What Are Your Favorite Money Saving Tips?

Today I have a question for all of you.

What are your favorite money saving tips?

 Is it homemade laundry soap? Homemade cleaners?

I would love to hear your tips. Would you mind sharing?

A couple of my favorites are washing dishes by hand, menu planning, using the clothesline for certain laundry items, and we do not turn on any lights until it is dark outside. Why waste electricity or increase our bill when we have plenty of natural light?

So, now what are your tips?

 I am anxious to hear and learn some new money saving tips.

Time To Simplify

When my children were babies I would always say that I could not wait until they were older so they could join some activity.  As my daughter reached the age of three I put her in a ballet/tap class and she loved it.  When she got even older we would be rushing to about three to four activities a week.  That does not sound too bad but then throw my son into the mix and all of a sudden you have no free time. 

I became more and more burnt out.  I finally had to sit down and figure out a way to simplify our schedule.  Here is an example of our schedule when both my children played indoor soccer this past spring:

Sunday~church
Monday~school during the day and Girl Scouts at night from 5:30-7:00pm
Tuesday~work from 8:30am to 2:00pm and then both had Tae Kwon Do and then soccer practice.
Wednesday~school in morning ballet at 12:30-1:30
Thursday~work from 8:30am-2:00pm and the soccer in the evening.
Friday~school and then Tae Kwon Do at 3:15pm-4:15pm
Saturday~soccer games in morning

Our schedule was out of control and I had to fix it.

The hubby and I decided that each child would be able to participate in two activities each and Tae Kwon Do had to be one of them.  So that left one activity to choose.  My daughter was already in ballet at the time so she chose ballet as her second choice.  My son on the other hand had a little tougher choice; Cub Scouts or basketball.  Finally, after a few days he decided to go with Cub Scouts. 

Now that the blessings have chose their two activities I still had some more simplifying to do.  After much talk with the hubby we both decided that it would be good to stop working my part time job and go back to school.  Even though we need the money we know that hubby's promotion pay will be here in the next couple of months we decided that we can live on one income until then. 

So here is what our new schedule looks like:

Sunday~ church
Monday~school (for both kids and I) and nothing in evenings
Tuesday~school and Tae Kwon Do and son has Cub Scouts from 6:30-7:30pm.
Wednesday~school and then ballet and nothing in evenings.
Thursday~school and nothing in evenings.
Friday~school and Tae Kwon Do and daughter has Girl Scouts from 6:30-7:30pm.
Saturday~nothing

I am excited to see that we went from being busy six days a week to three days a week.  Also, we only have two nights of activities instead of three.  This will give us more family time which is very precious with the hubby having to defend our country.  Our new schedule begins next week and I am so excited. 

Simplifying can be so simple sometimes!

**I know I said each child has two activities but I feel that Girl Scouts is a great opportunity for girls.  Also, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts are great activities to add to a college resume ;) **

Tips for a Good Yard Sale

On Friday I discussed using Craigslist for a tool of bringing in more money to help our battle against debt.  If you missed the post you may read it here.  Well, another great tool that the hubby and I use is the good old fashioned yard sales.  I remember the very first yard sale we ever had; we could not believe how much money we had earned in one day.  Ever since that day we have about two yard sales a year.  We usually hold them at the start of Spring and towards the end of Summer.  Here are some tricks we have learned that really help us boost our sales.

99 Cent Day

If you ask my kids what Monday is their response will be 99 cent day at Value Village, and I would have to agree with them.  If you are not familiar with Value Village it is a thrift store chain.  Usually on Thursday or Friday they offer 50 percent off and on Monday they have 99 cents on certain color tags.  For instance this past Monday all blue tags were 99 cents.  So my two little frugal blessings of mine walk up and down the clothing aisle looking for that specific color tag.  If they happen to find that color tag they will say "mom here is a tag!" It does not matter what it looks like, how many stains it has, or if there is a hole in it, my blessings will find that tag. 

I have lived here almost nine months and did not know about 99 cent days until a friend of mine told me about it and now I go each Monday.  I do not go just to go; I am in need of shoes for my daughter and both the blessings need jeans and I am in need of shirts.  Since I have started going I have spent about $15 and have acquired a lot of clothing not just for the blessings but for myself.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the items but of course I forgot, but just imagine about three plastic grocery store bags, full.  I am really excited about two shirts I found my son for next year.  One is a light yellow and the other a light red both polo shirts from Lands End for 99 cents!  What a deal that was! 

If you shop at thrift stores make sure to ask if they have any bag sales or any other promotions they offer. 

