Frugal butterfly wings for our daughter

Our daughter was invited to her first outside-of-the-family birthday party this weekend. The party had a Mad Hatter Tea Party theme and the entertainer — dressed to the nines as the Queen of Hearts — had costumes available for each of the children. Our daughter dressed up as a butterfly, complete with wings. Needless to … Read more

New $1 coin numismatics

This week saw the release of the first Presidential $1 coin.  (I haven’t seen one yet because my credit union didn’t get them for the initial release.  Waaah.)  And, not surprisingly, there are lots of auctions for mint coin rolls on eBay. Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary got a couple of the new coin rolls … Read more

Wholesale prices from your retail grocery store

My wife was shopping at Ukrop’s one day, mostly for our daughter’s foods.  Ukrop’s is one of a limited number of places that carries foods that our daughter can have because of her allergies.  (Costco doesn’t carry what we need here.)  When my wife goes there she will stock up on Soy Dream Enriched Original … Read more

Bonehead coin oops

With the official release of the first Presidential $1 coin only a week away, and with the coins already in hand and selling on eBay, there will be renewed interest in unopened mint coin rolls. Unopened mint coin rolls can bring a price above face value because there is a chance that one (or several) … Read more

No payments until 2008 and no interest until 2011

The furniture stores in our area are one-upping each other on easy financing terms.  One offered “no interest until 2009.”  Another offered “no interest until 2011.”  Still another offered “no interest until 2011 and no payments until 2008.”  It’s crazy! Nearly a full year without any payments, and nearly four years to pay off the … Read more

Point creep and point cancellation

At work recently someone had left a shoebox filled with probably tens of thousands of Betty Crocker Points.  Turns out the program was cancelled on December 15th, 2006, rendering all of those points almost worthless except for a limited-time 10% discount on Cooking.com.  That hurts. Also recently I went to cash in some points at … Read more