sign up for free samples

There are lots to be had

I know that last week or so Kotex.com was offering a free sample pack just for signing up. In that sample pack were also coupons.

Walmart.com offers samples often. I think they change weekly. They also include coupons often in the samples. There has only been a handful of times that I did not receive a coupon.

I will post more soon.

Why I stockpile

In an earlier post I touched on this a bit but now I would like to go into a bit more detail. As I said earlier I started my stockpile out of concern for the future, basically but I contine to stockpile for a few reasons:

• I enjoy it. I love finding great deals, getting stuff free, and having extra that I can give to family or friends when I want to or as gifts.
• I also use my stockpile as a bartering tool. My brother needs something, I have it. I can get him to work on something for us or watch the kids for whatever he needs from my stockpile.
• I just shop in my house. Ok so I do go out to the stores but if we are out of toothpaste, I just go to my stockpile and pull out a new tube.
• It is my hobby, well deal finding is.
• It gives me a sense of security. There is this wierd part of me that feels better when I know we can go for a few months without having to spend any money on household essentials. Maybe it is the recent layoff and unemployed period, whatever it is, it makes me feel more secure to have a house full of supplies.
• My kids will never have to go without something basic as DH and I each did as kids.
• Saving money. OK so yeah I am spending some money to build my stockpile BUT in spending that money, I am saving money. If I didn't have, say an extra toothpaste that I got free in the house and we were out, I would be running to Walgreens and picking one up and (GASP!) full price because I needed it right away, I didn't have a coupon, and it wasn't on sale. Even if I planned it out right I would still spend more than getting that toothpaste free.
• I like to compare with fellow stockpilers.

I know there are more reasons but my brain is fried from a rough day at work.

edited:

I thought of the last one:

• It makes my shopping trips much easier now. I no longer have a list with deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, etc etc etc on it. I have my must have now list (milk, bread, fruit, veggies) and my coupon list (what items I need/want that are on sale and I have coupons for) and my get if it is a good deal list (things that I have coupons close to expiration or like my local store offers instore specials every week so I take my coupons there and see what is on special that was not advertised that would be an exceptional deal with my coupons)

$30 challenge

$13.88 balance
-$2.10 toilet bowl tabs (4)
______
$11.78 left! One day to go.

a couple things

If you aren't a member already, join your local freecycle. A lot of good things to be had for free. Also a good way to get rid of unwanted items. Just search freecycle.org to find your local group. Your local craigslist also has some freebies or good deals.

Check out your credit report here. You are allowed one free from each reporting agency once every 12 months. You will need to pay to see your credit score. The charge ranges from $5.95 to $8.95, more if you add more services to it. If you only want to check your report to make sure it is on the up and up and there are no reportings that you don't know about, it is free but if you are like me and want to know what your score is, that will cost you. I check 1 agency every 4 months so I know and can monitor our credit.

Good thing the toilet cleaning tabs are B1G1F this week

my Oldest daughter is in LOVE with the blue toilet water. She likes to pee and make the water change colors. She has been wanting to go on the potty all night because the water makes cool colors when she pees.

and yes this is a thrifty post because.....
I am going to stock up on those toilet tabs. We have had an issue lately with K wanting to pee on the potty. She will go on the potty but not pee and then say she is done and 2 minutes later pee in her underwear. While DH was a SAHD, he would get so sick of it that he would put a pullup on her. I could have killed him. Not only do I refuse to buy more pullups for her to use except for at nighttime, he was hindering her getting to go all the time. If making the water change colors with her pee is what makes her want to go... I am all for it and will stock up on those tabs until I am out of $$.

How do you budget?

I am interested in reading about how other families budget but here is what we do:

I started out by writing out all of our household bills for the month.
Mortgage $580
cell phone $92 (I rounded this to $95 for budgeting purposes)
Cable/internet $100
Electric/water/sewer $95
(I rounded the electric up to $115 for budgeting purposes because that is more than what we pay almost every month but our highest ever bill was $125 and I wanted to make sure we had enough to cover a higher than average bill and the extra stays in savings anyway.)

