More Than a Little

There’s a $3/1 coupon for Surf laundry detergent in today’s USA Weekend insert-at least for the Louisville, KY Courier Journal newspaper. No guarantees elsewhere but it’s worth a look. I picked up four papers this morning and will go get more, because this coupon alone makes it worth it.

(The other newspaper in the area, the Lexington Herald-Leader, has the Parade insert instead of USA Weekend, and there is a $.75 Surf coupon in it. By the way, locals, all of the Lexington paper’s coupons habitually stink in comparison to Louisville. Even Ashland is better, from my limited experience with it.)

Surf is regular price $4.50 at Walmart. This makes for some cheap laundry detergent! Surf happens to be the one that I bought regularly before I stopped paying for things (ha!) so this makes me happy. I’ll pay $1.50 for something I actually really like!

I should add that this coupon was in there a few weeks ago, too, and though a few people were selling them on ebay, they were fairly pricey and didn’t last long.

Swagbucks is a cool site that I have been using for a while. It’s a search engine, fed by Google and Ask.com, so it gives you roughly the same results as a normal search on another site. However, every search gives you the chance to win a swagbuck, which you can then save up and use to buy prizes. Namely, 45 swagbucks buys you a $5 gift card from Amazon, or you can save up for things like iphones and televisions (not sure why you would do this, as the return rate is best with the Amazon gift certificate codes, but whatever floats your boat.)

You also get swagbucks from shopping certain places and from the people you refer. There are toolbars that you can download, too, so you can search right from your browser. It probably won’t be a huge source of income for you but if you only get one point per day, then you’re still earning $40 at Amazon every year! That’s a pretty good return on your investment (which is nothing.)

If you’re interested in earning money for doing internet searches that you’re going to be doing anyway, then please use this link to sign up:

I have redeemed several Amazon codes already–it really does work!

I had the best of intentions for cooking every night this week. Unfortunately, it all fell apart tonight when I didn’t get home until six, and dinner would take quite some time to prepare. (I had scheduled baked potatoes for one night, and baked potato soup for the next with the leftover potatoes.) It’s just as well because we’re going to be gone all day tomorrow (the zoo! yay the zoo!) so I really wouldn’t feel like making soup when I got home from a long outdoorsy sort of day, even if we get home in time.

Hence, I stumbled upon material for this post. You win, I win.

Going to O’Charley’s for dinner? First, sign up for their e-club for a “free gift” upon signing up, and one on your birthday. The best part is that you don’t have to wait–the welcome email contained the gift, which was a free appetizer. I suppose that your free gift might be different but I am assuming that it’s always a free appetizer. Since I usually order from the appetizer menu anyway, that meant a free meal for me. Awesome! (Technically, the welcome email does not say that you can only use it once, either, so you could theoretically print one for every night of the week for a month… but I haven’t tried it so I don’t know that for sure.)

So now we are home from a nice meal out and it didn’t break the bank. At least, not too badly. My daughter is now at an age where we have to actually have to order her food sometimes. On the bright side, she actually ate it tonight, which makes it worth it. I just hate the times she doesn’t touch it!

If you haven’t signed up for Vocalpoint yet, you really should.  I get some of my highest-value coupons from them.  Every so often, I get a fun package or envelope in the mail with samples and/or coupons, and sometimes the coupons are for FREE products.  I’ve received free Rice Krispies and Frosted Mini-Wheats, to name just a couple that I’ve gotten recently.  The last thing I received from them was a coupon for $2.50 off one Bounce dryer bar, which I was able to use at CVS recently to pick up the bar for about fifty cents.  Like I said, they’re really good coupons.

Once you’re a member, they will send you some stuff randomly, and some promotions you need to opt in to separately on the website.  You’ll want to occasionally check in and see what they’re offering, if anything.  Right now, members can sign up for a free sample of Secret Clinical Strength deodorant.  So, if that’s something you’re interested in, make sure you opt in for that promotion, too, once you’ve signed up.

The link again: Vocalpoint. 

Why wouldn’t you want random free things with no more work than filling out a registration form? 

Updated to add: You do have to qualify for membership. My dad tried to sign up after reading this post, but apparently they just aren’t looking for middle-aged men. ;)

You can print a coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase from Advance Auto Parts right now.  The coupon is valid through Dec 31, 2009.

Go to advancegrandopenings.com.

Then, click "Enter Now" and fill out the form.  When you submit it, your Printable $10 off $25 coupon will appear.

I know a few folks who will like this one!

I had my stockpile yard sale this weekend, which is possibly the last one of the season.  It went really well, and we made $1,425 in two days.  My base goal was to break a thousand, so I am thrilled that we brought in as much as we did.  It was so much fun! 

