Purchasing Power

By nature, I'm not a shopper.  I do give Abba glory for His provision and am grateful for the creativity in which He has blessed me, but I hated shopping long before I was a servant of the Most High.  Perhaps He blessed me with the gift of improvisation, because of my disdain for shopping.  At any rate, most of the purchases I do make, are business related, so it's mail order, internet, or auction.  Even though it's not a mall or brick and mortar, it's still shopping.

I've caught on to something that I'd like to share, though.  When I place an order, it seems within 24 hours I'm offered a coupon for something I just purchased, but the coupon has a very limited time frame.  I have a recent example and I'm so thankful I listened to Abba as I was placing my order.  I'm getting ready to make new catalogues for The Land of Goshen, so new color toner was in order.  I was going to purchase all four colors and a new drum, as it's gone long past it's paper count.  I felt a check in my spirit as I was adding toners to the cart, so I removed all of them except the one that actually tripped the warning on the printer.  The order was large enough to qualify for free shipping, but just the basic replacements.  I knew it would get me through label making, but not completion of the catalogues.

True to form, with my order confirmation, I received a coupon for 20% OFF of my next order of toner, but . . . the offer was only good for 3 days.  Tricky, they are!  So, having removed most of the toners off of the first order, I then proceeded to place that order and saved quite a bit of money in doing so.  Internet shopping has sort of become like a sport.  I've also learned to do a few google searches for specific items, a couple days before I actually intend to make a purchase.   And the coupons roll in.

I am not thrilled with being tracked and I'm certainly not agreeing to a great deal these days, but I have determined to make the best of the situation.  If Google chooses to track my product searches, and retailers pay to track my cookies or whatever happens, I can't change it; but I can work with it and let it work for me.