I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘cool stuff’ Category

Pinyo at Moolanomy asks for our best wedding tips and stories, and I couldn’t help but reply. Although our wedding was not the model of restraint and frugality, we did do one or two things right, and I thought I would share them.

Our wedding was for us a pretty extravagant affair. I wish I could tell you the total amount it cost, but since I was much worse at budgeting back then (basically, my idea of a budget was to write down a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper and then completely ignore them) I honestly only have a ballpark estimate that we spent about $10,000 for a wedding with 50 guests. Which means we spent about $200 per guest, if you look at it that way, lucky them! I did attempt to cut costs where I felt like we could, and one of the ways I did that was by doing things myself by hand if possible. I made all the placecards for the tables instead of having them printed, and I think they came out rather well. But the thing I did myself that I was most proud of was created the favors for everyone to take home.

I saw in a bridal magazine that you could order chocolate bars with a special wrapper around them commemerating your wedding, and I thought that was a really cute idea for a favor. But instead of ordering them, I bought some pretty colored resume paper, and designed them myself on our computer, printed the labels, and replaced the outside labels on 50 Hershey bars (bought on sale) with the new wrappers. Many people asked me where I got them from, so I would say my do-it-yourself favors were a success. So if you have an idea for a favor but feel they are too expensive, see if you can replicate it yourself. You might be surprised! Our do-it-yourself version cost me about a fifth of what ordering them would have.

The other thing that we did that really cut costs for our wedding reception was in our location. We had our hearts set on this specific location for our wedding reception, but it was a bit out of our price range. We went and inquired about it, and found that if we chose to have our reception in the downstairs ballroom versus the upstairs one, we had a much lower minimum on what we had to spend to reserve the space that was well within our target amount for food - and we could have the same amenities as we had in the upstairs ballroom. So we went with downstairs, and none of our guests ever knew the difference. We still did pictures in the same place, and we were still at the same location, just a different room than I had originally expected. That alone saved us $4000 in costs.

Think outside the box. To save money on your wedding, see what you have to have, and what would be nice to have, and what you can do without, and let those things work for you. We had a wonderful day that I will never forget and with a few simple things on our part, managed to not go completely broke in the process as well.

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I read last night on CNN that the economic stimulus rebate checks are going to start going out ahead of schedule, beginning this Monday, the 28th, instead of Friday May 2nd as originally published by the IRS.

There isn’t a complete updated schedule, but if you are in that first group of social security numbers that is expecting direct deposit, you could see the money appear in your bank account as early as Monday.  Just in time for my new furnace…  yippee!  Economy stimulation!

The paper checks will also start a week earlier than planned, on May 9th.  There hasn’t been an official updated schedule published yet, so it isn’t clear if everything is being moved up a week or if only some of each social security number group will be getting their checks early.  If you need to see the original schedule it can be found here.

So keep on the lookout - and may you be able to do what you originally planned with your check, unlike me. 

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I have two guest posts out there in the blogosphere today, and each of them has a little bit of a spin to other parts of my life I don’t discuss at length here already. Check them out, and one even has a picture of inside my house! It is a tiny portion of one room, but still, a picture.

The first is at Remodeling This Life. Her blog relates fabulous personal finance content within the context of living frugally and doing a home remodel themselves for less than the average kitchen remodel. I am no home improvement wizard, but I wrote about one of my decorating choices and included a picture of the finished wall. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out! And if you are visiting for the first time from Emily’s blog, welcome! I blog about our journey out of debt by learning to live frugally and with purpose. We make our money work for us.

The second post is at Frugal Parenting - Michelle just gave birth to her first baby, a beautiful baby girl, so she is understandably out of commission for a little while. As a parent of slightly older kids, I wrote about why it is hard for me to give away or get rid of many of their toys, but why I needed to do it anyway - for my sanity as well as the well-being of my kids. If you haven’t already seen it, hop over to see a side I usually reserve for discussing on my blog about being a parent. And if you are visiting from Frugal Parenting for the first time, welcome to you too! I do blog about my relationship with my kids here at PaidTwice - but usually in the context of money.

Thanks to both bloggers for offering me the opportunity to interact with their readers and make sure you visit their blogs to read my work as well as theirs!

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I just did this myself, and the pictures will be waiting for me after 11:28am at my local Walgreens - and I didn’t pay one penny.

Today only - get 15 4×6 prints from Walgreens absolutely free using the promo code TAXDAY. I went to the website, uploaded 15 photos, applied the promo code, and chose in-store pickup. My order rang up as absolutely free.

If you are having them shipped to you, there will be shipping charges. But if you live near a Walgreens - get 15 free prints today only! My only pet peeve was that I couldn’t find a place to switch my prints from glossy to matte finish. But they were free, so I will deal even though I much prefer matte finish for scrapbooking.

I don’t usually post random deals but this one was too good to not pass on. Enjoy! I just got a few more pages of pictures for my son’s scrapbook.

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Yesterday I signed up for twitter. Twitter is basically, honestly, like global instant messaging. I thought at first it was just something that you randomly “tweeted” whatever you were doing and people watched you say stuff. Since mine would be insanely boring I never signed up. But, you can talk to people on it and follow people and well, I haven’t figured it all out.

But anyone who uses twitter is welcome to follow me! And I will follow you back. My twitter name is paidtwice, if you couldn’t guess that. I am still pretty new at using it and have loads still to figure out. it seems fun though.

I also wanted to remind anyone who was thinking of signing up for Revolution Money Exchange (a person to person money transfer service like paypal) that Monday is the last day to sign up and get the $25 bonus! I have now linked a bank account, had money transferred to me (my spouse signed up and transferred me his bonus) and transferred money out into my own bank account, so I do trust that it works. It is backed by some pretty big corporations. If you sign up using my graphic below, you get $25.00 and I get a $10 referral bonus, which I am going to apply to debt reduction of some sort. I am going to put up a poll to let my readers decide which of my three debts my total money from RME goes to. I thought that would be fun. No pressure from me to sign up! But if you ARE going to sign up anyway, feel free to use my referral link. Just click on the graphic!

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