Money Saving Challenge - 09/28

Since my house is all nice and spotless for the realtor to come tomorrow, I decided to run some errands and do some money saving things today.


1) I picked up three prescriptions at CVS today and received $ 90.00 in CVS Giftcards using Safeway $30. each giftcard coupons. I paid for the prescriptions with a Free Giftcard from prior prescriptions.


2) I deposited the $ 100. Bushnell Rebate check in our house fund account.


3) I went to Albertsons and picked up a large package of $1.79 a lb. chicken breasts since I was totally out of chicken. We are getting tired of eating beef. I also got a $ .50 bag of carrots. I will be adding some of those to the succotash left from dinner last night and some chicken, chicken broth and spices to make soup for dinner. I also picked up a pint of Starbucks Ice Cream, 2 rolls of Marcal Small Steps paper towels and a bag of Friskies Treats all for free with free coupons.

4) Next stop was Super Walmart where I picked up 2- 2 oz. Glad Fragrance Collection soy candles for free with free coupons.

5) On to Petsmart where I got a 3lb. bag of Science Diet Natures Best Cat Food ( $12.99) for free with a free Petsmart coupon. The bottom of my receipt gave me a $5.00 off coupon on my next purchase.

6) Last stop was Coldstone Creamery where I picked up 2 containers of ice cream and a bottle of Mug Rootbeer using a $ 15.00 Giftcard and $ .41!


7) The mail brought a $5.00 off $5.00 purchase coupon from Famous Footwear since my birthday is coming up. I also received my Free Woman's Day magazine.

8) We still have our A/C on since we are having record setting heat here. However I am hoping my next bill will be lower than normal since we turned most everything off while we were 2 weeks in NY. We turned off the hot water tank, the pool which we superchlorinated which worked very well, turned the A/C up to 83 so my furniture wouldn't dry out, and unplugged everything but the refrigerator. We continue to set the A/C at 81 during on peak hours and 78 during off peak hours. I am still cooking mostly outside.

9) We are still swimming in our pool everyday for exercise; however it is getting cold so it won't be much longer before our swim season is over.

10) I also picked up some moving boxes today. I have placed an ad for them on freecycle but so far no luck. So I went to Home Depot which had the cheapest price in the area or online. Medium boxes were $ .97 each and large were $ 1.27! We are starting to box up things in the garage that we don't need until we move.

11) Entertainment tonight will be Two and Half Men and CSI Miami!


Please continue to vote in the poll. Also leave a comment and share with us what you did today to save money!

Please Take The Anonymous Poll on My Right Side Bar!

I put this poll up this morning to get an idea of what people are doing in this bad economy. It is totally anonymous. Please let me know so that I can get an idea of what kind of posts I should write in the future. I have so many rattling around in my head.

If you have something specific that you would like to see please leave me a comment and let me know and I will do my best to eventually write something on it.

Even though I am not doing a lot of shopping because of the move, I can still draw on my knowledge of many subjects. I can't promise that I will post everyday because I am busy with the move and will be putting my home up for sale.

If there is something specific that I have written about, for example: The Saving Money Today Challenge, etc., please let me know and I will continue that the best I can.

A Quick CVS Trip!

I got home from our vacation to find that I had a $9.99 ECB expire while I was away. Luckily, the manager at my favorite CVS honored it today. Phew! So in my quest to only spend free money, I made a quick trip to CVS today for soda that DH wanted and some Halloween Candy. I also loaded up on candy bars that were clearanced and a Caramel Popcorn to treat DH since his birthday is soon. Here is what I purchased:


2-12 packs of Diet Coke ( not pictured) - $ 4.99 each(I know that Pepsi is on sale but DH will only drink Coke)


1 Box of Reeses and 1 Box of Good and Plenty - $1.00 each

1 Box of Gold Emblem Gummies- $1.00

1 Box of Gold Emblem Caramel Popcron - $1.00

4 Clearanced Clark Bars - $ .22 each

4 Clearanced Skybars- $ .25 each

4 -2 lb Bags of Halloween Candy- $ 5.99 each


Used $ 9.99 ECB


Total was $ 29.83 but nothing OOP since I used a Free Prescription Giftcard.

