My Broke Folks are all hurtin’

Funny…the season for giving has begun and my assorted Broke Folks are all getting in touch this week, feeling the pinch of their situation harder than usual. I suspect that they’re in a situation where they can’t give, the pressure of Christmas is looming, and it’s making them feel a bit hopeless and needy.

Yesterday I met up for the second time with a new Broke Folk and her Broke Folk neighbor who is more like a soul-sister. They live in the same building, they work in the same office, they both come from Italian families and have bi-racial daughters – a situation that has gotten them largely cut-off by their families – with ex-husbands in drug rehab or jail or some other deadbeat circumstance. They both were doing okay until 4 months ago, when the company they worked for eliminated all overtime, essentially chopping $900 off their monthly take-home. They are both very open with their daughters about everything from sex to money to racism, and thought it was important for them to see with their own eyes that there really are good people in the world. Apparently, that’s me. Anyway, they both get free turkeys from their employer at Thanksgiving (cool benefit now that supermarkets aren’t giving them away as freely as they used to!), and I supplied a whole bunch of the accompaniments from my Walgreens escapades: Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, canned yams, string beans, Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, cake icing (they like cake, not pie), Stove Top stuffing, French’s fried onion rings, butter, eggs, vanilla CoffeeMate, and some other food items unrelated to Thanksgiving. I also threw in some things I wasn’t sure if she’d want, but they turned out to be her favorites: Glade Lasting Impressions plug-in unit and Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubber. How funny is that.

My original Broke Folk, Ayten, the Mom-of-2-teens who was my first up-close-and-personal experience with the definition of “Working Poor”, recently requested Christmas decorations. She’s got a house in foreclosure upstate that her ex-husband abandoned without any preparations. A pipe burst last winter and everything that was stored in the basement is all moldy and ruined. In my Great BedBug Clean-Out, I came across a ridiculous number of strung lights as well as things like Frosty candleholders and garland that I just don’t particularly want anymore. I may also have thrown in some cute dough ornaments from the Dollar Tree this weekend when I was picking up half-price Christmas stockings for that charity I promised to do 15 for.

Then, after a couple of months of near-silence (broken cell phone, and her speech impediment makes it necessary to communicate by text), I heard from Mom-of-9 this morning. She wants to meet up this week, but I asked if we could postpone until next week because of Thanksgiving plans. Apparently she’s quite desperate for supplies though, so I’ve agreed to dig out a few bags’ worth. I’m really quite happy about this – it means I’m reducing the amount of things I’ll have to find room for when I put my apartment back together. Update: she’s also desperate for cat food. She took in a few cats that were abandoned by her neighbor – 3 “lazy” ones and 1 “maine coon bully” who fixed a rat problem brought on by construction next door. Apparently it’s favorite thing to do was to hang out under the baby’s crib and attack any rats that tried to get to it. That cat should be best friend’s with my sister’s cat (saved her from a fire). So I promised Mom-of-9 a dozen or so of the free Fancy Feast appetizers I got for my sister’s cat, and she was shocked at getting some “high class cat food”. God that made me belly-laugh.

Unofficial Shelter Lady emailed me a few days ago asking if I knew anyone in need of a cleaning lady, dog-walker, etc. because things are getting desperate at her place. I suspect her husband’s unemployment benefits are about a month away from running out. I offered to post a flyer in my laundry room, but I think she was really hoping I’d hire her for something… even though I could probably use a better cleaner than I have, I just don’t want to change the relationship I have with her.

And then yesterday, I heard from one of my care package people who normally gets in touch about once a month or so for toiletries. She’s 20, lives with her mom, her boyfriend and his mom are also broke… this time she was asking for any food I had on the go as well, because they’re all having a tough month.

So I’m shopping my butt off this week, working cracker and cold medicine deals at Walgreens and using up my BOGO eggs coupons to give them all quality protein. I think I’ll give thanks this year that my worst problem in 2009 was an extremely minor bedbug infestation.

I’m hoping to put up a post later today with coupon links for all my helpers to print/clip so I can keep my Broke Folks stocked up with a few useful things.

