You Pay Me

I have got to say that I experienced something last night that I honestly haven't ever experienced before. Many of you know that I have what some would call a "large" family. There are 7 of us. And many have asked how in the world we can live - afford a house, food, clothes, etc - on a pastor's salary with 7 people? Good question. You have to be wise with your money and here's just one more way we try to do that....when you go grocery shopping tell them "you pay me"

See, we've got this great lady at Discovery who has been "couponing" for a while and taught a class to any interested ladies on how to get grocery items for pennies on the dollar or free. Of course Lora went, and has been at this for a month or so now. She took me with her yesterday and here's what went down.

We walked into Harris Teeter (local grocery chain), grabbed a hand basket and headed to the frozen section because Eggo waffles were on sale. No big deal yet right? We also have coupons - 9 of them. So we select 9 different boxes of Eggos and head to the checkout. The girl swipes the Eggos, then swipes the coupons and then, get this, tells us that we have $0.91 left to spend. So I grab a candy bar and she says there's $0.11 left. I said that's fine. She calls over a manager because she needs an override. He asks why and she says, "Because I owe them eleven cents." His eyes get wide, he swipes his little manager thingy and the register pops open. She takes out a dime and a penny, grabs the receipt and hands that, 9 boxes of Eggos and a candy bar over and says, "Now that we've paid you to shop here, have a nice night."

You bet I did. I could get used to this. Now of course you don't always get everything for free, but last night we did. And actually on the way back, we stopped at another grocery store (Food Lion) grabbed three dozen cookies because we had three coupons for a dozen free cookies, and got those too. Probably could have gotten 6 dozen since it was buy one, get one free, but we didn't want to be greedy. After all, we already had 9 boxes of Eggos and a candy bar!