More Than a Little

I mentioned yesterday that we booked a trip to Sweden.  We’ll be leaving June 27, so I have a little less than three months before we depart.  Because of that… I have decided that it’d be fun to create an Official Savings Goal. I want to create enough additional income to pay for our tickets before we leave.. just for fun.  I maybe need a hobby.

Tickets were $1,1013.69 each.   There are three of us, so that means the total cost is:  $3,041.07.

My lovely in-laws are contributing $1,000 to the cost of the trip, so my Phase One  Goal is $2,041.  If I reach that, I’ll readjust my goal to $3,041 instead.

My rules are that I can count anything that brings in income, most of which is going to be the sale of my stockpile but can also include bank bonuses or online offers or  similar.  I would allow myself to include profit from shopping except it would be too much trouble to calculate, so I probably won’t do that.   If I was smart, I would add an additional rule that the cost of all meals eaten outside of the home have to come out of this money (thereby eliminating my desire to go out to eat…) but I’m not quite crazy enough for that.

So far, I am 27% of the way there! That’s largely due to the online offer I did for a $500 gift card, but it’s nice to get a good start!  I’ll try to keep you updated on my progress.  In the meantime, anyone want a razor? Some Theraflu? KNOX? :)

Also, my husband sold a gun item for $300 but he won’t let me count that money because he originally decided to sell it to replace my laptop last year.  Which… awwww! But it would look really nice in my spreadsheet. Yes, of course I have a spreadsheet…

Couponing and deal searching changes you a little.  You get a sort of warped sense of how much things cost, or should cost.   So.. when you run into a situation where you can’t find a great deal on something, it really stings.  Airfare, to me, is one of those things.  My husband, as you may know, is Swedish (as in, born and raised there) so all our trips are to Sweden to see his family and friends.  International airfare? Sucks.

Contrary to the title, I’m not going to write about how and where to find the best airplane ticket prices.  I can give you a few hints, perhaps, but nothing that will rock your world, I’m afraid.

• Be flexible with your dates and enter different variations on several different websites (preferably a couple that actually compare sites for you.)
• Travel during the week instead of a weekend, or during off-season if you can swing it.  That one has never actually worked for me–I’ve only flown during the summer.
• Call a travel agent and see if they can find you a better deal–that doesn’t always work, but on at least one occasion, she saved me a couple hundred dollars.
• Book the trip rather than waiting around–we lost quite a lot of money on that this time.  I didn’t have a confirmation from one of our travelers (we’re taking our niece with us) so I couldn’t actually book anything until we did.  Just a few days later, prices had gone up. They even went up seven dollars per ticket from five o’clock to ten o’clock (when I was able to purchase the tickets.)
• Popular destinations will probably cost less. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a need to randomly fly somewhere just because the ticket is cheap, so this is perhaps not that useful as a tip.
• Orbitz has a lowest price guarantee. Theoretically, if someone else books that ticket for less, we’ll get an automatic refund.  I wonder if this is actually something that happens much, but it’s a nice idea.

As far as which site has the cheapest rates… your guess is as good as mine. That’s why it’s so frustrating to buy these tickets. That, and the fact that airfare makes no sense to any human being.

HOWEVER.

Last night, as I gulped aloud and prepared to authorize a charge for $4,055 (for four passengers, $1,013 each), I thought of something that I do automatically these days that everyone probably doesn’t do–click-through and cashback.

I found the right fare via Orbitz.  At that point, I went back to look at my favorite shopping sites (see my post about Ebates) to see if any of them had partnerships with Orbitz.  Ebates did, at 1-3% cashback.  So did Mr. Rebates at 1%.  However, I hit pay dirt when I checked my Discover card.  They had their cashback bonus for travel. It ended March 31 and I hadn’t bothered to sign up for it because I didn’t expect to be traveling. 5%!  I had certainly found which of my cards I wanted to pay with, but I was still looking for which one I should click through.  And then I found it! Discover also has a shopping portal with cashback percentages, and Orbitz was listed there for 5%.  Bingo!

I’m not positive I’ll get both 5%, and I will only get cashback from those clicks on the tickets (not the fees, which amount for about a third of that or more)  but STILL. When you buy something expensive like airplane tickets, that measly 1-5% adds up fast.  I was about an hour and a half under the deadline for the March 5% travel cashback, so I just have to hope they billed immediately. :)  It’s not showing up yet but my credit limit is now (drastically!) reduced so I think they did.

