The landlord provides us a 2-door refrigerator with the top freezer compartment. We somehow managed to “squeeze” a chest freezer and an upright freezer into our tiny apartment. The chest freezer was from a deal at our grocery store, yes, we got it almost free with coupons!

The outside and inside of the refrigerator.

The refrigerator is usually more packed than this, I am trying to “empty” it a bit before leaving for Malaysia in February. They are more yogurts in a plastic tub that I left them in what people here called the “Polish refrigerator” – the outside freezing cold weather.

The outside and inside of the chest freezer.

We use the chest freezer for meat. They are currently fill to the rim. The hams and turkeys that  are free with coupons before Christmas are taking too much space! I have the meat separated by paper bags, one bag for pork, one bag for seafood, one bag for chicken, one bag for turkey and one bag for beef. I still have a few 2lb bags of shrimps and 30-40 bags of Franks I got in March/April 2009 inside there.  The meat can last a long time in the deep freezer especially when they are vacuumed sealed.

Really glad I burned some Catalina coupons to get this vacuum sealer. It makes stockpiling perishable food and meal planning in advance much easier. With the ability to pick up fresh, seasonal fruits, vegetables when the stores are running deals or they are abundant of wine tags to get them for FREE. The vacuum-sealing allows me to use these foods when I choose, rather than rushing to use them up or waiting too long only to find they have gone bad!

The outside and inside of the upright freezer.

The upright freezer is currently filled with frozen vegetables, fruits, ice cream, breakfast food (waffles, strudels, breads) milk and pizza. The content varies from month to month as the deals differ. A couple of months ago, when milk was free with coupons, we have lots of of milk in the freezer, and didn’t have to buy milk for the last six months. Everything in this freezer is either FREE or they paid me to take home. What you see is a tip of the iceberg of what I actually bought at the store. When they paid me to bring home ice cream during a promotion in the summer,  I bought more than 180 tubs of ice cream but only brought home about 20 tubs, gave/donated most of them away. The ice cream craze got me $200+ in coupons to buy other groceries/necessities.

]]> http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/12/i-am-going-home-i-am-going-home/feed/ 0 http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/12/paid-to-take-home-free-booze/ http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/12/paid-to-take-home-free-booze/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:44:51 +0000 Leahs http://www.leahschrader.com/?p=1362 Liquor is relatively cheaper here in US compare to Malaysia. We don’t drink hard liquor, but like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer occasionally.  But I don’t buy the booze unless they are FREE! They are ways to get booze for free, I mainly look for rebates from liquor companies.

The beer companies have rebate forms out throughout the years, especially during special occasions like Superbowl and holiday seasons. You can get beer for free after the rebate, or even make a couple of bucks! For example, Coors had a rebate last month, you buy a 18 pack  beer and a  $100 gift card, get back $25 in rebate. I bought the gift card with coupons – so no cost, 18-pack beer is about $15 includes tax. I am paid $10 to bring home the beer!

Many people drink during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year when family and friends gather together. Most liquor department at the grocery stores count on the festive season to booze their sales. The retailers often have sales to bring people in. The manufacturers or liquor distributor often use coupons and rebate forms as marketing tools to promote their products. By taking advantage of all the promotions and stacking all the deals together, getting paid to bring home the booze during this time of the year is not a dream!

We have more than 50 bottles of booze right now, they are mostly wine, some sparkling wine (taste like champagne) and a few bottles of rum. Except for the plum wine from the Asian grocery store (I used it in cooking and marinade) which I paid real money for, the others are all FREE after coupons and rebates.

Some will come in handy as last minute gifts when we get invited to parties or family gatherings. The rest  is enough booze to last us for the next year. In fact, we had given away 5 bottles as Christmas and graduation gifts.

When it’s only 1-2 inches of snow, it’s fresh, fluffy and light, it’s easy to get them off the car and side walk. The roof, tree and ground covered with a coat of snow looks beautiful! But, there is no fun when it starts melting, it gets icy, dirty and quite a mess. We are expecting to get 7-8 inches inches of snow next week!

