Most of the time, if I use a coupon with a purchase, it’s for something I buy at the grocery store or household retailer. Items like food, paper products, cleaning supplies, and the like are most commonly where I might obtain such savings. I might use the occasional coupon for dining out, getting oil changes, clothes, and various other purchase categories as well.
Pretty standard stuff.
But what about using a coupon at the blackjack table?
First, to clarify: I don’t like to gamble in casinos, as I see it as a poor fit with my life as a father of 2. That said, when younger and pre-fatherhood, I liked to go to Las Vegas every few years and had a bit of a different perspective then. Even then, however, I was always the resident “Mr. Frugal”. In a 3-day trip, I might let myself lose up to $50 tops in the casino, and that’s it. Not many people really understood that, but I viewed it as purely entertainment and that’s it. The odds aren’t in your favor, so it’s not exactly a good investment:) Even now, I would rather food and shows if I were to go there.
Anyway, I mentioned the blackjack table, and yes – I did use a coupon at one! It worked like this: the hotel at which I was staying gave the guests a coupon book for discounts on food, gifts, and a few for gaming. One of the gaming coupons was a matching coupon at the blackjack table. It has been a while, but if I recall the specifics of how it worked, I believe that if you made a $5 bet on blackjack, the house would double your bet. So, if you won, your $5 bet could bring you back $20 – netting a $15 profit.
The part I remember most vividly was approaching a table that had just one open seat; the others were occupied, by guys in very expensive-looking suits. It was hot in Nevada that day, so I remember thinking to myself that these guys must have been roasting in those suits. Anyway, it was apparent that their native tongue was a language other than English, as they muttered what appeared to be some harsh words as they lost the several hands I watched before entering. I don’t blame them for being frustrated, as they were losing hundreds of dollars per hand!
So there I am, with my coupon in hand, being Mr. Frugal, and I then decided to sit down. I showed the dealer my coupon and put down my bet. The guys in suits all looked at me with a “who is this cheapo” type of expression. I then sheepishly played my hand.
I remember getting an 11 with my first 2 cards, and the dealer showed 9. The surliest of the guys in suits had 10. He proceeded to get out additional chips to double down (get only one more card while doubling your bet), and yelled out his first English words: “I want ACE!” That would have given him 21, and helped him stop his losing streak. He also had a big bet on the table, it looked like $700.
So, what did I do? I decided to double down as well, and added to the original coupon-driven bet. The surliest guy glanced at me like I was a nuisance, as he was totally focused on what his next card will be. There was tension at the table.
The dealer then proceeded to hand out the cards. I ended up with 21, the dealer had 20, and Mr. Intensity got 19.
So, I walked off with $40 on a one-time, coupon-enhanced cheapskate bet, while he lost $700 to continue his streak. He glared at me with contempt as I took my winnings and walked away. I’m glad I didn’t understand what he was muttering under his breath as I left the table! I just took my winnings, tried not to look right at that guy, and briskly walked away with a sense of sheepish satisfaction:)
I have to say that it was quite a way to leverage a coupon, and the frugal person ended up ahead in more ways than one in this case!
How about you? Do you have your own story about using a coupon for a purchase that’s a bit off the beaten path, or in a unique circumstance?
This article was included at Carnival of Money Stories #57 at My Journey to Millions
“Starlight, Starbright”
What do you think of when you see those two words together? A song?
Perhaps you think of the lyrics to the Madonna song “Lucky Star” from the 1980’s. ”Starlight, starbright, first star I see tonight. Starlight, starbright, make everything alright.”
Could it be that you think of a Metallica song from the 1990’s, where these lyrics were used?
Or, maybe you think of the classic children’s nursery rhyme, “Starlight, Starbright.”
Well, for me, I think of starlight mints. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because of a business lunch I had many years ago, where the mints became fodder for a story that lasted years among coworkers. Its also a story that makes its way into the Squirreling Gone Wild series, as the 7th edition.
