Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2009Dave Ramsey is coming to Atlanta! Dave Ramsey is coming to Atlanta!
You can go here to check out the details! Tuesday, May 19, 2009Dave Ramsey Video: FREE Cars!
If you don't already know...I am a big Dave Ramsey fan (like so many of you are!)
I was on his site last night and ran across this great video on how NOT to have car payments! Thought that I would share it with you! You can go here to watch it! Live and Learn! Tuesday, April 7, 2009How to celebrate Easter On A Budget! How to celebrate Easter on a budget! A little story about how we do Easter in my family... Growing up I can remember going to my grandmother's house each Easter for dinner and an egg hunt. I remember being a child and getting so excited that I could hardly stand to sit and eat before the egg hunt. My husband and I moved about 2 hours away from our home town and our families. Holidays are tough, especially with the economy now, and travel is a must if we want to enjoy them with our families. We are lucky enough that both his family and my family both live in the same city! All of our sisters, brothers, Aunt's and Uncle's live there also! Easter is one of the holidays that falls through the cracks for us when it comes to family. We usually go for a visit during the major holidays and spend Easter at home. For the past 6 years our celebration has consisted of going to church, eating a home cooked dinner, and an easter egg hunt with friends and their children (usually on Saturday's). We have always kept it fairly simple UNTIL now! I gathered up the family last year and we all came to the conclusion that we wanted an Easter Blow-Out this year! So, a little less than a year ago I began planning this years celebration on a budget! Step 1: Planning
There are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself when preparing. These are a few of the questions that I ask myself! Planning is essential because you will be making purchases throughout the year for this event. You may want to dedicate family members to do tasks throughout the year also. An alternative is to take most of the planning duties yourself and then divide the costs up between family members. Many of my family members don't shop the way that I do so it is easier this way for me! Step 2: Shop Clearance throughout the year! This step is very easy for me! I love to find a great deal! You want to get the biggest bang for your buck so obviously you will buy at its cheapest and stock up! Last year it seemed as though no one wanted to buy anything after Easter. By the time prices hit 90% off...there was a ton of stuff to choose from! Look for day after sales to get 50% off and 2-3 days after the holiday to get 50-75% off! It is a little tricky to plan this part because you don't know what everyone else will do! Will the stores be wiped out or not? Make sure that you are checking drug stores, grocery stores, Big Lots, Walmart, Target, Kmart(who has the slowest mark-down schedule) and any other store that may carry holiday items! You are going to find most of your items at 50% off (which is still an O.K. deal). If this is your first year shopping Easter clearance then I would suggest buying most of your items in this price range! Once you do it for a few years you will be able to gauge when to buy in the future! Here are some great tips on buying little prizes and trinkets off-season...
Step 3: Planning the dinner This step can go one of two ways! You can have your traditional meal or keep it simple! In the weeks prior to Easter you should be able to find Hams for .99/lb (after Christmas and before Easter). Buy a couple of them on sale (the number will depend on how many you are feeding) and throw them in the freezer! I bought up a few hams at .99/lb back at the end of February! Cake mixes and frosting will go on sale for rock bottom prices around Christmas and even this week (Kroger/Publix). We keep it simple because we have over 30 people that come and it makes it easier on my grandparents (we have the celebration at their house). This year we are having hot dogs, chips, baked beans, potato salad, slaw, cake and cupcakes. I decided on hot dogs 1 because they are simple to make and cheap to buy. We are actually going to take advantage of Kroger's BOGO sale on Ball Park Franks this week (timing was just right!) for $1.50 per pack after my coupons! We are buying potato chips from Publix BOGO @ $2 per bag and making baked beans out of tons of Van Camp beans that I got for free a few months ago! Potatoes were $2 for a 5 lb bag. Cabbage @ .19/lb for the slaw, .30 each for boxed cake