For more Frugal Friday jump on over to Life As Mom.

The Forever Neighbor on Facebook and Twitter!

For all my Facebookers and Twitters out there:
The Forever Neighbor is on Facebook!  You may click on the Facebook image in my sidebar or the link below:

The Forever Neighbor "Like" Page

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The Forever Neighbor on Twitter

Hope to see you over there!

SWAGBUCKS!!!

One may be thinking "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE SWAGBUCKS???"

Some people may know about Swagbucks either through other bloggers, Facebook, or just word of mouth.  I found out about Swagbucks from other bloggers, and heard how they were using Swagbucks to get birthday presents and/or Christmas presents for FREE.  That is right, for FREE!!!

Swagbucks is like Google but when you search you can win a Swagbuck or more than one.  You are able to redeem your Swagbucks for prizes, and there are a lot of prizes to choose from.  For example, I redeem my Swagbucks when I have enough for a $5 Amazon gift card.  You are able to redeem higher gift cards but when one does the math it is more frugal to buy the $5 card. 

There are so many ways to win then by just searching.  Some ways to win a Swagbuck is to download their toolbar.  I have downloaded the toolbar and at random I will earn a one to three Swagbucks for just having the toolbar.  Also, today I had a message on my toolbar and it was from the TSG (The Swag Guy).  When I opened the message there was a code for me to enter on the homepage, and I won 22 Swagbucks!!!  One can receive Swagbucks by referring friends.  Also, one can receive codes from being a fan on Facebook, and also they post codes on Twitter. 

Are you interested yet?

Codes, you ask? Well, the TSG will leave a "code" on either Facebook or Twitter and there is a time limit to redeem the Swagbuck.  Once you have the "code", you will need to go to the Swagbuck page and enter the code.  Then you will receive whatever the amount of the "code".

Another thing is, right now Swagbuck is offering 13 Swagbucks for uploading a picture for your account.  You have until April 1st to get it in, then in the first week of April you will receive your 13 Swagbucks!!!  It only takes about a minute if that to upload your photo.

Still interested????

 The best part is sign up is for FREE!!! If you sign up right now you will be given 30 Swagbucks, to start off with!!!

Swagbucks is a big thing at our house.  When the hubby receives a Swagbuck for searching, he will say "I just got you some more Swagbucks."  I plan on using my Amazon gift cards for Christmas this year, and to be really frugal about it Amazon offers free shipping!! So I could possibly get all my Christmas presents for FREE!!! I am not complaining about that!!!

Interested???

Good, you can sign up for Swagbucks by clicking on any of the blue links.  Good luck and have fun!

Cross Country Travels

In March of 2009 we received news that our family would be moving from Fort Meade, Maryland to Fairbanks, Alaska.  We were extremely excited for our new assignment, considering we were trying to be stationed in Alaska since 2002.  One day in the near future I will write about how God truly worked in our life's during that time.  We truly saw His hand in everything that had occurred from the time we found out to our arrival in Alaska (believe me we saw Him before & now but really saw His work during the move). 

Once we decided that we were driving to Alaska, I instantly thought about what things I could plan for the kids to do in the car.  So from the time we found out in March I started preparing.  Most of the items I was able to pick up from yard sales, or clearance sections at stores.  This is just the list of items for the car I had gotten for the two blessings to keep them occupied:

*about five coloring books each (used only for the trip & they chose the books)
*crayons (and also some extra just in case)
*15-18 movies that I purchased on clearance (the blessings could only watch them on the trip, no viewing of movies until the day we left Maryland)
*about 50 books for my daughter (all from yard sales and yes she read about 30 of those books)
*leapsters
*DS game systems
*laptops (learning laptops for children)
*toy cars for son
*toy dinosaurs for son
*paper to color on
*cd player for daughter
*an adventure book for things & places we visited or saw
*blanket (the blessings had more fun hiding in their blankets then anything else, I believe boredom may have been setting in ;)

For some reason typing out my list does not seem like a lot but trust me IT was A LOT!!!  Once I purchased the items I would put them in a "special" bag designated for our trip.  The kids had a lot of fun choosing items, and because they could only use it for our trip they were more eager for the LOOOOONG trip. 

Before we left Maryland we decided to take a whole month to get to Alaska, so we were not in any hurry, so we took our time driving.  We did stop at all the Welcome Centers in each state, and drove about ten hours a day, depending on where we were heading.  The movies really helped keep their attention for about two hours, and then they were ready to color, or their DS games or whatever else they had. 

Stay on the lookout for our "Trip Across The Nation and Then Some"