Starlight mints, for those that don’t know, are those round, red and white, peppermint spinwheel mints that you often find at restaurants. Sometimes you might see them when the check arrives, with one mint given by the server for each guest at the table. Or, you might find them visible in a bowl by the hostess stand, typically taken by people as they leave the restaurant. You appreciate them when you see your date or spouse taking one after dining on Kung Pao chicken 
Anyway, on my first day of work at a job back in the 1990’s, the department took myself and another new employee out to lunch. This “first day” lunch ended up being a department-wide lunch, as about 15 people attended. I do remember that the other newcomer and myself did not have to pay for our lunch, as it was paid for by the company – something us frugal squirrelers tend to remember!
But what I also remember is the behavior, at lunch, of this other guy who was in the department. I actually sat across from this guy, and he was moderately friendly, but seemed preoccupied. His big, beady eyes were staring slightly up and off to the side half the time. He had kind of a serious look to him, as though he was thinking of something related to the office, while paying half-hearted attention to the otherwise sociable conversation of the 15-person group at the table. I didn’t give too much thought to him, as I was trying to get my bearings and remember the names of the other faces new to me at lunch. He seemed like a regular guy, perhaps a bit quiet, and not immediately standing out of the crowd.
As lunch ended, and the checks were paid, we got up and made our way to the door. There was that aforementioned starlight mint bowl at the hostess stand near the door. As people walked by, some took a mint, others didn’t. The ones that did took one mint. I was toward the back of the group, and have to admit that I was eyeing the mints, and was going to take just one. After all, on the first day of the job, you want to be play it a little close to the vest even with the little things, as you try to figure out the lay of the land.
As my turn approached, the guy I had sat across – who was walking a half stride in front of me – reached for the bowl. He didn’t reach with a small grip of a few fingers, however. No, that would be too normal for a professional lunch. Rather, as his arm extended and reached for the bowl, his hand suddenly opened up wide. It looked like a snake opening its mouth to devour its prey. With a quick strike, he grabbed a huge handful of candy, practically overflowing from his grip. He must have had 10 or more mints in his hand. He put it in his pocket. Then, he reached out with his other hand and grabbed even more mints, putting them in his other pocket. All told, he must have taken at least 15 mints at this work-related lunch.
After working with him for a while, I realized that this fit his personality profile. It made for a good story that a few other coworkers and I made sure not to forget.
How much did he gain by this? A review of starlight mint prices indicates that these can be purchased at $0.05 per mint. So, at a nickel per mint, he picked up $0.75 worth of candy. Is this truly crossing the line of frugality, to the point of losing self-respect? Or is it harmless, since they were there for the taking?
This also brings up another question: do you keep your frugality under wraps when with coworkers or people you don’t know well, but unleash it later? For example, are you a one-mint person at a business lunch, but a mint-grabbing fiend on your own time? I’m curious what others reactions are to this.
Kind of reminds of how some parents talk about their kids: “Little Johnny behaves so well at school, but he’s just wild at home.” Perhaps it’s the same with some of us adults as we practice our frugal ways
This article was included in Festival of Frugality #281 at Remodeling This Life
Do you like food? Yes, of course, we know that we have the same answer to that question. Now, how about FREE food. I’ll bet that most of us think that sounds good too!
When it comes to free food, some questions might arise as to why the food is free. As I have been quoted before, I think that frugality goes too far when you’re taking advantage of others, or lose your self-respect. That said, there is one source of free food that I have seen enthusiastically embraced, which is the topic of this 6th installment of Squirreling Gone Wild: The Office.
I don’t mean the television show, but I mean “at the office” at which you or someone you know works. The office with lots of cubicles, copy machines, printers, water coolers, executive corner suites…..and people.
About those people….
