My only shot at ethnic coolness (and it is a long, long shot) is my Scottish ancestry (MacKinnon and McIlhatten), which is possibly swamped by my boring, roast-beef-eating, white-bread making, vegetable-boiling English ancestry. Nonetheless, it’s as close to a minority as I’ll ever get, so in today’s group-identity-based culture, I’m clinging to it like, well, a Scotsman clings to a penny.

That’s the stereotype in England, so I hear, that Scots make Jews look like spendthrifts–because we would never allow our religion to deny us free ham. (Note the “we”? Cute, how I slipped in my more-or-less created identity in there). Whether genetically determined or not, my family, we know how to save-a da money.

So it gave me a deep-ethnic-roots thrill a week ago when I had more than $10 in savings on a $28 grocery bill (net owed, $18–sweet!). But this week, I managed to have:

Total before savings: $32.40
Your Total Savings: $14.77
Total After Savings: $17.63

All bonus card buys except for one item, which I had a coupon for. And one of the bonus items? I had a coupon for that, too, biatch! (OK, I’m fairly sure my ancestors never said “biatch”. Some of my still-living, extremely distant relatives may, however–and say it with a funny accent t’boot.)

Two things to note, however:

1. A real penny-pinching Scot would never spend as much as I do on dining out and Internet access, to name a couple of luxuries, so please don’t imagine I live on milk crates or take dates to places for which I have coupons if you don’t yet well know me.
2. My skeptical side reminds me that I’m overpaying for those goods the rest of the time, so really I’m just not losing as much as I normally would on the transaction. If I actually consistently switched to the lowest-price version of each item and bought in bulk, I could save far more regularly. Nonetheless, I have a small apartment and like what I like, so slap! I’m Scottish, biatch!