A New Addiction

I believe that we all should be striving for moderation in all things. That you can have too much of a good thing, or in other words even good things or habits can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. That said, I also believe most of us tend towards the extreme and all have our addictions. Most of us understand on a rational logical level that everyone has their weaknesses and that it serves no purpose to compare our weaknesses with those around us because in the end it seems to all even out. However, we all have those people in our lives who's extremes or addictions are things like exercising too much, too obsessed with eating healthily, cleaning too much, too organized etc. As I said, I believe even those things can be carried to an unhealthy extreme, but not a lot of people walk into Miss skinny-toned-spotless's house and focus on her flaws, right? Right. And, oddly enough no one has ever asked me to teach a class on "How to Live in Clutter" or "How to Gain Weight".

All of that was just my very long-winded way of announcing to the world that I finally have one of those kind of admirable addictions - saving money!!!!! Yessiree, about a month ago my friend and her sister came and taught some of my family members and friends the art of couponing. I am merely a novice, but my love and enthusiasm for this new hobby grows leaps and bounds each time I go to the store and save money. I have yet to really even maximize the actual coupons, but thanks to a fabulous website (find your state and click on it), I can see which store has what on sale and even have it be broken down into 1-5 stars according to how good a deal it is, and then told which coupon to use and how much it will end up being. Anyway, I can't explain the rush I get when the cashier rings up my order and I start panicking when I see a subtotal of $124 (trying to stick to a $50 weekly food storage budget) and then I watch in pure delight as all of my savings start registering and I watch that total take a nose dive and end up at $62.00 (okay so it's a little over $50, but I feel fine about it and Brennan will too when I bring up how much he's spent on golf lately:) ) and then come home and unload a ton of food. It's absolutely thrilling. I'm seriously looking for just the right wall to hang all my receipts up on. To wrap up this exciting post, let me just conclude by saying, try not to be annoyed with me for saving too much money.