Monthly Archives: August 2016

Saving on Saturday 08/13/2016

Posted on by
Reply

sos

I actually have two savings to share today. First, I went to CVS last night and was able to purchase 8 cases of Diet Coke for $10.69 or $1.33 each 12 pack or $0.11 a can, a savings of 81%.  I was able to do this by double dipping as I call it. First, CVS currently has a sale that includes 4 packs for $12 and you get 5 ECB. I had 10ECB plus a coupon for a free 12 pack from My Coke Rewards.  Putting this all together is easy once you understand what is allowed.

Next, savings at McDonalds. A friend told me about the McDonalds app and what cool free items they have. I downloaded at the pool today. I combined this with a coupon for BOGO Chicken nugget happy meal. The McDonald that I stopped at would not let me use 2 coupons in the same order so I split into 2.  I spent a total of $9 to feed four of us dinner tonight. The best part no leftovers!

 

Thursday Thoughts

Posted on by
Reply
  • Zach has been missing his two front teeth for almost 4 years, I noticed today that he has one that is grown in about half the way and a second that is starting. This is changing his appearance and I will miss my toothless wonder.
  • Lily and Kendall both had orthodontic appointments today. Kendall mouth is umm not the best. In fact, she will have a tooth pulled in September and start her first round of braces in October. We are hopefully that two sets will do the trick.
  • Lily will only need one set of braces so we will continue to wait for all her permanent teeth to come in before starting braces. Next summer is the estimate.
  • I picked up one of my two new sets of glasses today. My ordinal pair was over 2 years old and the side piece had broken. The doctor did not include bifocals on my prescription and I lasted less than 3 hours at work before calling and getting the prescription corrected. I do have a second set but of course they are on back order and will be here after my vacation.
  • Lily will officially start school on the 22nd. We are all becoming very anxious about this.
  • We have worked this month on restocking our pantry and freezers so instead of focusing on the budget, I have been focusing on eliminated waste. I have discovered several areas that I can make improvements on. First is water, I am trying to use water that we cook with instead of pouring down the drain. Second is food, we have stopped menu planning this week to focus on eating what is ripe and in our fridge that needs to be cleaned out.
  • Today was our third trip to the water park. It was a much shorter trip only four hours but we all had a blast and I am exhausted! We are hoping to squeeze one more trip in prior to public school starting.

Best Shopping Trip EVER!

Posted on by
1

imageOur local grocery store is running a promotion that is unbelievable, especially when coupled with a 3 day only sale. Today I spent probably about an hour looking on line and printing coupons from coupons.com.   I did make two trips only because I wanted to make sure the deal work before grabbing so much. The picture above represents a total of $120.  I spent $ 72.30 cash and received $90 in visa gift cards back. I was paid $18 to bring home these items!

The promotion is worded that you must purchase 5 items in a single transaction to receive a voucher. I broke up each transaction into 5 items. I also was able to find coupons for each of the items above except for the Bagel Bites and soups. The bagel bites were $1.68 a package and the soup. $1.89. Each item was a money maker by itself.

As you can probably tell I am excited. This should definitely help keep our grocery budget in tact this month!

Saving on Saturday 08/06/2016

Posted on by
Reply

sos

This month we are approaching our grocery budget a little bit different. First, our summer is coming to an end. Next week is our final “slow” week of the summer followed by our beach trip. So after looking at our supplies and realizing that we are to back to school days and crazy nights. So the decision was made to go ahead and get things ready for our crazy busy life. We headed to Aldi on Wednesday night to buy some staples and make sure we had can goods. Next it was Costco on Thursday. Fortunately, Costco had an awesome sale on convenience foods and lots of things that make our lunches easy to pack in the mornings.  Zach and I also went to Walmart and grabbed 40 lunchables which were on sale for $1 each. These are awesome for the kids at the beach and also for a special lunch treat.   On Friday, I stopped at CVS to grab the laundry detergent that was on sale. This is a ton of shopping this week but I am vey happy with feeling confident for the first couple of month of fall.

Next is actually getting some things in the freezer for grab and go dinners. Matt picked up 80# of ground beef that we ordered from Zaycon on Friday afternoon.  This is some of the freshest meat we have ever received the date stamped on all the packages is July 23rd, so 2 weeks ago this was a live animal.  We decided to simple put in the freezer 20 pounds or 10 packages to use for things that call for raw meat.  Next we spent five hours, fry up and packaging the rest in one pound containers. These are also for pulling out for taco meat, spaghetti sauce, hamburger helper, sloppy joes, chili and stews or crock pot recipes that call for a pound of ground beef. I estimate this should last us six to nine months. This morning I made a large batch of French toast. The kids and I enjoyed some for breakfast and the rest was frozen to stick in the toaster for a quick easy breakfast.

We have a very full pantry and freezers. I plan to reduce our grocery budget to $100 in September and $300 in October. I may be able to keep it low for the rest of the year depending on how things work out with sales and how much the kids decide to eat.

Ways I Am Earning Money

Posted on by
Reply

I have been using all three of these for several months now so I am confident that they are legit. You will notice up front I am not making an income but extra money is extra money.