Our New York Trip!

We had the most wonderful time in New York. Being able to see our children and play with our grandaughter was just wonderful. She has grown like a weed since we saw her, the end of April, and her vocabulary has blossomed. Her favorite sentence now is " What is it?" Her pretend play is a year or more ahead of schedule. So Grandma and Grandpa spent hours being served meals at her play table. My son and his wife gave her a huge play kitchen and a whole bunch of food for it for her birthday. It is so cute to watch her take the potatoes and wash them at the sink, toast bread in the oven, make casseroles and stir them while she is doing it. She pours us juice and milk. I was truly amazed watching her. If a drawer gets stuck where she keeps her food, she asks for help. My DIL is a truly wonderful mother and has taught her to say help when she needs it.

We spent a week in the Buffalo area and a week in the Albany area. It is just 5 hours door to door on the Thruway. Not a bad drive for DH and I. We enjoyed seeing the leaves on the trees starting to turn colors.

While we were in the Buffalo area, our DIL and son were so wonderful. Our son makes the best Irish Beef Stew with Guinness Beer. He also cooked us a wonderful turkey sausage and buttermilk pancake breakfast. I spent a lot of time trying Beef on a Weck at lunch time. I managed to eat it at 6 different restaurants: Wagners, Duffs, Andersons, The Anchor Bar( the original wings place), Carlson's and at an Irish Pub in Lewiston. In my estimation, Anderson's has the very best! It happens to be the closest one to where our new home will be built so I will have to schedule in once a month only or I will be a blimp before you know it.

My DIL and I were able to go shopping for the new baby and took a detour for Lunch at Panera Bread. The four of us managed to go out to dinner at DeFlippo's and Shamus. We hadn't planned on Shamus but decided to celebrate the evening of the day we signed to build our new home. I am glad we went there. The ambience, service and food were outstanding. DH and I have found a restaurant that we will frequent when we move.

Our son took everyday off with us, so we spent a lot of time with him which was wonderful. He drove us all over town so that we could get a feel for the area. He took us to look at the lot that we had chosen online to make sure that it was the right one for us. It is perfect. He drove us to appointments with the builder. Our DIL and son went with us to the design center to help us pick out all of the colors of tile, carpeting, cabinets, countertops, etc. So many choices to make in such a short period of time. They were a tremendous help! I also want to thank my son for all of the time he spent the past 6 weeks or so with the builder getting questions answered for us and putting money down for us to hold our lot. Thanks so much to my son and DIL for your wonderful hospitality while we were there!


We spent a week in the Albany area with our son and his wife and our grandaughter. Even though my son has only been working for his company a few short months, they allowed him to take Thursday and Friday off with us. It was wonderful! We went to Indian Ladder Farms, took a ride up through Thatcher Park to Warners Lake to see the old family camp. We ate out at our favorite Italian Restaurant in Troy, Verdile's. I have been going there since I was a little girl. We did some drive in stand eating and ordering of pizzas. My DIL, who is a fabulous cook, made us wonderful breakfasts including banana pancakes with real Maple Syrup. She also had a family dinner with the 5 of us and her sister and BIL. The food was terrific( BBQ'ed chicken, mac salad, corn on the cob, baked apples, etc.) and the company even better. I hadn't had much time until that evening to get to know her sister and BIL. We had so much fun; I haven't laughed like that in a long time. Thanks to my son and DIL for a wonderful time and for your great hospitality.

This past Saturday, all 4 of us took my grandaughter to Hoffman's Playland in Latham. We had 3 generations on the train ride. I took my boys there all the time they were growing up so it is a family tradition. I think we will spend many times in the future there with my grandaughter. She had her first ride on the Merry Go Round and the Caterpillar too.

