My Favorite Store in Las Vegas Is...

The Goodwill!

And speaking of shopping (today's useful tip), if you are shopping for an electric vehicle, please note that EV rebates will end on September 30th.

All of This for $20!

Hubby and I stopped by the grocery store today and picked up a bunch of loss leaders.  For a grand total of $20.30 we got...

• a loaf of French bread
• a loaf of white bread
• 10 pounds of potatoes
• 20 limes
• a pound of tomatoes
• a half gallon of milk
• a pound of grapes
• 7.5 pounds of chicken

Overall, it was a pretty good--and cheap--haul!

The State of Retail

This is me every time I go into a retail store lately...

I remember the days when stores would stock at night so shoppers would come in the next day and find a nice, tidy store.  These days, every time I go into a store there are stocking carts everywhere...

And don't even get me started on the price of...everything...these days! 

I just had to add a couple more photos from Dollar Tree yesterday...

The State of Shopping Part 2

The state of shopping continues to be...uh...challenging.

I was surprised when I went to Dollar Tree yesterday and saw that everything in the store is no longer $1.25.  Apparently, it was a quiet rollout of higher prices, but seeing things that were $5 was shocking to my frugal brain. I guess they are just trying to survive in an inflationary market but Dollar Tree no longer being a dollar and the 99 Cent Stores closing completely is just sad.  I'm sure this is how my grandmother felt as she watched five and dime stores close up in her day. 

In other shopping news, I received the expensive backpack and while I was impressed with the quality and organizational features of the bag, I stuffed a bunch of clothes in it and wore it around the house and felt there was no way I could carry this bag for any length of time.  It was big and unwieldy, so it is back to my hiking backpack I go for my future travels (it has a great hip belt and narrower profile so I can wear it for hours).  I packed the bag up and sent it back to the store for a refund.  

Hubby was shaking his head over the cost of the pack (it's just a bag you put stuff in! you can do that with a pillowcase!) but he doesn't understand the value of a good backpack (I tried to explain this but he loves his el cheapo Walmart backpack that he has been using for years so he thinks any backpack over $25 is unreasonable!).  Then the next day I came thisclose to buying a Tumi backpack I saw at Ross (it was $315 which is a steep drop from its usual $500+ price...I could hardly believe that Ross had such a high-end bag for sale as the backpacks they sell are usually lower end) but I didn't get it because it really is just a bag you put stuff in and I could not really justify paying so much for it.  Bummer.

On the house shopping front--not that we are actually shopping for a house, but we have been talking about selling our current house because it is two stories and some of our guests (and ourselves) are getting old so we want a single story house without stairs--prices are equally dismal.  There is a house in our neighborhood that just came up for sale and it is a 4 bed/2 bath single story house.  It is listed for $500k which, again, to my frugal brain is a ridiculous price to pay for a basic house but I guess the housing market is still all kinds of crazy so it is actually considered a good deal in a nice neighborhood.  Add on top of that the increase we would pay in property tax (our tax base is super low since we bought our house at such a low price many years ago and the tax cap keeps taxes from increasing very much year over year), then add on top of that about $75k to repaint and put in all new flooring plus make any other fixes needed and...I am not so sure that buying a new house would be a good financial move.  I told hubby we should just install a chairlift and be done with it!

tldr; prices on everything, everywhere are just insanely expensive  :(  

The State of Shopping

Hubby and I went out shopping yesterday and saw the following things...

Our local 99 Cent Store is pretty bare.  They are supposed to close in June but I think they will be completely out of inventory much sooner than that. 

And as we were checking out of said store, we noticed a lady that had apparently changed shoes and walked out of the store without paying for her new shoes (notice the tag still on the side of the shoe. Also notice hubby's big finger in the way when he took the picture!).  As the 99 Cent Store CEO noted, one of the reasons they are going out of business is because of unprecedented levels of theft!  smh

Then hubby wanted KFC so we stopped by to pick up a 2-piece meal for him and noticed the other two specials and noted one was probably for people who couldn't do math!

Then we headed to Best Buy and I picked up a couple of sale items as I want to revamp my computer/monitor/entire work-from-home set up.  I am buying all sale items since I hate to pay full price for anything and while I used to buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, these days buying things on Amazon is very much hit or miss.  Some prices are good, many prices are now higher than regular retail stores, and you ever know when you will get used/broken/counterfeit items.