  1. IBOTTA- this is an app on my iPhone. I actually have been using for over a year now. I earn extra slow on it because I don’t look at it until after my trips to the store, if I purchased something on the list great if not so what. I earned approximately $20 in the last year but no money spent so a great extra.  To use you simply download the app and every time you shop you pick your store and see what rebates are available. To claim a rebate you first either watch a short video or answer a question, then you must scan the bar code of the items and barcode on receipt. I have to submit a picture of my Costco receipts but not difficult at all.
  2. MPlaces- another app on my IPHONE. This is like a GPS. The idea is that you “check into” all the places you visit in a day. You can complete 25 daily check in each day and you also receive “prizes” for the check-ins completed the day before. I use this app at stoplights. I will occasionally pull in a parking lot to complete several additional check-ins if needed. I compare this to “Pokémon Go” except I am receiving actual money for this. Just to give you an idea, I try to achieve my 25 check in daily mainly at stoplights and typically earn 500 points a day. I cash out at 12500 for a $5 gift card and start again. I usually watch a couple of short videos as part of the “prizes” so this increases my points as well. Matt has linked his tweeter account and received 10 extra points for tweeting each check in but I don’t have a tweeter account so that does not work for me.  Currently, I am earning about $5 a month again not a windfall but it is easy and does not require extra money
  3. Swagbucks- This one is easy to do but difficult to explain. I am going to give some step by step instructions and examples of how I complete. If you have a question ask I love to help people earn extra money.  First this is an app but I usually complete on the computer.   You can find a bit of everything and many different ways to earn swagbucks. I typically take surveys and watch videos. Here is a referral link that will take you directly to swagbucks.  This link will not hurt or cost  you anything to use but it does link you to my account and I get 1 SwagBuck for each 10 you earn. I want to stress that I am not taking anything from you but am being rewarded for getting you signed up. Ways to earn include:
    1. Everyday I go to the left side of the page and complete the daily survey(1), daily crave (1) and Daily Offers (NOSO) which is 2. The key to Daily offers is to hit the skip button until you get to the end. I NEVER fill in any  information.
    2. At some point during the day, I will open the SwagTV app on my IPAD and run the movie trailers. They will usually just run without me having to touch. You can earn a total of 10 swagbucks this way.
    3. Watching videos- Click the watch button on the right side. I usually start with NCrave videos which again is a button on the right side. Find the auto run ones because they will run without you interacting. A couple of tips I have learned is that you can not run two of the same type of videos at the same time, however you are allowed to watch an NCRAVE in one window and a regular video in a second window.
    4. Surveys- These can be found under Answer. I usually set a time limit for myself and if I have not qualified for a survey within 20 or 30 minutes I simple stop.
    5. Purchases online- If I am planning to make an online purchase I will go through shop first to see if it will qualify. I did purchase my new freezer this way and had no trouble using my Home Depot account with it. I am planning to make reservations this way as well.
    6. Subscriptions- I will state upfront that I only purchase things that I would normally buy and only if making money. Today I purchased the Birch Box subscription which is under discovery. I paid $9.99 out of our grocery budget and received 1500 SB ($15) these credit instantly.
    7. Searching the internet- You can be rewarded for searching using the bar at the top of the screen. This is very random and never certain so I use if I remember.

At the top of your swagbuck screen you will see several items one is your daily goal. This changes daily, by reaching your goal,  you receive the extra SB, for example today my goal is 90 to receive 8SB and 106 to receive 10.  These extra SB are awarded separately once a month between the 1st and 15th. I usually stop after reaching one or both of my goals for the day. If I qualify for one survey and reach my goal, I stop. This way I don’t spend more than an hour a day on swagbucks. Under the smiley face are your record and is pretty self explanatory.  They usually issue 1 or 2 extra swag codes a day but I usually miss because I am at work.  So how much am I earning. I try to earn 100 SB a day but this is about 60% of the time. I am earning approximately $50 a month with this. This money goes straight to my Disney trip.

 

Any questions? Let me know if you have any success!

 

 

 

 

School Choice

Posted on by
1

Choices are not always black and white, nor are they always easy, and most important as a parent, a choice for one child is not always the best choice for all your children.  Today, I am announcing that we have chose to place Lily in a online charter school for her sixth grade year.

The start of this adventure which really starts August 22, begans last November, specially on our Disney trip. Lily told me that she dreamed that she graduated from High School at fourteen. This was not a one time dream, but has been reoccurring.

Next came the realization that Lily will begin Middle School this fall.  Neither Matt nor I every doubt that academically Lily is super prepared and will handle everything thrown her way. However, middle school girls are mean and given the fact that Lily is a full year younger than most, very small, wears glasses and has horrible eczema, I have no doubt that these next couple of year could be emotional and difficult for all of us.

I decided to start researching options that would allow her to excel and even advance quickly academically and work in our current household budget.  I did start asking some of my friends who are also educators.  Based on our rural location, we found only a couple of options: 1. The one private school in our area- academically would not be as allow her to advance at her own pace . 2. Home Schooling- not the best option currently due to my work schedule  3. Charter School.

I was told about the North Carolina Virtual Academy by a educator. We started doing research. This virtual academy has operated for two years in the state of North Carolina but the company K12  has operated for over 20 years and graduates have been accept to all major colleges in the US.  We began the application process for Lily in March.  Lily has been involved in many discussions regarding this and decided that she would like to try officially in May.  In June after finishing a ton of paperwork and submitting, Lily was officially accepted into the North Carolina Virtual Academy. Today, Matt withdrew her from the public school system.

Lily will be attending this online charter school for her sixth grade year. She will access her teacher and classmate via  web camera at least weekly but most likely several times a week. All learning is complete using both online method and traditional methods, in fact only about 60% of her academics will be completed online. Matt, who is considered her learning coach, is responsible for grading and entering grades online, inputting attendance records and ensure that Lily is completing academic work on a regular basis.  One of the greatest benefit is the ability to work at her own pace which if she so choses should allow her to accelerate her middle school and high school academics.

Her books weigh more than she does and are almost as tall!

Her books weigh more than she does and are almost as tall!

We have spent many hours in prayer about this decision and are truly excited about this opportunity for Lily. Zach and Kendall will continue to attend the public elementary school this year. We want to start begin slow and determine if and when they would benefit from the same online school.  Lily also is very aware of her option to return to public school next year is this does not turn out to be a good fit and huge benefit for her.