Will you still love me if I began to use coupons? I know that previously I had been an extravagant, carefree, spendthrift shopper, an obscenely generous husband, one who gave you the world even if it wasn’t Valentine’s Day. Or even if it wasn’t our anniversary. But today’s times are hard, and the economy is experiencing a scary decline. We’ve officially hit a recession, or so the news on TV say. If I had to give you love, it must be of the frugal kind.

“You’re so poor,” my friend John, “that you can’t even afford a haircut.” I covered the top of my head and its thick mop of hair with my hand, self-consciously, and thought of a repartee. At the velvet portico of an Indian restaurant where there was a laptop exhibit, more journalists were signing their names on the guest list. “Well, I’m not the one with two names on the media bowl,” I said. “Or is it three? I don’t rig raffles. And I don’t collect as much coupon codes as you do.”

I used to have a lot of bad habits, and then I looked at my wallet. The amount of money that I had been spending on vices and compulsive purchases astounded me, and it was enough to convince me to kick bad habits and start money-saving ones. Now I’m a new man: a non-smoker, a frugal consumer, and a shopper who cannot not research for online deals and discounts.

I don’t even watch TV anymore. I know that that’s a little strange, given the one hundred and one channels on TV and my love of the boob tube, but I just said it: No TV. Not anymore, since my life has gone all online (sounds geeky, I know). The Internet is where I watch, write, read, shop, and shop for online discounts. It’s where I do most of what I do, to be more precise about it.

Having given birth to three beautiful kids in the course of the past five years, I have come to realize that parenting is no joke, that it’s effectively a full-time job.

Planning a garden can be a pain, so I am working on a few ideas and considering a good number of online deals to make this project less stressful and more affordable.

It pays to have a good cook and it also saves money. Dining out at fancy restaurants will siphon up all your pay check, you know what I mean. The day is no longer a good day because of high gas prices, mortgage woes, inflation rates, and many more. So the special instinct that every man should uphold is to save at this time. Why do we have to save? Because who knows when will the sky fall upon us. To tell you folks our situation causes a lot of effects. I no longer have to enumerate all of them. Look at our health care, our businesses, and our homes that will lose its value. Come to think of it.

Like many businessmen clutching leather travel cases on one hand and a plane ticket on another, I am a mobile worker – always on the move, without an office or a swivel chair to call his own. To be more precise, I am a financial management consultant who lives his life in hotels. I have a business card without an address. Ha! I am not making a point about how glamorous the job is; rather, I am fascinated by the fact that I have become, essentially, my own travel agent. I look for my own online deals; I employ my own strategies; make my own itineraries; book my own trips.

I’m looking for a birthday gift for my father, who’s turning fifty in a few days. Golden. I know that these are tough times, and that there’s always extra pressure on the men who head our families, so I would want to get more than just a “World’s Greatest Dad” souvenir or a collection of coupons for neckties.

Six o’clock, and with it comes a beautiful fall morning and a pretty nasty hangover. While the homecoming party last night was memorable, I have no time to reminisce. This figures to be a pretty busy day. I take an aspirin, drink an orange juice, and take my trusty old Yamaha acoustic guitar from my closet. I bought it online from Amazon two months ago, and because I used coupon codes it came with an aluminum pick and was shipped for free.