Finally, hubby gave me $500 and said 'buy whatever you want' since my birthday is coming up this week.  I always spend my money carefully, buy what is needed (especially if it is on sale), pay bills, or just put it in savings.  This time, however, I splurged and bought a stupid expensive backpack for our trip later this year.  When we travel, I always pack everything in one backpack so I, #1 felt like splurging on myself for once, #2 figured that even if the bag was expensive I would still save a lot of money not paying for baggage fees for our trip, and #3, get to experience the "Holy Grail" of backpacks.  I'm still waiting for its arrival and I hope I like it (if not, back it goes!).

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Sales and Other Things

A bunch of random things...

• We went grocery shopping today and got everything in the above picture for $49.01, saving $67.57 off the regular price.  We got: 2 pineapples, a loaf of French bread, 8 pieces of fried chicken, a pound of cheese, two racks of ribs, 4 cinnamon rolls, 2 dozen eggs, 4 boxes of brownie mix, 5 lbs potatoes, 3 rolls of biscuits, 2 containers of Coffee Mate, and some heavy cream.  We shopped only sale items/discounted app items and I think this was a good deal overall.
• 50 reasons Australia isn't on the top of my travel list.
• I made this breadstick recipe last week and hubby said they turned out better than Olive Garden breadsticks.
• And after much searching, I found this great (free!) file converter that works perfectly.  For several months I took pictures in .heic format which used to be free to convert to .jpeg but then Microsoft started charging for the app to convert the pictures so I looked everywhere to be able to change my pictures to a format that I could actually view (making something free then later charging for it is--IMHO--a jerk move by these companies!).
• We are all set for our usual quiet Thanksgiving at home next week.
• The price of stamps is going up in January so I bought a few books which should keep me in stamps for the next year or so.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

The Goodwill in My Area is Awesome!

I haven't been out shopping in ages so this morning we hit a couple of Goodwill stores in our area.  This is my favorite place to shop and we are lucky that in Las Vegas there are more than a dozen Goodwill stores to choose from.  The selection of stuff they carry is equally amazing (where else would you find old lady clothes, showgirl costumes, dapper suits, and collectables from all over the world in one place?).  I think it is because people from all over the country and the world, and people from the very poor to the very rich, donate stuff to this store so they end up with a very unique collection of items.  FWIW I love old lady clothes--comfy pants, comfy shirts, and comfy sweaters are my jam!

From today's shopping...they had a bunch of matching jackets (who knows where they came from but sometimes casinos change out uniforms and donate all of their old uniforms to local Goodwill stores), beautiful ball gowns (everyone's first place to shop for prom dresses should be the Goodwill, these dresses cost pennies on the dollar compared to regular retail stores), and a karmic message (crop tops are very popular for the younger crowd these days so as I was looking through the tops I wondered if I should buy a trendy crop top.  Then next top had a big 'Nope' on it.  Message received!).

 

 

 

Some Great Home Purchases

Here are a few things I have bought/repurposed recently for our home...

When the flooring guys pulled out our stove to put new flooring underneath it, I was shocked (and grossed out) by how much food and debris had managed to slide in between the stove and the countertop!  After thoroughly scrubbing the sides of the stove and the cabinets, I immediately hopped on Amazon and ordered these silicon counter gap strips which so far have worked wonderfully!  They do their job of keeping any spills from running down the side of the stove and are easy to clean.

Of course, I still rave about the bidet I have had for about a year now.  For around $35, it saves its cost in toilet paper several times over each year and we have also had several guests use it and immediately want to order one too!

After we got the wood floor put in, I asked the sales guy how to clean it and he said to just use a Swiffer.  Since I don't want to buy a product that I need to keep buying refills for all the time, I bought a $6 mop from Ross...

...and made my own Swiffer-like device out of it!

Finally, we had a lot of pictures on our living room wall that we took down during the renovation.  Instead of putting them back up, I decided I wanted to put them in a digital photo frame.  Then I checked out the prices of digital photo frames (yikes!  I didn't know they were that expensive!) and then I remembered that I had an old tablet-style laptop that we don't use anymore so I set it up to be used like a photo display frame and now it's screen saver just shuffles through hundreds of family pictures!

 

Sales, Sales, Sales

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Hubby and I had planned to have our usual tiny Thanksgiving dinner at home but when I found out that our 92 year old friend would be alone for the holiday (how can her family NOT drive a few hours to spend at least the day with her??? But I digress...) we packed up our dinner and went to her house and had an instant Thanksgiving dinner with her.  She was happy, we were happy, and it was a nice way to spend the day.

The following day, my walking club did a 10k #OptOutside walk around a local park.  The weather was perfect and we had a great time chatting and walking.

