I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Ours was 'okay'...could have been better, but could have been worse, so it's best to concentrate on the positives instead of dwelling on the bad stuff. Always concentrate on the positives. I'm pretty sure concentrating on the positives has kept me from sinking into depression(s) this past month.
Truth is, I'm not a 'winter' person. I hate being cold. I go into a sort of hibernation mode and don't feel like doing much.
When weighing 'going out shopping' against 'staying home next to my heater where it's warm', staying home is mostly the winner.
I've been trying to put my sitting here to some use. I've been spending some time at Swagbucks earning swagbucks (points) to cash in for money. Recently I was able to use (6) $5.00 Amazon gift cards I had earned to help with the costs of buying/renting textbooks for my son's college classes. Plus, I earned 96 swagbucks for clicking on "Shop & Earn" at Swagbucks to make my purchases.
If you don't know about Swagbucks, it's a Search Engine, like Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, etc. You earn points ("swagbucks") randomly for using the search bar. I use the bar for nearly everything because it's easier for me to type a site name like "blogger" into the bar and let it find the page for me. Most of the time when I type out web addresses starting with "www" I end up messing it up. My fingers are cross-eyed or dyslexic or something!
I hadn't really been putting much effort into earning Swagbucks, just whatever I got when I searched, entered random free codes whenever I saw them, and sometimes I print my coupons.com coupons for my shopping deals from there. I earn points when I redeem them. Even so, I've earned $125.00 free money just for doing what I do anyway.
They also have a lot of other ways you can earn points for even more free money, so I figured while I was sitting here not doing much of anything anyway, I would earn a few extra points. I vote in the Daily Poll, take some surveys, signed up for some free offers, played some games, watched some TV show clips and movie trailers.
In just a few days I've gone from about 250 points, to 1400 points. That's another $15.00 worth of Amazon gift cards. Free!
One of the Swagbucks offers I signed up for, I ended up signing up with InBox Dollars. I got $5.00 for signing up, and I've earned dollars and cents here and there by clicking on Paid Emails and taking surveys and doing a few searches. So far I'm at $11.69 (and I see 7 Paid Emails and 4 surveys waiting for me.)
They say when I reach $30.00 I can request a check be sent to me.
It ain't a fortune, but it pays for the groceries!
I have to go out on Wednesday nights to take my no-driving son to his Class at college, so I've been trying to plan my shopping for those evenings.
Last night I visited Walgreens for a cereal deal.
This week Walgreens had (4) Free After Rewards deals. Only (2) of them had coupons, making them money-makers, but I had missed the print limit of one of them, so I only had coupons for the KY Gel.
I didn't need KY Gel and will likely give it away, but I wanted the $2.00 profit I would make by buying them using a coupon.
They cost $5.99. I used a $2.00 off coupon from the 12/09 SS or Printable, and paid $3.99. (Plus tax)
I got back a $6.00 Register Reward, for a profit of about $2.00.
The cereal is on sale for $1.99 a box, and you get 1,000 Balance Rewards Points wyb 5 boxes.
I used $1.00/2 (IP - no longer available?)and $1.00/3 (1/06 SS) coupons, making them $1.59 a box.
I paid with my $6.00 RR with the $2.00 profit, making them $1.19 a box.
Plus I earned 1,000 Balance Reward Points which equals about $1.00, which brought the cereal down to about 99¢ a box.
Then I went to shop Kroger's mega sale.
I found boneless/skinless chicken on sale for $1.99/lb, which is my buy price (although I'd prefer to have gotten it for $1.69/lb last week at Aldi, but they sold out too fast) so I bought about $20.00 worth of chicken.
I had loaded the Free Carnation Breakfast Essentials and Free Egg Beaters coupons to my card(s) when they were available, so those were free.
Other Free's:
Zatarains Yellow Rice - 99¢ (Mega Price)
- 50¢ IP (Zip Code 18051)
Mahatma Yellow Rice - 99¢ (Non- Mega)
- 50¢ 1/27 RP or IP
Heluva Good Dips - 99¢ (Mega Price)
- 50¢ IP
Other Deals:
(10) Kraft BBQ Sauce 49¢ each (No coupon, but I have been having to pay more than $1.00 a bottle for BBQ sauce while I was out before this sale.)
(6) Finish Dishwashing Tabs - $2.99 (Mega Price)
- $2.15 1/06 SS
= 84¢ each
(6) Kellogg's Cereal - $1.99 (Mega Price)
- $1.50 IP (Paid with 1,000 Kelloggs Rewards. Search the web for lots of free codes.)
- 50¢ Fruit Loops IP
- 50¢ Krave IP
= 49¢ & 99¢ each
(6) McCormick Mexican Seasonings - 79¢ (Mega Price)
- .50/2 1/27 RP or IP
= 29¢ each
(5) Daisy Cottage Cheese $1.49 (Mega Price)
- 50¢ 1/06 SS
= 49¢ each
(4) Dinty Moore Beef Stew - $1.19 (Mega Price)
- $1/2 1/06 SS or IP (Zip Code 37219)
= 69¢ each
(2) Ragu Pasta Sacue - $1.27 (Mega Price)
- .40/2 1/27 RP
= 87¢ each
Azteca Tortillas - 79¢ (Mega Price)
- 25¢ 1/27 RP
= 29¢
Original Total $164.33
Total Spent $41.92
Of which $17.88 was the chicken, so everything other than the chicken only cost $24.04. Sweet!
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