Total monthly bills $890

Hubby gets paid weekly (as do I) so we took the $890 total and divided it by 4=$222.50. For a little added security, we put $230 a week in savings. On the months where there are 5 paychecks, we still but that $230 away for our car insurance (which we pay semi-annually). The extra that we put away each check plus the "bonus money" from the 5 payday months pays our car insurance for the year. I pull out of savings as needed to pay our bills.

Hubby's average check is $400 take home. Once we take out the $230 for bills, we have $170 each week for gas, groceries, doctor visit co-pays, entertainment, credit card payments, etc.
We do not budget these things as they vary. On average, DH spends $45/week on gas. We are pretty well stockpiled so my grocery expense is minimal. We don't generally eat out or go out so that is not really an expense and we have no credit card debt to speak of so that is not a factor either. Whatever hubby and I do not spend that week stays in his account, to be used on for weeks when we have more expenses than usual or gas has skyrocketed or whatever may happen. Once the money is gone though, it is gone. That is why we have "forgotten money".

Dh and I each have some $$ in our checkbooks that is unaccounted for. Should we write a check out not realizing that we have less than we thought, we have to take a sick kid to the dr, we have to pick up a prescription, whatever. We add to this forgotten money everytime we use our debit card or write a check. Say I buy some stuff at the grocery store and my total is $ 21.45. I will write that in my checkbook as $22. TA-DA! forgotten money. It adds up fast. It can be a real PITA for balancing your checkbook but I have found that I check online a couple times a week, check off the transactions that have cleared my bank and I always know my approximate balance including the forgotten money. I do not use the forgotten money as I go by my checkbook balance instead of my bank's balance but since I have started using my forgotten money system, it has become easier to balance my checkbook with my rounding. At one point, before we had kids, DH had $500 of forgotten money in his checkbook. He would round up to the nearest $5 instead of $1 as I do. Some people do not like this system but I find it very helpful. When I first started balancing DH's checkbook, I HATED it but as I started doing it, I found that I like the little bit of security it provides. On occasion (we are really short on cash, we had an unexpected bill, etc) I will add the forgotten money into my balance so I can cover that expense and then I start all over again.

Now on to my budget.

DH and I have seperate checking accounts. IDK why we still do it this way but we do and it works so we stick with it.
I work a varied schedule therefore my take-home pay varies weekly. I pay the sitter first out of my check and then the rest goes like this

gas $30
spending $10-$20
car payment:whatever is left

Usually I do not even spend $30 in gas so that money goes to my car payment. My spending money is for garage sales, oil changes for my car, clothes for me, whatever I want to spend it on.. My allowance.

I send whatever is left to my car because I do not owe a payment until March of 2009. I try to send at least $300 a month but I send whatever I can, even if it is only $25 that week. Right now I am working on paying off my credit card (again.. life insurance premium had to be charged), so I have not been sending anything to my car but sending everything to my card to get that paid off again and I can concentrate on my car once more.


This is the budget I set up when I started back to work and it varies somewhat at times but for the most part we are sticking to it really well. The household bills are the only thing that doesn't vary and gets paid the same every month. I hope to continue to save the money I was sending to my car once it is paid off. I would like to be able to put away $300 a month and have that money set aside for a big downpayment on a newer vehicle for DH or I when the time comes or to start making extra payments on our mortgage.

We also have an emergency fund in a seperate account. We put money in this account as we can. We have a pretty nice balance in it right now. This is for a new appliance (should one die), emergency home repairs, job loss, big medical bills, etc. We also pay our life insurance out of this fund yearly (usually but this year with hubby's layoff we didn't want to touch it so we paid the life insurance by credit card and have until the 8th to pay it off without any interest charges).

