Children's Museum offers $2 admission for EBT card holders

I'm not a huge fan of the Children's Museum, just because the educational component is quite minimal compared to the Museum of Science or Museum of Fine Arts. Most of it has very little information to read and the hands-on experimental materials are mostly fairly common household items. It's definitely geared toward the infant/toddler set as far as learning anything new, but is still quite fun for kids and adults. At $2 per person though, I don't mind taking the family to a space that's essentially a playground. I will say that we have found museum to be super special-needs friendly and haven't experienced any issues around staff being patronizing or providing unwanted "help," which I can't say for many places. Just present your EBT card and a photo ID at the admissions desk and they admit you with no hassle.

Boston free grocery roundup

I love coupons. Before I read websites explaining how to use them, it didn't seem really worth it to use coupons to get 50 cents off of something. Since becoming mostly unemployed, I've read sites like Living Rich with Coupons and have learned how to wait until something is on sale and there's a coupon, which can get you stuff for a few cents or even free. With our newspaper, a couple neighbors' coupon inserts, and online coupons, we can usually buy several of things and stock up when they're cheap. We currently have a huge bin full of deodorant, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste in our bathroom, all of which were 50 cents or less a piece and many of which were free. These things never go bad, we don't really care about brands, so we just buy them whenever there's a coupon deal. We also have bins in our kitchen of condiments and a lot of canned and boxed goods that we got similarly cheap. Between coupons for dry goods and the Fair Foods truck for produce each week, we're spending barely anything on groceries.

Since there are already coupon matchup sites like the one I mentioned, I'm not going to post coupon matchups here. However, I will post free or near-free deals of things available in Boston-area grocery stores using online printable coupons.

Ortega Salsa, $2.99 for two of them at Stop and Shop, use printable coupon and it's $1.99 for two. Should be able to print two coupons per computer.

Pirates Booty mac and cheese, $1.50 at Stop and Shop, use printable coupon, which they'll double, and it will be free.

Westsoy 32 oz soy milk, $1.00 at Dollar Tree, use printable coupon and it will be free. I've only found it at the Somerville Dollar Tree.

Trying this Purina free cat food thing

A couple months ago, I signed up for this Purina Myperks site using a code a friend sent me. Every day I've gone in and clicked on things, had a couple of friends accept my invite, and I've entered two UPC codes from cat food I've bought. Wow, there really ARE internet pyramid schemes for everything! It took me about a month to get to 30,000 points, which is a coupon for up to $15.99 off of a bag of cat food. Pretty cool. I requested the coupon on July 1, and they mail it, and I haven't seen it yet. I'll update when it shows up. Still, the program seems pretty easy and I can't imagine it wouldn't be legit. If I can get a free $15.99 bag per month, that would cover about half of my cat food expenses, which would be awesome. Here's my link if anyone wants to try it.