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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Well here we are at my first ever blog post. I intend this to be rather ecclectic. If you don't already know, I'm a Star Trek nerd, and a sci-fi fan in general. I've got one daughter in college and another in the 2nd grade. We call her Treklet. That covers the Starfleet and the Mom...I have been married to an Englishman for 19 years. Let's call him The Alien. Sometimes it seems we have nothing in common, but somehow we make it work.

I love to go to conventions, but don't often get the chance. I have my tickets for San Deigo Comic Con, and I'm 98% sure I'll be at the Star Trek Con in Las Vegas in August.

Besides my little obsession with Trek and other genre series and movies, I am a Twitterholic. You can find me there as @starfleetmom, usually discussing TV and movies.

I am a Christian. Get over it. It's almost an oxymoron to say that I'm a Christian who is interested in Sci Fi and Science, but that's what I am. My bestie, TrekJunkie, and I thought about starting a Christian Fan Group, but we haven't gotten around to it.

My New Year Resolution (resoloved a week into the new year) was to try to not pay full price for anything, if I can help it, and save more money this year. College is expensive! I've put lots of time into researching the drugstore and couponing methods. I'm just a beginner, but I've saved almost 40% this month!

So many friends have asked me how to get started with couponing and such. I'm no expert! But I promised a blog to help them. Basically, I'm just going to refer you to some pro bloggers that can teach you all you need to know, and share some of my personal shopping highlights.

I believe that if I stick with it for a couple of months I will not need to spend so much time, since I'll have the bugs out of this new system I'm developing and I'll have built up a nice stash of coupons and other resources.

For now, I'm just going to give you your first assignment: get a new email address. I keep my main email clean by using a separate free email account for all things shopping related. I am using gmail. I use my Outlook for personal emails, business stuff, banking, etc., but for club cards, blog newsletters, manufacturer newsletters and such I go online to gmail. Many companies require an email address before they let you print their coupons, so you may be getting a bunch of email. I would also like to encourage you to use Google Reader. One username and password is all you need for GMail and Reader, and any other Google apps you might like to use, such as Youtube. The reason I suggest you get Reader, is that instead of visiting multiple websites, scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds and emails, you can just subscribe to the RSS feeds of the bloggers and websites you like view them all in one place, without any ads and clutter.

The feeds I've found most useful lately are:

moneysavingmom.com has CVS 101 and Walgreens 101 articles, and other useful links under the "start here" section on the right. Subscribe to her feed and read up on her latest posts.

commonsensewithmoney.com The latest post on this page shows the CVS Deals for this week. Very nice that these people do all the research and calculating for us! After browsing this page, don't forget to subscribe to your reader.

chieffamilyofficer.com A great feed to subscribe to if you are a beginner! She is mentoring a "Padawan" (gotta love the scifi reference) at the Drugstore Game.

thefrugalgirls.com Find CVS, Rite-Aid and other deals.

I don't want to give you too much and overwhelm you. I'll give you some useful tools next time for organizing and tracking. Just read and set up your email and reader accounts for now...and hang on to those Sunday coupon inserts tomorrow!

I'm learning as I go, so extend me some grace. I hope I can share some useful tips, as well as make you smile now and then.

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