To live and explore

We went to flea market near Chicago to sell my stockpile. We have been there thrice, “business” was really good and it was quite fun. We left home around 5.30 a.m, reach there 6.45 a.m, setup the “stall” and by 9.30 a.m., we are sold out! After that we closed the stall and locked the van, and went around checking out other stalls.

The flea market is on Sat and Sun in the spring, summer and fall, there are easily about 500 stalls selling all sorts stuffs. They are amateur sellers who sell stuffs they no longer use that dig out from their garage or basement, they are professional flea marketers who sell vegetables, furniture, trinkets, toys, toiletries, ..you name it, someone is selling it!! They are so many stalls selling so called collectibles i.e. old bottles, toys, which to me the uninformed, they are just junks! There are even a couple of stalls selling jewelry and precious stones, but they are probably not certified diamonds! Would you buy diamonds at flea market if they do sell them? I would not!

The van would not start two weeks ago. T didn’t close the door tight and left the light on overnight. thus exhausted the battery. The neighbor’s boyfriend helped me to jump start the car, but it went dead again as it did not recharge enough before I turned off the engine.

T brought it to the workshop to recharge the battery, but was told he has to replace the whole battery. Despite me telling him there was nothing wrong with the battery, T and his dad decided to get it replaced and also “fixed” the alternator. The repair bill came up to be $330++.

The mechanics must have thought they got some dumb big fish, they also “discovered” problems with the shocks and recommended flushing the break fluids. They gave an estimate of repairs, came up to be a few dollars less than $1000!

Though equally ignorant about cars, I knew better not to trust mechanics! I told T no where we are going to spend so much money repairing a car that only cost $3500! So, T talked to his coffee mate, the retired policeman recommended him a mechanic whom he said is honest. T sent the car for him to check the shocks. Guess what? The second mechanic found nothing wrong with the shocks and whatsoever.

Now they have me thinking: we might not even have to replace the battery or alternator! For all you know, all we need is recharging the battery for 5-6 hours!!

I hope T learned the lesson this time. It always pay to compare and double checks because they are so many unscrupulous businesses out there to make a quick buck. I am sure it goes the same for  life insurance rate! We were able to save a lot by comparing the rates before we renew our auto insurance few months ago. It was almost half of what T used to pay, with same coverage and same deductible!!

We went to a silent auction at the retirement center that PIL lives. They were a few air filters and I bid on one of them. I bid on about 20+ items just for fun, bid $1-$2 on most items. Not that I “need” most of them, it will be fun to win, and don’t matter if I don’t!!

I won 4 items for a grand total of $9, the HEPA air filter is one of them! The houses/kitchens here are not built for Asian cooking and the oily smell does linger! I am hoping the air filter will be helpful to get rid of the oily smell from cooking in the apartment.

T met an auto accident on the way home from work, thank God he is not injured. One of wheels of a big truck in front of him came loose and rolling down the road and hit his car. If T didn’t turn the car to the right to avoid it, it would have hit the wind shield and caused a disaster. T turned to the right, the wheel crashed into the left side of the bonnet and caused a big dent.

The big truck belonged to a trucking company that sell trucks and heavy auto vehicles. Their insurance policy is with a company that specialized in heavy auto vehicles out in the east coast. T’s car has to go in the workshop for repair and the bill is estimated to be over $2500! The insurance will pay for the repair and the rental car for as long as T’s car stays in the workshop. The insurance company made the arrangement with the rental car company to drop off a Kia Spectra for T at his work place yesterday, so I didn’t have to pick him up from work. The insurance company has proven to be quite efficient so far, I must say. I hope they are efficient in paying the repair bill so we won’t need the service of Tacoma car accident lawyer to get our car back from the workshop!!

There is a GREAT promotion going on in Jewel Osco this week. I have been shopping frantically and gotten tons of stuffs for free. Almost everything on the promotion list (which is more than 1000 items) are free or almost after coupons. I have “bought” more than 100 bottles of shampoos/conditioners and tons of deodorant, peanut butter, pasta, laundry detergent, Lipton tea bags and mayonnaise so far. The store is totally running out of the shampoo/conditioner. I placed an order on Sunday but they didn’t show up with the Tuesday’s truck load, so even the warehouse is out of them now!!

They are two brands of ice creams for free this week. I have gotten a0 pints of Fannie May Gourmet ice cream and a couple quart cartons Breyer’s ice cream. No more freezer space for them. Consuming all this free ice cream will certainly have us put on weight. Probably not going to get more even they are free, unless they come with free weight loss pills. Yeah, we need more ice cream as much as we need a hole in our head!

