Swagbucks: Start Searching!!

Have you all heard of Swagbucks? I know I've mentioned it to some of my friends that read my blog, but if you haven't heard of it it's AWESOME! This is definitely not a plug for Swagbucks, I just can't contain my excitement! I signed up for it in March of this year (6 months ago) and have already earned $275.00 in Amazon gift cards (and I've used many of the the gift cards, so I KNOW its a legit site)!! I'm saving up to use most of them for Riley's birthday and Christmas (plus I'm sure I'll earn more before then!) Anyways, other than using coupons this is another way I "earn" money! Just thought I'd pass on the info and help you save $$ too :)! Here's a little information about it:

You sign up HERE, download the toolbar, and use the Swagbucks toolbar or homepage to search (instead of using Google or yahoo, etc.) for anything you normally would search the Internet for! Once you start searching you can "win" Swagbucks randomly and your points will start adding up. Plus, you can also earn 1 swagbuck daily by heading over to "Special Offers" section. Just go to Swagbucks Homepage, click on "Ways To Earn", in the top left, then click on Special Offers and click on "View Our No Obligation Offers and WIN Swag Bucks" on the right. Once you get to this page, it will state "Welcome to Swagbucks Special Offers. Sign up for the free money-saving offers you like, feel free to skip the rest, and find a special Swag Code reward at the end". Then, skip ALL the offers by clicking the skip button or the See Next Offer button beneath the advertisement. After about 4-7 pages of clicking you'll earn 1 Swag Buck.

Additionally, you can earn Swagbucks for doing the "Trusted Surveys"! All you have to do is click on the Trusted Surveys link at the top of the page under "Ways to Earn" where you will also earn 1 Swagbuck and have the opportunity to do surveys for HIGH value Swagbucks. Plus, you can also answer the daily "poll of the day" to score 1 swagbuck! You can do all 3 of these things daily to earn swagbucks. (Also if you have the toolbar you get 1 swagbuck just for signing in).

And finally, if you really want to rack up your swagbucks quickly, then go to the "Special Offers" section and click on "Sign Up For Limited Time Offers And Earn Swagbucks". There are SO many special offers you can sign up for and receive swagbucks. Most of them are free (I ONLY do the free ones) and just require your name, email, etc.

Also, it only takes 450 Swagbucks to earn a $5 Amazon Gift Card (you can also redeem your Swagbucks for MANY other gift cards or items if you want)! If you have any questions I'll answer then in the comments section and if you want to sign up go HERE and start winning FREE MONEY--it costs nothing and you'll get 30 bucks just for signing up!!

Cereal Galore!

A very small portion of my stockpile:

Now that I can walk again I'm getting back into couponing. I took a while off because it was literally getting really hard to even walk towards the end of my pregnancy. I went to the grocery store for necessities and that was it. But now I'M BACK! Between today and yesterday I have "bought" 58 boxes of cereal. 18 yesterday and 40 today. I paid nothing out of pocket and got back $8 in catalina coupons! Yeah for free cereal. This is a good week of "deals", so I planning on making a few trips to get everything I need! (ps. I still don't let the kids have "sugary cereal"...so that's ALL for me...and Ty :))!

How are YOU doing?

It has been over a month since I posted my couponing tips and now I'm curious how you all are doing? Have you started using coupons and/or websites to help you find deals ? Have you noticed a change in your grocery bills? Fill me in :)!

Kroger has some great deals this week. Total before coupons in this picture was $158.xx and I paid $34.xx for everything here. My biggest pet-peave happened Sunday very early afternoon. The sale had JUST begun and some of the things I was planning on getting were already gone--like the shelves were cleared. I hate when people are rude and clear the shelves!! I'll have to go back this weekend to see if they've been restocked.

Target has a great deal on cereal this week, so I picked up 16 boxes plus 8 kids tootpastes and 6 kids toothbrushes and Target actually paid me $2 and some change. I have enough coupons for 16 more boxes and more toothbrushes, so I'll make another trip later to get the rest.

Getting back into it

Well, I made my first "deal" run this evening when Ty got home from work. Ashley inspired me to get my butt in gear and do my menu (which I was putting off) and shopping list this morning. I haven't gone what I call "deal shopping" in a good three months--mainly because we were moving so I didn't want to stock up and have to move things, I had such bad morning sickness I didn't leave the house and because I've had to get used to all new stores (well actually we only have two options here).

I haven't even gone to the grocery store with coupons in months (until tonight), and it almost killed me the one time I spent 65.00 in ONE shopping trip...oh my goodness, I was spending almost that much in an entire month back in MI. Before we moved I had our weekly budget down between $20-$25/week and that was splurging sometimes. However, it was so nice to take a break and it also showed me what a difference using coupons makes in our budget! My new budget until I really get back into things is 40.00/week (but hopefully less). It's not that we can't afford more, because we can, but I can definitely find better things to spend our money on!

