Double Insurance Coverage

I am very thankful that my husband was wise enough to buy a secondary insurance policy years ago. Over the years he has been injured by criminals 4 times, three of which resulted in major surgery. The policy that he bought pays us for doctors visits, ER visits for injury, etc. We turned in this most recent injury and they cut us a check for $1100. This was a blessing big time. It allowed us to pay back the loan my grandmother gave us for a car repair and to buy some things we've been needing to get.


During this process we found some extra benefits that they are going to back pay and we will be getting about $1000 to go to the vacation fund. I am so looking forward to this!


Do you have a policy like this?

Goal Setting

I love reading Money Saving Mom. She is super organized and is full of great ideas. One thing she does is set goals for herself and post to her site. I always am making goal but never list them and certainly never hold myself accountable to them.


I really would like to be organized but my disorganization isn't going to turn around in a day.


So lets give this a try:


Personal:
1. Find my kindle (truthfully I have no clue where it is and I have so many free books on there and I am sick of having to read on the computer instead of my comfy bed).
2. Pin 3 new freezer cooking posts to my Pinterest board.
3. Spend 10 minutes a day reading a devotional.
4. Earn 100 Swagbucks points.


Home:
5. Clean out the toy boxes. (More stuff for yard sale).
6. Catch up on laundry. (I usually do laundry once a week. Guess what... the day that I was able to do laundry the power was out for 10 hours and then out 2 hours the next day)

Easy Money- Scrap Metal

I wish that I had taken a picture of it but...


Today we took all of our cans to the scrap metal place. 29 pounds of cans and then my grandmother gave us scrap metal that we took as well. This is not a get rich quick thing but we did make $33.68. That of course went to our surprise for K.


While there I talked to the man about maximizing the amount we could be making. I told him that we both work and DH works two full time jobs so it is just to have as fun money, but we have a lot that we want and very little spare money to play with. Items that my scrap guy said to save:


*Soda/beer cans
*Cans that veggies come in
*Aluminum foil
*Appliances
*Car parts


Obviously, I am not going to become a hoarder and start collecting absolutely everything in sight, but if I can hold on to these items and make a few extra bucks each quarter, why not?


Game plan:
1. Set up 3 containers as all items. I chose 3 because soda cans, tin cans and aluminum foil will be what I have 99.9% of the time.
2. Designate a spot for each
3. Start collecting. I will be asking friends and family to save their cans for me or ask if I can take their recycling for them. Many people are busy and do not have time to take off their recycling and are not willing to pay for recycling collection service. Why not start taking recycling for friends and family that live close by.
4. Put a small container with a lid in the trunk of my vehicle. All too often we see litter bugs throw their soda cans in parks and parking lots. Why not pick up and make a few cents in the process. This will also have a ziplock baggie in it to hold found coke caps.

My Coke Rewards

I am forever trying to find ways to live like someone with money on a frugal mama budget. One of those things is soda. I love soda... yes, I know that it is not good for you but I love it! The thing is that those little boogers are expensive. Good news, they don't have to be! With the My Coke Rewards program you can enter codes from the lids of 20oz bottles or codes from cases of coke and earn points that can be redeemed for coupons for free 12-packs or what I have decided to start getting $3 off a 12-pack coupon, because they are less points equaling more coupons and pair them with a good deal it might still be free or less than a dollar.


Ways to get as many points as me:
* Find a storage container and designate it to coke points.
* Ask friends and family to save their lids for you
* I am not above collecting lids that are left on bottles laying out in a public place and redeeming those points. If they aren't going to be used that is just plain wasteful anyway.


I also save the cans and tabs from my 12-packs. The cans go to the recycling center to be redeemed for cash and the tabs are stored in a special container and will go to Ronald McDonald House when the container is full.


We are really hitting the My Coke Rewards hard right now. We are going to be supplying the beach trip drinks by redeeming as many free coupons as we can.

Shh... It's a Surprise Week 3

This week we had some unexpected expenses. We were not able to save nearly as much as we would have liked, but tires are expensive and when they blow you have no other option but to buy. In the past we have bought used tires, but the place that we have been going didn't give us the same sized tires so the car drove funny. Now we have new tires.


Our Grand Total: $514.00
We also have 4 free 12-packs of coke and that saves us about $12.

Sunday Fun Day

We had a great Fathers' Day. With the family away, we took my grandmother out to Shoney's for Dave's FD dinner. They boys ate for free and drank water so no expense there. Grandma drank water so no drink cost, by her choice FYI. I splurged and had a coke and DH had tea as always. We had a $1 off each adult buffet cost coupon. So dinner was reasonably priced.


We came home and the boys played and cleaned up and now I am doing my normal Sunday night routine:


*Enter coke reward to my account and my mom's account (I get more tops collected than she does and I usually get some of the free products she gets)


*Run Laundry- I rarely do laundry during the week so Sunday is the day to catch up


*Watch Swagbucks TV while I clean (earn points and have a clean house... score!)


*Play a couple rounds of Spider Solitaire on Swagbucks


*Fold laundry while watching Drop Dead Diva on the DVR, right now I am finishing my favorite movie "The Blindside"


*Finish cleaning the bottom floor.

How I Save Hundreds of Dollars Each Year Just By Reading My Bills

We are all guilty of getting in a hurry and doing things out of habit. How often do you sit down and read the itemized breakdown of your utility, medical or misc. bills? For me, it is every single time. There is a reason for this... nobody is perfect and your bill can reflect human error. I have had my bills credited up to $96 just for rereading my bill. We went out of town a few years ago for a couple of weeks. Mom and dad had the pets so there was no reason to have the air conditioner on. We unplugged everything from the wall outlets to avoid occurring charges for the draw on them (why pay if you aren't using it), we turned off the AC and turned the water heater to the away/vacation setting. Our power bill should have been little to nothing. WRONG. It was sky high. Turns out they actually didn't read our meter for the month and they adjusted accordingly. Another example is yesterday while paying our daycare bill online, the total was high than it should have been. DH became frustrated because I read the total account history to find out what was up. Turns out we were charged a weeks worth of tuition for K even though he does not attend the summer program. Well of course that is human error and it was fixed thus a $96 credit to our account. It really does pay to check and recheck your bills.