Save on Hasbro Card Games
Thanks to a tip from Brandie at Free Sample Freak, I was able to save a lot of money on games. On coupons.com, Hasbro has several coupons for $4-$5 off games, including some for Scrabble, Sorry, Pictureka, and Monopoly, all of which are board games, but also card games. The coupons were also in the Parade section of last week’s newspaper, so I had three of those, in addition to the two of each coupons.com let me print. The card games run $4.50-$5.89 at my local Meijer, so this represented a lot of savings! So far we’ve purchased 4 Monopoly card games, 3 Scrabble, and 4 Sorry Revenge. Meijer is out of Pictureka right now, so we’re waiting until they’re back in stock, and we’ll buy 4 of them. With a $5 off coupon on a $5.24 game, we’ll be able to get 4 of them for just under $1 plus tax. It looks like we’ll be giving a lot of game night packages away as gifts this coming year!
See also: How to Get Stocking Stuffers for Free for more ideas on saving money on gifts.
Looking Forward to a Week of Savings
This is a week where we have the opportunity to save a lot of money, but still enjoy going out. Today we went out to Olive Garden for a Valentine’s lunch, where we spent just $4 on our food—the rest was covered by a gift card from Christmas. Then we went to a free movie using tickets I had one in an instant win game. That was followed by a trip to the mall where we got two shirts for my sister at Aeropostale where we had to do a mystery shop. We spent $18.51, and $14 will be reimbursed, so $4.51 for two shirts from my sister’s favorite store is a great deal. This will be her birthday present later in the year.
We have a supper out planned tomorrow for another mystery shop. We should be able to keep all of our food within the amount they will reimburse us for. At most we might have to spend a dollar or two on the tip, and that’s money I’m willing to pay for an otherwise free meal I don’t have to cook or clean up after!
For the rest of the week, meals are planned that should be easy enough to make, even after a long day at work. This should help us stay on track to spending $50 or less on food for the rest of the month, though we have been pretty good about eating at home so far this month. In January that was a struggle, but as we see our debt coming down, I think we’re becoming more committed staying in to save money to pay off our debts and then start saving for a down payment on a house and maxing out our Roth IRAs.
Using Up Our Stockpile
I had an unexpected vacation this week due to snow (and looking at the forecast, might unfortunately be getting another one this week). For two days I sat around and did nothing but watch tv, write some articles for eHow, and read blogs, which was enjoyable for two days, but by day three, I was bored. That, coupled with the fact that my house needed some organization, led me to clean out my cupboards and go through my stockpile.
Organized cupboard
As I was doing that, I realized that our clutter problem is not just with stuff around the house, but also food and hygiene products. As I was cleaning, I had to throw away about $30 worth of food that had expired. I’ve known for a long time we probably weren’t going to eat it—it was stuff only one of us liked, but not stuff we’d make for just one of us—and I should have been more proactive about donating it, but I wasn’t. This motivated me to go through and remove any item I didn’t think we would use before it expired. I did the same for the hygiene stockpile. I ended up with three bags filled with items to be donated, in addition to the bag of items I had purchased specifically to donate to the food bank. It’s good to donate, but it’s bad to have that much stuff just sitting around my house.
As a result of my cupboard and shelf organization, I came up with a couple plans.
1. I will use $10 each month to get as many items as I can for the food bank. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s what we can spare. Plus, I think that between sales and coupons, I can make that $10 go a long way.
2. We need to use up some of our stockpile. Stockpiling items we use when they’re on sale is a great way to save money, but only if actually use those items. If they go to waste, we wasted food and money. So for the rest of the month, we have only $50 to spend on food. This will include the $4 we spent at Olive Garden today (the rest was covered by a giftcard) and the $3.88 cents I spend when my coworkers and I go to the gas station for lunch each Friday (we really go for the fancy establishments), but it won’t include the four mystery shop meals (three suppers for both of us and one lunch for just Josh) unless we go over the limit they’ll reimburse us for. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. I’ve planned our suppers for the month, and we have everything we need for those except ¼ of hamburger we’ll need at the end of the month. Pretty much all we’ll need should be perishable items like milk, eggs, bread, yogurt, fruits, etc. However, if roasts and lean hamburger go on sale in the next two weeks, I’ll break my $50 budget to stock up on them, but I don’t think that will happen. They shouldn’t be on sale again until March or April, at least not a huge sale. By spending only $50 for the rest of the month on food, this is a great way for us to save money, and it’s something I think we can modify a bit to carry on into March as well. This will put as at an even better pace for paying off our credit card bill by the time Josh’s semester is over!