While we were in Albany, friends of ours who we have known for over 40 years, had a cookout for us and 16 of our friends. We had such a great time catching up with everyone. We spent 7 hours together and it was like we had never been apart. Thanks to them!

My only Aunt had us to her place for cocktails and dinner. My cousin came and we had a very nice evening. It was so good to see them! Thanks to them!

DH's sister and BIL had a family gathering at her home which included us and my son and DIL and grandaughter, and DH's brother and his wife. DH's only living Uncle and Aunt, who are 89 and 90 years old drove up to see us from New Jersey. DH's cousin and his wife also came. We had a wonderful pork loin dinner and lots of great conversation.

We also spent an evening with friend's of ours. We caught up on old times over a bottle of wine.

We were fortunate to be able to see so many people: family and so many of our friends who we have been close to since the 1960's. This was the best trip ever!

The entire trip from airfare, rental car, 15 days for our cat at the Pet Hotel at Petsmart, 15 days at the Park N Ride for our car, gifts for hostesses, family and my grandaughter and expected grandchild, meals, entertainment, etc, came in at a whopping $ 2700.+ but it was worth every dime! This is the kind of money we will not have to spend traveling a few times a year when we move so that is a bonus.

I have lots of laundry to catch up, dusting and vacuuming to do,a quick trip to the store for staples, and 15 days of mail to deal with, so I must get moving. I will try to do a post about our home that will be built as early as tonight or tomorrow.

We Just Arrived Home Two Hours Ago from a Glorious Two Weeks in New York!

DH and I have been in New York for the past two weeks visiting our children and grandaughter.
We had a blast! Our kids' hospitality was amazing! We enjoyed every minute that we were there!
Thanks so much to our children. Hug and kiss our grandaughter for us!!!!! It was a little easier this time for us to leave them knowing that in just a few short months, we will be so close!

DH and I are exhausted so heading off to bed early tonight. Over the next few days I will post about our trip! And then I will post about the house that we are having built. YES, we did contract for the house to be built. We are very excited and I will give you all the details soon!

Money Saving Challenge - The Past Week

Since I have some free time tonight, I thought I would post. In our quest to pay as much cash as possible to build our brand new home in New York, I have been doing as many things as possible this past week in order to save money and reach our goal.


- We received our Home Owners Insurance Policy in the mail which is due in a couple of weeks. We spent the time to research quotes. We are changing companies and will save $80. this policy year.


- We received our $185.20 electric bill for the past month in the mail. Even though it was $17.+ higher than this time last year, I was happy with it. It was 2 degrees warmer on an average day than last year and we used 70 less KWH. All of the $17. is nothing but a rate increase since last year. So all of those big and little things that we do that I have blogged about have paid off.

- Deposited $ 154. in rebates into our home savings account today.

- Received a postcard coupon for a free meal at Pei Wei for their new Japanese Chile Beef Ramen.

- We donated over 100 hardcover books to the Salvation Army.

- Sold 5 Hardcover Books to Cash4Books.net and will get a check from them soon. I love doing business with them because they pay the postage to mail the books to them.


- I continue to do my points programs and SwagBucks.

- Cooking outside on the patio table using the crockpot and Nesco Roaster as much as possible and also grilling a lot of filet mignon that we had stockpiled.

- Saved $10. with a coupon on something we had to buy.

-We continue to eat from the stockpile. DH is happy to see all the meat in the freezer getting used.

- The built in cleaning system on our pool wasn't working. DH took it apart and found that a part had broken. Rather than pay labor for someone to come and fix it, DH ordered the parts and will fix it himself. The cleaning system has a 10 year warranty so we saved the $90. cost for these parts.

- While I was running errands last week, I stopped at the cheap gasoline station and filled up for $2.56 a gallon.