Now that my stockpile is well established. I can get away with spending $50 or less a week on groceries. We get WIC for now and that helps a lot. Once I start getting more hours at work we will no longer get WIC but I should still be able to get away with $50. I only buy what we need and what I want to stockpile that is almost free, really cheap, or completely free after sales and coupons. In the spring we are expanding our garden, so that will cut down some expense on produce as well. Sure, eventually I will have to spend more $ on groceries but for now getting away with $50 a week is awesome!! If I can keep up with the stockpiling now that we have minimal expense for food, I should be able to keep up below $75/week even when I use up more of my stockpile. I keep adding as I see fit and using up the oldest stuff first and I should be able to keep the expense down. Once we use up the meat we have frozen, that will become a bigger expense because the deals I used to get on meat (99 cents a lb for ground chuck, ground round and ground beef and pretty much everything else) aren't there anymore.

Simple ways to save on home heating costs

Soem of the ways I am about to list will work for either renters OR homeowners. Some are just for homeowners.

• Insulate your windows. We use the plastic covering kits they sell at hardware stores or even at Walmart. They are pretty cheap and they are effective. If you want the option to still be able to open the windows, you could buy some camping blankets for a couple bucks each. I have not personally tried them yet but I will be trying one this winter. They are found in your local store in the sporting goods section. In my oldest daughter's room, we are just going to hang an old quilt over the window and nail it into place because she will just poke holes in the plastic making it useless. Downstairs, we can monitor that a little better and make sure she doesn't do it.
• Turn your thermostat down a degree or two and use blankets or wear long sleeves. Not always practical but when it comes to saving $$, I will wear a long sleeve shirt.
• Use an extra blanket at night. Not always practical for the kids but we put them in blanket sleepers and on the really cold nights, I leave a thin long sleeve shirt on under the blanket sleeper, sometimes thin pants too.
• After you are finished using your oven, leave it open. The heat will come out as the oven cools and add some more warmth to your house.
• Humidifiers. I have noticed that running a humidifer in the living room makes the house feel warmer.
• Reinsulate. Doesn't have to cost a lot and saves a bundle on your heating costs. For around $200 this summer, Hubby and my brother reinsulated both of our attics with blown in insulation. We went from 4 inches in one and 8 in the other to 48ish inches in each.
• Got a door with an air leak under it? Don't have the $$ to replace the door? Use a draft dodger. They are available at Walmart in the department with the curtains for $5-6 and they keep the draft under our main entry door to a minimum. For the entry door that we do not use very often (like NEVER), I am planning on nailing up an old quilt.
• Got rooms that you don't use or that you aren't in enough that you would need to heat them? Close off the vents by cutting some thick cardboard and taping it down over the vent after you close it or if you have the option of turning the vent off near the furnace, do it that way. We close off our laundry room this way. However the laundry room is right off the kitchen and there is no door there so it is still heated but not through the vent. We blocked off our upstairs for the first 2 years we lived here by nailing a really thick quilt over the doorway to the upstairs. You could tell the difference as soon as you moved the blanket. There was a good 20* difference between upstairs and down. We also had no ductwork upstairs at that point so the only heat going upstairs was gravity heat. We closed off the gravity vents by stuffing towels in them. Our heating bill that first winter was only $500 (of course LP was cheaper then as well). We moved our bedroom downstairs both of those winters and saved a bunch on heating costs. With the kids, that is no longer an option however.
• Change your furnace filter often. We made that mistake the year that our oldest was turning one. I forgot to change our filter and would remember at work but then forget by the time I got home. It was so plugged that for 2 days our furnace ran pretty much constantly but it would not get above 62* in the house. We awoke one morning to 55* and falling fast. Our furnace died. 1 hour, a $50 service charge, a scolding, and a new filter later, our furnace repairman had us up and running. He said we probably burnt a 50 or more gallons of LP that weekend when we would normally burn less than 1/4 of that heating the house for 2 days. Of course it didn't help that I kept turning the thermostat up because the temp kept dropping. YIKES! That was a huge wake up call and I keep lots of extra filters here now. Everytime I take something from my basement stockpile or add to it, I check the furnace filter. I also write on the calendar and the new filter itself when I change it.

free stuff

Tonight I got 2 more pert plus for Free tonight. Hubby likes it so yeah!! Also got a Nivea bodywash for Rodney that will be free after rebate. So $5.54 I paid for 3 things all of which are/will be free!!