The Cost of Bedbuggery

Last week, my building brought Champ, a cute little sniffer dog, around my apartment. Someone in an apartment along my line about 5 floors down had a serious case of bedbugs, and it so turns out that my apartment was the furthest one to have any evidence of them. No, I haven’t been bitten, nothing is visible even to the professionals with their little mag lights, but the dog is trained to tap at the scent of live bugs or live eggs. And tap he did. Damn you, Champ the Bedbug Sniffer Pro.

They sprayed an organic barrier around my apartment perimeter and my bed – if a bug attempts to cross that line in the next 2 weeks, it will die. I’ve been sleeping on the couch for over a week because Champ didn’t tap it.

The really fun parts begins Friday, when they exterminate – which involves flash-freeze spraying my furniture. I have to pack all my things in plastic by then, and it’s actually worse than moving because I have to wipe every little thing with alcohol first. It took me 3 hours just to do my bathroom. I thought it would take under an hour. Oh boy.

So far this whole adventure has cost me $32 for 6 plastic storage tubs and 3 rolls of saran wrap. And about $680 for nice new Serta Perfect Sleeper Plush (would have been a lot more, but Macy’s got a sale on mattress sets at the moment, and a friend of mine has access to a Macy’s employee charge card, which gets me 20% off). I’ll be throwing out my current bed, a rug, a hassock and a cheap bookcase that just won’t survive another jiggle. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do about replacing those last few things. I’ve got a few weeks to figure it out because I’ll be living a plastic-wrapped life for the next few months.

Okay, so I’m going to cheat and only live in plastic for a few weeks. They come back in 2 weeks for a second freeze-blast in case they missed any eggs, and then we’re supposed to keep things wrapped up for 3 months in case a third treatment is necessary. The plastic isn’t part of the treatment – we’re just keeping it that way so we don’t have to do it again in the event of  a 3rd round. Well, I reckon that, as the furthest the bugs got, I’ve got the tiniest problem. I seriously doubt that I’d be a candidate for #3, so the plastic is coming off after that second treatment in 2 weeks.

Other expenses incurred…well, my mother is coming in to help me on Thursday because, well, she’s a really good mom…so her train ticket plus take-out lunch and dinner. Then I’ll be spending Friday and hopefully Saturday night with her in NJ because the couch will be wrapped in plastic and the new bed doesn’t arrive until Sunday; that’s another $20 train ticket. If Macy’s calls me with an early delivery time for Sunday though, I’m sleeping on my parquet floor. Tomorrow morning I’m hitting up Walgreens for their sale on packing tape – excellent timing. Oh, and this whole thing has had me guzzling Arizona Big Cans of iced tea like it’s…it’s uh…Arizona iced tea. I’m about $7 into this new habit in 5 days. You do know those cans are nearly 24oz, right?

And the condo management company is picking up the extermination tab – as they should, but still, I’m glad I didn’t have to argue that. So pardon the dry writing tonight – I’ve been sleeping on the couch for a week averaging 5-6 hours of sleep each night, and 2.5 hours of massage and 5 hours of packing and lifting is taking a toll. Sunday was worse…10 hours of cleaning followed by an 11pm outcall. Yeesh.

Citibank is up to MORE shenanigans

Last week I got a notification that the interest rate on my credit card was about to change to 23.99% unless I did a balance transfer of no less than $3000 by December 10th, triggering that 3% fee ($90). Then I’d qualify for a 9.99% rate for a year on all balances before reverting to 23.99% – on all balances, including any portion of the transfer I failed to pay off in that time. In other words, 9.99% is some kind of introductory offer but for an existing customer with a FICO score over 800. What an unbelievable load of CRAP.

I don’t really care what they do with the rate because I pay it off in full every month and only failed to do so once in the last 5 years, which is when I discovered that you pay interest on the entire month’s balance $1800) and not just the portion you didn’t pay off ($300).  Never again. Anyway, if this is what I have to put up with to keep from paying an annual fee, fine. But as soon as my mom finishes paying off her balance on my Bank of America Visa, I may reclaim that card for daily use – it’s my oldest, and Bank of America has, to the best of my knowledge, not put the screws to their customers in the nasty ways that Chase and Citibank have. My card is still at an awesome interest rate of Prime + 1% on the transferred balance, and I just checked the purchase rate – 7.9%. I was really surprised they hadn’t messed with that, given what the other troubled banks have been pulling on their customers.

