Many people have asked what are the goals for this challenge. The original goal was to show that it was possible to eat well (have plenty of food so I was never hungry and have a fairly healthy diet which included fruits and vegetable — no living off of Top Ramen and Mac & Cheese)…
I made a huge couponing mistake. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that the Kraft money making deal was ending, but I had thought it was on the 30th. I had about 10 coupons left that I was planning to use for myself to get some more free food and stock up…
Rotten potatoes are gag reflex inducing. Unfortunately, I found this out first hand when I opened up my second 10lb bag of potatoes — and was greeted with a most unpleasant scent imaginable. Although tempted to chuck the entire bag due to the smell, I knew I needed to salvage as many of the potatoes…
One of the perks of having a bit more of a stockpile of food is that I don't need to go to the grocery store as often as I did in the beginning days of this challenge. I wanted to wait to go since there were a couple of Saturday and Sunday only deals this…
I've had a number of people email me saying that there aren't any good coupons in their area. Before I started couponing at the beginning of the year, I used to believe that there weren't any good coupons. I think most people believe this to some degree. I know that I had a lot of…
It looks like I need to turn to the readers here to decide on another rule for this challenge. I have had great success in getting free food from CVS when they have emailed me coupons for $x off when you by $x amount (it is definitely worthwhile to sign up on the ,a href=”http://www.cvs.com”>CVS…
Since I have a lot of Sunday coupon inserts but I never look at them, the inevitable questions I get is how do I match up the coupons with the deals that are out there. Being the lazy person that I am, I opted for the easiest way possible I could find to do this.…
It kind of scares me when people start to think I hold some special shopping skills to be able to get the deals I have been getting. Believe me, I don’t. I’m the least likely person to ever be doing something like this and I still am not sure how I got conned into doing…
One of the main goals of this challenge was to not be hungry with the limited funds I had. I think that I managed to accomplish this pretty well, but it really hit me today at how much being hungry affects what you are able to accomplish. I thought I had done pretty well yesterday…
Despite a good day in adding some of the things that readers have recommended I get for this challenge, overall today was a big blah. Tomorrow I have to go into the hospital to have a colonoscopy (boy, doesn't that sound like a lot of fun?) so that the doctors can try to figure out…
I decided to do some more foraging today. I needed to get some more lemons because I had already gone through the three I had picked, so I grabbed another three. I also found a bunch of blackberries — enough to fill three small containers. Even better, I found a spot by the river that…
I am not at all a big fan of mail-in rebates. I understand why companies do them — it makes it look like their products are cheaper than they really are because they know that most people will see the mail-in rebate price, but never actually send in for the rebate. I find this to…
After the coupon blunder, it seems that my luck turned the corner as I went on my first foraging trip (now allowed with the new rules). I take a walk every morning and part of that walk is through a city owned park. Near the creek there are wild blackberry bushes and I decided to…
It was a rough couponing day. Sometimes no matter how well you think you have things figured out, they just don't work like you expect them to work. That is exactly what happened and it cost me more than I expected, and my lack of preparation in foreseeing the possible issue made it so that…
Today was a disaster and I spent most of it wondering why I ever thought it would be a good idea to continue this challenge. This challenge really doesn’t lend itself to someone that does a lot of traveling and I was off to a new place for the week. Having to move the food…
I thought that I was going to end this last day of the challenge on a totally high note, and then the reality of only having a limited budget came slamming me back to reality with the issues that can happen. I did manage to survive one month eating on $1 a day (this wasn't…
