Addicted to coupons

Original post went *poof* when I restarted my PC grrr!! Anyway hiway…

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Guess what my addiction is right now? Coupons! I was inspired to try my hand at couponing when I watched a tv feature regarding a Mom who went shopping for $125 and paid only 25 cents after coupons. As in napa-wow dyud ko. Right then and there I renewed my newspaper subscription, subscribed to coupon saving blogs and made promise to follow the ff. rules:

1. Plan ahead. I can never stress this enough to thy self, I could have saved $10-$15 from Old Navy and Children’s Place if I printed those damned coupons two weeks ago.  

2. Always bring with me back-up coupons so any spur of the moment shopping is covered. 

3. Buy items when they are on sale.

4. Make a list of items that I need to buy so I don’t have to go the grocery aisle by aisle, doing so gives me a chance of picking up unnessary things. Wanted IPhone!!!!! Need an organizer asap.

5. Only go to stores that have good deals i.e. I am attending my cousin’s baptism tomorrow, I have a $10 off $25 or more coupon at JCPenney ergo I should go there to buy the gift.

Today, I did good with savings. I went to JCPenney to buy my cousin’s gift, since I printed two I separated my items and let Yiek pay for the other stuff *one coupon per customer man daw so dapat utakan hehehe*.  I got 2 sets of clothes and a gift pack for my cousin which would have been $31 and I got it for $21. The downside is I also picked stuff for Caleb and ended up spending $30 (I did save 10 from coupon) but still it’s not part of the plan. Last na to I will not buy anymore clothes for Caleb pramis or until end of august where there is an end of season sale para naa na siya pang summer next year hehehe.

I then when to the grocery, applied for their membership card so I can have their specials and bought 1.5 kilos of chicken drumsticks, 1/2 kilo chicken tenders, 1 kilo of pork chops, 3 liters of juice and 2 bagelfuls( instant bagels with cream cheese inside). Since I chose their specials and even got an instant coupon in one of the meat I only paid $21 for all of those which really shocked me. If I didn’t have the card and I didn’t use coupons it would have been $40.  It would have been cheaper (18) if the coupons that I brought were doubled as such there was a machine glitch and I was already tired to complain. Not bad for a newbie couponer eh? Now I am more addicted!

 

P.S.

I encountered a really bitchy person at JC Penney and I really want to strangle her for being such an ass. gah! I was putting stuff on the counter as I was trying to sort them out, she stared at me I ignored her, I was suppose to look at something when she stared at me and said “Stay there you are close enough to me” WTF?!?!? I then heard her complainig to the counter lady that some people just stay too close enough to her and that they might have a disease. As in gusto nako siya luwa-an disease ka diha pisti kang mexicana ka! heheh ok enough said. BAti ra siya ug nawongug tambok  mao bitter siya hehe.

What’s new?

I’m bored! I’m staring at my pc doing nothing! I wish my keyboard isn’t loud so I can get away with blogging as such it’s click clack is too obvious! I’ll buy a quieter one this weekend and write it off as a business expense, hah!

I’ve kept quite about this until I was 100% sure, now that I am I can shout to the whole world that I got my old job back woohoo! Not the NYC job but my first company here in the u.s. of a. I got a call from an ex-colleague that they were hiring, so I emailed my former manager asking if I can apply. I got a response the next day to go to the office to discuss and immediately got an offer. I started just this Tuesday as an independent contractor. Yey!

I was an employee before so being a contractor is new to me. Unlike in the Philippines, where you pay 2% taxes, here it’s much much more complicated. I have to hire an accountant that’s how complicated it is. I have to monitor all my business expense, write off invoices every 2 weeks and pay taxes every quarter! Darn! I wasn’t expecting it to be this complicated. When you work as an independent contractor here, it basically means that you are self-employed. The company gives me my full salary and it’s up to me to set aside x.xx% for taxes. That itself is complicated, I also have to pay a self-employment tax of 15.5% on top of my income tax to cover social security and medicare taxes. Who says being a contractor means more money? More headache is more like it.

One more hour to go and I am off to see the wizard Sorry senseless post, I just need something to do.

Year of the Ox

What is it with the year of the ox? Right now our appliances are going bonkers and does it have to be all at once? Arrrg!

1. Our drawer/ dresser gave up on us.

2. Our clothe’s shelf also gave up on us.

3. Yiek’s phone would suddenly not charge saying “You must use a sony ericsson battery” eeer we haven’t change batteries since it was bought bad bad hardware and it’s not even a year since he had it. Read up that sony ericsson’s phone quality right now are not that good anymore in fact they slid to #3 because of quality issues. 

4. Our humidifier suddenly won’t turn on despite it being less than a year and costing an arm and a leg.

5.  Problems with Yiek’s car warranty don’t ask its a long story.

Can’t wait for this year to be offer being a sheep is just not that good in the year of the ox, too much bad vibes going on.

Caleb at 16 months

I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post I’ve been really busy with my visiting family and now I’m just tamad to blog. I promised myself to blog about Caleb’s tricks just to have a record of  it.

On top of my mind right now

1. Can do sign language (taught by his daycare when he was 11 months old). It’s no surprise the he learned the “more”, eat” and “milk” signs because he loves his food! Now he signs more and eat with matching “nah nah nah nah” (we used to say no more and he stubbornly says “nah” instead of “mo”) and impatient look.

2. Knows some few words such as NO, Ball “Boo”, ELmo “Mo”, Totoy “toto” with matching grabbing of my boobs, shoes, dirty (when he grabs the trash can) and of course mama and dada (now he says “daaaarrr” mimicking me). 

3. Is very observant, he is becoming a sponge these days mimicking our every action such as me sneezing, pouring water in his bottle, turning on the ps3 and tv etc.

4. He is becoming quite a challenge to go shopping with because he doesn’t want to stay in his stroller and would rather push his stroller himself, do his own shopping i.e. grabbing any items and putting in the cart.

5. My oh my he throws quite a tantrum, he screams oh so loudly when he doesn’t get his way. Cries and roll on the floor (arggg!) making me think twice about having another kid again it’s so much hard work!