What You Can Get With Spare Change and Coupons

I am very proud of Elliott.  He has done a wonderful job keeping us on a cash budget every week, delivering our allowance each Friday.  Most of the time we do well and have some money left at the end.  This week however we went a little crazy.  Started with a date night, add in babysitter fees, then a picnic on Saturday with lunch from a deli, followed by a Father's Day buffet trip.  Yep, we went a little crazy.  Although we paid all in cash, it didn't leave as much for groceries and sales as I would have liked (and who's fault is that? Yes, mine!)

After I hit the grocers on Monday to stock up on some stuff I was left with an empty wallet and a looming awesome sale starting today at Smiths.  What's a girl to do?  Get creative, that's what!  Check out what you can get with spare change and coupons:

I took our spare change jar with me to Smiths and cashed it in for $28.  At Smiths I spent $12.52, leaving me about $15.00.  Then we headed over to Wal-Mart to use some coupons that had been burning a hole in my pocket, spending only $11.13.  Sweet!  So at this point I still have a $5 left in my wallet (I think I had a couple of bucks to start with).  I was feeling pretty darn proud of myself and thinking about how I had to post this on the blog.  I loaded the girls up into the van and returned the cart to the corral.  And guess what was in the corral, with no one around?  A TWENTY DOLLAR BILL!  I hesitated a minute but pocketed it; if I hadn't somebody else would have, there was no one around, and it might have blown off (all justifications that ran through my mind).  Plus, several months back I lost $20 at Smiths (fell right out of my pocket somewhere) so I called it karma and got into the van a happy camper.  So I guess you could say I only spent $3.65 for all of this.  I will be saying that.