On Friday morning, my dad and husband were out at six in the morning, trying to get the tables set up, when it started raining.  It was extremely hard to get everything organized while people were arriving, and we got a really late start as a result.  But the rain went away and we had pretty weather for the rest of the time.  However, I didn’t get out until after lunch to take "before" pictures of the sale, so these are after quite a few sales have already taken place.

And just for fun, a "during" photo.  Here’s Evelyn, clearly trying to do the math on someone’s purchases.  "Okay, you have two shampoos and a toothbrush… that’ll be four dollars, please!"

And this is just before we started boxing things back up. 

We packed everything that’s left into just a handful of boxes, and will be bringing them home for the winter.  To put that into perspective, the stock that we had from the last sale was already in the garage at my parents, and we sent a total of three car loads packed full I’ll have lots of fun unpacking them into my storage room, I’m sure.  Between the yard sales, I do sell some stuff to other people, like at my husband’s job, and to family, so it’s worth it to me to unpack everything and repack it in the spring.  We are still debating on whether or not to have one more sale here at our house before the season is completely gone.  It will depend partly on whether or not we get everything home in time, of course.  We had the car so full with other stuff that we only brought a couple boxes home with us last night.

Last Wednesday, my mom came down to visit, and when she left, she took Evelyn with her to spend the night.  It was a momentous occasion. On one hand, I had not been away from her for more than about four hours since she was born (she’s almost 28 months old!) but on the other hand… she’s my baby and I want her with me!  Anyway, it worked out really well, and I didn’t even pester my mom with TOO many phone calls. 

I kind of wanted to stay home and do things around the house that I never get a chance to, but since we were getting ready for our yard sale the next day, I headed out to buy more merchandise, plus household stuff.  I hopped over to the next town to try their Walgreens (twice) and Walmart, and then stopped back in at the one here in town.  I did a total of thirteen transactions, and bought the following merchandise:

…and I spent $16.57 for everything.

Full price, without coupons or RRs?  At least $192.50ish.  That’s a 91.2% savings!   (I say at least because I just added up the price of every item in the picture plus tax, but I might have forgotten a couple.)

So, yes.  It really is worth the time it takes.  Also? I am so loving my overage coupons lately.  :)  I kept wandering around Walmart, trying to figure out what to buy to eat up my overage from the razors ($1 each, and there are 32 there) so I could go check out.  I didn’t want to buy perishables at the first store, since I wasn’t heading home yet, and we had bought most of the non-perishable things we needed earlier in the week.  That’s not a bad problem to have!

When I arrived at Walgreens on Sunday morning, my favorite beauty advisor gave me a couple of the Friends and Family discount cards, valid on Monday only. So obviously, I had to go back to take advantage of it.

This was one of the stranger purchases that I have made in a while.

Total OOP: $24.51 (.59, 6.79, 6.79, 5.04, 5.30)
Total RR used: $70 (4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2)
Total Spent: $94.51
Total RR received: $36 (3, 5, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 5)
Total Gift card reloaded: $65.00
Total Cost: $6.49 PROFIT

They were out of stock on the razors and toothbrushes that are free after RR this week, or I would have done even better.  The peroxide was a little embarrassing to buy in bulk (who needs that much peroxide??)  but it was .33 after the ad coupon (the 15% discount made it .26) so it was a really good filler.  I have said before that I just consider the fillers a cost of doing business, so if I sell them for no more than what I paid for them, I’m content.  In this case, though, I’m going to try to get $.50 each out of them, which will nearly double my investment.

The thing to remember about the Walgreens Friends and Family days is that not only are things cheaper, but you really want to buy things that produce Register Rewards then if you can.  The items ring up at the discounted price, but you still get the full RR value. For example, the toothpaste is $5 on sale, and you get a $5 RR for buying it.  With the discount, they were ringing up $4.24.  Plus, I had $1 coupons, so I "made" $1.75 for every one I bought.  That $6.49 profit is what’s left after the rest of my overage paid for $5.27 worth of peroxide and tax ($2.86) on everything–that’s some pretty significant savings.

There will be no coupon inserts in this week’s Sunday paper, so there’s no need to go buy them. Well, no need unless you want to actually read the thing, of course!

If you have a subscription, you can put a hold on your account so they won’t deliver one this week and credit you an extra week. I just suspended my subscriptions–no use in paying for a newspaper I’ll just have to throw away!

Get a free sample of Betty Crocker potatoes here.

This is an easy sample request–you don’t even have to put in an email address if you don’t want to!  I don’t eat these that often* but I do consider them a secret vice, of sorts. 

*I am, however, fine-tuning a recipe for cheesy potato soup from instant potatoes–that’s what I had for lunch just today.  When I get it right, I’ll be posting it. These are insanely cheap or free after coupons fairly regularly so it’s good to have a variety of dishes to prepare from them.