So I just dropped Bank of America customer service a thank-you note for not following in the mercenary footsteps of Chase and Citibank just because they could. I’m not really aware of anything they’ve done except cutting people’s credit limits, but I gave them props in my email for doing that – it was a mutually beneficial move and had a minimal effect on the customers they did that to.

The Value of Christmas Drives “For the Troops”?

On Wednesday, my mother emailed me a notice from the International Club at the high school where she works, about a “Home for the Holidays” stocking stuffer drive for our troops overseas. Like my best friend who put me in touch with an organization that puts together stockings for their impoverished clientele, my mother is very aware of the kinds of things I can get for free. She also knows that I enjoy a little challenge.

Well, I opened the file and here’s the list:

• Hot chocolate packets
• Oatmeal packets
• Cup noodles, e.g. ramen
• Breakfast bars
• Protein bars
• Pringles in cans
• Soup cups w/ flip lids
• Twinkies
• Twizzlers
• M&Ms
• Candy canes
• GUM!!
• Flavor packets to add to water

Okay, so it’s easy enough to figure out that the focus is on edible stuffers, and some of them are definitely treats. But ramen cups and granola bars? Really? Is this what the men and women in the cold mountains and deserts of the Middle East are craving? I assume they’re working from a list somewhere of things they actually want that can easily be shipped. I mean, I know that M&Ms are the only chocolate that can be safely sent because the candy shell prevents it from melting into a puddle.

I haven’t really gotten into the assorted “care packages for the troops” efforts because I don’t really understand them. Okay, so I sort of understood the campaign to send female underwear, simply because I’ve been in that position – I’m convinced no one makes underwear the way we do (or, more accurately, the way we tell the sweatshops in Guatemala to). But really, don’t these women have families to send them undies? And the same goes for all the other stuff I see in these lists. So I got the feeling that these support-our-troops campaigns were mostly just a way to assuage our guilt for being ensconced safely on our couches in our snuggies cuddling a collection of remotes.

Anyway, I’m having my mother check out how much wiggle room there is in this list because it’s so specific. Like, I can get an enormous bag of Skittles treat packs or Charms blow pops for 50% off now that Halloween is over – but it’s not Twizzlers and it’s not M&Ms. Is it still okay? It should be, right? Because, well, guess who has way too many dumb little $1 and $2 Register Rewards from Walgreens and is a little worried about losing track of them, both physically as well as in terms of expiration date? This seems like a nice use for them. And I won’t have to shell out $10 on postage, which is usually involved in most other for-the-troops activities. I really must try to find a way to coupon away postage…

How a Delinquent Loan Saved Me Money

The sister formerly known as Bridezilla (who turned out to be anything but) borrowed $7000 from me in early 2006 to buy a good second-hand 4WD car to get her to and from college in the Rockies. She swore she’d pay me back within a year, I knew that wouldn’t happen. She did manage to pay me back $1000, and I was happy to defer repayment until she got her first nursing job. She started in early August, got married in September, and I just got my first repayment check for $300. It came folded in a notecard that said, “Thank you for believing in me.”

She has apologized on and off over the years about not fulfilling her promise to pay me back, letting me know she hadn’t forgotten. Well, last year I thanked her profusely for not repaying me on time, because I’d have most likely had the money in the stock market and lost more than half of it. Given my complete lack of luck with long-term choices, I wouldn’t have recovered much in this uptick. So thank you, Newlywedzilla, for preserving my capital!

Apologies for Lack of Posting

I seem to have developed friction issues with typing on my laptop – fingertips, outer edge of right hand, etc. I have no idea what I’m doing differently this week that I haven’t been doing for the 6 months since I got this particular laptop, or the year since I got the wireless router and moved to the couch, but I’m mostly giving my hands a break. I anticipate putting up a post in the next day or two with a Robin Hood coupon request, though who knows, I may get some random inspiration in the meantime.

Enjoy your Halloween!

Advertising Decision Time: Was I Wrong?

Last week, a client told me that a site where I had a free ad on was quite racy. I update my posting there every few months so that those searching for a massage there know that I’m still active, so this was news to me. Lo and behold, I found that the default search results are “pictures only” – um, since when did that become the #1 criteria for a massage therapist? And the majority of the photos were women with at worst a bikini on and at best a good cleavage shot. Honestly, stiletto knee-high boots and fishnets?? Oh, this did not bode well for the likes of me. So I searched for my ad by plugging in my zip code, and I didn’t even show up.

