Week 5: Mambo No. $5
I’m not sure how long this theme of “Songs with Numbers in them” is going to last, but let’s ride this wave while it’s still rolling, shall we?
I think I prefer this Disney version over the 1999 version that still gets a surprising amount of radio play…
BACK TO SAVING MONEY. $5 FOR WEEK 5.
I have a confession: When it comes to grocery shopping, I very rarely use coupons. Why not? I don’t get the newspaper and I’m not organized enough to keep a stash of coupons I do come across. However, I was over at my parents’ house a couple of Sundays ago and I was looking through their newspaper. The lovely lady that my mom is, she offered me the coupon section from their newspaper. I begrudgingly accepted, stuck the pile in a used plastic shopping bag and threw them in the back seat of my car, which might as well be a blackhole because rarely does anything that winds up back there ever make it out. Unless you’re my dog or a passenger in my car.
Now, luckily for those coupons, I offered to drive a group of friends to dinner which meant the car needed a cleaning. Instead of depositing the coupons directly to the big trash bin outside of my garage, I transported them yet to another inhospitable environment: the dining table. Home of pens with questionable ink levels, the 9 volt battery I removed from the extremely sensitive smoke detector that wouldn’t stop going off while fajitas simmered on the stove (nothing was burning!), and a potpourri of paper products in various forms (bills, reminders, notes, stamps, etc.). I assure you, friend: I’m a functioning adult.
NO REALLY, I SAVE $5 SOMEWHERE IN THIS ARTICLE.
On bill paying day, as luck would have it, I had to acknowledge the coupon bag before I could get to the water bill. Out of curiosity I opened the bag and perused the pile. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t think any of them would still be valid. Wrong! Most of them had pretty lengthy expiration dates. It was the $2.00 off a 12 roll-pack of toilet paper coupon that made me get up and look for some scissors, which reside in the third-most inhospitable environment of my home: the junk drawer.
Of course, not all of the coupons were winners but I did actually find $5.50 worth of savings on products/brands I normally buy anyway.
LESSONS LEARNED
Listen to your mom.
Don’t be afraid of “couponing,” (I’m told that’s a verb, now).
Create an”organization tips” board on Pinterest.
Follow some of those organizational tips from Pinterest.
I now have $15 in my 52 Weeks Savings Plan account. Yay!
Fox Communities Credit Union is a full-service, not-for-profit financial institution serving members throughout Eastern Wisconsin, including Appleton, Green Bay, Oshkosh, Manitowoc, and Milwaukee.