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It may be time for ANOTHER blog...
Just maybe. I'm getting into couponing and saving as much money as possible. I want a single solid place to tell everyone all about it. My successes, my failures. The deals I find. Yet I don't wanna give up my happy little blogging corner over here either. So it just may be time to get a special new blog place. :)
I'll have to think on this.
Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time (because all good fairy tales start this way...) a little EMT name Nique had a friend who had an Xterra. Her friend loved their Xterra, they called it a little block of caramel because it was squarish and caramel colored. Eventually Nique and her friend came up with silly nicknames for all the colors of Xterra's, like puff of cloud (white), spot of sunshine (yellow), patch of grass (green), campfire pit (orange), blood on the move (red, and sorry, we were EMT's).
One day Nique and her at-that-time husband decided they needed a new car. They wanted an SUV, they were going to buy another brand, S. Nique liked brand S, had a car from them already. But the sales people at S treated her VERY badly when she went to look, she left very upset. She meant to go to the T dealer, but her driver missed the turn and she ended up at the Nissan dealer and Nique said, ooooh, Xterra's. I want to look here. Nique quickly fell in love with a little puddle of water (blue) and just KNEW it was the right car.
Then the dealer started scaring her with numbers. Nique likes numbers, but not these numbers! Somehow Nique knew this payment was too big. Everyone around her tried to reassure her that her and the husband could afford it, they both had good jobs. "But what if something happens and one of us DOESN'T have a job??" Oh that won't happen they reassured her. So in the end they bought the little puddle of water. It would take 6 years to pay off, but it was worth it.
Unfortunately, everyone was WRONG. Barely 2 months later, Nique had no job. She managed to get a new job withing a few weeks, but at MAYBE a quarter of her previous income. Then Nique and her husband joined the ARMY. They had to leave the puddle of water behind. But at least they BOTH had jobs again.
About a year later though Nique was out of a job again. Believe or not the Army let her out... She was PREGNANT, and would soon find out that she was having TWINS! :) Good thing she had the puddle of water! But, with all the added expense would they be able to afford the payments with only one income? They struggled, had to get a few deferrments, missed some payments.
In all, their final payment should have ended up being about a year later than originally intended. But that didn't seem too bad at that point. But Nique just wasn't satisfied by that. So she did some math and figured out what they needed to pay to pay the Xterra off ON TIME. It was A LOT of money, but they worked on it and were doing it. Sometimes they couldn't do it, but the nice thing about paying extra was that the loan company always was saying they didn't owe as much or as soon.
Now Nique and her husband realized they couldn't live together and they separated and divorced. And Nique was sad, she had to let him keep the Xterra because he couldn't get another car because of the loan on the Xterra. But they worked out a deal that she would get the Xterra when it was paid off. This just made her MORE eager to be sure it was paid off on time. He has to pay the bill, but Nique can pay more. (And Nique does).
The Xterra WILL be paid off on April 1st, 2010!!!!! :) :) :)
Nique is doing a HAPPY DANCE though because in LESS THAN TWO MONTHS, her daddy (oh yeah, daddy is line one signer on the loan LOL) will be holding the pink slip to the car!!!!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! :) :) :)
Look for my tipping rant tomorrow. I'm too tired to actually type it right now.
Okay, i had it all typed out, and apparently lost it... so... I will work on it later
Okay, if this will save this time...
On Thursday, I joined a group of the mom's from our twin club at a restaurant in Framingham, MA. (Unless it is a RAVE, I try to steer clear of mentioning names. IF you really want to know the restaurant, feel free to contact me with your email.)
I was the last person to arrive, and the waitress NEVER asked me what I wanted, I in fact had to flag her down to order a beverage!! Fortunately, BFF had ordered for me. Thanks BFF! The cook came out (hibachi place) and started cooking. I heard some mumbling from the others, turns out, the sushi we had ordered was supposed to come out BEFORE the rest of the meal, they'd SPECIFICALLY asked for it that way! We did not get served our sushi until we already had our fried rice on our plates!!!