mix and free frosting from the Betty Crocker sale a few months ago! Here is the breakdown of our meal! 8 packs of hot dogs @ $1.50 each 1 jar of relish (vlassic that was free back in December) 1 Bottle of Mustard (free at Kroger last year) 1 bottle of Ketchup ($1 for Hunt's at Kroger a few months ago0 3 bags of chips @ $2 each (lay's at Publix this week) 8 cans of beans (free at Kroger before Christmas) 2 bottles of BBQ sauce for beans (.50 last summer KC masterpiece) 4 boxes of cake mix @ .30 each 5 cans of frosting FREE 12 eggs for potato salad and garnishment(.75 per carton) 1 lb of onion @ .99 8 pks of hot dog buns @ .59 each Sweet tea (pennies on the dollar with paying only .60ish per family pack, juice boxes (apple and eve from Kroger for free last year) Approximate total (cushioned for spices and sugar): $28.26 and this will feed 30-35 people! Not bad at all for .94 per serving! Step 4: Have Fun and take lots of pictures! I plan to keep all of the plastic eggs to use again next year! We have over 600 eggs for 12 kids! They are going to love it! Here is a picture of all the items I have been gathering since last year! Overall I spent about $30 on these things! I bought most of them at 90% off last year after Easter and have gotten some free things here and there at various stores!    Step 5: Do it again next year Start out small and accumulate items over the years as your family grows! Give yourself a rule of thumb for prices that you will pay and go for it! This year our total budget was $100 for the entire family. We came in right under $60! I love to make it a challenge! I hope that you have enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed sharing my Frugal Easter Celebration with you! I will be sure to take pictures and share the results after this weekend! I am so excited! Just like the kids! Do you have any Easter tips and tricks to tell us about? Link up or leave a comment and share the knowledge!
Friday, January 9, 2009Publix Secrets Revealed! Learn How To Maximize Your Savings! Please note that this information could be true for your local Publix Grocery Store but I cannot verify any of this information for any other Publix store other than the one located here in Paula wrote in and asked about using Food Lion and Walgreens Coupons at our local Publix! I though that this was great information to share with all of the locals and other individuals who have Publix store that accept competitor coupons! This is not something that Publix advertises on their corporate site and each store has their own rules! Our Local Publix Accepts Coupons From The Following Competitors Kroger - Food Lion - Target - KMart - Walgreens - CVS - Rite Aid - Dollar General - Family Dollar Make sure that you go to each of the listed stores and sign up to receive emails. Often they will send you coupons that you can use at Publix! Using Food Lion Competitor Coupons: How To Navigate Food Lion FLIPS on HotCouponWorld Each week I check hotcouponworld for the newly released Food Lion Internet Printable Coupons t0 see if there is anything for me to use! This link will bring up several different posts on topics at Food Lion that the members are talking about! What you want to look for is the most recent post on "FLIPS" (food lion internet printables). Occasionally the forum moderator will combine the FLIPS into one post and call it the FLIP Organizer! You can go here to view the FLIP Organizer! Please note that this will not always be updated so it is best that you check the original link I gave above to make sure that you are not missing out on any coupons! There are new coupons each week! VERY IMPORTANT I ALWAYS check these before I go shopping each week at Publix to see if there is something that I can use! Sometimes there are $2 off Produce or $1/ Food Lion Eggs. If the coupons say that it is for a Food Lion brand product they can be used on a Publix brand product! Using Walgreens Competitor Coupons: Weekly Ad Coupons and EasySaver Coupons And Walgreens...well...I use to throw out the weekly ad until a few months ago. Anytime there is a $/$$ coupon in the ad, Publix will take it! This week is pretty slim pickin's. Another thing is that they will take the Walgreens Monthly E-saver Rebate Catalog coupons also. I had my brother pick me up a few of the catalogs on his way into town from a Walgreens in Acworth the other day BUT you can print them from walgreens.com also if you don't have access to a local store. You can go here directly to the PDF Catalog! I suggest that you go here to Walgreens.com to sign up for their emails! They will send out coupons for $/$$ occasionally