In any case, I am hoping to get back up to $250 just by taking four minutes to research where to click through and which credit card to pay with.  More than a fair return on investments, in my opinion!  Never forget to click through, that’s my point.  :)

I used two $5/$20 at Rite Aid yesterday, plus a coupon for a free Bayer Contour (to get my total up over $20) to purchase two brand new books by two of my favorite authors for $3.17 each.   I paid with a $25 gift card that I got for free.

There are things other than health and beauty and overpriced junk foods at drugstores, you know. :)

The funny thing is that before I went shopping yesterday, I spent an hour sorting books in the sunroom.  We switched our bedroom with Evelyn’s and in our new room, we don’t have a logical place for the bookcase that used to be in there.  We were trying to figure out where to put it and couldn’t come up with a good place for it–that’s how it ended up in our room to begin with.  So, I suggested that we consolidate our books until they fit on two bookcases instead of three instead, and move the third bookcase to the basement and use it for general storage.  Most of these books won’t get read again anyway, so why are we holding on to them?  So I spent the morning looking at my books and thinking, “Can I justify the space in my home for this book?” and the afternoon buying two new books.  :)

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Blink for their eye drops.  Blink has had several different promotions over the last couple of years that made them free, so I had a bottle in my storage area but had never tried them.  I woke up with a terrible eye irritation. I’ve been using Visine and eye washes and stuff all morning, and while the Visine helped a little bit, it stung like crazy and then finally I noticed that it was expired.  (Not sure if expiration dates on eye drops are that important? But I don’t know for sure.)  Anyway, I happened to see a bottle of Blink sitting around a little while later and thought I’d try it and it has helped IMMENSELY.  My eye feels better than it’s felt all day.  So, YAY BLINK.  And also, I would like to note that people used to ask me all the time why stores/companies do these sales that involve giving their product away for free.  This is why.  If this drop helped my eye this much, I would pay for it gladly.  If I run out and I am buying more eye drops, I will remember this and I will purchase accordingly.

With a coupon, of course.  I may have suddenly switched brand loyalties but I haven’t, you know, become a different person. ;)

Now, my apologies to those certain persons who have nagged me about not updating this blog.  It has occured to me, now that Evelyn is no longer napping and I don’t really have a good chunk of time in the afternoon to blog, that I don’t really enjoy making certain kinds of posts.  Although I’m thankful to the bloggers who do post daily deals and coupon matchups, I don’t like committing to that sort of posting schedule, and I don’t like feeling like I am just reposting every single thing I see online.  And, I do enjoy posting photos of my shopping trips, but I would enjoy it MUCH more if I didn’t feel like I should do it every time.  I don’t know, those things sort of stress me out and then I don’t post anything.

So, maybe now I will feel less stress about posting, now that I have officially given up on those things.  I mean, I wasn’t DOING them already so there’s no reason to feel guilty. :)

I buy a lot of diabetes testing kits. I was excited about the first couple I bought. I have sort of wanted one for a long time because I have a strong family history of diabetes, as well as personal risk factors and indications that my body is a bit insulin-resistant.  It has never once been "off" when I tested it, but it’s always good to keep an eye on things like this. 

So, the first one I got free after coupons was great.  The second and third and fourth, I figured I could find homes for.  After that, though, I was at a loss.  They don’t sell particularly well (I have sold maybe seven or eight in four yard sales) and they take up a bit of space.  But I keep buying them because the manufacturers keep giving incentives to do so–coupons that make them free stacked with promotions that give Register Rewards at Walgreens or ECBs at CVS, or that allow you to use purchase-based coupons (like a $5 off a $25 order) at Rite Aid. 

What to do with all these meters?  People online talk a lot about donating them, but it always seemed to me (based on their reports) that there is more of a problem with finding people to take them.  If you have some you want to donate, you can try nursing homes, women’s shelters, vets and animal shelters, or find a donation place on this website: Islets of Hope.

My original plan, after I started accumulating them, was to donate, but I’ll be honest with you and say that I just never got around to it. Then I thought about ripping the boxes open and sell the included test strips on eBay.  (Not all boxes include test strips, but Bayer Contour and Breeze both do–for now, anyway.) After that plan was hatched, one thing led to another and I found out that even after insurance, my mom pays something like $60 for 100 test strips.

Let’s see now.  I have a gazillion meters that I can’t figure out what to do with, and meanwhile, my mom is paying out of pocket for strips. What could I possibly do to solve both of our problems?

I feel REALLY BAD about the waste involved in this.  It is terrible from an environmental standpoint, and I actually do care about that. My parents came down to visit last Friday, and the above is a picture of my floor before they left.

