Dear Piggy I Owe You!

Dear Piggy,

I know you feel the crunch of the continued poor economy. I am very sorry that I took everything out of you. I promise one day to refill you!

yours,
Super Broke





Unfortunately this is becoming the rule and not the exception! Some of us have gotten to the point where all of our piggy banks contain nothing but IOU's! Most of us have cut all the corners to the point that it is round! There are those of you that are still have some areas that can take a little more cutting.

We are going to use my dear mother for example. My mom and dad are by no means rich. My dad is a school teacher and makes under $50k a year. Fortunately they do not have a house payment or a car payment, they own both outright. My mom has a vegetable garden. She never has to buy tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, lettuce, peppers, radishes, or peas!

Her one weakness is magazines! Southern Living, Country Living, etc. are stacked up all over the place! With the price of magazines today I am surprised that anyone would shell out so much for something that is 3/4 ads! She literally spends $100 a month or more on magazines. Yes, it makes her happy but what would you have if you put that $100 a month into a savings account or even a piggy bank? $1200 a year!!!

What are you spending your money on?
Cigarettes $5 a pack a day = $1825 a year
Starbucks Coffee $3.50 = $1277.50 a year
Ordering Lunch at work $7.50 = $1875 a year
A 16oz soda a day $0.95 = $349.50 a year
A Candy Bar 3 times a week $.75 = $117 a year

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Affordable Glasses isn't a thing of the past!

I have decent Optical Insurance. It has a low deductible and pays for quite a bit. However, I recently did a little research that was quite shocking to me! I wanted to find out what it would cost me to get one pair of single vision glasses with an eye exam. The following might scare you, I know it did me!

The Eye Exam was quoted at $115 a little high because I was a new patient. That I could kind of understand. But when I asked about frames they had pretty much just two tiers. The lower tier started at $85 and the upper tier started at $250. That is just for the frames! Single vision lenses with no coating of any kind were an additional $150! Even with my decent optical insurance I was going to be out $200+ (that is the deductible plus the part that insurance wouldn't cover)

After that news hit me I started doing some research. Wal Mart has optical centers in most of them now. The price for an single vision eye exam? Around $60 and that isn't so bad. The frames and lenses were still quite high so I decided to look online. There are many low cost places on line! You can actually get overwhelmed if you are not careful. I decided to look at one place that a couple of my friends had mentioned. Zenni Optical.

They have glasses starting at $12.95 Yep, that is COMPLETE glasses, frames and lenses and a case and a cleaning cloth! And it is only $3.95 shipping (there are higher options but that is the base) There is a slight drawback, some of the glasses are not available depending on your pupil distance. Please note that you have to have the pupil distance measurement to order glasses and most Optometrist do not normally put that on your prescription so be sure to ask.

So, I decided to order a pair. I didn't like the cheap ones so I settled on a pair of $30 glasses. My prescription is pretty strong so there was a small fee for the stronger lenses. I opted to not get any coatings on the lenses as well to save on price. Total price on my order was $43. I have been wearing the glasses for about a year and I have had no problems of any kind.

So to summarize my eye exam was $56.00 and my glasses delivered was $43 for a grand total of $99! My deductible for my optical insurance is $100. So, I got my eye exam and my glasses for less than the deductible on my insurance. How is that for saving some money!

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