The ground is icy and slippery when the snow starts melting. Our landlord hires a company to plow the snow. That’s the advantage of living in an apartment, no shoveling snow in the winter nor mowing lawn in the warmer months!

The flight from Midway IL to St Louis MO is only about one hour, however it takes 2 hours to drive down to the airport from the boondocks we live. Since the flight leaves at 8.00 a.m, we have to leave the house at 4.30-5.00 a.m!

T got me hooked up with the International Cafe, I met many new people and getting to know some friends. Many people asked me what do I do with my free time since I am not employed here. Well, I am actually fairly busy in the last year. First, though I don’t work outside of home, I do work online at home a bit. Since I discovered the big wild world of coupon shopping two months after I arrived here and that has kept me pretty busy, especially when we started selling the stockpile at yard sales and flea markets .

Besides, have been donating tons of the dairy products and perishables that I got for free to the food pantry and shelter. Before I got my driver license, T helped me to drop off more than 200 bags of cheese and a few hundreds cans of refrigerated dough(to make biscuit, crescent roll and dinner rolls) at the women shelter.

I also join the area woman center and volunteer there. I do the layout and typeset for the bi-monthly newsletters. Actually, they invited me to be part of the Board of Directors, but I wasn’t sure I have time for greater commitment, so I didn’t go for the meeting last month.

We have gone to the flea market a couple of times and were doing extremely well. We started our tables at about 6 -7 a.m, by9.30 t0 10 a.m., we were SOLD OUT. If we are able to go there twice a month, it’s better than me working part time! What would you do? Slave at a minimum wage job and let Uncle Sam takes 1/4 of your pay, or have the stores pay you to shop?

I may eventually go back to school to get a teacher certification, so I can tutor math part time or teach full time in a public school. I would love to go for a Montessori certification, but there is no authentic Montessori school at this small town where we live. However, during my initial inquiry at the university near us, was told I first have to send all my certs and transcripts to an agency for evaluations. I am yet to dig out all the certs and transcripts to do that!

All in all, I am thankful to God for all the people that He put in my path during this whole year, it has turned out to be nothing I would have anticipated, but a detour that has wonderful scenery anyway!

The big truck belonged to a trucking company that sell trucks and heavy auto vehicles. Their insurance policy is  with a company that specialized in heavy auto vehicles and industrial equipment out in the east coast. T’s car has to go in the workshop for repair and the bill is estimated to be over $2500! The insurance will pay for the repair and the rental car for as long as T’s car stays in the workshop. The insurance company made the arrangement with the rental car company to drop off a Kia Spectra for T at his work place yesterday, so I didn’t have to pick him up from work. The insurance company has proven to be quite efficient so far, I must say.

]]> http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/08/met-an-auto-accident-on-the-way-home/feed/ 2 http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/07/our-new-apartment/ http://www.leahschrader.com/2009/07/our-new-apartment/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:11:49 +0000 Leahs http://leahschrader.com/?p=1327 It has been three weeks since we moved into the new apartment. Here is a picture of the exterior. Will take pictures of the interior when all the boxes are unpacked!

The apartment building is a four-plex, 2 lower unit and two upper unit, we are on the lower unit on the left. There is a detached covered garage on the left, one parking lot for each unit. It’s a two bedroom apartment with about 1200 square feet of space. We like the walk-in closet and  the abundance of build-in storage in this apartment! We now have plenty of room to store all the stockpile and keep our mess concealed. :-)

We decided to delay the plan to buy a house, so we could save more money for a bigger downpayment and a newer house. That also mean we will not be spending money on luxury goods or Orlando vacations for a while, at least until we archive the goal of buying a house!

We asked for permission from our landlady, she gave us green light to have a yard sale, not garage sale. So, we setup a tent on the lawn beside the apartment building. We put out a few folding tables borrowed from the in laws and have the “merchandises” displayed with the price tags printed on white papers.

