Saving Money on Insurance

Even though this doesn't have much to do with coupons, it does deal with saving money, which I know we all love!  I received our auto and home renewals last week and thought the rates were fine.  The auto insurance actually dropped by a buck (whoo hooo) and the home went up a bit but I figured that was because of rates always going up and because we added water backup coverage (I think that was about $60-$80).  I wished the house was a bit lower but I figured there really wasn't anything I could do because I was not going to lower my coverage to save a few dollars.  I just chalked it up as one of the necessary evils of owning a home.  I had gotten an email from my agent a few days after I received the renewal notices and she said the premium had increased a couple hundred dollars from the year before and she had asked the company to run my insurance score to see if it went up for possibly a better rate.  Well guess what, it did go up!!  This lowered our premium by $233!  I am so super excited as its been a expensive month already and with hubby getting his shoulder done this week I was bummin at all the crazy expenses lately!  So lesson learned here, if you aren't thrilled with your rate, call and ask them if they can run your insurance credit score to see if it went up.  If not, you can always shop around for the best price, there are tons of companies out there who would love your business! 

What a week!

Well this has been quite a week let me tell you!  My boss was out all week on vacation and of course EVERYTHING just had to go haywire.  Worked some long hours and needless to say I've been beat all week!  My classes started last week, and I had stats on Thursday.  I have to admit the teacher is so awesome so I'm actually looking forward to the class.  He reminds me of a mix of Santa Claus and a class clown.  He actually makes stats interesting...if there is such a thing!  My other class starts on Tuesday, its some dumb business analysis class, and from rumors I hear the teacher kind of sucks!  I'm so not looking forward to it but at least I'll know people in that class, so we can be miserable together.

We decided to get carpet downstairs (we live in a quad so its not a REAL basement but its our sons toy room and our laundry room).  We lost power a few months ago for a couple of days and of course the sump pump stopped working (we didn't even think of that damn thing) and our basement was in a few inches of water.  We steam cleaned it and everything just to get it back together until we could get some quotes.  We ended up going with Empire Today, they had done our sons bedroom a couple years ago and we really liked them.  They will be coming out on Weds.  The price he quoted and the end price were over $500 difference, I can't believe how much they mark this crap up, it really infuriates me.  Hubby and I ripped up the carpet and padding yesterday and my parents came over to help move the stuff out today - they rock! 

Needless to say the house has been neglected and so have my coupons!  I did hit up Meijer on Saturday for some good deals, I'll post those with a pic later on.  Today Kmart started their doubles (up to $2, supposedly a limit of 10 coupons, but my Kmart doesn't care how many you have), and I just had to go there.  I have to say for once I wasn't really impressed.  None of the normal stuff was free after coupon or maybe it was just because I used most of my coupons the last two rounds.  Who knows.  I'm sure as I'm clipping them tonight while watching DH I'll find some good deals.  I did get 5 boxes of Hartz treats, 1 can of Resolve, 5 boxes of Kelloggs Special K (buy 5 boxes get $5 off instantly, combined with $1 off Q's made them free) and 4 boxes of Visine for $1.74.  Not too shabby considering I love this Resolve stuff and we're out and our son and my hubby LOVE Special K and I was just told last week we were out of it.  Meijer has some good deals this week too which I'll post later with my pic and totals.

We're still eating out of the stockpile but honestly I feel like I miss goingn to the grocery store or something, I'm sure its saved a good amount and I know I could do better, I'll post the totals later for so far.  Yesterday I made the broccoli cheese soup and was able to freeze two cans of it for another winter meal.  Tonight we are having turkey mushroom meatloaf.  This week we willl eat leftovers or sandwiches for lunch.  On Friday my hubby is having shoulder surgery so please pray his Aflac comes through and pays while he is off of work.  Anyone ever have any experiences with Aflac?  I'm just so nervous for some reason.

Favorite Deals This Week

Walgreens

Thermacare 1ct. - $2.49 - get $2.49 RR
Use $1/1 coupon
FREE + $1 profit!

Carefree liners $1.99 - get $1.99 RR
Use $1 coupon from 8/30 SS
FREE + $1 profit!

Target

Market Pantry single string cheese .40
Use $1/2 coupon
FREE!

Meijer

Del Monte veggies - .69 each
Use $1/5 coupon in last weeks paper and $1/3 from Meijer Mealbox here
Buy 15 to get the price for .16 a can - this is rock bottom and a great stockpile item

Crystal Light - $2
Use $2 coupon from 9/13ss and Meijer Mealbox

What are your most favorite deals this week?

Two yummy and quick recipes

So here are two recipes that I really enjoy.  The alfredo one I made a couple weekends ago and we all loved it, we actually think that it was better the second day!  The other is a soup I made last year that I can't wait to make this year - they are both perfect for fall/winter recipes!  Most of this stuff you'll have on hand, which was pretty nice.  I never seem to have the ingredients on hand when I find a new recipe.