I used my rebate gift card to pay for the body wash and tax on the pert plus so no OOP expense.

I did spend $2 tonight at the dollar store though. The kids destroyed hubby and I's shower poofs so I had to get 2 more

$15.99 balance
-$2.11 poofs
_________
$13.88 new balance of my $30/week challenge. Two days to go.

$30 challenge

$24.12 balance
-$2.89 milk earlier today
-$5.24 walgreens trip
________
$15.99 left and 3 days to go.

my cheap walgreens trip tonight

I got a pert plus shampoo and conditioner in one (free-use the coupon in the ESC for $2.50 off the sale price is $2.50 so you only pay tax on this item!!)

2 dawn dish soap $1.99 (b1G1F with in flyer coupon)
massage oil $4.99 sale price
softsoap hand soap (99 cents after coupon in flyer)
2 toilet bowl tabs 99cents (b1G1F in flyer coupon)

I used 2 coupons on the dawn for 50 cents each, 1 35 cent coupon on the softsoap and $3.00 coupon for the massage oil. I believe there are coupons out there for the pert plus which would make it a money maker but I did not have them on me and I did not want to miss out so I will find those coupons and go back again for another one or 2 bottles. Free is good too..I am not selfish I don't need to make money on an item...It is nice but free is great too!!

My total out of pocket expense including tax was $5.24
WAG coupon savings $4.78
WAG advertised savings $6.29
MFQ savings $6.85
Total Savings------------$17.92!!!!

The massage oil is going to make a great Christmas gift for a friend and the rest of the stuff is for me or Rodney.

Garage sales

I like garage sales. I love the hunt, the bargaining, etc. But what I love more than going to garage sales is having my own. Many people don't like to do them because of the work involved but I found a way that makes it seem like a lot less work.

I start after Christmas every year..usually mid-January. As I go through the house cleaning (every time I clean) I will find things that are just sitting around, that we don't use, that the kids have outgrown, we replaced with something else, or is just not our style anymore. I take these items to a box that I keep set up in my bedroom. Once the box gets full, I sit down and price the items, then put them in a larger box in my closet. Once the larger box is full, it goes to the garage where I have 5-6 tote boxes set up. I have the tote boxes sorted by category so the items get sorted out and then put up for the garage sale. I have signs made from previous years. The night before my garage sale all I have to do is set up tables, unpack my boxes and get everything situated. The day of the garage sale, I put my signs up and get ready to sell.

thrifty carpet cleaning

I cannot take credit for this because the original idea I read it somewhere else. I cannot remember the original author or the site which I read it on because I frequent many money saving sites. The original author said that they use vinegar in their carpet shampooer as a thrifty way to clean the carpets. I tried that tonight but because the smell of vinegar makes me gag, I added some glade fabric refresher spray to the shampoo container on the side of my cleaner and I am happy to report that it worked great. The house has a faint scent of vinegar. I think I will add a bit less next time. I added 1 1/2 teaspoons this time. I will try 1 next time. But the glade scent is also in the air. The carpets feel soft and are very clean. I believe it worked better than the shampoo I usually buy and I don't worry about the kids crawling and walking on the carpet afterward because there are no chemicals

Kohls.com coupon code

get15now for an additional 15% off everything...good online only and only for the next 2 days.
also if you sign up for their emails..they will send you code to save even more $$..off to look at some jeans now.

Also old navy is having and instore sale this weekend 20% off if you spend $50. more if you spend more.

couponing basics

Just because you have a coupon, you don't have to use it right away or ever if you don't want to or the item doesn't go on a good enough sale.

