Shannon Christman
Even before my niece gave me a gift subscription to RC this year, I had discovered the joy of combining coupons, sales, and promotions to get free stuff. Often my husband, Mark, would come home from work to find a stack of eight or nine things on display. “I got all those things free at the grocery store!” I’d tell him. Little did I know that I was not the only person making displays of good deals I’d found (and my displays were small compared to those of many RCers!) Near the end of 2003, I discovered that my stockpile was growing out of control. At the same time, Mark and I were finding great deals on toys, which we had no reason to buy for ourselves, as we were still grieving after a failed pregnancy I had had that summer. Rather than avoid the toy section altogether, we decided to combine the toys we couldn’t resist buying with items from our stockpile to make a gift box for Mark’s cousin and her husband, who are raising six kids on a tight budget. We didn’t want them to feel obligated to give us anything in return, so I wrote a little (lighthearted) poem explaining that we had an overabundance of personal care items we had gotten mostly for free, that we had found some toys we couldn’t resist, and that we wanted to share what we had found with them. Shortly after Christmas, we visited the family and had a great time watching them open the box full of goodies. The following year, God blessed us with a baby of our own. Now I am stockpiling kids’ goodies for my own little boy and thinking of creative ways to teach him (when he’s old enough) about being responsible with money and about finding good deals. Although I find many of the deals in RC on my own, I have enjoyed getting premiums listed here (including a Mott’s Wiggles CD for the baby!) and have learned a few things, too. Recently, I started using $1.00-off coupons to get free trial sizes, which I plan to sell at our yard sale next month. (Most of the items in the photo came from two trips to Target, although a few came from other stores, and one was in a box lot I bought at an auction.) So far, my favorite RC feature has been the excuses people have heard about why the store can’t accept coupons. Several of them made me – and my family – laugh out loud!