We have a Walmart and Kroger. That's it. And since I refuse to shop at Walmart (unless absolutely necessary) Kroger is my next option. I think I can get good deals there once I understand how it all works. So I've been reading up and decided to try a small run and get a few things to see how things went.

Anyways, here is the result:


38 items for a total of 25.45 AFTER all coupons, before coupons it was 65.77. Not too bad if I say so myself. There were some things I just had to get and some things I probably shouldn't have gotten :).

Deals

I found out this afternoon about a great deal going on until tonight (8/04--I think) and I took advantage of it! You have to have a LOT of coupons to do it and since I do, I got a lot of stuff. Here is what I got:

1 gallon of milk

36 boxes of cereal

6 Natural peanut butter jars

2 Mott's Applesauce

1 bunch of bananas

When you buy 6 boxes of Big G cereal you get a $2 off your next order and 2 coupons for a free gallon of milk. BUT, when you buy the milk it doesn't take off 1.98 (the price of milk at our Meijer) it takes off the entire 4.50...Great deal, wish I would have found out about it sooner.

I tried to break down how I did the deal but I had a lot of issues with the machines not working, so it was difficult to do. Some of my coupons didn't spit out of the machine, so I got cash back instead of the coupon. I paid 37.12 out of pocket, but got back 11 coupons for FREE gallons of milk AND 29.50 in coupons on my next purchase! So for all that's in the picture, plus 11 additional gallons of milk I paid (with coupons deducted) a whopping $7.62!!!

Also, just to make clear, my kids don't eat this kind of cereal because they don't know the difference and I wouldn't let them eat it if they wanted to, but I, on the other hand, could live off of it. I know it's so bad for me, but when it comes to eating I'm like a 10 year old. SO picky and I still always order chicken fingers when we go out to dinner...enough said I think :).

This one's for Ashley...

My friend, Ashley, said that I'm " not bragging- you're just proud of contributing to the household" when I post my deals...I agree, so here's one more for the week. KMart is doing double coupons again this week and I went this morning and got this:



15 packs of Huggies Diapers
28 packages of Huggies Wipes
16 Kotex pantyliners
4 Visine
3 Edge Shaving cream
1 Dawn dish soap
6 packages of band-aids
8 Pantene Pro-V shampoo/conditioner

I plan on going back this week to get more goodies. I didn't want to be there all day today either so I did 4 transactions and got all of this stuff.

I paid about $42 for all of this stuff...actually the diapers cost me about that much and everything else I got for free after all coupons! Crazy deals you can get there if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. I didn't really need most of it but I love to donate it (especially since I can get it for free and others need it) and I'm planning on taking the pantyliners and visine and the salad I got last week to one of the shelters downtown tomorrow afternoon.

So, my suggestion is to check out your local KMart this week :).

More Deals

UPDATE: So, here is the deal. Right now the Dole salad is on sale for .75 each. Buy 2 salads and a half pound (or 1 lb.or however much you want) of Naturewell hamburger (at the meat department and it must be the right meat to get Catalina's). The hamburger is normally 3.99 a lb, but it is on sale for 2.19 lb. and when you check out you will receive a 3.00 Catalina. You can "roll" these Catalinas like I did, but you must do them in individual orders to get the Catalinas. You have to buy 2 salads and one meat for the Catalina to print. Hope that helps everyone, if you do it let me know if it worked for you :). I definitely didn't come up with this myself, I found it online just can't remember which website to give credit to... Then I had 20 pasta coupons that were 1.00/2 and they are on sale 3/$2.00. When you pair the sale and the coupon, each box ends up only being 17 cents. I used the overage from the meat/salad deal to pay for the pasta/bananas/grapes. The Lysol was free after coupons too. I use a 1.00 coupon off Lysol wipes and a .50 coupon from the Meijer website. They were on sale for 2/3.00. Does that all make sense??

I don't usually post the deals that I get on my blog, but I was pretty happy with this one so I thought I'd share it with you all. I went shopping at Meijer this week and this is what I got:

40 boxes of different kinds of pasta
6 lbs of beef

22 bags of Dole Salad

6 Lysol wipes

2 bunches of bananas

3 lbs. of grapes

TOTAL of $7.06!!!

Now to figure out what to do with all of this stuff...especially the salad.

This week's deals...

...so far! Riley slept a long time during her nap today, so Ty stayed home so I could go get some goodies (by myself)!

Paid: $7.32 total!

Deals!!

Here is what I got this morning.

Ah...I was gone for 2 hours and this is what I came back with. I figured out that I "paid" (on a gift card) a total of just over $60.00 for 36 packs of Huggies Diapers, 55 bottles of shampoo/conditioner, 4 Glad Lasting Impressions, 4 Glade Sense and Sprays, 4 Gillette Fusion Men's razors, 8 boxes of cold and flu medicine, 1 box of tampons, and 1-$15 Starbucks gift card. Not bad for one early morning run. You should see what I got the rest of the weekend, too much to even post about--but I did get over 75 bottles of Colgate, and so much lotion and other FREE!!stuff. Actually over the course of the weekend, I "made" more than $60.00 "buying" stuff, so really all the diapers and stuff I bought this morning for free. I NEVER pay out of pocket for anything I buy at Walgreens; not diapers, deodorant, toothpaste, anything Walgreens carries I actually never have to "pay" for!

