Monday, April 6, 2009

How I Know I’m Poor

I just dug through a trash can. For food. More specifically, for coupons for food. I stopped by the mailboxes at my apartment complex on my way home the other day to see if I got any interesting junk mail, because – let's be honest – that's all I get. Well today was my lucky day because my junk mail was not junk at all! It was a postcard from Chick-fil-A with 3 coupons for free food! And the best part is that the food is actually free! It's not one of those "you can have 1 free small fry if you buy 2 large burgers and 2 large drinks and give us a kidney and half of your liver" coupons. It's just free – by itself. (*Note: 1 of the coupons does actually require you to buy a medium drink, but the free item is totally worth more than the drink.)

Anyway. I was excitedly reading the details of the coupons when I happened to look down at the trash can (which, to my credit, is more like a junk mail receptacle than a diaper/smelly trash/rotten food receptacle) and noticed that someone threw their coupons away! Of course I snatched them right up. But then I noticed there was another coupon postcard underneath that one! So I had to pick that one up, too. And then that got me thinking…how many more people have thrown their coupons away? So…I dug. I only had time to find one more before I heard someone walking toward me and had to collect myself and my stolen mail and walk away nonchalantly. (Oddly, I don't mind broadcasting to the blogworld that I was digging through the trash, but I just could not bear to have the middle-aged, hairy, talks-too-loud-on-his-cell-phone man see me do it. Why is that?)

I got in the car with a grin on my face, ecstatic to tell Jared that I just scored us 12 free meals – 6 each. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have personally been feeling the pains of this recession and subsequent job market, so I'll dig through the trash for coupons any chance I get. What have the rest of you done to save a few bucks?