Most of you who know me know that I thrive when I'm saving money. I collect coupons to grocery stores, restaurants, and whatever else I can get my hands on. I love being able to buy my cake for cheaper and eat it too.
Well, this week I feel as though I've learned an important lesson in saving money.
Last week I got a buy-one-get-one-free for the Souplantation. You had to buy one meal at the normal price and two drinks to get the free dinner. My mom, who never orders drinks, went with me. Instead of using the simple coupons that you find in the paper to bring the meal's price down a couple of bucks and leaving out the drinks we ended up spending the same amount of money on this occasion. I was so disappointed. I was expecting the bill to be about half of what it came out to be.
So, on to the next... Pat & Oscars, one of our favorite family casual restaurants has kids-eat-free Tuesdays. For the past month I would fantasize about this place's breadsticks and the savings. Every single Tuesday. We finally went this past Tuesday. I even had a coupon for $5.00 off a $15.00 purchase. However I couldn't use that coupon, because it was one kids meal per purchase, so we had to split up our order. I got the two free kids meals, but it wasn't that big of a savings.
Not to mention the fact that during this nice family meeting Nathan began to cough. He had had a fever off and on that day and the day before, so I took him on my lap and cuddled with him while I ate my sandwich. He coughed, snuggled into my chest, coughed, belched, and threw up all over me! I stood up and he vomited again! There were families still eating their dinner. There was puke dripping into my backpack. I had a thin shirt on, so the vomit soaked through to my skin. Nathan was wearing his little pair of crocs, and those had to be taken off his feet, dumped out, and washed! It was crazy!
The last event was the Rainforest Cafe. I had a $10.00 gift certificate, 10% coupon, and a free chocolate cake with a certain amount bill. I ordered drinks and a kid meal and Brad and I each got a plate. "Good," I thought, "It's enough money to get us that cake." It turned out they wouldn't let us use all the coupons. Bummer! Even with $12.00 off we still paid $43.00, which includes tip!
I'm disappointed that I couldn't save more money, but I'm glad that I went through these three experiences all within close proximity, because it drove in the important money saving tip: Stay Home!
1 comment:
I am the same way with the coupons! Lonestar has kids eat free Tues as well. David just happens to be off on Tuesday so if we are going to go out to lunch we go there. Well I got sent a 10 off coupon for lonestar but it said it couldn't be combined with other discounts. So david and I went into and split our bill. For every entree you got 2 kids meals...so he put that on one tab and my food on another to use my 10 off coupon. They actually fought us on it, said that we were combining it...but we were not we just found the loop hole lol They eventually let us use it but not without some dirty looks.
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