The photo above pretty much sums up my attitude about shopping.  We have been inundated with BLACK FRIDAY DEALS since October so when Black Friday finally did roll around, I had exactly zero desire to go shopping.  There is nothing we need, nothing we want, and all of the shopping hype kind of makes me feel Grinch-like.

In other news...

• Another reason to dislike Facebook.
• Something scary.
• And this popped up on the Slickdeals site today.  NSFW and what the ever-lovin hell??  In other news, Amazon also sells tiny houses, a 40 pound box of the tiny marshmallows you find in cereal, and caskets complete with reviews (!?).
  

The Great Grocery Shrinkray and Other Things

Hubby and I were shopping at the military commissary a couple days ago and were excited to see that we could get a container of coffee for only $4.80!  Unfortunately when we got home and compared the coffee to one we had in the pantry, we realized that the coffee we had just bought was only 24 ounces but the older coffee was 30 ounces!  This has been a common problem for years but I really though that containers of coffee always stayed the same :(

And other things...

• Today when we pulled into a parking lot, the guy next to us got out of his car and asked if we could give his car a jump because his battery was dead.  He started hauling out his jumper cables but we quickly grabbed the little jumper box we always keep in our car and had his car started within minutes.  He was pretty surprised that such a small device could jump a car but this is the second time we have used it and both times we were impressed with how well it works.  This is a great tool that everyone should have!
• Here is a big list of useful websites.  I know of many of these sites but I learned of some sites that I had never heard of before and have added them to my favorites list.  Cool!
• With our current economic system teetering by a thread, it's always good to learn new skills, like how to live without money.  Hopefully it doesn't come to that but one never knows...
• Something I have been noticing around Las Vegas as well as other places is people posting their Venmo/Cash App/etc link in public places in the hopes (?) that strangers will send them money.  Apparently this is a thing now?  I've seen this quite often on the back of peoples cars ("just turned 21 buy me a drink!") and on Facebook/Twitter/etc.  Hmmm
• Did you know that you can Google 'Halloween freebies' and come up with pages and pages of free stuff?
• And here is a reminder to check to see if you qualify for any class action rebates.
• Finally, this weekend I am attending the free Community Safety Forum at the Mob Museum.  If you ever come to Las Vegas when this monthly event is happening, you can sign up to attend the event then get free entry to the Mob Museum (the cost to visit this museum is usually $30!).
  

This Weekend...I'm Not Shopping

It seems I may be the only person not shopping this weekend based on social media and news reports of everyone going nuts with their shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday but there is literally nothing I need!

About a week before Thanksgiving, sale ads started inundating my email box, blasting through social media, and popping up on every website I visited.  It seems like right after Thanksgiving, these ads increased ten-fold.  By that point I was fed up with the entire idea of shopping.

The reasons I don't feel like shopping this year include...