We did really well, we had our first “customer” at 7.30 a.m, before we even officially “open business”. People strolled in non stop and we made a little over $400 on the first day! We also got to meet many of our new neighbors.

On the second day (Saturday), the first customer didn’t  show up until 10.30 a.m! I was wondering whether the signs were there, so I drove out  to check. The signs were alright, guess most people slept in a little late on Saturday! Anyway, once we started to have people pulled up, it was non stop. There were a few repeated customers from Friday and a couple of big spender. Despite of the initial setback, we actually did pretty well on the second day too!!

Marketing and advertising are BIG in America. Businesses are constantly trying to sell you stuffs that you don’t need and commercially prepared  junk food are disguised as “good and wholesome” ! The stores especially the grocery business is very competitive, they spent a lot of money advertising and playing psychological game with the consumers. The same item can be $1 this week, $2 next week and $1.50 another week! In order to win the game, I don’t shop like a typical consumer – buy what you need when you need them, I buy them when they are FREE or almost Free!

How do I do that? The grocery stores have a 12-week cycle in which everything in the store is at its lowest price point.  The manufacturers  also  often run marketing promotions coincides with the cycle. When that happens, that’s the best time to buy that item for an even bigger discount using the manufacturer coupons, store discounts and manufacturers’ promotion that are available.

Let me give you an example:

Marie Callender’s frozen Pasta

Normal Price: $4.00

Store promotion: On sale for $2.50

Coupons available: $0.75 or $1.00

Manufacturer’s promotion : Buy $20 of participating products, get back $10 on your next shopping trip.

Scenario:

Buy 5 packs of frozen Pasta = 5 x $4 =$20 (hit the threshold for manufacturer’s promotion)

Sale price = 5 x $2.50 = $12.50

Minus coupons available, let say you have 2 $0.75 coupons and 3 $1.00 coupons.

$12.50 – 2 x $0.75 – 3 x $1.00 = $8.00

You pay $8.00 + $0.13 sale tax (of course you can pay with coupons you get from buying other products) and get back $10!

They pay you $2.00 to take home five packs of frozen pasta!!

Isn’t it a fun game? I enjoy being paid to take things from the store!

Well, it may not be healthy to eat frozen pasta all the time and no one has a BIG freezer to stock up a year worth of pasta!

But, I have gotten almost “everything” free or close to free by being a strategic shopper, including fresh vegetables, shrimps, Salmom, cough medicine and diet pill that works!! In the process, also gotten gift cards for Starbucks and different clothing stores that got me new summer clothes and T’s work clothes.

We drove this baby home last night!

After T got off work at 2.00 p.m, we drove down to Oak Park in Chicago. After we got the mechanic to inspect it, T signed the papers and paid the seller with a cashier check. I drove the Toyota Camry and T drove this baby home last night!

It was 50 miles one way to go down to Oak Park. Driving home on highway I-88 was rather stressful and tiring I have not driven much on highways with fast moving commuters. The commuters crowd just got off work and the highways were quite packed, though the traffics was nothing like the kind of bumper to bumper traffics in KL/PJ!

We need to go to the Department of Motor Vehicle to get a new license plate and add the car onto our current auto policy. I got a quote online  this morning, it costs about $150 to add another vehicle. It’s much more reasonable than the AAA auto insurance that T’s parents used to get. It saves us at least $300 half yearly!! It pays to shop around when it comes to getting auto insurance. The same company also offers homeowner  and rental insurance, but no cheap term life insurance, one would have to look some where else.

Being in a big farm town does not bother me, the smell of fertilizer and manure in the early spring when the farmers started planting does not bother me either. I love the fact that it’s a small town, but a small town with many facilities due to the presence of the university community. It’s a rather safe community where children can roam around, play in the yard and houses don’t have to be locked all the time! I bet businesses that sell or install home alarms are not doing too well here as many people will not need them!

May be because of the university, there are hospital and specialists clinics all over town. There are more than five grocery stores, departmetal stores and shopping malls a short 10-15 minutes drive from where we live , and  tons more within 30 minutes drive. Living in small town that has big town facilities work for me, as of now.

