The Boss'

“Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields it’s fruit in season, and whose leaf does not whither. Whatever he does prospers. Not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” -Psalm 1

We’ve been working on memorizing Psalm 1 as a family, and we were able to recite it together at a recent church service. The whole idea of reciting these passages in front of our church has really helped motivate us. Each of wants to know the verse really well so that we don’t stumble in front of a crowd. There is a risk, however, that the desire to master something in order to recite it will take away from our desire to really “know” it. I have found this especially true with the Psalms. They’ve proven to be quite easy for us to memorize,but are we getting all we should out of each and every verse? One of the great things about memorizing a passage with your kids is that they tend to ask questions, as you would expect. They question everything else, so why not this verse that they’re being asked to memorize? It is in the explanation of the passage that we stand to gain the most. Look at Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.”

Easy to memorize, but what does it really mean? Most commentators explain this verse as describing a man being blessed who does not take the advice, or counsel, of the wicked, who does not stand, or posture himself, or present himself, in the way of the sinner, and who does not associate, or encourage, or find humor in, the seat of mockers. As I look back on just this one verse, it seems that I missed a number of valuable talking points with my family. How often do I seek advice from those who are ungodly? Do I present myself to others in a way that is consistent with the gospel, or do I “stand in the way of sinners?” When we turn on the TV, do we sit in the seat of mockers? Do our children find us laughing at those things that would make a mockery of our Savior? Do we find humor in the crude and profane? Do we snicker along with those who would mock Jesus and his message? If Christ were next to us on the sofa, (He is, of course.)would we be proud to discuss with the him the messages and images we’re allowing into our homes?

And that’s just one verse! It’s easy to see how memorizing just this one chapter provided us with many opportunities to explain these truths to our children. There’s about a month of devotionals in this chapter alone. I think that many parents spend a great deal of time looking for the “perfect” devotional to read with their kids, only to overlook the perfect book that is sitting right in front of them.

This probably qualifies as my family’s 15 minutes of fame. The coupon clipping interview that we did finally ran in our local paper this past Sunday. Here’s a link. Full text of the article is printed below, in case there’s a membership requirement at the Holland Sentinel site.

Five kids eat a lot of food, even when they’re all under the age of 10.

Those kids eat enough food, in fact, that Chad and Lindy Boss of Overisel Township have adopted a take-no-prisoners policy for grocery shopping: Paying less than 50 percent of an item’s retail price.

“We like to kind of start off at 50 percent,” Boss said. “If we can start off at 50 percent off, and then get a coupon off, we’re doing pretty good.”

The Bosses, like many other families, are looking to save money by clipping coupons and using new ways to do it, but Hope College economics professor Victor Claar said coupon usage has dropped in recent years.

“That’s a downward trend that’s been going on lately,” Claar said. “People just don’t clip and organize and use them like they used to.”

Chad said that necessities including milk and orange juice aren’t often on sale, and take away from savings in other categories. Overall, he estimates he saves about 40 percent to 45 percent off of retail price, as much as $66 in a single visit to the store.

In order to find deals, the Bosses use a Web site, SavingsAngel.com, to match manufacturer’s coupons with in-store sales at local grocery stores.

Manufacturer’s coupons are often released without any cooperation with stores, said Claar.

“The strategy behind the coupon is, it’s a way to do a promotion without having to work through the retailer, like Meijer,” Claar said. “A manufacturer can just drop the coupons on the public, and the public can just show up and use them.

“People take the coupons to Meijer, and then Meijer mails in the coupons,” he said.

Mike Wiersma, owner of Wiersma’s Central Park Foods, said his store receives only about $10 to $20 a week in coupons, which he saves and returns to the manufacturers once or twice a year. The total value of coupons he receives in a year adds up to about $1,000, he said.

“I haven’t had too many problems, but it is a hassle to keep them,” Wiersma said.

The Bosses recently built a pantry so they can stockpile essentials when they are on sale.

“Then we’re never running out of the essentials, like toilet paper,” Lindy said.

“You want to avoid paying the full price,” Chad explained.

The couple’s five children — Emma, Ben, Grace, Anna and Jack, range in age from 4 months to 9 years old.

Holland resident Barb Dornbos keeps a folder full of coupons she might use.

“I have a regular file,” Dornbos said. “I cut them out and put them in. And then when I make out my grocery list, I go through the file.”

Dornbos said she saves about $5 to $6 a week by clipping coupons.

Ruth Otten, also of Holland, scans the Sunday newspaper for good deals.

“I don’t clip a coupon unless it’s 50 cents or more,” she said. “My daughter usually does it, too. She usually cleans up after me and takes whatever I don’t take.”

Unlike the Boss family, Otten doesn’t stockpile household goods when they are on sale, but she will buy a couple of extra food items if a store has a two-for-one sale.

“I plan my meals around what they have on special,” Otten said. “If they have chicken breasts on special, then maybe we’ll eat that.”

