If you find yourself at the grocery store and you find yourself buying coffee and you find yourself buying coffee out of those bins (which I should take pictures of so that you know EXACTLY what I mean) with the little pull levers that release the whole beans into the paper bags: STOP!  That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t buy that coffee as much as it is to say this: beware the funky flavored crud.

I had company in town and I didn’t purchase them the high end [high quality but not high priced] stuff I usually buy because they don’t like it (I offer and they generally refuse it).  But I did buy them what was supposed to be 10% Kona beans because I’m nice like that.  Except that the lemurs that put the coffee in the bins put the kona (read: hawaiian beans are in here) next to the hazelnut flavored coffee.  Note the word flavored.  That word should be a big warning sign.  They should label it, “Death star coffee flavored like hazelnuts so that the death will be sweet.”  But they don’t.

If you buy coffee that is supposed to be just plain coffee flavored out of the chute next to the flavored death star stuff then spill a little of the beans into the bag and then smell the beans.  Your nose should be able to tell if miracles have happened and your kona coffee smells like coffee or if the evil siths of hazelnut have taken over and your imported beans are really just polluted with bad ju-ju.

Save your money on the coffee that’s been polluted, report to a store manager that the devil responsible for putting the coffee in that chute should be chastised heavily, and then buy something else that may not be what you wanted, but will not be polluted.  Unless of course you’re into flavored coffee, in which case by all means just dump the arabica beans into the bag and proceed with your business.  I’m embarrassed to have written this post because I prefer home roasted coffee if possible.  But I’m a coffee snob and I have to deal with that burden every day.

We have purchased 90 bags of Peppridge Farms Goldfish crackers at $0.50 each.  That is to say that we have picked them up for about 25% of their retail price and now we have bags of these crackers that will last us into the winter or longer (I should hope longer, nobody needs that many cheese crackers).  I think that makes us pretty cheesy, and crazy.  We saved a lot of money, had to go through the register three times, but will be well stocked.  If we have a natural disaster that keeps us trapped in our house for a while, we’ll at least have some carbohydrates.

What’s the most extremely frugal thing you  do?   A man I know lives on a corner and he parks his car on the street and backs the car around the corner instead of going straight because it wears his tires out just slightly less than pulling a U-turn and then taking a right handed turn.  I am insanely anal about turning off lights and computer monitors around our house (we have two).  I also like to keep “fart fans” on as short as possible in the bathroom (and wish I simply had windows upstairs, though the basement doesn’t need one in the bathroom).

Tonight we bought 30 bags of goldfish crackers at the grocery store because they were on special and that was the limit.  They cost us fifty cents each and so we spent fifteen dollars on enough goldfish crackers to last quite a bit of time.  Our daughters like them and the big containers can’t compete with that per-bag price.

So… what is the most extreme frugal behavior you practice?  Have you done anything above normal like buy thirty bags of goldfish crackers?

I’m not maxed out with credit cards, my time is maxed out.  Therefore blogging will be light over the next few weeks as I dig through client needs and make sure that they’re satisfied.  I’m just warning you in case you’re thinking that I’m dead or something

Look for some content to come your way, just not a huge deluge of PF podcasting or blogging.  I expect to be back to normal in two weeks or less.

This morning my girls scanned the newspaper ads.  My five year old identified coupons and with great glee declared, “Mommy is going to love this ad, it has coupons!”

We’re definitely a coupon oriented family now.  Its because it comes part and parcel with personal finance obsessions

We’re on vacation with family in Estes Park, Colorado. We’re having an amazing time and enjoying off-season prices. Unfortunately some poor planning has lead to higher expenditures on food, but the time has been enjoyable. We’ve seen more Elk than a thought possible, and I have recorded the next video podcast. I have to get home and edit it down on my mac and then it’ll go up. Hopefully by Friday night!

This last week I starred a handful of great blog content from other personal finance blogs.  Check these out because if you don’t the terrorists have won!  Can you tell I’m low on sleep?  Because for some reason I find that adding, “… or the terrorists have won,” is funny again.

Mighty Bargain Hunger wrote about 11 ways to ease your commute.  It just so happens mine is only a few moments long as I walk into the office at my house, but for anyone with a real commute, there are some good tips.  I would add a twelfth tip: subscribe to podcasts.

We’re In Debt had a good reminder post: always backup your computer data if it is in any way important to you.  Now.  Yesterday.  Tomorrow.  Forever.  Think of the cost of not backing up data.

The Simple Dollar’s post on the wonders of cheap, healthful bean eating is actually the first compelling writing on beans I’ve seen since the musical fruit jingle was introduced to me in my youth (and Dave Ramsey says it in a negateive way, shame on you, Dave).

Gather Little By Little asked readers how the speed of gazelle intensity and offered some great feedback based on his own personal experience.

If you like watching shows but don’t have or like the idea of paying for a DVR then save a few bucks and check out hulu.com.  It’s free to use and is sponsored by the TV networks.  That means that its free, legal media over the internet.  Yes, you have to watch it on a device connected to the internet, but I think that you can use a bunch of different devices that will do that, or you could just watch on a desktop computer or a laptop computer.

TV isn’t the most valuable thing you can do with your time, but its quite nice to have control over when you watch various things and know that the

I read this quote from Merlin Mann…

 Starting a blog to solely make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.

… and it reminds me why I do this: I enjoy it.  In the last couple years folks have moved from being employed to self-employed bloggers and I think its great.  It just doesn’t happen to be my personal aspiration.  I barely make a cent on this blog and I love doing it.  What do you do for money?  What do you do for fun?

I will more than likely enjoy my economic stimulation check for all of two seconds as I flip it over, sign it, and then cash it in at my bank.  Upon actually receiving the funds in my account it will go towards paying off my debt.  The ‘fun’ of the spending money will be gone in a flash, but the excitement of being that much close to debt free is there.  In fact last night I got paid for some work and that money is going straight into the debt snowball.  Five hundy down in all principal since I’ve already made the normal monthly payment on  the Disguster Discover card.  It is this kind of extra payments that are exciting, but at the same time are a monument to my folly.

There are very few things in life that don’t come with lessons, but when they kick your pocketbook, the lessons feel a little more like sandpaper than satin.  I’ve found that each check gets me closer to the short term goal of debt paid off, but serve as a reminder, as I sign them,  that I’m signing off on the consequences of my previous stupidity.  I don’t say that to be melancholy, but more to emphasize that I recognize the consequences of past actions, and in the future, as I sign other checks after having my debt paid off, I’ll be signing them as a monument to where I’ve been, where I’m going, and to help build the foundation of the long term goal: financial independence.

Do you care about your economic stimulation check’s arrival date?  I figure that a few months difference in interest payments can be somewhat important, but the short term difference to me is insignificant.