T is working till 2.00 p.m, we are driving down to Chicago to have a car inspected right after that. We have looked at the car and wanted to purchase it, so we are sending it to the workshop for a final inspection to make sure there is no major mechanical flaw that would be costly to repair! It everything goes well, this is the baby that we are hoping to bring home today!

It’s a 2002 Kia Sedona, a mini van that sits 7 passengers. We plan to take out the last row of seat and use it to haul stuffs for flea market or garage sales. Until I find a job or enrol in a course, selling stuffs at the flea markets or garage sales will be a part time job for me. An online acquaintance who has six children is taking one of those medical coding training courses to be trained to be a medical coder who can work at home. I have been contemplating whether to take up the same course or  going back to school to get a teaching license. Since it costs quite a bit of money, we first have to save up.

Tomorrow, T and I are going to Elton John and Billy Joe’s concert in Wrigley Field in Chicago. T has been rather excited about going to the concert since we got the tickets in January! I don’t care too much for the concert, especially we probably will not be home until after midnight. That also mean we will have a few hours of sleep before getting up on Friday morning to get ready for the Yard Sale. There is a city wide yard sale in our town and I will be putting out things at our lawn and yard!

It’s a newer apartment (especially compare to the 100 years old house we are living in right now), a two bedroom apartment with the right footage for two adults. It was love at first sight for me, I like the many closets and cabinets throughout the apartment. The rental is quite reasonable. The downside: there is no washer and dryer hook up in the apartment and we have to use the coin operated washer and dryer provided by the landlord. That mean we have to keep our current dryer in storage and sell off the used washer that we got from T’s colleague. I see it as a trade off for a fully equipped kitchen with cabinets and dish washer. The dish washer especially is a boon. I hate to do dishes when the weather is cold! We will be moving at the end of June! Packing will be a headache, it’s amazing how fast stuffs get accumulated!

So, we told the landlord that we would not renew the lease, but would stay on a month to month basis until we find a place to move.  T’s cousin is a real estate broker, she has been helpful to get us some listings and show us around. She also got us in touch with a lender to start a pre-approval process, so we know how much loan we are qualified.

We have been looking at a couple of single family homes and townhouses. We are amazed how the prices have dropped in the last six months or so. Many of this houses are bank-owned or in the process of being foreclosed.

We were looking at a  3 split level end unit  townhouse on Thursday. They are 2-stall garage at the ground level, one bedroom  and bathroom on each level, kitchen, fireplace and living room on the first level,  family room on the second level and a full basement!!

Front of the house shows the garage and front door.

Living room and fireplace on the first level.

Kitchen on the first level, comes with cabinet and fully equipped with appliances i.e. refrigerator, oven, stove, dish washer, garbage disposal and microwave oven.

Full bath on the second level. They are 2 full bath and one half  bath in this house!

Guess how much is this house listed for? It has been listed since July 2008 and current list price is $129,900. Since it’s a short sale (the bank owns the property), T’s cousin thinks we can offer around 100k. We are sitting on the decision to make an offer, may continue to look at more houses before we do that!

While we are glad spring is finally around the corner and had a wonderful spring like week in the middle of March, alas it’s back to cold and rainy days after one week. Looks like cold weather still roaming and lingering around!!

Can’t wait for the day we can switch off  the heating  to arrive!  It will be quite lovely to open the windows to let fresh air and sun to come in!!

Discovered something new (to me) few weeks ago- the wine tags put out by wine manufacturers. They are tearpads found at the wine department or tags hang on the wine bottles, which give you $ off produce, meat, fruit, cheese, seafood, juices, etc.

The tags for instant may say “Save $6 on groceries when you buy 2 bottles of xxx brand of Wine 750 ml or larger”. But the wonderful thing about this tags is: the liquor law in IL prohibited coupon redemption for the purchase of hard liquor, so there will be a “No alcohol/wine purchase is required” in the fine print.

