 11:30:00 AM by Triste Horrell
category: Finances
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If Your Money Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy
by Triste Horrell
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About Triste:
Being an organizing expert makes one want to be a "showroom" in all areas of life. However reality can hit hard when you're a mother of small children and a military wife and own an organzing business. Of course Triste would like to have a picture perfect Better Home and an even Better Garden. Throw a Pottery Barn in the backyard for exceptional creative time to become the wiz-woman for all the ideas and inventions that the world could not live without. But Triste has settled on the fact of telling herself "I can be perfect in my mind and no one can mess up my space there!" In reality Triste is very self-motivated and has true business accomplishments like having SYSTEMIZE since 1997, the first home and business organizing firm in the state of South Carolina. She has been repeatedly recognized in her Greenville, SC area for her organizing expertise and makeovers on local NBC and FOX news, Greenville News, local magazines such as Greenville Magazine and Upstate Parent and NPR radio. She has turned people's lives around by focusing on what she calls the "four building blocks of being organized" consisting of space, time, financial and personal. This is even represented in her business logo. "That's what I'm in business for, turning people's lives around!" Also applying her popular 3 Steps to Systemize have not only organized her clients but KEPT them organized for years.
Triste's Website:
www.systemize4u.com
Downtime Activities
- Reading Magazines
- Spending time at our cottage
- Keeping our Westie pretty
- Putting tealights around after the kids are in bed
- Adventures with my awesome hubby
- Making microwave smores...just for me
1 graham cracker, broken in half 1 small piece of chocolate 1 big marshmellow On one side of cracker put piece of chocolate and marshmellow on top. Place in microwave and heat for approx. 17 seconds (while cooking replace marshmellow on top of chocolate if needed). Put other half of cracker on top, eat and enjoy and watch out for oozing chocolate!
My Organizing Tool-Box
- Time - Outlook
This is a great way to keep papers off the desk and track where you need to go, task list, jot down quick notes on the virtual "post-its, keep up with contacts in the virtual Rolodex
- Personal Finances - Quicken
This simple yet practical program keeps your bank accounts in tact...did I mention simple?!
- Business Finances - QuickBooks
I have used this program for years and have set many clients up on it. It is a must for keeping track of business transactions and keeping tax time easy...push a few buttons and out come the reports, your done and your tax preparer loves you.
- Space - turntables
I love these things! You can put them in cabinets, the fridge, garage, and closets. They are inexpensive, easy to find and available at any discount store and you can even find fancier ones. If you are not sure what they are, they are the white (or other fancier kinds) and spin around like a lazy susan, you can have a single or double-tier one for spices.
- Personal - Magazines and Internet
I love to look at magazines and the internet for good articles on personal development, pictures for decorating inspiration and fun projects to do with my family. I keep my magazine subscriptions to a minimum (3) so I can read them and enjoy each one. I look for things on some of my favorite websites for whatever fancies me at that time.
- Online Recipe Boxes
Use these on some of your favorite websites, bring the laptop into the kitchen while the recipe is up and you never have to have the paper clutter. One of my and my husbands favorites is Williams-Sonoma.
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www.OnlineOrganizing.com is a service mark of Bradford, LLC.