T is going to take time off from work for a week in the middle of August, which is one week away. He wants us to drive up to Wisconsin for a vacation. But, the procrastinator hasn’t made any arrangement or plan yet! I am not going to be stressed about a vacation nor going to do all the planning! I will just go with the flow.

He has never went up to Wisconsin, so he has no idea what kind of attractions or rental place they have up there. I would expect him to do the research on vacation rental for Wisconsin on a site similar to Outer Banks rentals(which is for vacation rental in North Carolina) and make arrangement acordingly instead of picking one last minute without any research. We of course can’t afford an arm or a leg a vacation rental place, we are looking for a cabin near the lake or a rental apartment!

Some people believe nothing is FREE in this world. I used to think the same, not until I learn to play the grocery game!!

Marketing and advertising are BIG in America. Businesses are constantly trying to sell you stuffs that you don’t need and commercially prepared junk food are disguised as “good and wholesome” ! The stores especially the grocery business is very competitive, they spent a lot of money advertising and playing psychological game with the consumers. The same item can be $1 this week, $2 next week and $1.50 another week! In order to win the game, I don’t shop like a typical consumer - buy what you need when you need them, I buy them when they are FREE or almost Free!

How do I do that? The grocery stores have a 12-week cycle in which everything in the store is at its lowest price point. The manufacturers also often run marketing promotions coincides with the cycle. When that happens, that’s the best time to buy that item for an even bigger discount using the manufacturer coupons, store discounts and manufacturers’ promotion that are available.

Let me give you an example:

Marie Callender’s frozen Pasta

Normal Price: $4.00

Store promotion: On sale for $2.50

Coupons available: $0.75 or $1.00

Manufacturer’s promotion : Buy $20 of participating products, get back $10 on your next shopping trip.

Scenario:

Buy 5 packs of frozen Pasta = 5 x $4 =$20 (hit the threshold for manufacturer’s promotion)

Sale price = 5 x $2.50 = $12.50

Minus coupons available, let say you have 2 $0.75 coupons and 3 $1.00 coupons.

$12.50 - 2 x $0.75 - 3 x $1.00 = $8.00

You pay $8.00 + $0.13 sale tax (of course you can pay with coupons you get from buying other products) and get back $10!

They pay you $2.00 to take home five packs of frozen pasta!!

Isn’t it a fun game? I enjoy being paid to take things from the store!

Well, it may not be healthy to eat frozen pasta all the time and no one has a BIG freezer to stock up a year worth of pasta!

But, I have gotten almost “everything” free or close to free by being a strategic shopper, including fresh vegetables, shrimps, Salmom, cough medicine and diet pill!! In the process, also gotten gift cards for Starbucks and different clothing stores that got me new summer clothes and T’s work clothes.

We decided to delay the house buying for another year or two, but moved out of the 100 years old house we lived two weeks ago. The apartment we moved into is newer and have modern facilities. I don’t care whether they are gold plated toilet seat or Moen faucets, but having no kitchen cabinet and not enough closet rooms at the old place is a constant pain in the butt.

The two bedroom apartment comes with a fully equipped kitchen, central air and heating and lots of closets! T and I are sold on the Walk-in closet, never have that in our entire existence.

It took me 3 months to learn to play the grocery games really well. Nowadays, we got most of our groceries FREE or close to FREE from Jewel Osco and Target. For toiletries and household items, we got the best deals from Walgreen and Walmart! I cringed everytime I think of we used to pay full price $3.00+ for a tube of toothpaste, now, if it’s not free or moneymaking, I won’t even bother to go in the store!

Since we got the groceries, toiletries and household items covered. Next we need to learn places where we get the best buy for furnitures, electronics and clothings.

Time really flies, it has been almost six months since I moved to IL in the end of September. The weather got cold right after I arrived, though it got warmer two weeks ago, it’s still hovering around 40-50 F ( 5-10 C). I have not started driving yet. T tried to discourage me to drive on snow covered roads, but mostly because I am a procrastinator, I have not gone down to the DMV to take the tests for driver’s license.

Supposed I can drive with my Malaysian driver license for the first six months, but the catch is: I need to be on the auto insurance before I can drive, and T won’t put me on the auto insurance unless I got my  IL driver license. He is supposed to research and find out cheapest auto insurance company to get me on the auto insurance when we renewed the auto insurance last month. It ended up he just renewed the auto insurance with the existing company without adding my name on it!