BFF had ordered a veggie roll for me, I'm not a fish fan. She had asked for no mayo, another thing I'm not a fan of! Well, I dig into my first piece, am eating it, and suddenly it hits! Mayo, SUPER DUPER UPER SPICY mayo. I was doing the hot mouth dance, the hand waving, trying to keep my mouth shut... etc. I'm sure it was a hoot. (FTR, the mayo was LIGHT, but HOT AS HADES). Poor BFF thinks I'm gonna be sick. I gave her a piece and WARNED her. A minute later she eats it. Miss-I-Never-Lose-My-Composure was doing the hot mouth dance too, and she'd had WARNING!!! LOL I still ate the sushi, but at least I knew for the rest of it! And the sushi was pretty good, another friend had a FRUIT roll, mango and nummy's, I might have to get more of that next time!
Well, they serve up all our food and the other friend asks where her steak is. Apparently, they had NOT written it down. The cook asks if they can make it in the kitchen instead of on the hibachi. She begrudgingly agrees. Don't blame her, I would want my steak done on the hibachi too! So when it finally comes out, it is OVERCOOKED (cuz they never DID ask HOW she wanted it cooked), and it has a smoke flavor, it was grilled! BFF had a taste of it, and she described it as charbroiled. Ugh.
When all was said and done, we got the bill and had to split it. Let me start with, there were SEVEN of us. MOST restaurants do an "auto-grat" (automatic required tip) of 18% at SIX guests. There was NO auto-grat on our bill! Okay, no prob. The problem is, when you have a larger group splitting the bill themselves, bluntly, you are likely to get less tip. Most people forget about the tax. Our bill, PRE-Tax, was $214. At 15% our tip SHOULD have been $32. BFF and I tipped at 20% AFTER-tax (yes, we did math). I'm a supporter of the 20% tip unless your service was bad, in which case I give 15%. If the service was down right insulting, I'm all for the 2 cent tip. ANYWAY, our group should have left a $32 dollar tip at 15%. Our tip was apparently only $27. Now bluntly, the service was questionable. I know I tipped what I believe in, but it's not MY job to police everyone. Furthermore, since our friend was only comp'd THREE DOLLARS for the screw up with her steak, I don't feel she owed ANY tip! I think $27 was an acceptable tip.
Apparently, the waitress didn't. And her manager must have agreed, because they actually had the GALL to come over and tell our friend that we owed her MORE TIP!! OH MY WORD! Are you KIDDING ME????? We paid our BILL, legally, that's that! We left a tip, but apparently we are bad customers. This is close to a week later, and my blood STILL boils about this. I was a server for a while. I've been left no tip, I've been left low tips, I've even been stiffed for a portion of the auto-grat cuz the customers felt like that was okay (totally not). But never in a million years would I think to tell a customer that they owed me MORE tip!!! What HAS this world come to??? Between the friend with the messed up steak and a couple others, they added another $5. I don't feel it was AT ALL necessary, but they did.
Truthfully, if it wasn't for the fact that the food made up for the service, I'd NEVER go back. But the food quality was EXCELLENT! I will be very cautious about the service though and leave a written note explaining my tip if it is a penny under 20%! ARG.
As a grocery store checker I have become quite amazed at what people manage to SAVE with their coupons. I've long felt like too often the coupons aren't for things I'd really buy, so I'm not saving. And also that most the coupons are for processed foods that I try not to eat.
Well, many of these arguments are still true. BUT... there are more coupons for stuff I'll truly use, and as long as we don't buy things JUST because we have a coupon, we aren't wasting money.
And the internet coupons ROCK. You find and print them, and ONLY the ones you NEED. How awesome is that??
Last night I did a small amount of shopping after work, JUST the coupons in our weekly flier, and a couple snacks for me. I bought 5 boxes of cereal, 1 bottle of mayo, 1 block of cheese, 1 box of cream cheese, 1 package of sliced cheese, 3 packages of hot dogs, a bakery box of cupcakes, an ice cream treat and a bag of flavored pretzels. I spent $23.49, and SAVED $31.42. And yes, we WILL go through all that food in a short time. We have 7 kids in this house!!!
Today will be interesting. :)
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