In a position from way back when, I observed that some very smart, highly professional individuals became just a bit different when it came to how they handled free food in the office. The free food would come in three primary ways:
1) It would be a free lunch, as a part of a meeting that one attended
2) It would be set out for all to eat, in the form of snacks sent by a supplier (pretzels, popcorn, etc)
3) There would be leftovers from a larger, executive-level meeting where some “good” food was served, and then set out in the common areas for everyone else to share.
With #1 above, people were professional in getting food at meetings. With #2, the snacks were nice but not enticing enough to change behaviors. With #3, all heck broke loose!
Now, it was civilized, but when the “free” food from meeting leftovers was left out, it would be gone in a hurry. Typically there would be restaurant-quality sandwiches, pizza, salad, cookies, brownies, and things of the like. The food would be rolled out on a cart, and left in a common area.
It was a typical scene: when the cart rolled by, and someone audibly commented words to the effect of “hey, there’s food!”, the reaction was as if someone in shallow water at the beach yelled “SHARK!!!”. People within earshot got up out of their cubes and scrambled to get the food. Within minutes, the food would be half gone – just as a result of those in proximity to the food.
Next, an email would typically be sent out. This would usually happen right as the food was set out, and as the first people nearby realized there was food. The emails would have a subject that usually had something very simple such as “Food”, and the body of the email would indicate where the food was stationed.
At that point, when people instantly opened their new email, the stampede was on. You would see plenty of people stand up in their cubes, like prairie dogs shooting out of a hole in the ground, looking in the direction of the food. Then, they would politely get up and walk toward the food. They weren’t running, or overtly doing anything uncouth, but they were like heat-seeking missiles, walking briskly toward the food. It was a sight to behold, as you would never see people move so quickly in the office – even for a fire drill. All done politely, but with a purpose: FREE FOOD!
As can be expected, there was one individual who went over the top. She seemed to have a sixth sense for the food coming out, as she would always seem to be in the mix of people with this food. When she did get it, she would go against the “protocol” of taking only one sandwich, cookie, etc – and take multiples. Further, she would come back after a while and take whatever leftovers were still there after nobody wanted anymore. I saw here walking with a huge salad container one time, and just laughed – she did too! That thing looked like it could feed a family for dinner.
This “outlier” individual said that she spent only $100 per month on food, as she was able to use enough leftovers from the office that nobody wanted. Apparently, eating grilled chicken pesto sandwiches 4 days in a row was no problem for her!
I’m guessing this overall scene might be typical for large offices. What do you think? Is this sensible frugality, or extreme frugality gone too far?
This article was featured in Festival of Frugality #280 at Penniless Parenting.
In the 5th installment of Squirreling Gone Wild, I’ll go back to a story about my old college buddy. While the last SGW post went away from the college buddy and covered an airport carry-on loophole, I’m thinking its time to revisit another extreme penny pinching tale from the past.
Much like some previous examples – gas station penny trick, picking up change from under the drive through, etc – the following example is one that I personally don’t advocate for mature adults Rather, its an interesting example of how people will go to great lengths – often crossing lines of self-respect – to pinch pennies.
In this case, lets go back 20 years, to undergraduate days. By the way, as a side note - just typing 20 years makes me realize how time flies, and things move fast. Anyway, back to the story. At the school at which I did my undergraduate work, sometimes people would grab lunch at the main library cafeteria. Depending what your class schedule was, or if you needed to be studying at the library, this might be your only choice to grab a meal or snack if you weren’t carrying your own. Needless to say, as college students, most people weren’t carrying their own food!
This cafeteria offered standard fare: sandwiches, pizza, snacks, drinks. I would occasionally go there and would often run into the same friend who invariably would have popcorn and a soda as a snack. No big deal, but what was interesting was how he purchased them. A box of popcorn cost $0.50, and a drink cost $0.75.
He would first get a tray, the standard cafeteria-style offering. Then, he would go the popcorn bin, grab a popcorn box (much like at a theatre), and fill up the bag with popcorn. But he didn’t just fill up the bag with pocporn – he showered the bag with popcorn, as if it were a popcorn hurricane. The aftermath was a cafeteria tray that had a mound of popcorn, with a popcorn-filled box buried within the larger mound.