ONLINE

Finding prices at all area stores, and matching them with the coupons you have at home can be a lot of work. That’s why Park Township resident Josh Elledge started SavingsAngel.com.

“I’ll be honest. I’m not a coupon-clipping kind of guy,” Elledge said. “But I am a geek — I don’t mind admitting that.”

Elledge started SavingsAngel.com a year ago. The Web service tracks prices at local grocery stores and matches store sales to manufacturer coupons and has 1,300 active users. Users pay a fee to access the Web site.

– Stephen Kloosterman

Jack had his 4 month checkup yesterday. He weighed in at a whopping 15 pounds 3 ounces. That is right in the middle of the normal range, but that is pretty big for one of our kids.

We also got some tips on how to get the little bugger to sleep through the night. The doctor told us not to give him his pacifier in his bed. If it falls out, he’s just going to get pissed. He needs to learn to live without it at night. That is going to be tough to implement. He woke up several times last night, and I think we ended up giving in and giving him the pacifier. I can’t remember exactly…it’s all a blur. We really NEED to get this nighttime stuff figured out. It’s hard on both Lindy and myself. I have started doing some programming work for a friend of mine in Montana, and I need some sleep so I can think! This stuff is tricky, and it doesn’t get any easier if you can’t see straight. Of course, Lindy has four other kids to take care of, and the younger ones don’t really care if mom got a good nights rest or not.

Because we’ve been stocking our pantry over the last several weeks, we have the luxury of taking a week off from our usual bargain hunting. We still need some essentials, such as orange juice, milk, baby formula and diapers, but our trips to the store will be kept to a minimum. We’re making the most of our 88 cent Peter Pan peanut better. I even brought a jar to work. Now I can run out of the house in the morning with just a couple slices of bread and have toast when I get to the office. Yeah, I guess that sounds kind of dorky now that I see it in print. Oh well.

Last week, Lindy was able to do really good at Walgreens and RiteAid. I think her total savings amounted to around 50% off. Even with a trip to Meijers that included many non sale items, our overall percentage off came to 43%. I’ll take that. We were pleased to find Glucose Tablets BOGO at RiteAid. Ben carries these around in his bag with the rest of his diabetes gear. He uses them to correct really low blood sugars. Glucose Tablets are the sort of thing that are hard to find good deals on, so we stocked up when we saw this sale. Lindy has also been making good use of the community forums over at SavingsAngel. She put up a post asking if anyone had Pampers or Enfamil coupons that they wanted to give away/trade. She got a number of responses and other SA members are sending us their coupons in the mail. We’ve even been able to help out some other folks with coupons that we would have thrown away. It’s a great way to help each other out.

Still no sign of our story in the Holland Sentinel. Last week I wrote about how we were interviewed for a story they were doing about coupon clipping and using the internet to save money on groceries. The reporter thought that it would run sometime this week, but we haven’t seen it yet. Maybe they’re holding on to it for the big Sunday edition.

You never know who may be out there…in the shadows, reading and analyzing your every word. In my case, that person turned out to be a reporter from the Holland Sentinel. Even he isn’t sure how he stumbled across this tiny little piece of the internet, but my posts on coupon clipping and SavingsAngel piqued his interest. Last night we got together at a super market to discuss our shopping philosophy and describe how we use the internet to help us save money. After we chatted for a while, a photographer followed us around and snapped a couple hundred pictures. It was a surreal experience. I’m sure people were looking at us thinking, "Why is that photographer taking a picture of that family buying cheese?"

I’m not sure what exactly will come of the whole exercise. There was talk of it appearing as a front page article some time in the next week. I can only pray that they were joking. I’ll post a link here if it does show up in the paper.

No, not frozen peanut butter. That would be weird. I mean, freezing cold temps, and great deals on peanut butter. We’ve been experiencing a brutal cold spell these last few days. Sunday was a real treat. Five degrees above zero with 30-40 mile per hour winds. Wind chills in the neighborhood of 20-30 below zero. Whiteout conditions meant that all area churches were closed, and folks that were dumb enough to go out, were stranded on the highways.

As far as Peter Pan peanut butter is concerned, I think we’re set for a while. We snagged nine jars last week at just 88 cents a jar. I’m a big fan of Peter Pan, and I used to buy the five pound can at Sam’s Club, but they no longer sell that. The 88 cent deal was for the small 18oz jar, but it’s still a fantastic deal. I think the regular price was $2.55. We don’t normally shop at Family Fare, so we would have missed this deal if it weren’t for SavingsAngel.

I managed to get a little video put together of Jack’s baptism, which took place Sunday, February 3. I included the slide show that was shown after the baptism, as well as a few snapshots from the lunch that we had after the service. We rejoice that God has blessed us with Jack. What a treasure! Our treasure chest is getting pretty full, by the way. Five little ones makes for a busy house.

Anyway, enjoy the show.