Go here to get a great deal on 1 year of Women’s Day magazine.  This mag usually has coupons in it and great recipes.  At checkout enter the code PXCJ116 to get it for only $3.73

Breakfast this morning was quick, convenient and cheap.  I picked up Jimmy D D-lite croisssant sandwiches yesterday at Publix with the sale and my coupons each sandwich worked out to about 5 cents each.  The hashbrowns are never on sale but aren’t too expensive and the pack lasts forever.  Toss on a few grapes and some OJ and you have a yummy cheap breakfast.  It took me all of 3 minutes to make I didn’t have to drive to McDonalds and I certainly didn’t have to shell out $5 for it.

So how are you saving??

Looks like the deal is dead now  :(

10 Packs of Paper for only $6.07!! This is such a great deal you might want to order 2 of these and be well stocked on paper for a long time.

What do you do with extra change?  Do you plan your money out and spend that pocket change or do you drop it into a jar at the end of the night/week?

This is something I’ve been wrestling with for a while, while I would like to use all my change and have tried I always find loose coins somewhere or I have soo much change in my purse that it weighs a ton.  So we’ve decided to feed the pigs our change.  LOL and here’s how:

See that huge blue pig?  Well that “little” piggy wants to help buy a car for Shawn or something like that.  That is his piggy bank (it’s nearly bigger than the dog) when he gets money (milks the grandparents for their change) or finds money  (i.e. grabs it out of the coin return before I get it) he puts it in the pig and when the pig gets heavy mommy puts the money into his ING account.  Someday that money will help him purchase a car, an engagement ring or a house who knows.

The big beer bottle is our giftcard fund.  At the end of the day/week when we have pocket change that’s where it gets dumped.  When that gets full we head to the coinstar machine and exchange for a giftcard without any fees.  They have giftcards for Amazon and Lowes so depending on where we are in our lives we get a card to buy something we need/want that we would normally go without.

That is what we’ve been working with for months but another little piggy showed up last week.  See the little piggy all dressed up for winter, isn’t he cute?  I got him for .99 at Target on clearance.  Well that little piggy wants to go on vacation!!!  We currently can’t afford to save money for a vacation there are just too many other things that need to be done first but we can put a few coins a day in this pig and not really affect our bottom line.  Someday that little piggy will get to go on vacation it won’t be anytime soon but it gives us a goal and when I was at the store the other day we decided to drink water instead of soda and added that $1 to the pig.  This little guy won’t get fed to often but found money will be added to him so the 61 cents I found while cleaning yesterday went in and for quarter I found coming home from the bus stop this morning went in there too.  As I said that poor pig isn’t going anywhere soon to someday.  Hey a girl can dream right.

So do you have a piggy with high hopes??  What do you do with your change spend it all, save it all, feed the pigs??  I’d love to hear your take on change savings.

I headed out to Publix today to try and get some motivation to clean.  Well I made it to the store but I found no motivation there, they really should have that at the store (I might even pay full price some days).  So here’s what I got, I spent $4.07 on all that’s pictured.

Here’s my analysis: 

• 4 Yoplait Smoothie Frozen bags well these were about $.50 a bag and Dave and I are both trying to eat a bit better and I think these will make good snack/breakfast items.  We’ll try them out at that price.
• 1 Mott’s Plus $1.69 I had no coupon with me for this.  We are just about out of juice, with Shawn being off school for 2 1/2 weeks my juice stock has taken a hit.  He’s also had a phlegm issue so he hasn’t been drinking much milk so my juice took a double hit.  $1.69 isn’t a bad price (not a stock up price) but we needed juice for him to take to school
• 4 boxes of Special K cereal $0!!!  Who can resist free cereal?  Special K is BOGO at Publix this week and there was a BOGO coupon on Kellogg’s website I printed 2 coupons and gladly took my 4 free boxes.  (If you have these coupons make sure you follow the wording buy any 1 get 1 oats & honey or plain for free)  I would have preferred 4 of the chocolate flavor but we’ll try the Oats & Honey
• The tangerines were .10 a piece so I picked up a couple for Dave to take to work with his lunch

So how has your shopping been going?  I’d love to hear your stories.

These are a few things we’ve been doing to save some money:

• Last night I cut Shawn’s hair.  About a year ago I spent $18 on a very good Wahl clipper set and it has more than paid for itself.  So I saved myself $12-$15 on a haircut.
• I had lunch at home and used up some leftovers and dinner will also be at home and using up leftovers so that no food is going to waste.
• All the lights have been off today since it’s a beautiful sunny day, the windows are also open.  This morning instead of turning the heat on to warm it up (windows were open and it got chilly in the house) we just used blankets until it warmed up.
• I spent part of the morning checking out the Publix ad for tomorrow and clipping coupons so I will be ready to go shop tomorrow morning.  Next on my list is to find deals for Target so I can do all the shopping while I’m out to save gas.
• I also clipped coupons for a trip to Walgreen’s while I’m out tomorrow.
• Tonight we’ll stay in and relax.  Dave got a couple new Wii games for Christmas to play and I have about 10 different craft projects started so I’ll be working on one of those.

What are you doing to save some money??  Do you know how much money you can save just by staying home?  Between gas and impulse purchases it really adds up.

I wanted to keep track of my spending but with company being here it’s been considerably harder.  My mother in law goes home on Wednesday so I will be starting fresh on Thursday with tracking my pennies.

But just because we have one extra around and have been running around like crazy doesn’t mean that I haven’t been trying to save some money.  Today I headed to Walgreens and picked up the children’s medicine that is free after RR with a $2 coupon, a Electrasol dishwasher detergent, 4 pks of Nyquil/Dayquil, 1 Vicks Sniffer thing and some Tilex.  I was able to roll my RR’s to minimize my out of pocket. 

• Analysis- We have very little children’s medicine after doing some inventory so I need to stock up on a few things in case Shawn catches a cold especially when it works out to be free, the detergent was also free and stores well so I stock when I can, Nyquil/Dayquil is my hubby’s drug of choice when he is under the weather it’s also very expensive when not on sale at less than $1 each I will keep them on hand, the Tilex is the only cleaning product I would ever pay full price for and it was on sale after coupon for $1 each so it was time to pick up 2 this is one of the few things that makes my mildew prone shower easy to clean.

We went out originally with the purpose of my mother in law picking up a few things at Disney for gifts so I stopped at Property Control on the way home (Property Control is a special shopping area for Cast Members) they recently added a very small grocery section and they have sandwich loaves of bread for .95 since we are low I picked up 1 loaf and while we were there I picked up a package of sliced provolone.  I will be checking around to see how good of a deal I got but it was good enough (2.5lbs for $6) for right now.  I broke up the package into smaller groups and froze them for future use.

I’ve also been watching the electricity used around the house.  It’s been warm lately so the windows have been open with the fans on in the evenings to cool down the upstairs.  We’ve been trying to only use the lights with the saver bulbs in them eventually I will change all the lights out but only as I can get them cheaply.

So how has your year started out?  Are you prepared to make 2011 your best financial year yet??  Together we can save on our bills and increase our savings/net worth.