I have found it best to hold onto my coupons for 3-4 weeks after they come out. If the item is on sale that week for a good price, I will use my coupon but I have generally found that the item goes on sale 3-4 weeks AFTER the coupon comes out. I have a theory on that. I believe the manufacturer puts out the coupon to get you to try the item right away. Once you have tried it and like it, they put it on sale to get you to buy some more and then you might become hooked and pay regular price for it after that. Of course those of us that stockpile, will have bought enough when it was on sale to last until the next sale so we don't pay full price for that item EVER.

Watch expiration dates on your coupons, but know generally if that coupon expires before you use it, there will probably be the same coupon out again either the week it expires or the week after it expires, just something I have noticed.

It's just a coupon, not gold, oil, gas, or your life savings. If you use it and miss a good sale, oh well...there are more sales and more coupons.

How I prepare for a shopping trip (AKA going into battle)

My husband calls my shopping trips battles because the time I spend preparing amuses him. He finds my couponing and deal comparing very funny...until he sees how much I save.

I get the walgreens previews a couple weeks ahead thanks to hotcouponworld, so those are a seperate prep sesssion but very much like my grocery prepping only shorter generally.

Mondays, we get the paper with the grocery ads in it. After the kids are in bed Monday night, I sit down at the kitchen table with my coupon organizer, the ads, scissors, 2 envelopes, the list on the fridge of what we need, and the ads I just got on Sunday from my father in law and the paper I bought (when I buy one). I look through my local ads. If there is anything I want to get, I write it on the envelope for the appropriate store and if there is a coupon for it as well. I place the coupon in the envelope. I do this for both of my regular stores. If there is a great sale on something I want I will go online to thecouponclippers.com or ebay and find more coupons (I don't have a working printer so I can't print any online, plus my local stores are not too keen on taking the printed ones anyway).

Once I am finished with my envelopes, I put them in my purse. When I get to the store that week, I pull out my envelope with the list and go shopping. If I have ordered some coupons, I will wait until they arrive to do my trip otherwise I just go one night after the kids are in bed. It is much easier to shop without both kids in tow.

Easy, simple, not too time consuming and saves money. 4 of my favorite things.

This weekend's coupons

Check out taylortownpreview.com for a list of this weekends coupons. Lots of them with the proctor and gamble insert as well as the regular ones.

Where do I get large quantities of the same coupon?

For multiple quantities of a single coupon..like the purex deal. I use eBay or a coupon clipping site. On eBay a lot of times you can get 20 or so of the same coupon for $1. Since buying coupons voids the coupon (stated on the coupon), you pay for the sellers time in collecting, clipping, listing and mailing the coupons. In a way it seems counterproductive to pay for coupons, right? well in my opinoin, I would rather pay someone a buck or two to get my coupons sent to my door, rather than buying multiple papers. Especially if there is only one or two coupons I want multiples off. If I only want say 5 of one, 6 of another and 3-4 of other ones. I use a clipping site...thecouponclippers.com. They have a minimum order you must place in $ amount but it is low. They send them out generally the next business day after your order is placed.

When thrifty goes wrong Part #1 and #2

So in my thriftiness journey I have done some stupid moves and some not so thrifty things.

#1...When I first started with couponing and stockpiling, I would get so into figuring out my deals and matching my coupons with sales that I would forget to look at my list for things I needed that I did not have coupons for usually (milk, bread) and I would come home with bags of stuff that I got for very cheap. I would start putting stuff away and all while telling my husband how much this cost originally and how much I paid. I would get to the end and he would say.."so is the milk and bread still out in the car?" DOH! I forgot what I went to the store for in the first place. Yeah DUMB!

#2...I made the mistake earlier in the year of getting too excited about stuff I found at a garage sale for one of the kids or myself and not look it over completely. I did that with a pair of flannel pj pants that I bought for myself. They were marked 25 cents. Cool!! I grabbed them up right away, Held them up to my waist to make sure they would fit and checked them over. I didn't notice until after I paid and was home that they had a rather large hole in the side by the pocket. I was not impressed. But I still wear them around the house for now. The hole is getting larger so they will have to go but I did get some wear out of them anyway.

