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5 Painless Ways to Save $100 (or more!) this year.

In: Money Makers, Money Savers

My friend, Crystal over at her blog, was inspired by an article from the Tightwad Gazette – “Ten Painless Ways to Save $100 in a year”.  You can read what she had to say here at her blog.  She did encourage us to come up with our own lists, though – so, here it is, folks – the way we’re saving quite a bit more than $100 this year – painlessly! 🙂

1. Get free movie rentals and game rentals from Redbox or with My Coke Rewards points.  Redbox has several free movie codes here, and by using the bottle tops from Coke products, you can earn points to exchange for free movie rentals from Blockbuster here.    (FYI:  Redbox is a new brand of movie rentals that actually utilizes a vending machine!  You can find them in most Bi-Lo’s here in Greenville, and in several other stores across the country, including some McDonald’s even.  The benefit is that the movies are only $1 a day – so if you have the discipline to return it after you watch it, you can see movies for MUCH cheaper than Blockbuster prices.  For a list of available locations in your area, click here.

2.  Always have sweet tea in the fridge.  Before my husband dropped his Coke addiction of 5 years about 2 months ago (which is how we got all those free movies and game rentals!), we were spending lots of money on his caffeine requirements for the day.  One things that’s significantly helped is to always have sweet tea in the fridge – that keeps him from looking for something else, or feeling like he needs to go make a CVS run for more Coke.

3.  Do surveys on e-rewards.com.  Through this you can earn “cash” to buy things like $25 gamestop gift cards (my husband’s favorite!), restaurant gift certificates and shopping gift certificates.  They make for great gifts.  The surveys are super easy and are legit, not like some surveys on cashcrate.com, which can sometimes lead you down a path of neverending offers.  The best thing is that they tell you from the get-go how long each one will take, and how much $$ you can earn – so you can accept of decline them as you have time.

4.  Shop all year for Christmas – I have LOTS of Christmas gifts already put aside in my closet (Becca and Beth – don’t go looking!!) from great sales I found this summer or even at the end of the last winter season.  Of course, the buy.com and google checkout promotion helped a lot too! 🙂

5. Use a hotel rewards credit card.  Of course – this is can be a scary thing for some people and is even looked down on in some circles, but it’s worked well for us (and really kinda helps keep us in check with our spending)!  We have a credit card with Choice Privleges that actually gives points towards free hotel nights.  There’s no annual fee, and the interest rate is low – although, we usually don’t take advantage of that because we pay our bill off every month.  We like to cash in every year for our vacations, and will be taking a 6 day/5 night stay in Savannah, GA the first week of September for free – at a really nice hotel with an awesome breakfast! 🙂

So that’s us – anybody else have some great ideas out there?  I’d love to hear!


Kim


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3 comments

  • April

    August 15, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    Something my mom does is round-up the change on the checks she writes out of her checkbook. So if the check was $10.14 since she would write $11.00 out of her checkbook! You would be amazed how fast that adds up! Theres times she has a couple hundred dollars different than her bank statements so she carries it for a few months then spends it! That doesn’t work for me because I’m OCD and my checkbook has to balance to the penny! but it might work for you or someone else!! )

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  • April

    August 15, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Yes I know I misspelled cents

    Reply

  • MommyChronicles

    August 20, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    I am sooo with your husband. Three weeks ago I gave up my Dr. Pepper addiction of about 15 years by switching to sweet tea. Kudos!
    We canceled the premium cable package and now get just the local channels (dropped my bill by about $90/month!) and just use Blockbuster Online ($25/month). We wait until our favorite tv shows come on DVD and rent them. So much better, and we’re not harassed by commercials. Plus, our family time is now playing cards or going to the park rather than watching tv!

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