• I have everything I need.  Clothes, check.  Cell phone, tablet, laptop...check, check, check.  Shoes and walking/hiking gear...check, check.
• I feel better about my phone.  I always like to have the latest and greatest cell phone but at $1000+ for a new Samsung Galaxy phone, the price is getting pretty ridiculous.  Especially since I really don't use my cell phone for much more than texting and calling a few people as well as taking pictures.  Besides, one of the top tech guys was asked what his favorite Android phone is and he said that the three-generation-old Galaxy S8 is his favorite which is the phone I have!
• I want a specific tablet which isn't available.  I have a great tablet (a 10" Galaxy Tab S6...a tablet many people think is better than the newer S 7s) but what I really want is an 8" Android tablet with great specs.  Currently my only options for an 8" tablet are an Apple iPad Mini (I don't like Apple products) or a Huawei M6 8" (due to the government ban, Google play and US apps won't work on this tablet) so I don't want to settle on a tablet that is "just OK" which means no tablet buying until they come out with something I really really want.
• We are generally low-tech people.  Aside from the usual cell phones/tablets/laptops, we are pretty much low-tech.  No Roomba (I actually like vacuuming), no smart assistant like Siri or Alexa devices, our TVs are around ten years old and are still working fine, and hubby keeps asking if I want a Kitchen Aid mixer because I bake a lot but I prefer to use my hands.
• Good enough is good enough.  There will always be something better out there but most often, something that is good enough is better than continually buying the latest and greatest.  Take ear buds for example.  I have a pair of generic earbuds that cost around $25 and work just fine for the infrequent times I use them.  There are a lot of good ear buds on sale now--the Galaxy buds Live, Galaxy buds Plus, and Galaxy buds Pro--which are on sale for $100+ but based on how often I use them (hardly ever), how I use them (listening to YouTube videos, not listening to or editing music tracks), and how much I care about what other people think about the name brands I use (not at all), there is really no need to upgrade to a "better" pair of earbuds.  Then there are the WTF were they thinking earbuds that cost $2799(!?!) that I guess are for the wealthy who have run out of things to spend their money on.  Buying what meets your own unique needs is better than being swayed by the media to continually buy more and better (read more expensive) things.
• Hubby is the voice of reason.  It's our 30th anniversary today so for 34 years (the length of time we have been together...we met the weekend before Thanksgiving in 1986 and moved in together the weekend after Thanksgiving in 1986!), hubby has been the voice of reason and knows me too well.  First I will see something I like, then I will research it to death, then I will decide I really need the item, then I will tell hubby I really need said item, then hubby will say "but you already have similar item", then hubby will say "go get it if you really need it but you know we could put the money to better use...".  Then I will stew about it and decide that spending money wisely is probably better than spending it on something I will be bored with in a few months.  Occasionally I will decide that I definitely need to buy something (like the $800 I spent on a Dell XPS laptop which was more than I had ever spent on a laptop before but I am happy to report it lasted me for four years then I passed it on to a relative who is still using it eight years after I purchased it!), but more often than not, after much thought, I decide not to buy every item that snags my attention...which is a good thing in the grand scheme of things.
• I am surely and steadily moving towards a more simple living/minimalistic/anti-consumption/buy-it-for-life/zero-waste lifestyle.  This means less shopping, less wastefulness, and buying one good product (hopefully with multiple uses) and using it for a long time instead of buying several of the same or similar products that just take up space, waste money, and aren't used often.

This is just my take on cutting back on consumerism in general.  For some people, shopping is their happiness and if they can afford it, they should make themselves happy.  For many people, however, their shopping woes can be summed up in 'The Overspent American', 'Affluenza', and 'Your Money or Your Life'.

Super Sales!

Today we got some great deals when we were out and about shopping...

We got these groceries for a grand total of $3.42 shopping sales and using the store app.

Next we used the TMobile Tuesday deal to get lunch for $1.08.

Finally, I saw these button up shirts for hubby on sale for $3 each at Walmart (even the clerk ringing up the shirts said "wow that's cheap!").  Overall, a very good shopping day!

The Great Bicycle Shortage

On our walk today we saw that there was no line at our local Ross store so we went in.  Hubby found a few things he wanted but I couldn't find a single thing I either needed or wanted (after 2.5 months and I didn't need anything?? Wow).  And while there was no line to get into the store, the checkout line was about 50 people long but it moved pretty fast.  Then we stopped by Target and I noticed that like yesterday at Walmart, there was not a single bicycle available to buy!  Apparently it is the same all over the US.  We have definitely seen a lot more people riding bicycles in Las Vegas, especially along the Las Vegas Strip, which was pretty much unheard of before the shutdown.

In other news, here is some information about using your HSA to buy feminine hygiene and other products which many people didn't know was possible.  Also, I didn't know there was such a thing as Facebook groups that do free-cycling and other no buy/sharing of stuff which can help people in need which sounds particularly useful during these difficult financial times.  I Googled my local area and quite a few of these groups/pages showed up!

I Still Don't Like Shopping

I used to love shopping (years ago when I was maxing out my credit cards and "keeping up with the Joneses").  Then we went cash only and debt free and shopping got a lot less interesting (maybe buying only what you actually can afford will do that to a person?).  But now I pretty much loathe shopping.  We had to drop off some food to people today so we made a quick run through a shopping center that we rarely get over to because hubby wanted to pick up some Filipino desserts that have been hard to find lately (we go the last box!).  They seemed to be out of a lot of items.

Next we went to the Asian grocery store and the lines were so long we didn't buy anything because we didn't want to stand in line with so many people.  Next up was Walmart.  It wasn't very busy there so we grabbed some fish food and a few other things and got out of there quickly.  I did notice that you can walk through Walmart and get a quick snapshot of what items are in demand by the general public.  Apparently bicycles are a high-demand item these days...