Next, he would get a 32 oz fountain drink (or about 946ml for our Canadian friends). He would fill up the cup with diet coke, would take a straw, but would not put a lid on the drink. Rather, he would go to the cashier line – usually 3 or 4 customers ahead of him, and look for the “stamp of the day”. So, what was this mysterious stamp? Well, it was a stamp that the cashier would apply to a 32 oz drink lid, so that the customer could get a $0.25 refill that day if he or she wanted. The stamp was only valid that day.
After going to the cafeteria long enough, this guy noticed that there were 4 possible stamps, and that the cashiers used one specific stamp per day. The stamps seemed to rotate somewhat randomly by day, but you never knew for sure what stamp would be. So, what he did was he saved the stamped lids from prior cafeteria visits, and then kept them in his backpack. As he got closer to the cashier, he peered over the customers ahead of him to see which stamp the cashier was using that day. Then, he reached into his backpack, and pulled out an old lid from a prior visit, which happened to have today’s stamp. Then, he put the lid on the drink, and ultimately paid $0.25 for the drink as if it were simply a refill, instead of $0.75.
Devious? Yeah, I think so. I couldn’t do it. But it was funny to see someone else do it, and do it over and over. Even funnier was his delight at gaming the system.
So, basically, instead of paying $1.25 for a drink and box of popcorn, he paid $0.75 for a drink and the equivalent of two boxes of popcorn. He would eat what was in the box (you know, the one buried in the popcorn avalanche), and then refill the box with the rest of the popcorn covering the tray and take it to go. He looked at this as paying $0.75 for a $1.75 value.
Extreme penny pinching that went too far, but could be excused as youthful immaturity. What I find interesting are more “grown up versions of extreme penny pinching. Do you have any examples from either yourself or someone you know, in terms of adopting offbeat yet above-board ways to save a few dollars or cents?
In the 4th installment of Squirreling Gone Wild, I’ll move away from the example of my college buddy from back in the day. To refresh, this guy was quite a character, and his antics with “frugality” provided for some good stories. Anyway, one of the terms he used, which I had previously mentioned in an earlier addition of this series, was “arbitrage opportunity”. He threw this term around when he saw a chance to “get something for nothing”, or game a system to pay less.
Recently I came across one of these arbitrage opportunities, though it was after the fact and I did not intentionally take advantage of it. Here’s the situation: I was traveling back home to the U.S. from Canada, where I was on a short visit. Since I was visiting a few folks who gave some food and a small gift for my daughter to take back home to the U.S., my carry on bag had gone from being fairly full upon arrival to overflowing when departing. Thus, I had to expand the bag as I finished packing. I had carried the bag on the plane on my flight to Canada, but wasn’t sure if I could carry it on when I returned back due it being expanded.
When I arrived at the airport to check in, I did not check my bag and tried to carry it on. I thought I might as well try it, since I saw others with seemingly bigger bags walking through. So, on I went toward customs/security. Before I could even get to customs, I was told that my bag was too big and would I would have to check it in. I asked if I could proceed and then check it at the gate, but the individual who stopped me said no. Ok, I thought – I guess I’ll have to go back and check in. No big deal.
I backtracked and made my way back to the counter, where I told them that I was sent back because my bag was too big and needed to be checked. At that point, it occurred to me that I might have to pay, and thoughts raced through my mind that the food and gift that I brought would end up costing me quite a bit! I mean, the homemade fruitcake was good (very good, I might add), but were those slices of cake worth the checking fee?
Once I checked it in, the said I was all set – but never mentioned what the fee would be. I asked, and to my delight – no fee! I mentioned to the nice lady behind the counter that if I would have known that I would have checked it in the first place. To my surprise, she told me that if I had checked it there would have been a fee, but since I tried to carry on was sent back, there would be no charge.