So I found out that MassageAnywhere had become a subscription site, but us unpaid “promotional members” grandfathered in from their free days will randomly show up in results. I thought about it … their annual subscription rate was fair, but then I thought about how little business I’d actually gotten from my ad there over the past 5 years v. how many obnoxious calls. I would often get a spurt of inappropriate inquiries that made me wonder where the site was advertising itself. I mean, when you get 2-3 calls a month on average from a particular advertising venue and suddenly you get 5 calls in a week for “pr0state massage”, you know it has something to do with the site’s advertising, not yours.

Now here’s the scariest new addition to the site: As a user from the client side, you can pay to become a “Friend” and maybe (but not guaranteed) get a Token for your donation that gives you “Unfettered Access” to provider profiles. I can’t begin to describe how shady and provocative that sounds.

So I wrote a pissy email to the folks at MassageAnywhere, explaining why I wouldn’t be upgrading to a paid membership and wasn’t sure I even wanted a free ad on their site. Their reply boiled down to “whatever” because obviously it was more lucrative to have lax rules. And then yesterday, I had two appointments with people who found me through that site and made a BIG chunk of change. Yes, despite preliminary conversations that started with me confirming that they’d read my rules, they both had an interest in “more than a massage”. One wasn’t at all pushy, though he texted me later to say he wished he’d tried, and the other claimed an enormous attraction to my personality as his reason for getting a bit het up (but in no way threatening). I am highly adept at sticking to my code of ethics without getting confrontational when someone attempts to push the envelope – I just give my wiseass side free rein, because it’s somehow face-saving for them while getting my point across exceptionally well.

So now I’m thinking that, if I got 2 appointments in one day from a posting that shows up at random rather than every time NYC is searched, I should reconsider my feelings about paying to advertise on this particular site. I mean, just yesterday I made enough to cover the subscription for 5 years. I’m now wondering if, despite its many drawbacks, MassageAnywhere now has a significant-enough presence on the web to take a chance. Or I could just stick with the freebie.

What to do when someone laughs at your coupon habit

Here is the easiest way to quiet the mild ridicule that emanates from any friend, family member, or even co-worker:

GIVE THEM A RAZOR.

If there’s one toiletry item that everyone knows the price of, it’s a good razor – because the shelf price and even the sale price of your reputable brands are painfully high, especially for the blade refills, that it sticks in our memory. So when someone has the gall to bust your chops for using coupons, give them one of your many, many Gillette (Fusion, Venus), Schick (Quattro, Intuition) or Bic (Soleil) razors – if it’s someone you’re really close to, go on, give them two.

Their eyes get big.
They ask “are you sure?”
They want to know what “free” means.
And then they never make fun of you again.
Heck, they might even come to your defense if anyone else starts picking on you.

Secret Santa plans: Stuffed Christmas Stockings

Last week, my BFF met up with her freshman year roommate (I was her sophomore year roommate) for a happy hour on behalf of the non-profit her ex-roomie now works for – Services for the Underserved. Every year, they ask for donations of Christmas stockings with presents in them, or even just things that would make good stocking stuffers. My BFF knows I love donating and wrapping and finding a good home for the things I get for free, and gave me the email address of the person who handles this.

Of course, it’s a bit early in the year for all this, but upon establishing the non-profit’s clientele, I asked for 15 females, age 16+. The instructions unfortunately state “don’t wrap anything”, but I’m hoping that I can either enclose a specific list of contents and be allowed to wrap them, or I can do the wrapping in their office. About 3/4 of the items on the list of suggested stocking stuffers are the things I get for free, so now it’s just a matter of getting my hands on cheap stockings. Feel free to make suggestions that improve on the dollar store

Coupons Giveth and Taketh Away

I won’t bore you with a detailed list of this past weekend’s incredible feats of couponing, and will instead go straight to the highlights and lowlights (?) of my adventures…

Rite Aid in NJ: Piece of cake, quickly in and out. The burbs are such a treat sometimes.

ShopRite: No screw-ups, no lousy cashiers, minimal problems. I loved getting 8 jars of my favorite tomato sauce (Classico) for a net cost of 55 cents a jar. Ah, the breakfast Lean Pockets for 49 cents a box, the feminine products for free, the Knorr’s pasta sides (TBD, D = Donated) for 4 cents each. Oh wait, I did screw up. I bought some things that qualified for some sort of special offer or rebate, and then lost one of the receipts - AND realized that two items for different promotions were on one receipt. Of course, all manufacturers understandably want an original receipt. Sigh.