But I feel REALLY GOOD about sending my mom home with 460 testing strips.  I believe she tests her sugar about five times a day.  That is enough to last her for nine months. At approximately $0.60 a strip, that is a savings of $276 in the above picture.. not counting the meters themselves. 

(Oh, and they cleaned up the boxes for me before they left.)

This is the second time I’ve donated my strips to her.  I wrapped up a bunch of them for her at Christmas in her stocking, along with all the Zantac I got from Walgreens.  :) She was actually using a different meter before this got started, but I think it was worth switching. :)

Now I have two reusable shopping bags full of meters and the accompanying carrying cases and instruction manuals. I have a few small ideas on what to do with some of them but I’m open for suggestions. 

I have been shopping for three days and I am almost glad it’s snowing so I can have a break.  I tried hard to talk myself out of my normal Sunday shopping trip yesterday, but I ended up going. It took me four hours, but I hit CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and the weekly grocery shopping Wal-Mart trip.  I took pictures of the drugstore purchases last night but I don’t know if I’ll bother posting them. They weren’t terribly exciting.

Anyway.  On Friday, I went up to see my parents for the day, and while I was there, I went to Rite Aid.  It was kind of awesome.  I had two $20 Gift of Savings certificates and was worrying over  when I would use them–I have not had much OOP cost at Rite Aid lately.  One of them expired at the end of this month, too.  This is all to say that I had been planning on doing a Pampers deal to qualify for the first $50 requirement for the P&G Single Check Rebate.  My original plan was to buy them two at a time, add enough fillers each time to get to $20, and then use a $5/$20.  However, once I was in the store, I couldn’t find fillers and then I realized that it would be an excellent time to use those gift of savings, so I went ahead and did it in two transactions instead of three.  I “lost” five dollars that way, but I was able to use two $20 GOS certificates, and I didn’t really account for either one of them when I purchased stuff to qualify for them.  So, I did two identical transactions:

3 Pampers, 8.99
1 Angel Soft toilet paper, four-pack, .99 (needed to bring my total up in order to use the certificate)
1 bag of M&Ms, 0.50 (miscalculated* and threw these in at the end to get up to $20)

The $20 certificate went through, and the cashier said my total was $.83. I handed it to her, but then she looked at the screen again and said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and handed it back to me.  My total was NEGATIVE $.83.  She handed me cash back from the register!  It was awesome, especially since I then did the exact same transaction again.  I received a total of $1.66 to purchase six packages of diapers and eight rolls of toilet paper.. plus I’ll get back $2 in rebates and a $15 gift card. Then, I’ll use these two receipts to qualify for the P&G $100 Coupon book rebate. (Mail in $50 worth of receipts and get a coupon booklet over for $100 value. Last year it was $120, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?  Also, I didn’t get one last year and it was so frustrating to see these super deals using coupons I didn’t have!)

(Meanwhile, my dad checked out for me at the next register. He bought a nine-roll package of Charmin and a Bayer Contour. He paid $1.11. It was a pretty good day.)

I called it a rite of passage because I’ve seen lots of couponers talk about getting the random cashier to give cash back, but it’s never happened to me.

*Apparently the $5/$20 coupon, AND the $20 coupon, take off tax.  This makes a big difference when it comes to calculating exact totals!

Rite Aid is making me happier than usual lately.  I have taken terrible advantage of the plentiful $5/$20 and $5/$25 coupons that they put out in combination with the Bayer Contour and Breeze testing kits coupons.  Buying one of them and using a coupon to make it free means that I can then use a purchase-based coupon to get five dollars worth of stuff for free.  I’m just not paying that much out of pocket, which is a nice change.  I’m doing a lot more stuff like this:

Total cost: $1 even.  The entire point of the transaction was the bubble bath.  We buy it at Walmart without coupons–actually, we buy a different brand that I am not crazy about but comes in a convenient ginormous size.  We’re nearly out again, so I thought I’d pick some up at Rite Aid this time, where it doesn’t cost actual money.  Also, I’m missing a bag of Chex Mix from this picture because it fell victim to a long car ride home from my parents and a little girl who wanted a snack.  She didn’t LIKE the Chex Mix but at least she stopped asking for a snack after I found this bag in the back seat.  

I finally found some more Contours at Walgreens on Saturday afternoon!  They were unloading totes and I happened by an employee who asked if I needed help finding anything.  I’ve never had a Walgreens employee offer to look for something in particular while they’re unloading, but this one went to find one for me.  I left a couple just because I am nice, but it was tempting to clear the shelves. It’s not my Walgreens anyway… haha.  Kidding!  It’s a store on the way up to my parent’s house, about 45 minutes from here.

