Where are you in your journey with coupons, deals, rebates, and more!?!
I’ve (Litsa) remained a stay at home mom this past year and continue to work on our savings plan——-with coupons and deals to negate debt and to refrain from working outside the home until our little girl enters Kindergarten! It’s a challenge to stay on course with a savings plan in today’s economy but to show you and myself that it matters, I tallied up our savings for January 2013, February 2013, and now March! Here’s a glimpse of our savings by categories this month:
Coupons (Kroger/Wal-Mart/Target/Walgreens): $322.72 (many stockpiled items—snacks, Palmolive, shampoo, etc.)
Bing/Swagbucks/Ebates/Cashback: $46.57
Items Sold (items around the house): $912.75
Blog Dealing (Two Sources): $361.98
Online/Retail Store Savings: $131.63
Our family’s total was $1775.65 for the month of March! That’s a grand total of $4935.17 for three months of working from home on deal blogging, watching sales and clipping coupons!! And spring cleaning——if I don’t love an item and it doesn’t add value to our life, we are continuing to purge them (although we are almost done)!!
Now, I reiterate that I don’t encourage you to quit your job because the hours put in on accumulating this figure were FULLTIME hours! However, I can say that our stockpiles are still working wonders and will take us into the fall as we negate debt.
There’s always room to save! I opted to color my own hair again at home ($60 savings) and I’m not using a gym membership (rather working out on my own outdoors and/or home videos–yoga by Rodney Yee and more)!
And again……there’s that dreaded budget word—–spend what you have coming in before you have the money in hand! That’s my focus for April as I watch sales, deals, and more to buy what we need and eliminate the WANT buying—-an all cash budget for daily needs throughout the month is another goal!! I’m not there yet but much closer. I can count medical bills on one hand now too rather than on all my limbs. Each penny saved is a penny spent negating debt right now. Where are you?
There were many, many freebies too that came in the mail—-magazines and more! I did try to keep a mini list this month to encourage you to take advantage of these freebies too: 4 pairs of boot youth socks (wrong order from company-allowed me to keep them), 10 tall cups of Starbucks brew from store (with empty bags), 1 piece of Godiva chocolate (free with card each month), 1 free VS panty, 1 free umbrella (lottery points), a free box of many P&G samples and $24 worth of free coupons, free bloomin’ onion at Outback Steakhouse (Fb offer), free bottle of Excedrin (Fb offer), free Coke rewards points (online codes), and more!
May your journey of savings and having it all be just as prosperous as we pull on our rain boots and let the showers of April embrace us!
Set goals. Achieve—-as you envision where you want to be a month from now—or a year from now!
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