Therein lies that arbitrage opportunity – if you simply take your bag through as a carry on and get sent back, you could avoid the charge!
Now, to reiterate – I did not game this on purpose, and did not try to do this. I simply found out after the fact purely by accident, and was happy to take advantage. I believe the savings was $29, if I remember correctly. My conscience was clear because I really did try to carry it on, as I saw others with bigger bags walking toward customs/security.
My assessment is that this is a clear loophole for people to avoid the carry on fee that seems to annoy so many people. That said, knowing this loophole for this particular flight (Canada to US), would you try to take advantage of it and go through carry on – even if you thought you would probably have to check in, Or, would you just check in up front and pay the fee? Personally, I would check in up front if I knew that the bags were definitely too big. But I tend to be a rule follower in those cases, and am wondering if there is a grey area here.
What do you think?
The first two “Squirreling Gone Wild” stories were examples of extreme ways to pinch pennies, both by an old college buddy of mine from 20 years ago, with whom I am still friends. This third story in what is shaping up to be a periodic series, is yet another example that involves – you guessed it, the old college buddy!
This one, on the other hand, is a bit different. A bit more opportunistic, and again, not for everyone. Nevertheless, some good can come from it in our modern day application of these approaches.
So, what else did he do, besides the gas station penny scheme and food couponing I illustrated in the first two “Extreme” posts? Well, he looked for money in strange places. Mostly, it was for effect and shock value, as he knew that it would get a laugh out of us or push some people’s buttons. But he did, on occasion, try to search for coins in offbeat places.
Here’s where he looked:
1) Under the Drive through window. Yes, he really did this. I was with him only once when he did this, but I know he did this other times. Anyway, he had previously worked at a major fast food chain while in high school, so he came to find out about the idea that loose change can be found under the drive through window. Apparently, enough people would drop a coin or two here and there that there was often a decent collection of change by late in the day. He claimed he could pay for his meal with what he found by the window, and I recall him coming close on that occasion.
2) In vending machine coin returns. He would quickly reach down and check them periodically, sometimes finding a quarter here and there. As a corollary to this, he would look at vending machines to find instances where a bag of chips or candy bar was hanging down, having not fallen down when someone before him had put money in. He would then put money in to buy one, and get two for the price of one, as he got the one hanging plus the one behind it which he paid for.
3) In parking lots. For this one, I actually just remember one instance, where he found a $10 bill laying in the lot. He grabbed, held it up, and said “YES!” with the look of someone who found treasure. Pure satisfaction for him, I still remember his reaction.
4) At a movie theater concession stand or fast food restaurant, on the floor by the counter. He probably found some pennies or other loose change here and there.
5) In front of parking meters. Yes, sometimes people drop coins by the curb and don’t pick them up. He told me about this, but I never saw him do it.
You get the idea.
Juvenile? Yes, I certainly think so. What adult wouldn’t think so? I’m not even sure if its ok to take loose change like that from private property – I wouldn’t do so. Regardless, it was all part of this guy’s shtick, and I theorize that it was partially a way for him to draw attention to himself and partially an aspect of him truly being frugal.
Besides being a story of extreme penny pinching (or something of the like), its also a lesson on how money can show up in the most unusual places, often there for the taking like low-hanging fruit, so to speak. As adults, here is something we can do with money we happen to find (not his way!) or obtain as a total surprise or through luck: GIVE IT AWAY.
Yes, give it away. Whenever we come across something unexpected – whether its finding a $1 bill in a public park, or winning something in a free-entry contest – why not give it away? Accumulate it through the year, then at the end of the year, give it to a charity or organization that will make sure that a needy person or family will benefit. Keep loose change/bills found like this in a charity jar, other items in a special container, and then donate toward the end of the year.
A little giving is always a good thing:)
This post was included in Money Hacks Carnival #113 at learnsaveinvest.com
