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I’ve posted a couple of articles regarding coupon clipping; this one from last October, and this one from yesterday.  I also wrote this article for Helium some time ago, and tonight I found that it had been voted up to #3 in the NO side of the debate over whether couponing is worth your time.

I’ve said it before, and I’m gonna say it again – unless you can find lots of coupons for stuff that you would normally buy anyway, it’s usually a waste of time.  Maybe you’ll save money if you live on a diet of name-brand, over-processed junk.  Because that seems to be what most of the coupons in the Sunday paper are for.  As I’ve said before, we stopped getting the paper because there were never enough coupons that we’d actually use to make up for the cost of the paper.  That, and the fact the the telemarketers at the Boston Globe refused to stop calling me to sell me a full-week subscription, when I made it clear I only wanted Sunday.  I told the guy that if they called me one more time, I would cancel.  They called again.  I canceled.  No skin off my ass, and no more coupons for crap like Lunchables, Fruit Roll-Ups, and nasty, sugar-laden cereals.

So when I read stuff about people saying that their financial circumstances “require” them to clip coupons, I scratch my head in confusion.  WHERE do these people get their coupons, and WHAT exactly are they buying?  Is there some super-secret source of coupons for fresh produce, meats, poultry, and seafood?  Is there some little-known newspaper that has coupons for PLAIN rice, beans, flour, oats, etc.?  I ask this because if people are using a ton of coupons and claim to be saving money, they certainly can’t be getting them from the Sunday papers, or even from sites like that CouponSuzy thing.

However, there are occasions when we will use coupons.  For example, we often get store coupons from PetSmart and Petco in email.  Sometimes we get a good one, like $10 off a $50 purchase.  So we just go in there and buy $50 or so worth of Purina Healthful Life, which is the only stuff our kittehs will eat these days.  With five cats, they’ll go through it fast enough, it won’t go stale as long as you don’t open the bag until you need it.  Duh!

But if we got a specific coupon for say, traditional blue-bag Purina Cat Chow, we would not bother to use it.  They used to like this stuff, but we had to throw a whole bunch of it away because they stopped eating it, and eventually, it got stale.  Buying something that your cats won’t eat is a waste of money.

Oh, and parents, don’t bother trying to defend yourselves by telling me that your kids will eat nothing but overprocessed, overpriced chicken nuggets.  It’s YOUR fault for not introducing them to healthier foods at an early age; if you had, you’d be saving a LOT more money now!  Just because other mothers tell you that kids will only eat pizza, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets does not make it true.  If kids get hungry enough, they will eat what is put in front of them, and the more different foods you try, the better results you will have.  The Healthful Life usually costs about a buck more for an 18 pound bag, the cats like it better, and it’s probably better for them.  Even with a more expensive food, feeding cats is cheaper than feeding kids, anyway.

And if there happens to be a sale on the cat food (you usually have to have the rewards cards for PetSmart/Petco to get the sale price), we can save even more.  If we’re already well stocked on cat food when the coupons come to us, we’ll keep checking for sales, and try to buy then.  If not, we just wait until shortly before the coupon expires, or when we next need cat food, before we use it.

Another source of great coupons are the ones from CVS, if you sign up for their ExtraCare card.  Mike practically lives in CVS, he’s always in there picking up some scrip or another.  The more you spend, (there is a $40 cap on prescriptions & co-pays), the more ExtraBucks you earn.  These ExtraBucks can be used just like cash for just about anything in any CVS store, except prescriptions and co-pays.  And then sometimes we get some seriously kick-ass coupons, such as $20 off a $50 purchase of CVS brand products.  It’s not that hard to find $50 worth of CVS stuff that we want to buy and use.   I think they even let him use one of those coupons for his diabetes test strips, since he uses the CVS brand meter and the strips that go with it, they are non-prescription, and they cost over $50.

Shopping at CVS is something we do anyway, and so is buying their brand of products.  Okay, there are some CVS brand duds out there, back when I was still having periods, I found that their tampons are no good.  I liked the Kotex ones, but I wasn’t going to kill myself looking for a coupon for them, or buy a cheaper brand or one that there were coupons for.  If I came upon a coupon, great, but if not, no biggie.  In this case, I just wanted something that I knew worked, because you can’t place a dollar value on avoiding walking around in public with blood all over your crotch because you just HAD to skimp on tampons!

Okay, so here’s the deal—

*Store brand items are USUALLY just as good as brand names (the CVS tampons are the only bad example I can think of at the moment).  And they are usually cheaper than even using a coupon on the name brand.

*Fresh meats, poultry, seafood, produce, as well as PLAIN frozen veggies, PLAIN rice, bags of dried beans, grains such as oats, flour, etc, are ALWAYS cheaper than any processed version, even with coupons.  By PLAIN frozen veggies, I mean just that, just the veggie, no crappy sauce or anything.  By PLAIN rice, I mean rice that comes in ginormous bags for $5.00, not little boxes that come with seasonings, boil-in bags, etc.

*Sign up for rewards cards at places where you would normally shop anyway.  Out of stores, I’d say that the CVS one has had the biggest payoff, and we don’t have to go out of our way for any of it.

