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More of a frugal month, but I just calculated our total expenses for the month and our total was $3,881, 63.5% of which was spent on our mortgage, daycare, health/life insurance, and our car payment (51% if you remove the car payment). This is by far our least expensive month of the year. It was pretty exciting to see.
This weekend we went through our accounts with a ine-tooth comb and eliminated sever recurring charges, including things like car rental insurance---we have 4 cars! Dropped Vet Insurance on a dead cat....dropped insurance on a storage unit that is covered via our homeowners insurance....
All these nickel-and-dime charges added up to savings of $140/month!!!!!
I get daily emails from a emarketing scheme that gives me 5 points for every web link I click through to sites like Walmart, HSN, Groupon, etc... typically 2-5/day & I wait until I get about 13K points through clicks, that takes 3+ years unless I buy something through the click throughs when on sale/bonus added.
13K points gives me 5K points for United Air frequent flier program which is what I typically do. (This past summer I got 2 RT tickets from U.S. to Ireland & Portugal that cost me less than $90 tax total by doing this & using FF affiliated credit cards. In Europe I stayed at AirBnBs & Portugal is very reasonable, cheaper than home.)
But this week I checked & was able to redeem a few thousand points from the emarket scheme & get a $50 Target gift card for free that I will give my niece for Christmas.
I get daily emails from a emarketing scheme that gives me 5 points for every web link I click through to sites like Walmart, HSN, Groupon, etc... typically 2-5/day & I wait until I get about 13K points through clicks, that takes 3+ years unless I buy something through the click throughs when on sale/bonus added.
13K points gives me 5K points for United Air frequent flier program which is what I typically do. (This past summer I got 2 RT tickets from U.S. to Ireland & Portugal that cost me less than $90 tax total by doing this & using FF affiliated credit cards. In Europe I stayed at AirBnBs & Portugal is very reasonable, cheaper than home.)
But this week I checked & was able to redeem a few thousand points from the emarket scheme & get a $50 Target gift card for free that I will give my niece for Christmas.
Our 20-year-old overhead garage door (not the automatic kind) was in sad shape. The bottom seal was in need of replacement and one day last week, the entire locking mechanism fell off, including the metal bars that lock into place on each side when you turn the handle. Some holes holding the center handle had also grown larger, and the screws kept falling out. I called around and a nice overhead door company came out and looked at it (after another company declined to come out, saying we weren't in their service area). The technician fixed everything, replaced what needed to be replaced, and it now goes up and down smoothly, like a brand-new door. It also seals well at the floor now. It still looks good, because it is white vinyl. Total cost for parts and labor was $169. The cheapest overhead garage door I could find on Home Depot's website was $319, and that did not include hardware or installation. Yay!
Mypoints is legit- they've been around since the first wave of rebates/rewards programs in the early 00s. They were recently bought by Swagucks, which I've also had good luck with.
If you've got a smartphone, I've also had reasonable luck with Checkpoints, which gives you points for scanning the bar codes of items in the grocery store (the big food companies want to expose you to new product offerings) and lets you redeem them for Amazon gift cards, frequent flyer miles, etc.
Our 20-year-old overhead garage door (not the automatic kind) was in sad shape. The bottom seal was in need of replacement and one day last week, the entire locking mechanism fell off, including the metal bars that lock into place on each side when you turn the handle. Some holes holding the center handle had also grown larger, and the screws kept falling out. I called around and a nice overhead door company came out and looked at it (after another company declined to come out, saying we weren't in their service area). The technician fixed everything, replaced what needed to be replaced, and it now goes up and down smoothly, like a brand-new door. It also seals well at the floor now. It still looks good, because it is white vinyl. Total cost for parts and labor was $169. The cheapest overhead garage door I could find on Home Depot's website was $319, and that did not include hardware or installation. Yay!
Nice! Stuff like that has happened for me in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Honest people... are honest people.
My son fixes peoples computers and cars. He never gets much out of it--food, beer, trade, a little cash. When I asked him why he didn't charge at last a flat hourly rate, his answer floored me. He told me that those people need that computer or car to earn a living or get to work. Then he asks to borrow money from me.
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