I Get It Honest

When I was a little girl, my mom had a "refunding room". This was a hot, windowless room off of our garage that smelled of must and old paper. She kept old diaper boxes full of receipts, UPCs, and labels in there. She also subscribed to a magazine called "Refunding Makes Cents", and would regularly soak the labels off of orange juice bottles so that she could send them in for refunds.

Well, I have to admit, my name is Alicia, and I'm addicted to refunding and couponing. I thought when I was little that my mom was kind of weird for doing all these things, but in the past six months, I've found that I too cut the UPCs off of items and mail them in for refunds. To be honest, the refunds these days are a bit sweeter than they were when my mom was doing it, and it's kind of a high to walk out of a store knowing that you saved more than you spent.

Here's a picture of how I did today. CVS - my favorite store!- was out of a few things that I wanted, so I've got to go back, but I did okay.



This stuff is from both Walgreens and CVS. I spent $40.61, saved $53.16, still have 2ECB to spend when I go back, and the Aveeno stuff will be sent in for a $10 rebate. That shakes out to $28.61 for this stuff. I also bought 4 Sunday papers and 1 20oz coke. Not too bad, huh?

Oh, and as a side note, for those of you who steal the inserts out of the Sunday paper without buying it, you're breaking the 9th commandment. I'm just saying. That really irritates me. 3 of the 4 papers didn't have the RedPlum insert, which is the one I needed. UGH!

Okay, how do you save?