(Don't worry, I didn't clean out the shelves, I went to a bunch of different stores)

A GREAT deal...

So my favorite store the past few weeks/months has been Walgreens. I get CRAZY deals there!! I mean crazy...

This is what I got tonight, in one shopping trip:

1 pack of schick disposable razors
5 cartons of Orange juice
11 rolls of aluminium foil
21 boxes of Robitussin (medicine)
2 boxes of Ziplock bags
4 large bags of Reese's (for cookies--not all for me to eat :))
1 Kit-Kat (for me to eat :))
4 Arm and Hammer laundry detergents (I've never used it...we'll see??)
2 All laundry detergents
1 Cascade dishwasher soap
14 packages of bandaids
1 box of Fruitloops
24 Christmas gift bags
2-3 packs of Scotch tape

I "spent" $42.00-ish that I paid with a gift card, got $48.00 back in Register Rewards and will be getting back $25.00 in mail-in-rabates. That means I got all of this stuff for FREE, plus I actually made $30.00!!! Crazy, huh??!?

No, I'm not planning on keeping all of it. I'll either donate it to a homeless shelter or to Jennie's food pantry :).

What a steal...

I found another deal today!! I got all this stuff for $31.99 (including tax): It all would have cost me $155.58+tax.

Yeah, for never having to buy shampoo/body wash/lotion/diaper rash cream/baby oil for the kids every again :).

Cheap Diapers anyone??

I've said a million times before I can get a deal on just about anything, especailly diapers (thanks to babycheapskate)...well here I go again. Today I got 13 packs of Pampers jumbo diapers and 13 packs of Pampers Sensitive wipes (the big kind--the ones with 3 refills in it) for a grand total of about $30.00!! I had the greatest coupons and some good cashiers, you'll know what I mean in a minute.

I had these coupons (I could print as many as I wanted): "$5.00 off Pampers diapers and wipes "AND "Get a $5.00 Target gift card with the purchase of Pampers diapers and wipes". I also had manufacturer coupons to combine with it.

So, I bought 13 packs of Pampers (on sale for $8.99) and 13 packs of wipes ($5.99 each).

13 x 8.99 = $117
13 x 5.99 = $78

Target allowed me to use both coupons at the same time so subtract $10 ($5 off and a $5 GC that you can use on a different transaction...so I had to do several transactions) from $14.98 (8.99 diapers +5.99 wipes) which equals $4.98/diaper and wipe combo and that's without manufacturer coupons, which you can stack on top of Target coupons!! So I ended up getting each pack of diaper and each pack of wipe for $1.50 EACH! Hopefully that makes sense!

I'm going back tomorrow for MORE :)! (BEWARE, though, I don't think every Target will let you use both coupons together, but even if they don't it's still a pretty good deal!)

I have the coupon saved on my computer, if anyone wants it you can give me your email address in the "comments" section and I will try to email it to you.

Stocking Up!!

Okay, well for most of you that know me you know that I can get a deal on just about anything. Well, a couple of weeks ago Target had a coupon for Huggies products and I definitely took advantage of it. I bought 140 travel size packages (normally $1.47 each) and I got them all for free (well actually I got money off the rest of my purchase because the coupons were for $1.50 off any Huggies product). I also bought 60 containers of the normal size wipes (normally at least $2.50 each) for a total of almost $5.00. I think we'll be set on wipes until both babies are out of diapers (seriously)! I also got 12 bottles of Huggies shampoo or baby body wash (normally $3.00 each) for $1.50 total.

These are the regular size of wipes, the 140 travel size are already packed away!! Right now they're taking up a good portion of our closet.

Then yesterday I found a great deal at CVS. I bought 16 packages of Pampers diapers jumbo pack (normally $10.50 or more each) for a total of $40.00 (that's $2.50/package). Then this morning I went back to CVS because I found more coupons and they had a great deal on Huggies diapers. This morning I bought 32 packages of Huggies diapers jumbo pack (normally $10.50 or more each ) and 6 bottles of Johnson's baby wash (normally $4.50 each) for a total of $29.00!!! It turned out to be about $.75/package of diapers!! My mother would be so proud!!

It's going to be a pain to move them all, but I couldn't pass on such a great deal!!

Riley was excited to see all the diapers because they all have pictures of babies on them, so she went from package to package kissing each baby!! It was priceless.... (This picture shows half of the diapers)

Pampers in Riley's closet...some are for her and some are for the new baby!

So this is what we got and how much I spent:

140 travel wipes: FREE

60 pkgs. of normal size wipes: $5.00

16 pkgs. of Pampers: $40.00 ($2.50/package)

32 pkgs. Huggies Supreme: $25.00 ($.75/package)

6 J&J products: $2.00

12 Huggies shampoo/body wash: $1.50