Vinegar
Saturday’s Super Stuff: Vinegar
Vinegar is one of my favorite super products. It’s cheap, and it’s got so many uses! Here are my top 10 uses for vinegar.
1. Flavoring cucumbers. My favorite way to eat cucumbers is sliced up and then soaked in equal parts apple cider vinegar and water. Yummy!
2. Making “buttermilk.” I have a few recipes that call for a cup of buttermilk, but I don’t want to go out and buy some when we won’t drink it and very few recipes call for it. Instead I add a tablespoon of vinegar to a measuring cup and then fill to the one cup line with milk. Let it stand a few minutes, and you’ll have a great substitute for buttermilk.
3. Cleaning carpets. We’ve always used equal parts vinegar (white tends to be the cheapest) and cold water to clean up pet stains. Soak up as much liquid as you can, and then using an old scrub brush or rag, use the vinegar and water solution to clean the carpet and neutralize the smell. The resulting vinegar smell should disappear as it dries.
4. Cleaning showerheads. I did this just this past week. Our showerhead’s pressure was getting low because of hard-water build up, so we removed the showerhead and soaked it in a bowl of vinegar and water. It was far cheaper than chemical cleaners you can buy at the store, and I liked not having to use a harsh chemical at all. This is like natural CLR.
5. Cleaning drains. This won’t clear a clog, but it can help keep your drains clean. Just pour some vinegar down the drain once a month or so. Vinegar is naturally anti-bacterial, so it will kill anything lurking in your drain. For added fun and to better get at gunk starting to coat the sides of the pipes, pour some baking soda down the drains first. This is lots of fun, especially for kids. It’s like having a volcano science experiment in your drain!
6. Making rocks bubble. Yes, I admit that this is really dorky, but it was fun when I was a kid. It seemed like magic. My dad used to take pieces of limestone and put them in vinegar for us. The rock would then bubble because the vinegar was eating the lime (same concept as cleaning the showerhead—vinegar eats lime buildup, which is what limestone is made of).
7. Soothe a bee sting. Put a bit of vinegar on it to relieve some of the pain. Another option is a paste of meat tenderizer and water.
8. Laundry softener. As an alternative to expensive products like Downy or Bounce, you can add ½ cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. The vinegar smell will be gone when the clothes are dry, and they’ll be left extra clean because the vinegar will get rid of any lingering soap residue.
9. Disinfect a cutting board. It’s important to disinfect cutting boards occasionally to kill any bacteria that might be hiding in the knife marks. Many people recommend bleach, but an alternative is vinegar, which is anti-bacterial and better yet—won’t stain your clothes if you spill it!
10. Clean the dishwasher by pouring 1 cup of vinegar into the bottom and then running it empty.
February Goals
Our main goals for the month as a couple are to create a budget and to pay off as much debt as possible, but we also set some personal goals for the month.
Lindsey:
1. Read at least 5 books. Listening to audio books during my hour roundtrip counts as reading, so even though this month will be super busy with grading student essays, this should be doable.
2. Walk at least 100 miles. I wear a pedometer and track my walking everyday. I’ve averaged over 4 miles the past few days. If I keep this up, I can definitely meet this goal.
3. Lose at least 2 pounds.
4. Make extra food at least once a week to put an extra meal in the freezer. I met that for this week already when we made a huge batch of mini pizza meatloaves. It was our supper last night, Josh’s lunch today, and we have 5 servings left in the freezer.
5. Generate at least $100 of extra income (which can come from selling stuff or extra work). This is going to have to be actually $170 because I want $100 profit, and I’m budgeting this month for the breakfast I provide all 90 of my students the morning of our big state standardized test the first week of March. Last year I fed 93 kids on $100, and they were well fed. They were still full at lunch. This year I think I can do even better and spend even less. My budget is $70.
6. Write at least 10 ehow articles.
Josh:
1. Be all caught up on grading
2. Do 10 mystery shops (he’s already done 2 for the month and has some really good restaurant ones lined up–2 at Buffalo Wild Wings and 1 at Applebees. I’m excited!)
3. Listen to 2 audio books
4. Lose 9 pounds
5. Sell at least 10 things and earn a minimum of $70
6. Figure out what he’s doing this summer and fall
7. Not buy more than 3 fountain pops (his very favorite)
8. Have 1 day a week of not yelling at Mauer (one of our dogs; he’s the crazy neurotic one, but we I love him anyway)
9. Apply for at least 3 full-time jobs
January’s Successes
We’ve said many times that we need to get our acts together, start being more responsible, etc., but in January we finally made a real commitment to it. We still have a long way to go, but we’re off to a good start. Here’s what we accomplished:
1. We established our emergency savings account of $1000.
2. We paid a decent chunk toward our credit card bill. We plan on being credit card debt free by our first anniversary on July 3. It will hopefully be sooner, but that’s our deadline.