*If you eat out and/or travel a lot, consider finding out about rewards from your favorite restaurants/hotels.  We like to eat at the local TGI Friday’s, so I signed up for their Give Me More Stripes card.  In addition to earning “stripes” from eating there, they also send additional money-saving coupons.  I also signed up for Hilton’s HHonors program, since we stay at their properties a lot.  I’ve already earned more than enough points to book a free stay this fall for the New Hampshire Brewers Festival, and will also be booking a room at one of their properties for the Christmas stuff at Old Sturbridge Village, as soon as they announce the dates for that.

*And remember – if you use a coupon for $2.00 off a $7.00 widget that you really don’t need, you did NOT save $2.00 – you are OUT $5.00.

I wonder if  perhaps that’s the whole idea behind this silly gimmick.  You have probably seen the ads on TV – this box of beer has a special window that lets you know when the beer inside is cold.  It’s opaque when it’s warm, but becomes see-through when it’s cold enough.  Also, the mountains on the bottles or cans in the box turn blue, so you can be extra sure that it is cold enough for human consumption!

They’ve had the cold indicator on the labels for a while now, so it’s nothing new.  The box thing, though is fairly new.

Coors has also been bragging about how their beer is brewed cold (duh, it’s a Lager, aren’t all Lagers cold-brewed?)  and is kept cold.  I suppose they keep it in one of those steel buildings in the middle of the Rockies, until it’s ready to ship, that way they could save on refrigeration costs.  Why not, they skimp on everything else, most notably beer quality.  The only thing they DON’T seem to skimp on is spending money on stupid advertising gimmicks.

Also, contrary to popular belief, many beers are at their best when they are NOT ice cold, for many, a temperature of 40° F is about right…not completely warm, but cold enough so that you can still taste it.   But since Coors Light is watered-down swill made with cheap ingredients, it might as well be ice cold, because there’s nothing to taste.

Too bad they don’t spend all of this advertising money on actually making a good product.  But that’s okay, I don’t have to buy the crap!

I finally broke down and bought one.  In case you haven’t heard, the Kindle (friend’s affiliate link) has come down in price, from $259 to $189.  I had decided that when it dropped down below $200, I’d buy one.  Well, now it IS under $200, and I ordered one, I got it yesterday.  I could have had it a few days sooner, because they offer FREE 2-day shipping for the Kindle…however, to take advantage of this, you can’t have it shipped to a P.O. box.  I’d rather be safe than sorry, as I can’t really get packages and mail at home, and sometimes even having stuff sent to Mike’s work is a pain.  So I went for the regular free Super-Saver shipping so I could have it sent USPS to the P.O. box.

So far, I love it.  With my crappy eyesight, it is actually much easier to read than a paper book.  There is the option of increasing the font sizes if needed, but the default is easy enough for me to read.  Also, it can save money.  Often, the Kindle editions of books are cheaper than the paper versions (but not always).  They have a HUGE collection of free and almost-free books, as well, I’ve already started taking advantage of a lot of those.  Don’t spend money on the classics, because many of these titles are FREE.  I picked up a Wizard of Oz series, and a collection that has most of the Anne of Green Gables books (why it doesn’t have “Anne of Windy Poplars” and “Anne of Ingleside” is beyond me, but I’ll keep looking for those.

A lot of the free books are junky Harlequin Romances, but hey, they are FREE!  Sometimes you just want something light and mindless to read, so just download one of those, read it, and you can always delete it if you want to in order to make space for more books.  As it is, the Kindle holds well over a thousand books, but you can also store all your books online at Amazon, even if you delete them from the device, you can get then back whenever you want them.

Amazon also has a larger Kindle, the DX, and they have a new model of that coming out soon.  But frankly, I prefer the smaller one, as it even fits into my little Red Sox purse.  It’s great to have this to carry everywhere, so you are never short of reading material in even the most boring waiting rooms.  Why do doctor’s office waiting rooms only have BORING magazines and crap?  The DX does have more space for more books, but it’s also about as big as the Apple iPad, too big for me to carry everywhere.

Most importantly, there is the fact that we have so many paper books, that we’re running out of space to store them.  One of these days, something might happen, we might need some emergency assistance, and the responders will have to trip over piles and piles of books to get in here!

I’ll let you know more about how I like it as I use it more!

Heading out tomorrow for our long weekend up in Portland, Maine.  The weather is supposed to be gorgeous…70′s…may or may not be shorts weather, but I packed a pair just in case.  But I would not be surprised to see a woman or two or more at the Saturday and Sunday afternoon games wearing a terry romper.

Looking forward to good baseball, good food, and good beer up in the Pine Tree State!

Well, sort of, because I do use some excellent products to keep my acne under control.  But I am always looking for something better.

So how about you?  Do you suffer from adult acne?  What you you done about it?  What have you found to be the best adult acne treatment for you?

I’d really love to hear about it.  What works, what doesn’t?  What dries your skin out, what makes it too greasy?  Please leave a comment to let me know!  kthxbai!