Save money!

I don't clip coupons.  Okay, I do, but not to the extent of Extreme Couponing.  I like to save money, but I hate to buy junk.

Recently, it seems everything's going crap.  Of course it had to because our household income increased significantly last November so stuff had to break before we had a chance to catch up from living paycheck to paycheck, right?

First our dishwasher.  We got lucky, though, and got this one

for 44% off retail price.  Woohoo!  And once we sent in for the power company's rebate, that was another $30 in our pocket.  It happened that they had tried to put it in someone's house, but it didn't fit. In the process, the box got lost and there was a scratch and a dent. Yeah, do you see a scratch?  A dent? Nope.  Where it sits, the scratch is barely noticeable and the dent is all but invisible, but those problems added up to HUGE discount.


About 2 weeks ago, we paid off that dishwasher before the "same as cash" period ended so we paid no interest.  Feeling good about that, we should have known it couldn't last.  The washer started feeling lazy.  The next week, the dryer stopped drying.  I've had repairmen out a bunch of times to fix these issues.  It has been mostly the same problem over and over and getting closer together.  At some point, you gotta say "this washer is 17 years old and the dryer is 15.  Do we really call the repairman again?"


Well, today I'm feeling good. They just delivered our new washer and dryer.  This time, we only saved 35%, but then again, best sale I've seen is about 15%.  It's still quite a relief.  Oh, and this time we will get $100 back from power and gas.  Plus they are supposed to be all efficient and stuff to help with utility bills in the future.  We looked all over the place and couldn't even find any decent top loaders for much less ($30 a piece, but doesn't qualify for the $100 cash back so...not worth it.)  I hate white - was hoping for grey (and I was expected to HAVE to get top loaders) but when you're saving about $760, you care a lot less about color.  These ones were floor models, but since they don't hook them up or anything, they're really new.  Also, this one doesn't have a dent.  Our old dryer had this huge dent in the front because it was a floor model, but that worked in our favor because we didn't have a lot of money at that time either.  Too bad you can't get floor models for $200 anymore.  I might have saved money going to this place that does refurbished appliances, but I have trouble trusting "refurbished" and besides, we would have to pay cash.  This way we have 12 months on credit to pay it back.  The other place couldn't give us that.

And 12 months to pay this one before interest kicks in.  I hope we manage. I don't like paying interest if I don't have to...