3. We started decluttering. We both have hoarding tendencies we need to keep in check, and we started getting rid of stuff (though we still have a lot more to get rid of). The stuff is either getting sold, being given away, or going in the garbage.
4. I got free stuff! I love free stuff. This month I got several samples of things, but, more exciting, I got several non-sample items: 1 free pair of Lee jeans, 1 free pair of Champion workout pants (now I just need to work out), Tide Swash (which I tried for the first time this morning and was amazed at the results), and a full bottle of Suave Rosemary Mint shampoo and conditioner (a much cheaper version of Aveda’s expensive stuff). I also won 2 free tickets to Valentine’s Day.
5. We made extra money selling stuff! We got $49.92 selling video games on Half.com and $150 selling stuff on Craigslist.
6. We got about $45 worth of free food. Most of it was from Arby’s (see my eHow article on how to get free food from Arby’s), but we also got free fresco tacos from Taco Bell, a free half gallon of chocolate milk thanks to a coupon I got from the Great Gallon Give, and we earned enough points at QDoba to get Josh’s chicken quesadilla free.
7. I made my nerdy spreadsheet to track my free stuff and extra income.
Great deal at Office Depot!
In years past, Josh has paid our taxes using the free edition of Turbo Tax, but this year we decided to purchase Turbo Tax Deluxe to try to help us find as many deductions as possible. We’ve been looking in the Sunday ads and had seen several offers for a gift card or money back with purchase, which looked tempting, but we just didn’t get around to going to the store to actually purchase it.
I’m glad we didn’t! Office Depot is having a great deal this week. Buy the Turbo Tax software for $50, get Quicken Starter Edition for free, a free dvd (he chose House Bunny because he knew my sister and brother-in-law like the movie (Happy Birthday!), and they also have up to $1100 worth of free software that you can get. Josh got Defender Pro, which is an anti-virus software we’ll use when our current subscription is over, and Digital TV for PC2 (we’re considering getting rid of satelite and streaming Netflix and other programs through Josh’s XBOX 360 in the living room and a roku in the bedroom and also watching on my desktop). The only catch to all of the free software is it’s all rebates, so if you’re not willing to fill out the paperwork, it’s really not a good deal for you. We’re willing though, so we’ll gladly take our free stuff! 
We spent $181.85. Of that, $11.90 was tax, the Turbo Tax program was $49.99, and the rest will be refunded with rebates. Josh also signed up for the Office Depot rewards card, which means we’ll be getting 10% in a rebate from them. So for a about $45, we got a lot of stuff! I just hope we’re able to save that much or more on taxes with the Deluxe Edition!
Walgreens and CVS deals
Super Savings Sunday
Today I did a pretty good job of shopping. I went to Walgreens, CVS, and Meijer.
At Walgreen, I purchased $71.98 worth of items for just $15.96, plus I got $6 in Register Rewards back, so it was basically a $10 excursion. I purchased:
4 Loreal makeup items BOGO 50% (1 foundation, 2 powders, for which I had $2 coupons for each, and 1 mascara I had a $3 coupon for and the store had a $2 instant coupon for)
3 Swanson chicken broth (store coupon for $.69 each, plus I stacked it with a manufacturer’s coupon for $1 on 3)
2 Dole Peach cups and a Mott’s applesauce (on sale $5 for 3, coupon for $.75 off on 2 Dole)
1 Secret Clinical Strength Deodorent ($8.99 with $4 RR, $.25 coupon)
2 Hershey’s dark chocolate bars, 2 Hershey’s dark chocolate with almonds (2 BOGO coupons, will keep one wrapper and send it in to get a free bag of Hershey’s dark pieces.
1 Carmex chapstick (Store coupon for $.99, stacked with a catalina coupon for $.75 off)
Vitamin Water Schtick chapstick (on sale for $1.99 with $2 RR) (I’ll probably be stopping in at Walgreens later in the week to get some more of these)
I also used $25 in RR from last week.
The makeup and deoderent will go downstairs to the stock pile to be used in the next couple of months. The chapsticks I put right in my stocking stuffer box, as they don’t expire for quite some time and will still be good well beyond Christmas.
