Progress... and my favorite blogs!

Hello everyone!  I apologize for not posting much in the past month.  We have had a lot going on here!

Financially we are not getting that far ahead yet.  In January my husband was driving down to South Carolina with my brother-in-law to pick up my niece and they had an accident due to the weather.  So, there was an expense we did not plan for.  Then, we needed new tires for that truck and also transmission work.  But, the good news is this month we paid it off, and actually now have the title in our hands.  That is a first for our family, ever since we had newer vehicles we have never paid one off. I guess our lesson learned is to keep money in our emergency fund!

This month was busy for our family because my niece just came for a visit last week.  We had my husband's firefighter installation dinner - he is captain with the volunteer fire department so that is a big deal for us.  My work has become pretty demanding in the last few weeks, and starting next week I have two people from Europe coming for a three-week visit where I have to prepare training.  Whew! So... I probably will not be posting many deals for the next few weeks.

The good news is that I have been sticking to my allowance and I have been able to save some money! In addition to that we have reduced our monthly spending so I have more to apply to our credit cards.  We are looking into refinancing our credit card bills with my work's credit union which I think will save us some money in the long run.

In that case - I thought I would post some of my favorite blogs that I use to find deals!

Coupon Teacher - This site is one of my favorites! She seems very realistic in her posts, and I know she works as a teacher, so for me, as a working mom, it's easy to follow her blog posts! She usually has the deals for the national stores such as Rite Aid, CVS, etc, but she is not local to me so some of her posts don't apply for me.  Please check her site out!

Cherry Picker - My favorite thing about Cherry Picker is that she is a Giant Eagle shopper! I think she is from Ohio so sometimes her local coupons are different from ours but each week she has a great Giant Eagle post! I'll try to link to it weekly when I am reading it to pass it on to all of you! In addition to the Giant Eagle posts she has some great deals!

Couponing to Disney - I love this site because it has so many fun offers.  Kristin, who runs the site, loves Disney and her goal on her savings is to save for Disney. I like her thought that you can use couponing and savings to reach your goal, whether it is a trip to Disney, like hers, or getting out of debt, like mine.

Saving Toward a Better Life - This is one of the newer blogs I started following.  I really like this one because she offers a wide variety of savings, freebies, etc.  She has a feature on her site called "Contact Us" where she picks a company to contact on their website, and usually with feedback a company will send you coupons! This is a great way to get hard to find coupons (like Jif) or coupons for things you buy all the time.  She has a young son so she has a lot of deals that would interest parents.

Hope you enjoy these sites as much as I do! I will post more later!

One of my favorite sites - Eversave

Have you seen all of the daily deal sites out there?  One of my favorites is Eversave.  They are currently my favorite because, for all current members, they credited our accounts with $10! (This happened today, and I'm still full of the awesome)  *note, "Full of the awesome" is an Aunt-Becky-ism... for those of you not familiar with Aunt Becky, check out her blog sometime for some great entertainment!

So, back to Eversave.  They have some great daily deals, you can sign up for your city, or there are also some nationwide deals.

This is how it works: You receive e-mails from Eversave about their daily deals. If you like the deal, you can purchase it.  One of the recent deals I used was $12 for $25 (or so) worth of magazines from Blue Dolphin.  Those of you who know me personally know that I love magazines!  So I used the voucher to buy All You magazine (which has tons of coupons!!) and Redbook, to spend the difference.

Another way to make Eversave work for you is referrals.  Once you are a member, each member you refer that makes a purchase means a $12 credit in your account. 

Also, as a new member, you receive a $5 credit just for joining!  This means that you can get an extra $5 off of any deal!  I used mine to purchase the magazine voucher for only $7! (An All You subscription costs over $20 normally)

Also, to sweeten the deal, members that join TODAY or TOMORROW (12/22) can use the coupon code FIRSTBUY to get an extra $5 off of any deal purchased today or tomorrow!

Happy Shopping!!

Disclosure: The link to Eversave above is my referral link, and if you make a purchase, I will get a credit to my account in addition to the benefits you will receive!

One of my favorite sites - RetailMeNot

Have you heard of RetailMeNot? No? It's one of my favorite sites! It has coupon codes available for over 65,000 stores!

One of my best saving money trick for shopping online (besides using Ebates for every purchase, if possible) is going to Google and typing *store you are shopping at* and coupon code.  At least 90% of the time, I find an offer that I can use for my purchase, and most of the time, the coupon code is on RetailMeNot.  You can use these coupon codes to save extra money, in addition to the cash back in your Ebates account!

Another fun thing about RetailMeNot (well, I'm an online dork) is sharing the codes.  If you sign up on the site, you can track codes shared and money saved using the site.  I like to submit any coupon codes I can find, and since I've been using the site for almost a year now, I've submitted 257 codes and according to the site, saved others $33,066!  When you use a coupon code to make a purchase, if you check "it worked for you" it will ask you approximately how much you've saved.

So, next time you make a purchase online, I suggest checking out RetailMeNot!

They also have printable coupons, and shopping tips for your favorite stores!