and you will be one of the first to get one instead on relying on another site to post it up! NOTE: You cannot use a coupon from their weekly ad for a sale price (ex. Hunt's tomato sauce 3/$1) They consider this "Price matching" and they will not honor it! Only the $/$$ coupons! Using CVS Competitor Coupons: Email Coupons & Scanner/Receipt Coupons You can also use ANY CVS Coupons there! Note: You can also use any of the coupons that print out at the bottom of your CVS Receipts. Often there will be ones for products that you can purchase at Publix. Our local CVS has a scanner located in the middle of the store on the seasonal aisle. Be sure that you scan your CVS card each time you go to the store to see what coupons you have! Many will match up with current or future CVS deals or can be used at Publix! Here is an example of one that I used this past Saturday! CVS had a $1.50 off Colgate Maxfresh coupon that was emailed to me. I wasn't sure how much Publix charged for them but I printed it and took it in because I also had a $1/1 internet printable coupon from the Colgate website! It turned out that Publix had the Maxfresh toothpaste for $2.65 and I got it for just .15! I know that through CVS...toothpaste is one of the things that you can get plenty of for free but for .15 I couldn't pass it up! They also still have a $3/$15 that Publix will accept and a $3/ANY CVS Pharmacy Brand Item! Using Rite Aid Competitor Coupons Be sure to sign up with RiteAid.com to receive emails! Registering with the site will give you access to coupons for their members! ALWAYS check the weekly ad for $ off product coupons. A couple of weeks ago they had $2 off Chips Ahoy Cookies. Rite Aid had them for almost $5 per pack. Publix sells them for $2.63 and guess what...I got them for .63 that week! Using Target Coupons Target releases occasional coupon in the regular coupon inserts. You can go to hotcouponworld here to view the Target Coupon Generator. This program is set up so that you can enter the number of coupons you would like to print . YOU HAVE TO REGISTER TO ACCESS THE COUPON GENERATOR. Once you registered and on the main page you will go to "National Chain Stores", scroll down and select "Target", and click on the links that are for the Target Printable coupons! Family Dollar and Dollar General Make sure that you are on their mailing list along with being signed up to receive emails! Occasionally they will send out product coupons and $/$$ coupons that you can also use! THESE ARE THE RULES FOR STACKING COMPETITOR COUPONS AT PUBLIX! You can only use 2 coupons on the same item in the following manner...
$/$$ Rules:
Internet Printable Rules: Publix will accept most internet printable coupons from sites such as coupons.com or smartsource.com etc.
BEEPING REGISTER NOTICE: When You have too many coupons the registers beep at Publix and the Managers have to come over to enter a number sequence to unlock it and allow the cashier to continue scanning your coupons! I haven't quite figured it out yet but I think that there is 2 ways this happens! If you have more than 25 coupons AND/OR your number of coupons is higher than the number of items you have purchased (kind of like CVS). Using competitor coupons is one of the main reasons that I am able to save a constant 70% or more at Publix each week! Combining this method with the BOGO sales yields the highest savings that can only be done at this store! No other store in town accepts competitor grocery coupons! Publix is my #1 store! Many people that I teach my classes to, or just simply talk to, think that Publix is too high on their prices to shop for groceries there. This is true in one sense...but ONLY if you purchase the items at the regular shelf price. Walmart DOES have the lowest shelf price on many items and that is why most people do their shopping there! I use to be a Walmart shopper myself...before the coupons came along for me! In the last year I have only gone to Walmart 5 maybe 6 times and only to get things free with my coupons! Be sure to check out my Publix Shopping trips here, here, here, here, and here (just to name a few) to see how much you can really save at Publix! Don't Miss Out On The Weekly Deals Either! Check those out here each week! Let me help you save 70% or more by showing you the greatest deals each week! If you live close to or in Cartersville, GA go here to check out our monthly coupon club information! If you are local and would like me to give a coupon class to your local organization or to take a one-on-one coupon crash course go here for the details!
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