Ink Refills $1 at Walgreens, tomorrow only!

Tomorrow, April 22nd Walgreens will be offering all of their print cartridge refills for only $1. There are normally $12.99 so this is a real steal! If you are like me and constantly printing coupons this will be worth stopping by for. This price is good on both black and white and color cartridges. The coupon is in their weekly circular (available in store.) Check here before you head out to be sure that they refill ink on you printer's make/model

50 free 4x6 prints at Winkflash

Winkflash has a great deal going on for 50 free 4x6's with just $0.99 shipping. I love great deals on prints, there are several great places out there so that you never have to pay. The bonus being that I don't have to leave the house to get the deals! Check out Winkflash here.

Awesome deal on copy paper! Grab this one quick!

Tracie over at Penny Pinchin' Mom has a great scenario for cheap copy paper.

I love this deal because I don't have to leave home to get it. :) I just snagged mine. This won't last long so grab it now if you want it!

Swagbucks totals so far!!

As well as posting totals for spending/saving I wanted to also let you know how I'm doing in my Christmas savings. I've mentioned Swagbucks before and I wanted to let you know how much I have earned since I started in mid February. $55.00 in gc's at Amazon! Wow! I didn't even have to do anything but use their search engine. It's free to use and easy to download their toolbar. If you are interested in signing up to earn free money for Christmas (or whatever) just go here. You will earn 30 swagbucks just for signing up. Can't beat free money!

I had an amazing lady at one of my coupon seminars recently tell me about a rewards program at my bank that I didn't even know about. Personally I bank at America's First Credit Union, but maybe your bank has a similar program, it's definitely worth looking into. The way it works is every time you use your debit card to make a puchase you earn 1 point for every $6.00 you spend. BUT, if you use your debit card and run it as a credit (where you have to sign for the purchase) you earn 1 point for every $3.00 you spend. This is definitely the way to go, you are earning twice as fast as well as keeping your pin number safe by using the credit option. When this lady told me about this program I came home and looked it up immediately...I had enough points to equal over $100.00 in gift cards!!! Since this too is "found money" so to speak we are choosing to hold onto it and wait until closer to Christmas to spend it on gifts.
I'm striving for a "no out of pocket spending" Christmas. Can we do it? I will keep you updated!

Meal Plan for the week of April 4-10

Though our eating out challenge from March is over (we failed miserably!) I find that I do so much better when I have a plan. Even though I'm home almost always I am busy teaching and taking care of things in the house and hate it when I don't really give dinner a thought until 5:00 or so. Uh-oh. Yeah, by then it's a little too late. When I make a plan in writing I usually stick to it and dinnertime is much smoother.

Here is what we will be having for dinner this week.

Monday: Chicken alfredo & salad.
Tuesday: Pork roast in the crock pot, potatoes, steamed veggies.
Wednesday: Chicken fingers & macaroni and cheese. We almost always do this on Wednesdays to get to church on time.
Thursday: Breakfast for supper. Again, we almost always do this on Thursdays because I have a lot of prep for our Friday activities.
Friday:Chicken stir fry with veggies and rice.
Saturday: BBQ pork sandwiches, (leftovers from Tues.) potato salad, corn.

Saving and Spending Totals for March

I'm sorry this is several days late in coming. I'm also sorry for how seldom I've posted the last few weeks. I don't know what else to say other than life happens. We've been super busy trying to wrap up year-end school projects, I've had work things going on...it's crazy just being a wife and mom mostly! But I am back and am constantly trying to stay on track to let you all know of the best deals around town.

On with the totals! I deposited $256.00 this month into the savings account just from coupon savings and rebates that have come in.

Rebates in March
3-2 $10.00 Kraft
3-5 $15.00 Olay Renegenerist
3-8 $10.00 Heineken NBPR
3-9 $8.00 Coors NBPR
3-16 $10.00 Coors Light NBPR
3-20 $8.00 Coors NBPR
3-25 $10.00 Rite Aid SCR

It was a great month in rebates, many of these I sent off in January so it certainly isn't immediate gratification but still fun to get free or almost free stuff!

I didn't keep up with the $ amount of donations in toiletries but I know that we did a good bit especially considering that I hardly shopped this month, I missed 1 week altogether!


Our spending this month was $215.00 or an average of $53.00 weekly. I know that is much better than I was spending last year but I am trying to stay under $50.00 a week so I will continue to fine tune my spending.

Do you track your spending/savings monthly? I highly encourage you to do this, it will really open your eyes to the amount of money you could be saving. It may open up a way for your family to take that dream vacation, afford a new car or meet some other need in your life. Hope that helps!