I did the math on this in the car after we left, and I lack the motivation to do it again. I don’t remember the exact number we arrived at, but it was approximately $40 worth of profit on the above.  I love drugstores.

I have a warped sense of humor sometimes, but I thought this was a pretty funny error message. I was attempting to sign up for the Box Tops for Education email newsletter in order to get a $10 coupon booklet today.  I got an unrecoverable error message that made me break out the screen capture.  I was never actually able to complete the registration–though I did receive an email from them so maybe it worked.

Just a hint, BTFE?  If you want my state to be submitted as a two-letter abbreviation? Don’t make me choose a state from a drop-down menu that does not include abbreviations.

Thank you.

Pregnant ladies! Or all of you with children in diapers! Walgreens has Huggies on sale this week. They’re $8.99 and you get a $3 RR. You can use one manufacturer’s coupon and one Walgreens coupon per package, so:

$8.99
-$2 manufacturer’s coupon (there were printables at coupons.com, but I don’t see any now.)
-$1 Walgreens coupon, from the Coloring and Activity Book
-$3 RR
——–
$2.99 each
-$0.75 Caregiver’s Marketplace rebate
——–
$2.24 each

For the Wags newbies, you should know that you have to do this in separate transactions (ie, don’t buy more than one package per transaction) or you will only get one $3 RR. You also cannot use that RR on another transaction with diapers. SO, what I would do is to do as many transactions as you want, and then deposit your diapers in the car and return to the store to spend the $3 RRs. The reason I’d go out to the car in the middle is so that you will have room in your buggy for more stuff. Take it from my own personal experience that if you put a few packages of diapers in a Wags buggy, you won’t have room for much else. Anyway, to use the RR, you have to have one item per RR you want to use. If you want to buy something that is kind of expensive, throw in a few “filler” items, like Valentine’s pencils with eraser tops ($.20 with ad coupon) or Disney coloring and actiivity pads (.34 with ad coupon) or peroxide or Encore brand spices for $.50 after ad coupons. Ad coupons don’t count into the one-coupon-per-item rule. Look through the ad to find things on sale that you actually need, if you can, to spend that money on. :) Or, hey, buy yourself something fun. Even without the RR, you’re paying nearly half price on diapers you’d buy anyway, so try not to get too overwhelmed on the “but I’ll be spending money on other stuff that I wouldn’t normally buy today!” thing. You could even use the RRs (and fillers) to buy another package of diapers, though remember you wouldn’t get a new RR that way.

While you’re in there, Dove men’s body wash is free after RR this week, as is Super Polident… though you will have to spend those RRs, too, of course. To avoid having a ton of RR, keep your transactions as small as possible, and use one RR (from another RR item, NOT the same thing!) to pay. For example, buy two packages of diapers and get a $3 RR in each transaction. Then, purchase a Dove’s men’s body wash at $5.99 and add a Valentine’s pencil for $.20. You’ll owe $6.19 plux tax and you will have two items so you can use your two $3 RR and thus pay $.19 plus tax. (There are coupons out for Dove’s men’s body wash, so if you have one of those, you should use it and you’ll make a profit on the whole thing, but you won’t be able to do this transaction as I’ve just written it out.)

p.s. Buy as many as you can, because why would you want to pay $10 later for something you can buy for less than $3 now? If you buy five packages, that’s a $39 savings. If they don’t have the right size, you can always buy the wrong size and exchange them later for the correct size. Diapers will fit in lots of places around your house (under the crib, at the top of a closet, in a bathroom closet, under the clothes in the closet, under the stairs, etc. They also make decent building blocks for the older kids if you want to leave them out in the open..haha. (Not as good as bales of toilet paper, but less embarrassing than boxes of tampons. And yes, I am speaking from experience, though in my case, Evelyn kept dragging them out of the closet to stack them–I didn’t just leave them out. ;) )

I headed out yesterday morning like I often do to get some shopping done while there’s still a small chance of there still being stuff left in stock.  (Yesterday, this was perhaps not successful, as I couldn’t find a single Contour now that they’re giving $10 RR each, but it’s a nice idea anyway.)  I went to Walgreens and then got stuck at Kroger for much too long, but ended up with an incredibly awesome haul that I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of. (It was somewhere between 75-80% savings, I am estimating, and I had a hard time keeping all of the groceries in the cart while walking around because it was overflowing… for less than $37.)  Anyway, my husband called while I was at Kroger and gave me the vague impression that I should come home, so I skipped the other two drugstores when I was finally done in there.  I was surprised because he never rushes me when I’m out shopping.  Anyway, I pulled into the driveway to see my parents car sitting there.  They arrived about twenty minutes after I left, but they didn’t want him to call and tell me they were there. They never come over on Sundays and they have almost never come over without warning.  (It’s a 90 minute drive from their house.) So that was fun! I would have come home if they’d called though! :)

