Coupons

I love saving money and finding deals. Living in the city can get expensive but there are little things that can make you feel like you are living the life, yet saving a bit of money.

I have inherited the coupon cutting trait from my mom. Everyone Sunday when I was little, my mom would sit on the phone with my grandparents and clip coupons. They came in the Sunday Newsday and she would have a nice pile by the end of the phone call.

I do not receive a paper everyday from a subscription and instead choose to read the free AM NY that the nice man at the train station hands to me. Because the paper is only published on weekdays, there is no Sunday section with coupons. During the week, some coupons find their way into the newspaper and I always find them hidden between the recipes and neighborhood spotlight.

Cosi, the crazy expensive sandwich and salad shop has a coupon when the seasons change. This coincides with their new products but they publish a coupon for about 2 weeks that runs in the paper. The coupon is for $2.00 off any salad, soup or sandwich. Now Cosi is seriously overpriced. It is almost $9.00 for a sandwich. Two dollars off is a treat. I do not go out to lunch at work but a co worker has a Cosi salad every day for lunch. (I really wonder how she can afford it.) I am the Cosi fairy and appear in her office with the clipped coupon in hand. She loves that I think of her. Sometimes I pick up two copies of the paper and treat myself to a Cosi salad because I just cant resist using a coupon!

Another lucky find in the AM NY is a coupon for a sushi place that my friend and I love. We stumbled upon this place on night while in the West Village and enjoyed a platter of sushi. A month later I found that they had a coupon every week in the paper for 50% off any sushi! It also had a deal for $1.00 sake! I figured there would be some special menu to use and some day old fish but alas it included the whole menu! Cheap, non- supermarket sushi, is a hard find and yet I have found a great place and a way to make it affordable!

I look for other coupons in random publications that I find by my mailbox. You never know when a chance to save money will appear so have a pocket pair of scissors ready to clip.

Moral: Don't ever laugh at the power of a coupon.