The Boss'

Lindy and I continue to get this whole SavingsAngel thing nailed down.

I went to the store last night after a rather difficult council meeting at church. It was raining when I went in and blizzard conditions when I came out. A rather unpleasant surprise.

I managed to save $66 on a $72 total. 48% off the retail price. I was hoping that I would make it over that 50% hump, but alas, it was not to be. Here are a few of the deals that I picked up.

(8) Lays Chips – BOGO. I got 8 bags of chips because we’re serving lunch to everyone after church this Sunday to celebrate Jack’s baptism.

(5) Medium Taco Bell Salsa – Half Off. Lindy may go back later in the week for a few jars of Mild…there were none on the shelf when I was there. ChiChi’s is on sale this week too, and there’s a coupon for it…but I didn’t have the coupon…so I went with the Taco Bell brand.

(4) Jose Ole Taquitos – Probably not the healthiest thing in the world, but…they were half off and I had a coupon that I could use to get another dollar off on one package.

(2) Tropicana Orange Juice – 2 for $5 is about as cheap as we ever see this stuff, so I grabbed a couple…we’ll get 2 more later in the week.

(6) Sargento Cheese – 1/2 off. Hard to have too much of this on hand.

(2) Thomas’s English Muffins – BOGO. We make “Egg McMuffins” out of these…we have a glass bowl that I’ve been dragging around since college that is exactly the right size…we spray the bowl with cooking spray…microwave the egg just long enough for it to set up nice and round, and then finish it in a frying pan…the kids think they look cool. Only problem is that it takes a long time to make enough for everyone doing it one at a time…dad ends up eating last.

I grabbed a couple of other things, at or near full price, but that’s it for the most part. Even with this modest list, we wildly overspent as a whole during this last pay period. We need to be better about passing up on deals, no matter how great they seem, if we are over budget for a given time period.

“Yeah, I over-drafted…but look at all these chips!! WhooHoo!!”

So, that’s it for now. Our pantry is starting to fill up, so hopefully we will have some weeks ahead of us where we wildly under spend. Remember, if you want to give SavingsAngel a shot, click here.

Unfortunately, it was again necessary to pen a letter to House Education Committee members, as well as the local paper. It seems that every year there are those that want to increase state control over children. This year is no different. A bill to raise the compulsory age of attendance, and another proposal by the governor to make kindergarten mandatory have surfaced again. Despite studies that prove raising the age of compolsory attendance does nothing to increase graduation rates, proponents continue to charge ahead. Hopefully my letter will be joined by thousands of others and the members of the committee will reject these proposals. My letter to the Holland Sentinel is reprinted below.

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Last year, the calls of many concerned parents were heard, and several bills to increase state control over education were defeated. Now it appears that those wishing to exert greater control over the children of the state of Michigan are back.

H.B. 4042 would raise the age of compulsory attendance from 16 to 18 years of age. Studies of all 50 states show that raising compulsory attendance ages does not increase graduation rates. The two states with the highest graduation rates, Maryland and North Dakota, compel attendance only to age 16. Legislation such as this only serves as a waste of taxpayer’s money by forcing unwilling, disruptive students into the classroom. In addition to H.B. 4042, the governor is expected to announce her desire that kindergarten be made mandatory for all children in the state. In effect, the state is saying that they need more time. Hand your kids over sooner, let them keep them longer, and our troubles will be over. No thanks.

Children belong first to their parents, not the state. The state may be able to lend a hand, but raising children is the job of the parents. There are many serious issues facing families in this state, and around the nation. However, I doubt that any of them will be solved as a result of children spending even less time with their parents.

Sincerely,
Chad Boss

This morning’s drive to work was amazing. It was overwhelming to my meager senses. Almost too much to take.

Six inches of snow had fallen overnight…the sort of dry, fluffy snow that skiers love. The air was dead still and biting cold. The sun was rising behind me, casting a brilliant light on everything in front. Tree branches, heavy with snow, popped out in stunning detail against the still dark sky in the west.

Turning north, a thin layer of fog clung closely to the ground. So close, in fact, that the tops of several barns emerged above the fog, giving evidence to the farms that dot the countryside along my drive to work.

