I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘cool stuff’ Category

My inlaws visited us for a week recently, and while they were here, they shopped at our local Kroger quite a bit. My inlaws have lots of specific dietary needs and wants, and instead of sharing them with me so I could stock up on what they like, they chose to just go get stuff themselves when they were here. Which is nice of them - not necessary of course, for they were our guests, but it was what they wanted to do, so I gave them space in the pantry and fridge to store their stuff and let them do what they wanted.

When they left, besides getting to finish off their leftovers, my mother-in-law left for me a stack of the grocery coupons from Kroger that print out with your receipt. Not being one to turn down a coupon, I sorted through them, and found that most of them were for things we don’t buy or use. But one… one was exciting. Thrilling for me even. There was a coupon to go online and enter a code to get a $5 Starbucks gift card. My father-in-law had bought himself some Starbucks ground coffee (not realizing I had gotten special coffee just for him for his visit, which he ended up drinking instead) and that had generated a coupon for a Starbucks gift card.

So I ordered it. And it arrived yesterday afternoon (along with a $4 survey check and 50 of my 200 free 4×6 prints from ArtsCow, more on that next week with my complete review, but you can get them too) and I have been excited about it ever since. Today was a great day for the US Mail and me! A free trip to Starbucks to have a little coffee treat! There is a Starbucks in the Target just down the street from me, and I am going to jet on over this weekend on my way to taekwondo. I think I can still get a drink there for under $5, it has been so long I’m honestly not sure - but I am confident I can make it work.

And all because I looked through a pile of random coupons instead of throwing them away. Sometimes, the little things really do pay off. And a $5 gift card is a small thing to some - but has made me feel very cheery.

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One of my readers, A @ Too Much Time For Nothing, alerted me in a comment this morning that Walgreens has another free picture special today and today only.  Use the code 4MOM and get a free 8×10.  If you pick it up at the store, there is no shipping, so it really is free!  I did this a while back with a free 15 4×6 prints offer on taxday and it all went off without a hitch.  I’ve ordered my 8×10 and used the code - my invoice says my total due is $0.00 so I just have to go pick it up!  I so love free pictures.   Since I drive right by a Walgreens on my way to taekwondo, it doesn’t even cost me more than a cent or two of gas maybe to pull in and pick it up.

This is a timely order for me, because my inlaws just visited and my father-in-law took lots of pictures of me with the kids - since I am usually the person behind the camera I have hardly any pictures with me in them.  In honor of Mother’s Day, I ordered a picture of my son and I at taekwondo class.

So if you live near a Walgreens - take advantage of the free 8×10 offer today!  I just got an email my order is ready for pickup. 

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Saturday, at least.

I just logged into my bank account and was shocked to see my checking balance was a little over $5000.  My spouse got paid yesterday, and I’ve moved money to pay for the furnace to my checking, but those things don’t add up to $5000.  So I looked at the account detail, and there was a deposit for $1800 from the US Government.  The link I looked at from the IRS said I would get my early economic stimulus Monday, but it is here.  Ta da!

They called it a “tax refund” on the line item explanation.  Interesting.

I will enjoy having $5000 until my mortgage check is cashed (which should have happened already, and is what I was checking on actually) and then Thursday when I pay for the new furnace.  It’ll be a rough week for outflow.  Heh.  And then my checking account will be restored to its normal pittance.   I am looking forward to the new furnace though, since yesterday our current furnace got itself stuck on (without us even turning it on) and the whole house was about 85 when I got home.  Yay.  We have ghosts who are cold!

Must go back to our yard sale… I’ve made $4 so far.  But its only 9:30am.  :)   I’ll report on that later, hopefully with happy news!

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If you are like me, you’ve been asking that question for the past week, ever since you found out that the stimulus payments are coming early. And now I have your answer. My spouse sent me a link this morning from the IRS website that you enter your social security number, your filing status (single, married joint, etc) and the number of exemptions on your return, and the site tells you what your economic stimulus payment will be, and what date it is scheduled to be deposited. Or, I assume, what date the check will be mailed, I have direct deposit so I can’t verify that but I assume it works the same (the site never asked if I used direct deposit or not).

When will your economic stimulus payment arrive? Find out here!

My payment is scheduled to be deposited on Monday, May 5th. And now with complete peace of mind that I will actually have the money before then, I can schedule the furnace to be replaced next Thursday. Yippee!

Update:  Apparently a number of people are getting an error message that the IRS can’t tell them when theirs is coming yet.  This may be due to it not being scheduled for you yet.  If you get an error message, I suggest you bookmark the site and try again at the beginning of next week.  Hopefully the IRS will schedule more and more each day!

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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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