Some of the “NO ALCOHOL PURCHASE REQUIRED” tags that I have found and used in the last few months!

Most of this tags are specific about what products you can use them on, but some are open to interpretation!

What is a mixer? The cashiers or store managers may not always agree with me, my interpretation: mixer is anything that you can mix with liquor! So, Coke, milk, orange juice, coffee drink, are all mixers!

What is a produce? Are eggs and frozen vegetables included? :-)

I was able to find tons of the tear pads and hang tags (most people don’t pay attention to them, unless they do coupons) and used them to get seafood, produce, meat, cheese for FREE. Our fridge is now well stocked with fruits like Kiwi, strawberries and mangoes we otherwise won’t buy as they are expensive. We have frozen shrimps, chicken, pork, ham and sausages to last us for at least 3 months!

Our refrigerator has limited freezer space, so when the store has a FREE freezer deal in the winter, we got one with coupons!

We bought the chest freezer  when the store ran a freezer deal. We paid with catalina coupons accumulated and received $150 worth of coupons for FREE food

In the month of January, we hardly spent any money on groceries, we probably forked out about $20 for sale taxes as coupons cannot be used for taxes, that’s it.

The trick is, at Jewel Osco: the $30 total is based on normal shelf price, even though the item can be on sale for less than the shelf price. Combine with coupon use, you get really good deal, things for free or even making money by buying this items included in the deal!

Walgreen does the same kind of catalina deal every week, but Walgreen doesn’t allow you to use the Catalina coupons on the same item to get more catalina coupons (it’s called rolling the deal in couponing lingo). But, Jewel Osco not only allow you to roll the Catalina coupons, they also take the catalina coupons from Walgreen! So, I used some of the Walgreen coupons at Jewel Osco stores to buy groceries or roll them into more catalina coupons when they have a good deal.

This kind of deal doesn’t happen too often, the last one they have was in Nov 2008. It’s a “Buy $30 and get back $15 in Catalina coupons”, then you can use the coupons to buy more stuffs and roll into more coupons.

A typical scenario: a box of Fiber One Honey Cluster cereal is normally $4.65 at Jewel Osco, it’s on sale for $2 a box.

When you buy 7 boxes of cereals 7x $4.65 = $32.55 (over the $30 threshold for getting back $15)

Sale price is 7 x $2 =$14

minus 7 x $1 manufacturer’s coupons

Total paid = $14- $7 (manufacturer’s coupons) = $7.

You pay $7.00 ( and $0.14 in tax) and get back $15, a net profit of $7.86.

Needless to say, I have been buying cereals to make money. :-)

We obviously won’t need so many boxes of cereals for two person, so we gave them away, donated them to the food pantry and women shelter. We even get tax relief for doing that!

The 8-roll bounty paper towels and Tide detergent are normally $14.99, they are on sale for $10 and $11.47 each. But I am able to get them for $1.50 and $3+ each with the coupons and Catalina deal. I offered them for $6 each to DH’s relatives and friends who know nuts about coupons, they sold like hot cakes!

Throughout the whole week, I spent about $50 out of pocket over 40 transactions for goods worth about $2000+. Kept some of them for own use and resold some of them to T’s relatives and friends, made a net profit of $200 in cash and still have $50 worth of Catalina coupons!

I could have done much better if I could drive to the store in the morning as the store often ran out of the money making items when T got off work. I still have tons of unused manufacturer’s coupons for cereal and P&G products. I need to get going with the driving license and get all geared up for the next Catalina deal coming up in about 2-3 months. :-)

I have been adjusted to the cold weather in IL better than I thought. Surprise, I have not felt much of home sickness after almost three months since I arrived. Life in a small town in the Midwest is as close to home as it gets with inexpensive VOIP calls and web cam. A suitcase of spices and pre-packed sauces, plus having access to an Asian grocery store 45 minutes drive away do help. :-)

My health problems seem to be under control. Though I complained about the expensive medical cost in America, the health care system here is good. The health issues (IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome) that bothered me for years are under control right now. At first the doctor told me I might have to take that medication for the rest of my life. We went on to purchase 10 bottles of the medication when they were on sale and we had some coupons. However, we returned five bottles last week because after taking 4 bottles of the medications, there is no need to take them anymore! I don’t know whether the doctors back home are aware of the seriouness of IBS and how it affects a person’s daily routine and emotions, they never gave me medications, they just gave me laxatives!