Next we went by the Ross store in the same shopping plaza and they still had a long line, since there is nothing we absolutely need we just skip any store with a line these days.  Finally we stopped by the 99 Cent store to get some garlic (another item in high demand?  They only had a couple of meager packages left).  And I was particularly horrified to see that your basic rubbing alcohol which cost about 79 cents six months ago was now selling for $4.99!!!  eeekkkk

On the Grocery Front

We walked over to the grocery store today, mostly because they had boxes of blueberries on sale for 25 cents a box instead of the usual $2.99 (a special if you use their app; each week the app features one ridiculously low-priced item, probably to get people in the store).  We were also able to pick up pork ribs for $1.97 a pound (I've tried to get hubby to go vegan without much luck!) and I was surprised that they even had such low-priced meat in stock because all I have been hearing on the news lately is about meat shortages.  A few of their meat shelves were looking pretty sparse...

...and this is something I have never seen before, our grocery store selling number 10 cans of stuff.  I'm guessing with schools and restaurants closed, the distributor needed somewhere to sell these so they are trying to sell them through grocery stores.

Shopping...Ugh

We went to Costco this morning, arriving about 20 minutes after the store opened.  The parking lot looked pretty full but there was no line.  I'd heard that the Costcos often had lines because they only let so many people into the store at one time.  Apparently the store we went to didn't get the message because the place was packed!

I went straight to the toilet paper and was happy to get some since there was less than a half pallet left of the stuff.  At least the store was limiting sales to one bundle of toilet paper per Costco card so that kept people from hoarding it.  Then we went by the meat department and it was utter madness.  Overall, people in the store seemed cranky, impatient, and others, completely unaware of their surroundings as they literally ran into other people with their carts.  ayayay

The store looked really well stocked compared to the Sam's Club we went to yesterday so we picked up some other things we wanted and even though the checkout lines were kind of long, we got through pretty fast.  I didn't even take time to take any pictures, I wanted to get my stuff and get out!

I may go 100% home delivery after that experience.  It certainly wasn't the enjoyable experience we usually have when shopping at Costco, and even though we have been pretty isolated with staying at home for more than a month, I don't really miss being around people at all.

3 Lessons from Today's Shopping Trip

I ran over to Target today (literally, I like to do my errands on foot!), and picked up a few things I needed (see photo above).  When I shopped today I...

1. ...used coupons.  In our junk mail each week we get pages and pages of coupons, many are for stuff we would never use but some are for products we actually need.  I cut out the coupons and took them to the store with me today and used coupons--ranging from $2 off to $4 off--for each of the items I bought.
2. ...used the coupons specifically because Target had a blanket "20% off all vitamins" sale.  For example, the Centrum vitamins were $9.99 plus 20% off which made them $8 then I used a $4 off coupon so those vitamins were only $4!  It's always a good idea to use coupons when the item you want is already on sale. 
3. ...checked my receipt before I left the store and found the 20% off vitamins sale wasn't taken off my purchases when they were rang up so I went over to the customer service desk and they refunded the sale price on each bottle of vitamins.

Total spent for these items today: $22.47.  Regular price for these items: $42.21.  Amount saved: $19.74.

Holiday Shopping...Or Not

When the Black Friday ads started coming out--at about the time we were cleaning up from Halloween!--there was so much cool tech that I absolutely wanted.  Note that I really don't even need any new tech as my phone still works great, my laptop is awesome, and I have not one but two tablets which also work great.  But I love tech and the prices on everything from tablets and laptops to appliances and TVs are soooo cheap this year!

The first item on my list was a Fitbit which was on sale for only $49.  I figure that having a Fitbit will inspire me to walk more (I think this every year when they are heavily advertised!) so I told hubby that I was going to pick one up and he said "why? you've had three of them and you return them within a week."  Hubby is right, of course.  I just couldn't really get into Fitbits before because they were so complicated.  I couldn't turn them on and off when I wanted, I had to wear them around my wrist and I never wear watches or jewelry so it was kind of annoying, and they just seemed like more hassle than they were worth.

So I decided not to pick up the Fitbit and tried to figure out what else I could use instead and I found that there are several free apps for my cell phone that would basically do the same thing.  I tried a couple of apps which I didn't like then I read about a simple pedometer app--called Pedometer, how basic is that?--which is super basic and easy to use.  I gave it a try today when I did a 10k and I LOVE it!  It is super simple, just push start when I start walking and stop when I am done, and it is also very accurate even though I was walking both inside and outside.

A bit of creativity--and free technology--saved me at least $50!  Now I am going to look at the other things on my "want" list and try to come up with cheaper solutions that would be just as good as spending money on stuff I don't really need.