There was so much to take in. I turned off my radio. I slowed down. I opened my eyes. Wow. It’s like God put together this incredible show just to bless me. What an awesome God.

Well, we continue to get the hang of this SavingsAngel thing. Lindy made a run to Family Fare yesterday to grab some of this weeks best deals, and here’s how she did:

• Retail = $120
• Spent = $70
• Savings = $50

So, a savings of $50 on $120 worth of products. That amounts to a savings of 42%. At first, I kept wanting to divide the amount spent, buy the retail price of the products, but that was giving me the wrong number. I felt like a complete idiot because we’re dealing with, like, sixth grade math here, but hey, sixth grade was a long time ago for me, and those were awkward years.

Algebra still has me scratching my head at times, but I think I’ve got it figured out now. Amount saved, divided by the retail price of the products, gives me the percentage that I saved versus retail. The other equation simply gave me the percentage of retail price that I paid. Going back to much simpler numbers made this easier for me to grasp. Lets say that I spent $75 dollars on $100 worth of groceries. 75/100=.75, or 75%. Obviously I didn’t save 75% on my grocery bill, I simply paid 75% of retail price. I don’t know why it took me so long to understand this. I must have had this basic math fact mothballed in a seldom used corner of my brain. My savings, $25, divided by the retail price of $100 gives me .25, or 25%. Duh.

If I’ve gone through the trouble of writing up this post and still explained this whole equation completely wrong, leave me an insulting comment, will you?

Remember, if you want to give SavingsAngel a try, use this link. I’ll get a few bucks at the end of the month, which I’ll probably end up using to buy toothpaste. (At a huge discount, of course

I asked my lovely wife to compile the results of her “enlightened shopping” of the last few days. We still aren’t seeing a ton of savings from coupons, because our subscriptions to the papers haven’t kicked in yet. However, our focus on buying and stocking up on only items that are on sale is helping with our bills overall. Here’s a brief rundown:

Meijer:

• Total = $124.12
• Savings = $77.16

• Total = $65.21
• Savings = $29.28

WalGreen’s:

• Total = $10.62
• Savings = $6.87

Family Fare:

• Total = $40.87
• Savings = $19.60

Rite Aid

• Total = $35.50
• Savings = $35.67

Altogether, the above numbers add up to a savings of roughly 38%. (Retail – $444.90 Paid – $276.32 Savings – $168.58)

Not too shabby. One thing that we need to watch in the beginning, as we build up our “stock” is too avoid overspending on our total budget amount. It’s not helpful to spend a bunch of money buying stuff, no matter how great the discount, if there’s no money in the bank to pay for it.

This week we will have the benefit of coupons that we got in the GR Press this Sunday. We’re excited to see what sort of difference that will make. I’d like to get our percentage of savings closer to 50%. By Tuesday morning, SavingsAngel will have all of the deals and coupons entered into their database, at which time we will begin making our shopping list.

Here are some pictures of the nook that I carved out in our basement to store some our surplus supplies.

A new benefit recently announced at Herman Miller, my place of employment, is a discounted membership to a service called Savings Angel. What is it? Here’s a description of the system from the web site…

Each week SavingsAngel:

• Takes the local advertised prices (for stores such as Meijer, Walgreens and RiteAid and more) and places them in a searchable database.
• SavingsAngel then compiles coupons that can be used on each advertised item, adding this information (along with the coupon location) to the data.
• Together, this information allows you to shop for items you normally buy, but at the best possible savings.
• You’ll be regularly alerted to special “deals” and purchase/coupon combinations that make quality products very inexpensive or even free!
  We spend what would take you 20-30 hours each week compiling manufacturer coupons & rebates with store sales – matching them up to scientifically – giving you the shopping pattern that will result in the lowest monthly grocery bill. We call this “enlightened shopping.” Most members report being able to cut their monthly grocery bill in half – especially after about six weeks of “building up supplies.”

The “purchase/coupon combination” is where the real savings lie. At its most basic, SavingsAngel encourages us to only by something if it is on sale, preferably with a coupon, thereby increasing our savings. After a couple months of doing this, potentially going without things that were not on sale, we will have built up a sizeable pantry of food and household goods. Once our pantry is nicely stocked, we’ll be able to plan meals and so forth based on what we already have, rather than planning meals and heading to the store to buy items for full price. The pantry drives the menu, not the other way around.