- I snagged $60. in CVS giftcards getting 2 prescriptions and the manufacturer of one of the drugs ate $20. of the 30. co-pay. Make sure when you are getting your prescriptions that you check here first:

http://www.internetdrugcoupons.com/


- When we need milk, eggs or orange juice, I purchase it with CVS ECB's or giftcards.

- I have baked bread, cookies and muffins from scratch.

- Snacks have been air popped popcorn, sunflower seeds and rice cakes.

- We have researched every option on the new home that we are building so that we make sure to get everything that we want.

- I continue to research the area that we will be moving to so that I know where everything is.

- We continue to watch our electricity and water usage so as to not waste precious resources and the money they cost.

- I had my hair trimmed last week and used a 25% off coupon from the Entertainment Book to defray the cost. I decided to color my own hair at home using a Free Nice N Easy Haircolor Kit. I had not done this in a long time and was surprised at how easy it was. Now I have my light brown hair color back.

- I gave myself a manicure using almost free nail polish that I have stockpiled.

- For exercise, I have been using the recumbent bike and swimming in the pool daily.

- I have been picking up free movies at Blockbuster so that DH and I have date night at home. I have coupons right now for 6 free movies. Nothing better than seeing a movie and popping some popcorn and making ice tea in the privacy of our own home.

- We are making decisions on what we will sell at a garage sale and what we will sell through Terry's Consign and Design. A great deal of furniture will not be going with us since styles are so different in New York.

- I am on the advisory board for a major clothing manufacturer and received a $ 10. gift certificate from them last week.

- Last Christmas one of the gifts that I got from my son and DIL was a Coldstone Creamery Giftcard. Every time that I tried to use it, their machines had trouble reading it. The store people tell me this happens all the time. Up until last week, when I tried to use it, they have tried twice and it has gone through. Last week, before I went I checked the balance online so I knew I had $ 8.96 left on it. I tried to buy some containers of ice cream to use it up and it wouldn't work. The cashier tried a second time and tells me that it is registering a $ .00 balance. I told him that could not be right and he basically said too bad. I was really annoyed this time. So I came home and called corporate. The manager of the store I frequent called me and I explained how much trouble I have had. He said the cards that you buy online from corporate are terrible. They rarely work. He had them issue me a new card with $15. on it. I told him I hope it works. He said if it doesn't to talk with him and he will make good on it. In my estimation, my time was worth nuch more than the extra $6.00 they are giving me. I will be telling my son not to buy one from them again. I really appreciate his thoughtfulness, but these cards aren't worth the aggravation.

Please leave a comment and let us know what you have been doing to save money.

Hopefully I will have news and an UPDATE for you all soon!

So many of you have left me such nice comments and good wishes about our impending move. Many of you have also e-mailed me the same and asked what our plans are. I REALLY APPRECIATE all of your good wishes. I promise that I will be able to update you in just a few short weeks on what our plans are.

In the meantime, I can tell you that we are planning on moving to New York State to the Buffalo area. For those of you not familiar with Buffalo, it is the Snow Capital of the US. So I guess as desert dwellers, DH and I will have to make our first priority buying winter clothes, since we have none, AND a snowblower.

I have been able to find out from my son, who lives there, that the biggest supermarkets are Wegmans and Tops. Online I think I have found a Quality Supermarket. I also have found on Google Earth a huge Produce Market and Meat Market. But I don't know if there are others and will have to do a lot of research on store coupon policies when I get there. But it won't take me long to get into the swing of it. If any of you who read my blog are from the Buffalo area, I would love to hear from you as to what stores you frequent and where you find the best deals. Please leave a comment on this post if you are from that area. I could use some help since these will be different stores for me. Thanks in advance!

I miss blogging and will find bits of time to update all of you and answer the many questions that you have asked in your e-mails. I continue to visit and enjoy all of your blogs in between all that is going on here. I promise to post again in a few weeks.