At CVS I ended up making money, which was exciting. I’d never done that before. I purchased:
2 of Dove’s new man soaps for $5.49 each, plus 2 coupons for $1.25 off, and got $10.98 in CVS Cash Back
1 Colgate Max Fresh toothepaste for $2.99, plus a $.50 coupon, and $2 CVS Cash Back
I spent a total of $11.95 including tax, and I got $12.98 in CVS Cash to spend later, so I made $1.03 this trip. We already have some man soap and toothpaste, so these will be added to my stockpile in the basement, but I know we’ll use them, and these prices were too good to pass up.
I didn’t save nearly as much at Meijer, but that’s to be expected, as it’s harder to save on groceries. I did, however save 33%, spent under $50, which was my goal for the week, and was able to stock up on tomato sauce, Rice-A-Roni, and Raisin Bran, in addition to buying the groceries we need for the week. All in all, I think I did pretty pretty well.
Staples Rewards – Read the Fine Print and then take advantage of it!
Two and a half years ago when we first moved to our current city, we made our first trip to Staples for some basic supplies for our house. When we were checking out we were asked if we wanted to join Staples Rewards. When told it was free, we joined. Two years later, I had still been going to Staples for any office needs and had spent almost a thousand dollars over this span. Two weeks ago, I received an ad telling me I could receive three-ring binders for free after a 100% Staples Rewards return. I of course was interested in receiving free things.
After I went to Staples and purchased the binders, I began to think about how I had not actually received anything from Staples in regards to Reward rebates. I did some research and it turns out in order to receive a rebate, you need to have earned enough of a rebate ($10) within a calendar quarter (three month time frame).
In order to receive rebates at all, the rebates need to be earned via purchasing certain items. The items include printer paper and cartridges as well as special sales that they offer. Now that I know how much of a rebate I need in order to receive Rewards, I have made a plan on how to shop at Staples. Instead of going to Staples and purchasing a ream of paper, or a single print cartridge, I now plan on buying in bulk. When you buy one ream or one cartridge, you build up a small rebate and run the risk of not actually making the $10 threshold.
After buying the binders, I have now started scouring the Staples ads in an attempt to build up as big of a rebate before the quarter is over. I have also started to look at the other reward clubs I belong to (Best Buy, CVS, Speedway/Super America, etc.) to see what steps I need to take in order to receive the rebate.
Pleasant shopping!
Thrifty Reading
I love books! And two of my favorite websites allow me to trade books with others–PaperBackSwap and SwapTree.
PaperBackSwap works on a credit system. YOu post all of the books you want to trade, and for each book someone requests from you, you earn one credit. You then send the book to the requester. This usually costs between $2 and $3. People likewise will pay to send you the books you request. Once you earn credits (and they automatically give you two once you list 10 books), you can use them to request the books you want. You are also able to purchase credits to request more books.
SwapTree is similar, but has some key differences. You also pay to send books requested from you, but wherease PaperBackSwap gives you credits to get books, SwapTree allows you to trade directly with people who have items you want. Three-party trades are also possible. SwapTree also has books, dvds, cds, and video games all on the same site, so you can swap your book for someone else’s movie. You and the other people participating in the trade all have to agree to it before the trade goes through–you’re not obligated to trade your brand new dvd for a cheap paperback, unless that’s a swap you want to make. Swaptree also let’s you rate the condition of books. This can help you determine whether or not you want to enter the swap.
I find the two systems complement each other well. I like that on PaperBackSwap I can order books from whomever I want, regardless of whether or not they want something of mine. However, for popular items, you’re put on a waiting list, and it could take a long time before all of the people ahead of you get the books and it finally gets to you. This points toward a main advantage of SwapTree–if there’s something you want, there isn’t a waiting list. You just have to have something the owner wants. So if you have a desirable item, you’re likely to get what you want fairly quickly. This trading system can also be a disadvantage, though, because you must have something that the other person wants. Overall, I find that by belonging to both sites, I get the benefits of both, and they balance each other out.
I recognize that an even thriftier way to access books (and other items on SwapTree) would be to go to the library, as you do spend money to send out each book. I do use the library sometimes, but they don’t always have too books I want, and I want to be able to read the books at my own pace when I get the time. This isn’t always possible with the library. Overall, I find paying only shipping makes books significantly cheaper than buying new and also cheaper than at a used bookstore. Plus it’s always fun to get mail.
This is also an economical way to purchase gifts. Get items you know your gift recipients would like that are in good condition, and they become great, affordable gifts. I was able to get books for Christmas gifts for my mom, my mother-in-law, and my cousins this way.
