Electronic Chain Letters

When I was a kid, I sat at our kitchen table and watched my mother console a distraught aunt because she was having a family crisis and blamed it on breaking a chain letter.  My mother told her she was being irrational.  From that day forward, I always hated getting a chain letter.  I gave no thought to what might happen if I broke the chain.  In fact, I felt like I was saving any potential people I might have sent it to, the bother of dealing with it.  In our age of technology we now get e-mail chain letters.  

The kind that bother me the most are those of a religious nature.  They play on your feelings by calling your love of Jesus into question if you do not forward them.  One that I received asked why it is that people will forward a joke to people on their contact list but balk at sending one that professes their faith in God.  For me the answer is easy.  I only send jokes to people that I know will appreciate them.  I do not ask them to pass it on.

Just as I believe that God loves the sinner but not the sin, I do not dislike the people who send these to me I just don’t like the action they have taken.  I don’t mind when people request prayers from me.  That tells me they recognize I am a person of faith.  I will gladly add my petitions to theirs for any intention they may have.  I appreciate when people recognize my need for prayer and offer pleas to God on my behalf.  Relationships with our creator are personal.  Don’t tell people how they have to express that love.

I recently read a post on Facebook that spells out what I believe claiming to be a Christian should mean.  It means that we acknowledge our sinfulness and our need for a savior.   Christian means “Christ like”.  We will always fall short of that goal because of our human nature. Striving to attain that kind of behavior is what I believe we were put on this earth to do.  I like the line in one of our church hymns that says, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

Glenda Wagner

Extreme Couponing

I don’t know about you but I am not sure that extreme couponing is worth all the time and effort it takes to save some money.  I have clipped coupons for years.  When I went to the grocery store, I would sift through my coupons and take coupons for items on my shopping list.  When I shopped weekly, I would save about $5 each week.  As my children got older and my husband took a job that keeps him from home most of the week I started shopping on a less frequent basis.  I get paid once each month so I tried to buy groceries to last from one pay check to another.  I was saving about $20 each time I went to the store.  Of course I have to buy some items like bread or milk in between shopping sprees.  Often I would see another item or two that I could use.  I would realize that I had a coupon for some of those things at home in my coupon folder.  

One day my husband and I stopped at a local grocery store to pick up a few items that we needed and to take advantage of some advertised sales.  While we were browsing up and down the aisle I noticed a man who had a picture album that was loaded with coupons in the sleeves meant for photos.  I thought that was such a clever idea.  I had a small empty album.  I decided to convert it into a coupon caddy for myself.  I put similar item coupons together.  I separated them into cereal, meat, pasta, dairy, canned goods, snacks, bread, cleaning supplies, paper items and hygiene products.  I planned to keep it in the car and take it with me whenever I went grocery shopping.  

Last week I was my first time really putting it to use.  I do not like to shop.  Going just once each month was making me happy. It usually takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to getting all of my shopping done.  That week it took me nearly three hours.  I was spending time trying to figure out if the coupon I was using was really saving me money over the generic brand offered at the store.  Often it did save me a few cents, but not always.  Fiddling with the coupons and then trying to separate what I was going to use from those I was not took time.  I still saved $20 but it took at least an hour and a half more time to do so. 

My thought now was to have a separate sleeve for each item.  That of course would take some more time to reorganize my caddy.  Then I was tantalized by a flyer from a store advertising triple coupons.  I could redeem 15 coupons with a value up to and including 75¢ for three times their value.  I went through my coupons.  I pulled out coupons for items that we use on a regular basis and then prioritized them by the amount of savings.  

This past Friday afternoon was my second attempt at being thirfty.  My husband had asked me to pick up something for him from the store.  I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do my coupon shopping while I honored his request.  Two hours later I was home from my shopping expedition an aggravated woman and late for happy hour.  The store was crowded with other like-minded people.  Some items were still not a bargain over the generic brand, some items were out of stock and the store did not carry some of the brands for which I had coupons.  The one real bargain that I thought I had obtained turned out not to be so because I failed to read the fine print stating I needed to purchase two of that item.  It still would have been almost half price.  However, by that time I was unwilling to get out of line and maneuver through the crowd to get another.  I paid an elevated full price for something I had in the cupboard at home.

I didn’t even use 15 coupons.  I did pay only about $30 for what normally would have cost me $50.  In the big scheme of things I believe I would have been happier had I gone straight home and enjoyed time with my husband versus performing that bit of financial savings.  My time is worth something and shopping would not be my idea of how to spend my leisure time.  I will still coupon.  On a lazy Sunday afternoon I will organize the coupons individually and I will take my little caddy with me when I do go shopping.  When I have a choice between shopping or doing something I would enjoy more, my priorities will change.