Catch It!

Posted on by Katie

Today, my dear friends, we are going to talk about money again. I have recently caught not one but two money saving mistakes. TWO! One saved me a little money and one is going to save me hundreds. HUNDREDS! First, you need to know how much I love the Patch NYC mini shop at Target.  I loved everything I saw on that endcap. Patiently, I waited for it to go on sale and one evening I was out at the old Target with my boyfriend and spotted some Patch items on a 50% off shelf. Hell to the yeah. I looked at the price sticker and it was the still the 30% off I had seen before. So I scanned it. Still 30% off. Then I did the one thing that not very many people do, but should. I asked.

The girl I asked quickly called her manager who told me it was their mistake and that they would honor the 50% off. Now, before you go taking one item off a shelf and putting it on a clearance shelf just to get the deal, don’t.  All the signs were supposed to read 30% off, not 50%. It really was their mistake. I was told to let them know when I was going to check out so they could alert the cashier. Now, here is where skill becomes luck. I explained what happened to the cashier. She couldn’t do it. Another employee or maybe manager saw her confused face and came over. He told her they can’t take 50% off the original price so she would have to take 50% off the ALREADY REDUCED price. This is the breakdown:

4 mugs = $4.99 ea reduced to $3.48 ea reduced to $1.74 ea

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1 teapot = $24.99 ea reduced to $17.48 ea reduced to $8.74

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Total Savings = $29.25

Now, I don’t know about you but an extra $30 in my pocket is a fantastic thing. Or maybe not wasting $30 on something I don’t really need is a fantastic thing. Either way I freakin love the set. Fo sho worth the $15. 

The other mistake I noticed was in a bill.  Earlier this year I had a surgery (story maybe to come).  Anyway, I’m paying off the surgery with a payment plan and I recently got my monthly bill.  The total had doubled. Um, say what? So I perused the charges and two recent doctors appointments showed that my insurance was paying a whopping $0.00.  Not cool. I called my insurance company and they told me my doctor didn’t accept my insurance so it was being charged to my out of network deductible. I thought this was ludicrous. My doctor is part of an enormous health system and there was no way she didn’t accept my very good insurance. So I fact checked (election reference, ay-ohh!) and sure enough she accepts it. I called the insurance company back and they sent me to a “Resolution Specialist” who saw that yes, my doctor accepts them and that yes, it was processing wrong. Boom.

Total Saved: $466

I’m just a lowly receptionist, but I’m pretty sure everyone wouldn’t mind reducing their debt my nearly $500. Asking questions and paying attention to what you are being charged is extremely important, especially if you are on a tight budget. Honestly, who isn’t these days? At 23 and living on my own, every penny counts. I pay my bills, not my parents or my boyfriend or any anonymous benefactor (not that I would say no to one of those).

Lesson learned: Really watch those totals. Ask questions!

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Juicy

Posted on by Katie

Let’s talk about this new juicing trend. Yes, I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. I am a member of Join the Reboot. I own a juicer. All of these things happened months ago, nearly a year. Guess what? I never tried the cleanse until yesterday.

My sister and I broke out my never used juicer and got to slicing, dicing and juicing. We got new bottles to hold a day’s worth of juice. We were all prepared.

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We prepped for the whole day the night before. We were feeling great!

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I woke yesterday feeling amazing. I was ready to begin my new life as a cleansed person. I knew it would be a tough three days, but I felt I could do it. (Who needs the one week of preparing your body? Not this girl) The breakfast juice was pretty good. I could do this.

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The midmorning juice was tolerable. Still in this.

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Then I got very comfortable and took a nap. Seems irrelevant, but when I awoke my sister told me she got half way through her lunch juice and couldn’t take it. I tried the mid afternoon juice and it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever consumed. I gave the dinner juice a shot and it was not terrible, but not delicious. Not even close. I ashamed to say it but…

We went to Chipotle.

Then we decided that the combined $120 we spent on produce could not go to waste. We bought a stockpot and cooked up a modified version of the cleanse. I’m basically going vegan and I’m fairly certain she’s just going to do whatever the hell she wants.

Ok, I shouldn’t be so hard on her. She did make us our breakfast juices today.

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It tastes pretty ok. The only thing I can’t say I love is the (for lack of a better term) gaminess of the produce. It tastes how that department in the grocery store smells and I’m not a fan. I’m considering stevia as a possible resolution.

Lunch today is a meat and dairy free salad. A big one. A delicious one. Dinner is perhaps going to be soup made from our excessive amount of produce.

So Far So Good

Posted on by Katie

I think the national health intelligence is varied. Some people are health nuts, others frequent fast food restaurants. I think I’m somewhere in between. There have been a few things that I have changed as I’ve gotten older:

  1. Drastically reduced the amount of soft drinks I consume. I am addicted to Diet Coke and I know that I could make better drink choices without sacrificing flavor (which used to be my excuse).
  2. I changed from regular deodorant to Tom’s of Maine aluminum free deodorant.  I read somewhere that the fragrance in other deodorants can interrupt your endocrine system (hormones) and that’s just something I don’t need. Also, the aluminum in antiperspirants clog your pores, enter your body and can mimic estrogen. These things can lead to breast cancer. I decided that I just don’t needs those kinds of risks and I actually like the consistency and smell better than that of my old deodorant so win/win.
  3. I bake everything from scratch, and top those baked goods with frosting from scratch. It started just as a cathartic saturday activity.  Then my aunt sent me an ingredient list for a grocery store cake. Yeah, not pretty so I bake for myself and the people I love.
  4. When I shop, I try to leave with as few receipts as possible.  Some (but not all) receipt paper contains BPA, the same stuff that you can find in plastic.  According to this article, it’s possible that it can cause gasp worthy effects on fetuses and children. No thanks.

I’m by no means someone who completely lives sustainably or even very responsibly.  These are just the few of the things that got me thinking.