Saving Money....or How I Cheat My Family

I am a horrible cheapskate. My mom always said I could pinch a penny so tight you could see through it. I coupon and bargain shop, and I really enjoy it. Sometimes it goes a little too far.

You know it is bad when you take money advice from Roseanne Barr. I remember this episode from the show in the 90's where Roseanne gets caught by John pouring store brand "CoCo Charms" into the empty CoCo Puff's box. She tells him she's been using the same box for years and the kids don't know the difference.

Here is my interpretation:

The premium stuff in the carafe is $3 when you can find it on sale! The frozen concentrate is $1.87, plus, I don't have to wag home that heavy bottle. Sure, I could save another $.50 if I got store brand, but orange juice companies use personalized flavor-ants to ensure consistency. That is why Minute Made always takes like Minute Made. Name brand ensures my family doesn't catch on to my scam. (And I'm pretty sure they don't bother to read my blog, so we are good.)

After making my fake-out juice, I went to Dollar Tree to get flash cards and stuff for alphabet games. Here is the pack I got. Notice anything strange?

Thirty-six cards? How does THAT work? I thought maybe there were some activity cards so I tore into the pack like a wild wolverine (notice the taped up box as an afterthought?). There are all twenty-six upper case letters. Then ten random lower case letters. I figure his is why low-income kids often have trouble with early literacy. Their parents can only afford Dollar Tree learning products. Let me just say Dollar Tree, I couldn't spell the name of your store with the letters you provided, so let's work on that.

But Dollar Tree is how we came to know about Claire. I half-ass realized my period was late and wanted to take a pee test just to rule out the possibility of an embryo causing it. I had a Dollar Tree test and it was positive. Shocked the shit out of me. I ran up to Brad and rambled one long word that should have been divided into words to form a sentence or sentences. "Brad-I-just-took-a-pregnancy-test-and-it-came-back-positive-It-was-a-dollar-tree-test-so-maybe-it-is-wrong-but-if-not-we-are-having-a-baby."

Love my husband. He was so calm. He smiled, calmed me down, and said we would go out and get another test that cost more than a grab bag of Doritos and try again. But the Dollar Tree test was right.

Life can be fun on the cheap. But I'm pretty sure that pack was missing the h and f, so we'll be having "un on the ceap."