Recently, I discovered fabulous printable grocery coupons at Kraftfoods.com to take with me when I went shopping for food at my favorite store, Wal mart!
Included were terrific coupons for Cool Whip, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Ritz and Triscuit Crackers and more! Those were the things I love and wanted to get anyway!
While I was on the Kraft website, I came across this terrificFlag Cake recipe! It was so impressive looking, yet sounded super easy, so I decided to make it for our Memorial Day picnic!
Many of the ingredients in this patriotic cake were items I got with the coupons.
Most of these Kraft coupons gave me $1 off the price of the item and combined with the low prices at Wal-Mart, I was able to get them for practically nothing! That’s just the way I like it!
Last night we decided to take advantage of the FREE Birthday Entree that my husband had received in his e-mail from Moe’s!
If you sign up at Moe’s, they will send you a coupon around the time of your birthday and you get an entree absolutely FREE! Love that!
I have found the Moe’s Kid’s Size entrees are plenty for me & really not much smaller than the regular sized entrees. Plus–they are only $ 3.29 and you get a combo with a small drink and cookie! That brought the entire cost of our meal to $3.55 plus $1 we put in the tip jar! That’s only $4.55 for 2 people to eat dinner! What a deal!
This week we will be going to redeem our FREE coupon at Qdoba Mexican Grill for my husband’s Birthday Entree! They will send you a coupon for a Free meal if you sign up on their website!
Anyone have any other suggestions for great deals, freebies of any kind or FREE meals? Please share them with us!
There are some fantastic deals right now if you plan to do any traveling, since the economy in the doldrums!
Recently, I took a trip to Chicago and needed a rental car while I was there. I found a fabulous deal at Enterprise Rent a Car through Hotwire.com for a midsized car at only $ 19 per day!
When I arrived at O’Hare Airport, I was given a BRAND NEW Chevy Malibu–with only 11 miles on it! It worked like a charm and even better- it smelled like a new car!
I am traveling in Chicago for several days and found another CHEAP deal for a fabulous hotel room on one of my favorite discount sites for hotel rooms and rental cars: Hotwire.com
Look at this fantastic completely updated room for only $ 39 a night! It is in a great location near everything I wanted, including Woodfield Mall and Ikea!
This room is in a Holiday Inn Express Hotel and it is super! I initially was concerned about booking at Holiday Inn, not knowing what the quality might be, but these hotels are geared for the business traveler and are terrific!
Inside the chest beside the desk is a refrigerator and a microwave so I can even have a snack or light meal in my room!
I also have noticed that the lower price hotels include FREE Internet access and a free breakfast!
As we mentioned in the last post, I’m Drowning in Debt, What Do I do Now?, there are 2 components in the plan to eliminate debt. They are: spend less of what you currently earn and make more money.
Today,we will look at the expense side of things. Remember, this is about building an exciting future, not about dull budgeting and deprivation!
To keep you motivated, I highly recommend cutting pictures from magazines so you know what you are aiming for and to inspire you to stay on track when the going gets tough or you feel deprived.
Long ago, I cut out a picture of a beautiful home as a short term goal and a beautiful beach as a long term goal. The beach photo reminded me that I want to be able to sit on the sand some day and NOT work hard every day.
I decided to sacrifice spending now for financial freedom and life at the beach later! Now that you know what the goal is–you can determine how to get there!
If you need clothes, buy them on sale or at the thrift store or at a garage sale. I buy almost brand new clothing that way! Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!
Adjust the the thermostat to save energy costs.
Cancel Cable TV.
Do not smoke!
Get your books and movies FREE from the library!
Cutting these expenses will give you cash to pay down your debt, so you can begin to save and invest.
If that sounds extreme or harsh–ask yourself these questions: Do I really want to be rich or don’t I?
Will spending on this item get me closer to being rich or keep me poor?
Would it surprise you to know that you can buy coupons on eBay that can greatly reduce the cost of buying groceries? Recently, a grocery store in our town offered triple coupons for a week! They would triple the value of any coupon up to 99 cents! What a deal!
The technique I have used to capitalize on this offer makes the process super easy! I signed up for the e-mail version of the weekly specials to be sent to me on the first day of the new week. I then check what they are offering as super deals that week, paying particular attention to the Buy One Get One Free offers. I went to eBay and in the Search Field, I type in the names of the products that are on special to see if there are coupons available.