Though it was quite an eventful year, I sold the tutoring business, started work from home, had a surgery, went through a cancer scare, marriage was going through rough patches, dealed with physical illness and ailments, migrated to America, but they turned out all fine at this point in time! I am thankful there is reason for everything that happened though I might not know why. I am also thankful that there is a season for everything.

In this season of Love and Hope, may the spirit of Christmas bring you God’s richest blessings that will continue throughout the coming 2009!

Pumpkin pie is one of the must have dishes for American Thanksgiving celebration, which falls on the last Thursday of November.

The women at the international spouses meeting had a little adventure with pie making this morning.  Merilyn who organized the cook out had us met at the kitchen of a church. She prepared the store bought pie crust and filings. Everyone had great fun making and baking the pies.

I was late and missed the fun of making pumpkin pie with them, but was in time for pie eating. They had made extra pies and we were able to bring one home each!

Teresa shared the story of the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims and their Native American friends. I learned something new about the history of America. :-)

We will be celebrating our thanksgiving with T’s parents at his uncle’s house. T’s aunt will cook the main dish and the turkey, but every household will bring a dish. T suggested I bring a non spicy Malaysian/Asian/Chinese dish. I haven’t decided what to bring to the lunch party. Most of the dishes I usually cook need to be eaten piping hot, and do not taste good when it’s cold, which are not so party friendly. Do you have any suggestions?

The nearest local Social Security office took about two hours to and fro,  we would prefer to find out the status through phone if someone would pick up the darn phone at the Social Security office. We have been calling the national toll free number but was told we need to call the field office or been there personally.

We waited 30 minutes in line, was told the woman who processed our application was on leave and we would not get any information other than the Immigration Services had validated my data.

Though the woman who talked to us was all polite, you know she didn’t care and would not go an inch further.  She could have go ahead to assign the SSN or corrected the mistake in my name, but she choose to do nothing. The Social Security office at this location sucks, the people work there are worst than Malaysian government servants.

T’s uncle and aunt live about 25 minutes away from where we live. They run a farm corporation with thousand acres of corn, wheat and soy field. Their home is on the farm. T’s uncle is in his 70s and he still works in the field! It’s harvesting season right now and they have been really busy. When they told us their workers have been working 120+ hours per week, I poked at T who worked about 45 hours a week and complained about over working.:-)

We had two large pizzas with meatball and mushroom toppings. They were very delicious, but pretty greasy and high calories. T somemore brought home the leftover to eat for lunch!

We chit-chatted and played the dice game Farkle after dinner. It ’s a very fun dice game with simple rules. The cover of the container said it’s a game of guts and luck. Really, through the game, it’s so obvious who would take chances and who were the conservatives. :-)

T’s mom was having such good luck with the game, she kept getting three pairs, two triplets and straight. We had a good laugh and the game ended with her reaching 10, 000 points, way ahead of all of us!

However, T found out his father would be running errands in the morning and could give me a lift, so I didn’t get a chance to take the bus yet. These buses are not as big  or as comfortable as the JFK Airport Shuttle. But, the bus stop is right in front of our house and it’s pretty convenient to take a bus to go downtown or the university.

There were about eight of us there, three other Asian women are from Taiwan, China and Indonesia. The Indonesian woman was very happy to learn that an American woman and I can speak Indonesian/Malay. She wanted to teach us cooking some Indonesian dishes!

We spent time chatting and getting to know each other while our hands were busy with the quilting. Actually, we were doing the cheater quilt. We sew on the pre printed quilt instead of starting from fabric pieces. :-)