The first question I had when looking at SavingsAngel was, “Can’t I do this myself? What do I need to pay these clowns for?” The answer, which they readily admit, is “Yes, you could do this yourself” Then I wondered, if I can shop this way already, why am not doing it? The answer is that it takes a lot of leg work and coordination to keep track of weekly sales, local coupons, and manufacturers promotions. That is exactly what SavingsAngel does. To me, being able to log in and instantly see what the weeks best deals are at all the local stores is easily worth the price of the membership. In addition to this core service, SavingsAngel is also building an active online community where members exchange ideas, tips, recipes, deals, and other savings related content. It’s this social interaction piece that really adds value to the core service.

It also requires a change in how we approach meal planning and shopping in general. I was often guilty of wandering around a store and figuring out what I wanted to buy based on what I saw there. That’s exactly what store managers want you to do. Now that I have the ability to make a shopping list online with SavingsAngel, selecting only deeply discounted items, I know that I’m getting the best deal on almost everything I buy, and the ones that aren’t on sale are kept to a bare minimum. (Milk, for instance) When an item is on sale, and there’s a coupon to discount it even further, then the idea is to stock up on the item as much as space and budget will allow. This doesn’t work on perishable things, of course, but it’s great for nearly everything else.

So, we’ve only gone shopping once since becoming SavingsAngel members, but here’s how we turned out:

Meijer – Total spent was $125.00, total savings was $77.00. Basically we saved 37% on $200 worth of groceries. Lindy and Emma did the shopping, and she commented that she had never had a cart so full and spent so little. Now, we had hardly any coupons since we don’t get the paper and this was our first week shopping like this, but I’m still pretty pleased with the result. (I think $3.50 in savings was in the form of coupons.) We signed up for a weekend subscription to the paper to get the coupons, so  that should help. Some members report getting two, three, or even more subscriptions to the same paper in order to maximize their coupons. The percentage saved is only going to go up as we get better at finding the coupons. The savings that we saw at Meijer were simply a result of buying all but a few items that we on sale. I think we only paid full price for five or six things. Like I said before, this is the sort of shopping that anyone can do, whether you’re a SavingsAngel member or not. We are just finding that SavingsAngel makes it easier, and more fun.

Time will tell whether we’re able to stick with the program. Many folks in the community section of the site report that it takes a couple of months to really get the hang of the system, and to start to see the results in terms of huge savings a well stocked pantry. I’ll be reporting on our experience with the program as things unfold.

If you’d like to give it a try, use this link to sign up, and I’ll get a little kick back…sort of like a commission.

(I was leery of this whole commission thing when I originally looked at the site…It seemed a little “Amway” to me. However, this is not multi level marketing…it’s not like you get friends to sign up, and then they get friends, and they get friends, and pretty soon I’m on vacation in the bahamas and you’re stuck with a cupboard full of soap…I only get paid for the people who sign with my personal referral link…So it’s only one level deep, and you can cancel any time. It’s really easy to get started)

These diabetes posts may be tedious, but they are  great way for me to chronicle all of the changes that we’ve made/are making to Ben’s pump.

Ben had an appointment with his Endo during the week of Christmas…the 27th to be exact. It was an early trek to Grand Rapids for an 8:25 appointment. I felt like it was a bit of waste of time because when we finally got into the office, they told us that their computer was down and that they could not download his pump. Unfortunately, I had not downloaded recently either, so the only numbers that we had to go on were the last few days on his meter. Based on just those numbers, there was not a whole lot his doctor could do. She did make a small change in his afternoon basal, with instructions to download after a few days so that she could take a look at the results of that change.

One useful piece of information to come out of the visit was that we were able to get his latest A1C number…9.9. Now, that’s not particularly good, but it is down from his last appointment 2 months ago. The problem certainly seems to be in his basal rates, because his food coverage seems pretty good. If I overestimate his carbs at all, he goes low pretty quickly, so his carb ratios are fine, if not a little too aggressive.

We’ll see what they want to do after I get them some fresh data. They also suggested that we take an advanced pump class, that deals with sifting through all the data and being able to make our own adjustments to his pump. I guess that’s a good idea since we can’t depend on doctors forever.