Recently, I was able to find 10 peanut butter coupons for 40 cents off each, for total cost of $ 1.49 plus 42 cents postage. That’s a grand total of $1.91 for 10 coupons! That’s a $ 1.20 reduction for each jar of peanut butter! I order the coupons from the eBay seller on the first day of the store sale, so they can be mailed to me right away so I get them in plenty of time while the sale is still in progress.
I took these to the store, where my final cost, after all the deductions, came to 30 cents per jar of peanut butter! Combined with all the other coupons I had for other products, I was able to save 50% on my grocery bill!
That’s like someone handing me $25.00 cash that I didn’t have to work for! I will take it!
I accomplished this task in 10 minutes drinking coffee at the kitchen table and you can too! It couldn’t be easier!
Did you know that one of the largest profit centers of an eye doctor’s business is the sales of glasses and contact? In this day of reduced insurance company reimbursements, eye doctors are looking for profits wherever they can– and selling new glasses and contacts is a cash cow!
Several years ago I had the good fortune to run into a man that had worked as an optometrist at the large ophthalmology practice where I had my vision tested each year. He told me that the lab that fabricated the glasses ordered through this fancy eye doctor’s office was the exact same lab that made glasses for the vision centers at Wal-Mart!
Before this conversation, I had always pictured a minimum wage Wal-Mart employee sitting in a back room, piecing together the item most important to my eyesight– my glasses. I thought I would be compromising my precious vision if I ordered glasses from a place like that– just so I could save money! Not So!
Now that I know my glasses are being made in the same way at the same place as the the fancy eye doctors office orders–I only get my glasses from Wal-Mart. The last time I ordered a new pair of glasses, they were 40% less than what the fancy office had quoted me for the identical product! Wow! I also order my brand name contact lenses from Wal-Mart for the same reason!
It is the law that you are entitled to your vision prescriptions, so you can take it anywhere you want to have it filled. Get your eyes tested by the ophthalmologist at the doctor’s office, then order the glasses elsewhere. The lovely people at the vision center will even adjust them if they ever become loose!
Invest the money you save, so YOU get richer–NOT your eye doctor!
Did you know that the moment a car is driven off the lot, it is worth alot LESS than when it was purchased 5 minutes earlier? One of the very best and easiest things you can do to save money, build wealth and get rich is to ONLY buy USED older model cars.
Remember the rule we have practiced for 32 years–We try to only invest in appreciating assets–NOT depreciating assets. Because our goal has been to save as much as possible, we have NEVER invested in new cars!
Buying used cars has put loads of extra money in our hands which we used to buy stocks, mutual funds and investment real estate. We’d rather gain wealth than try to impress other people and make automobile companies richer!
So, in keeping with that philosophy, 3 years ago we purchased a used company car, as it was about to be sent to the auto auction. The car is a 2002 Ford Taurus, it has 170,000 miles on it and we only paid a couple thousand dollars for it. It’s not super pretty, but it gets us where we want to go!
We figure we have saved $12,600 on that car in the past 3 years, since the average car payment is about $350 per month times 36 months = $12,600. Invest that money for 20 years and you’d have almost $60,000 if you could earn 8% on the money! The car still runs, so we are continuing to save money each month!
We’ll take the money rather than the new car or the admiring glances!
The other day, my 23 year old daughter called me to ask the name of the bagel shop where I get fabulous sun dried tomato bagels because she wanted some of them. I gave her the name of the local bakery and told her they have bins off to the side marked “Last Night’s Bagels” and they are half price.
In my typical frugal fashion I said “Get them out of that bin and ask if they’ll give you 2 packages for $ 2.49” ! She said Ok–I will try. She was amazed! They gave her 12 bagels for $ 2.49– Just for asking!
I discovered this bargain several months ago, when I was in the bagel shop and spotted this bin. I decided to give it a try and buy a package of 6 bagels for $2.49. I had become reluctant to pay the outrageous higher price of $ 1.29 for ONE “fresh” bagel, so I thought– Hey, how BAD can they be?
When I got to the cash register that first time, the lady took one look at me, dressed in my garage sale appropriate clothes after a long morning of scouring yard sales and she said–You know what? Right now they are 2 Packages for $ 2.49! I got the message! She thought I was POOR– so she was going to help me out and give me extra bagels for FREE!
