Blog from the Library

Last Tuesday night, Riverview Branch Library was graced with a royal visit when Carrie, the Coupon Queen, presented a lively program on how to save big at major retail, grocery and drug stores. Carrie shared money-saving secrets like combining coupons, taking advantage of sales and discount card programs, locating coupons in unlikely places and using rain checks. She also covered specific store policies. Audience members were impressed with her real-life examples of getting products at a deep discount, free or the store owing her money at the end! Other tips included organizing and planning shopping to maximize savings, using websites to scout out deals and networking with other coupon clippers. Carrie closed the program with a sharing session in which audience members asked questions and dished on their own money-saving strategies. Everyone agreed that Carrie nobly earned her royal title of Coupon Queen, but if anyone doubts it, she has a $4 case of cereal bars and twenty free toothbrushes to prove it!

Another booking.

I had another library contact me about booking two, maybe even three classes. We have the dates set for the first two classes. One is in July and the other is in August. The head librarian wants me to do the classes on a Saturday and a Sunday so more people can attend. I am thrilled! Most of the attendees from the last class have signed up for my group on big tent. A few of them are active through email. One person even emailed me to thank me for the sneak peek of the new Publix ad. I told him it always helps me plan my shopping trips.

I did a coupon class play date the other day. It ended up being really fun for all of us. It was nice to sit around and talk about coupons while the kids played. I love this age because the kids can really do their own thing with little supervision. I have another coupon class play date that I am going to schedule next week, for the people who were not able to make it the other day.

Coupon Class was a HUGE hit!

I taught a class at the Riverview library last night and it was a huge hit! There were 25 people there and they all learned something new about saving money. I even received some money saving tips that I didn't know about. I had everyone laughing and having a good time. The class lasted a little over an hour and the question and answer period was about a half hour. The program director that booked me said that she will blog about how successful the class was on an internal blog so all of the libraries can read about it. She thinks others will start booking classes too. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Another successful experience I had was on Saturday at the Westchase garage sale. I made a nice amount of money in just a few hours. My friend had to leave early to take her kids to soccer, so I stayed and sold some of her items too.