Usually I wait all year and save my Mypoints until about October and cash out for a gift card to Wal-mart or Target. Did Wal-Mart this year. Usually Black Friday is a way to update our DVD and now Blu Ray collection (scored a Blu Ray player at an estate sale for $30, Sony at that).

I also usually try to find gifts, but that was hard this year and I only ended up adding to my mom's Twilight DVD collection and getting my mother-in-law a heated throw at Target. Oh and my mom a Tinkerbell...

Couponing is a great way to stretch an already tight budget. While shopping at stores like Albertsons, Safeway and other large grocery store chains have their perks like “doublers” their prices tend to be on the spendy side during non sale dates. This is why DeCa’s motto is “Save an average of 30% or more!” Items are marked at cost + 5% surcharge to cover the cost of building, maintaining and upgrading Commissaries nationwide. They understand the tight budget military families...

So this is pretty interesting to me... I used to despise grocery shopping. Sometimes I even had a hard time with large Target trips. I don't know how to explain it-- it will sound really weird-- but it was depressing for me, a lot of the time. I don't know if it was just the large amounts of money I was forking over every time... Or thoughts about American/modern consumption... Mixed with the crowds, the often bad music, throw in a dash of social anxiety & hypersensitivity... Probably...

My stockpiling is as random as the stars in the sky. "I love the idea of having a lot of useful stuff around, but if I can't use it eventually (before it goes bad) then I don't want to go to the trouble of getting it and storing it". That was the way I felt about stockpiling!

I've had a real change of heart about the matter in the past month or two. DH and I didn't buy groceries for an entire month (with the exception of dairy creamer and cheese) because of my "stockpile"....

RDY"New to couponing" 1/1/2010

Bills, bills and more bills. Medical, medical and more medical bills. I can't work (disabled) and DH is working 2 jobs to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I've looked all over the internet without finding a legit source of income. I'm beside myself. God, what can I do to contribute to our household and help ease the load? Two or three days later the neighbor came home from the grocery store, yells at me to "come see, come...