I also made the mistake a couple times of not counting the change that people would give me back when I used a $5 or $10 bill at a garage sale. I got ripped off for a buck or two a couple times. I was not amused. Now I carry $1 bills and change with me when I go to a yard sale. I pay in exact change if possible and if I do need to give a person money and I am expecting change back I count it before I put it in my pocket. I have caught someone giving me back too little money twice and too much money once. I try to only give them enough so I get coins back...no bills.

edited...

In my current stockpile post I edited my pictures to make them smaller...For some reason, photobucket did not like my large sized images so I resized them and now you should be able to view the whole pic and everything that picture should show of my stockpile.

My gift giving stockpile guidelines...

For my friends and my side of the family:
This year I am doing something a bit different. They are getting care packages of things they use everyday. Mostly HBA stuff but some household stuff too. I got the majority of the stuff I am giving for cheap or free.

For my brother and his girlfriend:
They are very much into smelly things. Like plug ins scented things, candles, sprays..stuff like that. Over the last few months, I have amassed quite the collection of glade and oust scented oil candles and refills for 50 cents each or less. I also have gotten room sprays for less than 15 cents a can, glade scented oil candles for free, and the plugins made me some moeny after rebates. These are Walgreens deals that happens almost monthly. So they are getting a box of that stuff as well as some bodywash (50 cents a bottle), hand soap (35 cents a bottle), a scrubbing bubbles automatic shower cleaner $2 (after coupons and a good sale) and a pair of Victoria's Secret slippers for her for 50 cents a pair (awesome deal...they were 2 for $6 and if you were a new customer and had the code you got $5 off and FREE SHIPPING!!) I ended up getting 4 pairs on 2 seperate transactions for gifts.

My parents are getting pretty much the same as the above except I got my dad a schick razor for free after coupons and a sale at Walgreens. I got mom a Venus razor. They both are getting body wash for each, Dad is getting some cologne, I got mom some body spray. Mom is getting a pair of the slippers and 2 shirts that I got for $1 a piece at Walmart the other day. Dad is getting a brand new pair of Jeans that I paid a couple bucks for at a garage sale. They even have the store tags on them yet.

Hubby's parents are a bit harder. His mom I got a shirt at Sears with her favorite Nascar driver on it. It was on clearance and I got an additional 40% off and I got to use my associate discount as well making it less than $2. (for the record, I work for a company affiliated with Sears but not Sears itself). I have also picked her up a few things here and there. I can't remember them all off the top of my head right now but I do know that I got her a brand new in package fleece blanket at a garage sale for 50 cents.
Hubby's father is the hardest of all. We usually end up just getting him a gift bag of Campbell's soup, crackers, some kind of dried meat (jerky or ham sticks or summer sausage), some diabetic candy, and a magazine subscription.

For the neice and nephew:

I pick up stuff on clearance all year round.
a shirt and a pair of shorts for her..99 cents each..clearanced at the childrens' place
a Mrs. Potato Head...clearanced at Walgreens for $1.59
a velvet color thing with markers. It is a mini one with 4 posters $1. clearance at Walgreens-also got one for my oldest daughter and my nephew.
crayola crayons 24 ct box 20 cents clearanced at Walmart. I got one each for our nephew and oldest daugher as well.
a fleece camoflauge blanket for our nephew $2 clearance at Walgreens
a camoflauge shirt $4.99 clearance at Oldnavy.com but I also got free shipping and 20% off that $4.99 price

I also check out garage sales or thrift stores for nice, new or very gently used items that I know my friends and family will like. I buy a lot of stuff after Christmas when everything is marked down by 50% or more. The gift packs of different HBA items are a great stock up item at that time and the not overly christmas-y ones make great birthday gifts during the rest of the year.

I keep a box or 2 (or 5 like right now LOL) in my closet of items for gift giving and when an occasion comes up, I am always prepared with a nice gift that I got cheap.