I said Well alrighty then and grabbed another sleeve of 6 yummy bagels! I got 12 bagels for a grand total cost of $ 2.49! That’s 21 cents per bagel!
That saved me over $ 12 for 12 bagels! That’s $ 12 free money–that I didn’t have to earn by working!
We lightly toasted the bagels and they made fabulous sandwiches! They were great! There was NOTHING wrong with them! Now every time I go to the bagel shop–I ask them –Could I have 2 packages of day old bagels for $ 2.49? They ALWAYS say YES!
Try it next time you have a taste for bagels!
Be generous and get a whole bunch of the bagels and donate them to the food pantry so other people can enjoy them too!
In 1977, after having just gotten married after graduating from college, we were DEAD BROKE– and we didn’t intend to stay that way for long!
We both have degrees in Business and learned that through hard word, perseverance and frugal living it is possible to save and invest to build wealth, especially when you start young.
Our quest to get rich began when we had a fateful conversation with a friend of ours named Pat. In the course of visiting with Pat, he casually mentioned that he needed to drive over to his 4 investment properties and pick up the monthly rents! Pat was the same age as us, 23, and he already owned 4 duplexes! We were stunned! How could this be??
Over the years, I learned something that that has served me well! When I see someone accomplishing something I would like to do too, I ASK them directly– How Did You Do That?? So I asked Pat to explain how he accomplished this amazing feat!
Pat said– It was easy! He told us he saved like crazy by setting a very strict budget based on the money he made at his job at an insurance agency and, because he wanted to accomplish his goals quickly, he supplemented his incomeby working at his family’s sweet corn business- so he could save more.
Pat’s family had financed all 5 children’s college educations through the selling of sweet corn at a farm stand on the side of the road in the summertime! They all worked very hard and made lots of money that was split between each child!
Pat decided to defer his spending and build his wealth NOW by saving a large percentage of what he earned and use that money as a down payment on investment properties. When he purchased a property, Pat would move into each duplex, so it was considered owner occupied and he only needed to put 10% down. He then would repeat the process!
He’d save the money, move into the property, live there while he continued to save for the next property and buy another property and move into it! Then, Pat rented the entire property he had just vacated. He did that 4 times!
We said WE CAN DO THAT TOO! And we did it!
While aggressively saving money from our jobs, we also took on piecemeal assembly work for my company that we did at home on the weekends so we could save even more! We didn’t sell sweet corn, but we utilized the same concept. Take on extra work and save all that extra income!
At the end of our first year, we bought our first piece of real estate!
When we were married in 1977, after graduating from college, our entire savings was $500.
We promptly spent that $ 500 on a used and functional (but very ugly) pea-green colored Plymouth Duster car. You know the type—similar to the one on the Dukes of Hazards. The “ugly” car worked fine and got me where I wanted to go. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t new, but it worked.
My husband was a salesman, so his company gave him a car. So—at that point we had 2 great cars at a total cash outlay of $ 500. Not bad. But, now we were BROKE.
Both my husband and I had majored in Business is college because it gave us a marketable skill (we could get a job) and it would help us understand the workings of personal finance and building wealth. We learned that rich people do things differently than people that were always struggling to pay the bills.
The # 1 thing that has influenced ALL our buying decisions is this: Whenever possible, spend your money on items that will go UP in value—not on things that go DOWN in value. Thus–the $ 500 “ugly” car. It would have been throwing money in the garbage can to buy a brand new expensive car! We wanted to BE rich– not just LOOK Rich!
Our goal was to purchase real estate as soon as possible to build equity and have a place of our own. That required some serious saving for a down payment. We figured we needed to save more than 10% on a $ 70,000 purchase price for all the costs . That meant we would need to save approximately $ 12,000 by the end of ONE YEAR–that’s $ 1,000 a MONTH.
Considering we were each only earning about $ 14,000 a year in 1977—that was almost 50% of our pay we wanted to save!
AND WE DID IT!
Not only did we do it ONCE—we repeated that procedure 3 times in a 5-year period!
The primary motivator behind our intense saving effort was we did NOT want to rent an apartment more than one year—since the rent money was making the landlord rich—not us.
We bought duplexes rather than single-family homes because we could own, rent and control a larger value property. We would rent half the building, until we moved out, then we’d rent it all, so the tenants were paying the mortgage off! What a deal! Frugal to Rich!