Walgreens

Total Spent: $8.14 (4.38, 2.63, 1.13)
Total RR Used: $61 (10, 5, 5, 5, 3, 10, 6, 2, 8, 7)
Total OOP: $69.14
Total RR Received: $77 (5, 8, 10, 6, 7, 5, 5, 8, 7, 6, 10)
Total Cost: $7.86 profit

I missed one RR while compiling those numbers and couldn’t figure out how I could possibly have made $17.86 profit, but while I was searching for the missing $10 RR (it’s difficult to separate regular manufacturer coupons on the Walgreens receipts from RR coupons) I noticed that the cashier apparently scanned my $10 Aviva coupon and entered it as $14.99.  I would have stopped her if I’d noticed it yesterday.  But hey, an extra $5 is nice.

Would sure like to find some Contours in stock this week.

What do you do with this stuff? Might try the Joint Juice and I’ll probably keep the Advil–wish I didn’t ever need that. :)  I’ll probably sell the rest.  I am pretty sure that I will end up chucking the Scalpicin in the clearance bin of a yard sale before long though. ;)

I managed to get out of the house today! I have a serious attack of the homebody fever this winter.  Too cold to drag an unwilling child into store after store. I hit all three of the drugstores. CVS was really boring so I’m going to skip that part. I don’t want to write about it in detail and I certainly didn’t want to take a picture of it.  Eyeshadow plus six 12-packs of Pepsi.  The most interesting thing about that trip was the ladies in front of me in line who were angry at the cashier and really confused about things.  They kept talking about the Pepsi deal from last week, which was 6 for $11.  You know, because you buy 6 for $20 and get $10 ECB back, making it $11.  Because… $20 – $10 = $11.  IN CRAZY TOWN.  Actually, my husband inexplicably pointed out that it would be $11.20 with tax and maybe that’s what she was talking about.  I say inexplicably because my darling husband has many fine qualities, but his tendencies to assume the best about stupid people is really not one of them.

Rite Aid

At the beginning of the week, I made my shopping lists and actually did not find a single item to put on the Rite Aid list.  I think that’s the first time ever. If I take the time to make a list, I always find something that I could buy if I go.  I might decide that it’s not worth the time and effort when the deals are slim, but there’s always something.  But, then I decided to start working the $5/$20 coupons with the free glucose monitor coupons, so I went in today to pick up some toilet paper.  I did two identical transactions and they made me Happy.

Total Cost: $.72

Also, there was an extra M&Ms but it is no more.  The monitors were $19.99, so the $5/$20 essentially allows me to get five dollars worth of free stuff.  Bless Rite Aid’s little heart.  They didn’t even challenge my usage of the $5/$20 before coupons.  That’s new!  Now that I’m carrying a copy of their coupon policy, I haven’t had to use it.  Believe me, I am not complaining.  That store gives me high blood pressure sometime

Walgreens

I could have bought more Contours, but I refrained because I intend to go shopping on Sunday morning and if I wipe them out today, I can’t buy them on Sunday.  The diaper deal isn’t stellar, but it’s adequate for my purposes.  I resell at six bucks each.  These were 3 for $13, minus Caregiver’s Marketplace rebates, so $3.57 each. Theoretically.  I just now noticed that $2 went missing.  The Pull-ups didn’t work for the Walgreens Huggies coupon from the kids coloring activity book.  Oh well.  

I kind of don’t want to do a cost analysis. It’s going to be ugly, I think.

OOP: $7.79 (1.80, 4.03, 1.96)
RR Used: $58 (10, 10, 10, 10, 5, 5, 5, 3)
Total Spent: $65.79
RR Received: $30 (5, 5, 5, 2, 5, 5, 3)
Rebates (CGM): $2.25
Total Cost: $33.54

So, that makes them $3.72 per pack of diapers, after tax (and not counting the chicken stock and other stuff) which is pretty good.  I should get back about twice that in my yard sale. :)  I’ve never not sold out on diapers.  They’re one of my best sellers and one of the hardest to obtain at a resellable price.

I have got to stop staying up so late.