Tag: savings

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HURRY IF YOU LOVE AMARYLLIS

Has anyone ever sent you an Amaryllis plant for Christmas? If they did, you may have gotten hooked. There’s something miraculous about watching the leaves shooting up, inch by inch. After four to six weeks, a fresh bud emerges, and finally, after a few days, bursts into a glorious trumpet-shaped flower. The white, red or pink blossoms lift your spirits and help you through gloomy winter days. If you order the plants online, they’re fairly expensive. But during November and December, you can buy them for under $10 at grocery and home improvement stores. Hurry if you love magical amaryllis. Because by January they’re gone.

Amaryllis plants are sold as kits, complete with pot, bulb and soil. Once watered, they bloom within 6 to 8 weeks. They make wonderful gifts that the recipient can enjoy for weeks, and think of you.

Why would you want several? Because they give you hope on dreary days as you watch them grow, inch by inch. I have scads of the bulbs by now, and I plant them in stages , so that I always have one or two coming up all through the winter, and into early spring. It’s also fun to plant two or three in one pot, which makes a beautiful show when they finally flower.

HURRY IF YOU LOVE AMARYLLIS. rIGHT NOW THEY'RE INEXPENSIVE
Hurry if you love amaryllis. Right now, they’re very inexpensive.

Now, here’s the best part. Once the plant has bloomed, it will flower again next year if you store it correctly.  If you think that sounds like too much work, it really isn’t. Here’s what you do:

Snip off the flower after it blooms. After that, the leaves will keep growing in that same pot,  When it gets warm you can  move the plant outside for a few months. In early fall, cut off the leaves and remove the bulb from the pot, roots and all. Then,  wrap the bulbs in newspaper, put them in a brown paper bag, and leave them in a cool dark spot until the following winter. This is called the dormant period, and it’s important. I usually label them as to color and size, so I can plant more than one of the same type in one pot.

Around the middle of November, I start  by  planting the bulbs in fresh potting soil. You might want to trim the roots. Just plant them heads up, and when you want the process to begin and unfold, soak them with water and give them some bright sunlight during the day. Water lightly once a week. Then watch the magic begin.

Amaryllis started appearing in stores last week. Hurry if you love Amaryllis. These bargains won’t be around for long.

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HOW MUCH CAN YOU SAVE WITH COUPONS?

Many years ago, I had a mother-in-law who prided herself on her money management skills.  We’re talking a real tightwad, here.  Like turning off a faucet before you had a full glass of water.  Never, ever, discarding a leftover.  Changing  banks  every time they offered a free gift if you opened an account. And of course, this frugal lady believed she saved a lot with coupons.

She lived in a small, beachfront  apartment, so there wasn’t a lot of storage space.  But one kitchen cupboard was crammed with  containers of upscale, name brand items that represented, to her, hundreds of dollars in savings–offbeat things like  crab soup, gourmet peanut butter, imported cereals, special jellies.  The list could go on forever.  She seldom used any of these items.  They just sat there, month on end, but she could tell you exactly how much she had saved by using coupons for their purchase.

STORE COUPONS DON'T ALWAYS SAVE MONEY
HOW MUCH CAN YOU SAVE WITH COUPONS

Coupons weren’t  so widely used in those days, and since I was working full time, I thought coupons weren’t worth the time and bother.  Why spend hours going through magazines and newspapers in search of a $1.00  off coupon for a can of name brand food, when I could buy generic brands for even less?

Coupons are everywhere nowadays.  You go to the drug store to buy a pack of gum, and the cash register spits out ribbons  of coupons representing mega dollars in savings. However, there’s a catch.    You can’t use a coupon  to buy a bottle of any old face cream; it has to be the most expensive one on the shelf.  The mail brings more coupons—stacks and stacks of them from our local grocery store.  They’ve even kept track of my purchases and send me coupons for the things I’m likely to buy.  I stuff these things in my purse, but when I get to the store I don’t have time to sort them out and decide which ones are still good.  And often, when I try to cash one in,  I’m informed that the coupon just expired.

One drug store chain has a sneaky way of sending coupons through the mail that are only good for a week.  On the back of the coupon, you see numerous “excluded” items, including anything that’s on sale. If you rush to the store to redeem your coupon, you see yellow tags everywhere you look.  Everything you  normally buy is on sale!   Your coupon is useless.  But what the heck, they got you into the store!

The Sunday paper is loaded with coupons.  How else would newspapers survive without that advertising revenue?  Here again, it seems more trouble than it’s worth to save a couple of dollars on a product you wouldn’t ordinarily purchase.  And yet, millions of people must cut out the coupons, or the companies wouldn’t spend the money to print them.

I guess the world is divided between those who clip coupons and those who don’t.  As for me, I prefer coupon free stores like Walmart, Sam’s and Aldi where what you see is what you get.