CVS:  Extremely good experience. I had $14 in expired ECBs and as soon as I entered the store, I approached the assistant manager to see if they’d accept them. He was perfectly agreeble – phew! And then everything went smoothly – lots of Glade products for free that qualify for the SC Johnson $5 rebate.

Walgreens in NJ:  The manager was next to my cashier and kind of passive-aggressively informed him (in front of me) that they only accept internet printed coupons in color – I was holding one in my outstretched hand. I piped up that some of us don’t have color printers, and the things to look for to make sure it’s not a photocopy was a faint watermark if it was from one of the main coupon sites as well as the verification number that is different on every coupon printed. Turns out the manager used to be an avid couponer herself at one point (I reckon back when internet coupons were easily tampered with), and appreciated the info I gave her as well as my understanding of the # coupons cannot exceed # of items rule. She told me about people cutting off expiration dates and photocopying coupons from the newspaper inserts, and told me how her store had had a lot of problems with rejected reimbursement lately. I said that IPs could be traced to the computer that printed them, and no way was I going to get hauled off to prison over a $1.50 coupon. I suspect that they got hurt by that $5 Huggies IP last spring that inspired quasi-criminal madness amongst diaper-buyers. I had some recently expired Register Rewards that she said couldn’t be used because they were manufacturers’ coupons and they won’t get the money back, but I then told her what I knew about how all that worked and she let me use them up “just this once” (I wouldn’t have pushed it). I’ll be more careful. I really appreciate that she didn’t let her past bad experiences with coupons close her off to my explanations.

Target:  Pulled off using a manufacturer’s BOGO coupon and a store BOGO coupon to yield free Fancy Feast cat treats for The Best Cat Ever Because He Saved My Little Sister’s Life. I actually had my mom do the first round because I wasn’t done shopping, and she was feeling bold. I also had some fun getting free things from their travel-size section with coupons that don’t exclude them – free Clean & Clear face scrub, All and Tide laundry detergent, Dove cleansing cloths, Degree deodorant, Oxy acne pads. On the downside, I picked up a purple hoodie for $19 that went on sale the next day for $15. Grr.

Walgreens NYC:  Oh boy did I screw up and end up the better for it. You generally can’t use a Register Reward earned from a specific product to pay for the same product and then get another RR. I accidentally did that and tried to undo it with the assistant manager. Somehow, I ended up not getting the $8RR but ended up with $15 cash from a return, and yet still got the items. I knew it wasn’t supposed to happen that way and gave the guy my name and number in case the register totals were really screwed up and they wanted the money back. I do not want this very nice manager to get in trouble over frikkin’ Theraflu. Despite doing everything right this time, the $8RR didn’t print. The manager asked me to please come back tomorrow and torture someone else with this. I laughed and called it a night.

In rebate news … I submitted for the Kellogg’s $10 Fuel for School rebates on behalf of me, my mother and my best friend. It looks like mine has been processed and is on its way, but my friend just got hers returned for insufficient postage (.20 short). Damn food scale said it was 3/4oz. Guess what I’ll be replacing asap – not going to let it screw up my dieting as badly as it screwed up my rebate! The postmark deadline was 9/30 and the receiving deadline was 10/9 — I mailed it around Sept 20 and it took the post office A WHOLE MONTH to return it. Probably S.O.L. with this, but I emailed Kelloggs anyway. On the plus side, I only paid $4.90 for the 10 boxes of Eggo waffles that were supposed to earn me this rebate - 4 for me, 6 donated. I looked up the status of my mother’s rebate and saw no note of it … hm, I think I mailed it the same time I sent mine.

Rite Aid NYC:  Just noticed that this week’s circular is 8 pages – excellent! It used to be 12 pages like everyone else, then a few months ago, they shortened Manhattan to 4 pages of deals that rarely included their rebate specials. I stopped shopping at Manhattan stores. But after reading their recently-issued corporate coupon policy – which is 100% awesome for us coupon crazies – I checked the sales on their website and found that NYC is no long out of favor. Sweet. I’ve got my morning cut out for me tomorrow.