Saving Money at the Goodwill

Whenever we need to buy something, the first place we check is the Goodwill.  Last week hubby's coffee pot got a crack in it so instead of running to a department store and buying a fancy (read, expensive) coffee maker, we hit up the Goodwill (on Wednesday which is 40% off for seniors, of course).  Hubby found a perfectly nice, and actually pretty new looking coffee maker for only $4! 

And since my walking club was going to have our first walk of the season this weekend, I got a nice outfit for walking which included a new looking RBX jacket and new looking Nike athletic pants for a grand total of $5.00 for both pieces.  I love the Goodwill!

5 Fabulous Purchases

Here are some of the purchases I have made in the past couple of weeks, all of which were well worth the money!

1. Skullcandy wireless headphones.  I often watch YouTube videos while hubby and I are sitting on the sofa in the evening.  He is playing poker online and the TV is on in the background and I am usually reading, redditing, or watching YouTube videos on a wide range of topics.  The problem with YouTube videos is, of course, the sound.  I usually use my wired earbuds so hubby doesn't have to listen to both the TV and my video sounds and this system works OK but being tethered to the laptop means I've yanked the earbuds out of my ears a few times when I forgot I was physically attached to my computer.  Then I found a set of $25 wireless headphones at Ross.  These sound great, don't keep me tethered to the laptop (I can walk all over the downstairs of the house and still hear my video), and were a very inexpensive way to see if I even liked wireless headphones (I do--they are great!).  So while I don't see myself spending $300+ on wireless headphones like many techies do, this cheap option works way better than expected! 
   
2. A portable car battery jump starter.  Hubby has a van.  It is very old and the air conditioner is shot and the book value of the thing is $500 but he loves his van and doesn't want to get rid of it.  Needless to say we don't drive it at all during the summer because of the lack of air conditioning but when he went out to start it for his weekly check to make sure it was still operable, the battery was dead.  The thing with batteries is that ANY battery in a car in Las Vegas has a lifespan of about two years because of the high heat.  So we needed to jump start the battery and could have used cables and waited until the car parked in front of it was moved so we could get our other car in line to jump it but we decided to check out the new battery jump starters which are so popular now.  The reason they are so popular is that you don't need jumper cables or another car.  Just hook up the battery jump starter and crank the car and "ta da" your car will start.  What a great invention!  We went to Walmart and bought a cheap $40 jump starter, plugged it in to fully charge it when we got home, then jumped the car and it started on the first try!  I think this jumper starter is well worth the $40 price because not only does it quickly and easily jump cars, it also has an air compressor on it to put air in tires (or basketballs, bicycle tires, etc), and you can also charge any UBS device like a cell phone or tablet through the machine. 
   
3. A new Samsung Galaxy S8 cell phone.  I've been looking for a new cell phone for a while.  Hubby has my hand-me-down Galaxy Note 4 phone from 2014 which is an eon ago in tech time.  I wanted to get a new cell phone so he could upgrade to my hand-me-down Galaxy S8+ phone (it's big and beautiful and fast and still quite current technologically speaking).  When I checked out the ads today I saw that Best Buy had the Galaxy S8 (identical but smaller than the S8+) phone on sale for $350 (regularly $499).  Deciding I could easily use a smaller phone, I jumped on this sale.  Most new phones are going for $900+ these days but since I hardly use my phone (mostly just for texting hubby) I can't justify spending $900+ on a cell phone with five cameras and 5g and all of that fancy stuff.  I need to text and take photos and that's about it.  Now hubby and I both have great phones for much less than I had anticipated paying.
4. A couple of Kipling bags.  I love Kipling bags but I can never pay full price for them.  Needless to say, unless I can get a Kipling bag at a 50%+ discount, I won't buy it.  I found these cute bags on sale for $10 (regularly $35 each) and didn't have a use for them but I bought them anyway (this brand makes excellent gifts for friends in Japan).  I had them sitting around for a week then I found a great use for them...  
   
5. Emergency supplies.  Last week when I was at work hubby called me to say they were having a big earthquake at the casino he was at.  Fortunately it rolled and shook the building a bit but it wasn't a major quake.  But the idea of hubby being stuck away from me in a disaster situation was pretty scary.  He usually has his lunch and a drink with him and that's about it.  So I used the Kipling bags to make each of us small emergency (EDC--everyday carry) bags.  They are still a work in progress and I will do a separate post about every item I put in them, but these bags include everything from hubby's medications and spare hearing aid batteries to a written list of emergency contacts in case cell service goes down, a granola bar, matches, Wet Wipes, a pocket knife, an emergency whistle, a small flashlight, etc.

While I don't shop a lot, I do like spending my money on useful, highly discounted, stuff!