Crockpot Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo

Broccoli Cheese Soup

3 cups water
3 cups chicken stock
3 bags broccoli steamers (could use fresh if you have any left from the garden!)
3/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 package kraft american cheese slices
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 cup milk
1 cup light cream
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup cold water
1/3 cup all purpose white flour

In large saucepan, bring the water (3 cups) and stock to a boil.  Add the broccoli and onion; boil for 10 to 12 minutes.  Add the cheese, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until cheese melts.  Add the milk, cream and butter.  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.

Add the water (1/2 cup) to the flour and mix until smooth.  Add slowly to the hot soup, stirring rapidly.  Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the soup is the consistency of heavey cream.  Serve with rolls.

Hope you enjoy these as much as we do!

MIA

Sorry I've been MIA for a few days, but we've been preparing for our garage sale that started on Thursday and will end (finally!) tomorrow.  My aunt did one a couple weeks ago and I put a few boxes in hers and made $156 so I decided to participate in our sub sale to see if I could get more!  I put some stockpile stuff in there as well as some junk from our house.  So far I am at $130ish and we still have tomorrow to go!  I'm so happy because all of this will be going into our vacation fund for our cruise in December!  Its kind of tiring and overwhelming because all your energy and time goes into sitting outside (which has been gorgeous weather so I can't complain about that!) but my house is in some serious need of TLC. 

We've still been keeping up with the stockpile challenge.  I've been taking turkey sandwiches to lunch with some type of snack and my hubby has been coming home for lunch (as usual) and either making a sandwich or eating the leftovers from the night before.  Today we ran out of milk so I ran to Meijer and spent $25, I was kind of upset but there were some good deals on things that I didn't want to pay full price for.  I got milk, doritos (hubbys Sunday snack for halftime, don't mess with him if he doesn't have his Doritos), romaine hearts, 16 cans of campbells soup (for those lazy winter lunches/dinners), 5 boxes of Nabisco 100 calorie packs (ended up being about $1 for all of them and I like those for little snacks with lunches), 2 tombstone pizzas (I just knew I wasn't going to want to make lunch today while doing the garage sale, these were $5 all together, not too shabby, but a splurge, bad me!), sour cream, oatmeal (for oatmeal cookies in the winter) and I think a few other things.  I like to stock up on the baking stuff when its on sale because if I had to buy all that at once it'd break the bank!  Thanks to Pubbler for letting me copy her Meijer deals and being so patient while explaining them to me over and over this week....my brain is sort of mush this week. 

I found a few things at the other garage sales today, I got my son 2 computer games for a dollar each and 4 books for $2.  Then my SIL called and said this lady had a basically brand new trampoline (I've been looking for one) for $50!  So I got there and the springs look brand new and so does the jump part, but when I got it home I noticed there was a dime size hole in the jumping part, I hope its still okay, anyone know if this is fine or if I should take it back?  Anyways we are going to give this to our son for his xmas present, hope he likes it! 

Well thats enough rambling for the night, I'm going to read the little one a bedtime story and then hope I can make it up for SNL....haha.

Totals so far..

Well this is day 14 of eating out of the pantry/stockpile and I just thought I'd report my totals so far!  Below is for health and beauty stuff as well as food (its mostly food though).  I noticed we were able to mainly eat from the stockpile but as I was searching for recipes to make I found some really good ones I just had to try and that caused me to run to the store to get the few things I was missing.  All in all it was worth it....especially for the crockpot chicken fettucini recipe!  It was to die for. 

Drum roll....

So far $69.40 has been spent this month!  That's it!  Usually I'm in the $150 or $200 range by now!  I am pretty proud of myself but I do think I could do a little better next time, live and learn!  This has definitely taught me there are a few things I need to keep stocked like canned mushrooms, cream of chicken/mushroom and some other canned veggies. 

What are your most stockpiled food items? 

Just some randomness!

Well it looks like it will be a gorgeous weekend here in Michigan!  We are going to the bus races at the Flatrock speedway this weekend, its always a great time! 

Yesterday I had yogurt for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and we made egg salad sandwiches with chips for dinner.  I did go out to Aldis yesterday and got 4 cans of mushrooms, a bag of chips and some parmesan cheese.  It was about $7 dollars.

Today I wasn't feeling so good this morning so I didn't eat - hubby and son had cereal at home.  I had a sandwich for lunch and for dinner we are making steaks, potatos (from the garden) and salad (with fresh veggies from the garden).

I'm hoping to make a crockpot chicken fettucini alfredo this weekend one day (probably Sunday), which is why I needed the cheese. 

I'll have a bit of time tonight after we close the pool to put up a few deals that I see for next week...

LeapFrog Issue and Food for the day!

Well today I had yogurt for breakfast and half a bagel.  Lunch was leftover chicken marsala and we ate dinner at my moms (homemade spaghetti sauce!).

We bought my son the Leapster 2 for Christmas last year (its like a gameboy but its ALL educational games, but the kids don't know they are learning haha) and my son absolutely loves it and so do I! He has about 7 or 8 games for it and last month he kept telling me that it was turning on by itself. Naturally I thought he was joking with me. So we had to sleep in his room one night while our bedroom was being redone and sure enough my husband got up and took the batteries out because it kept turning on! So I looked at it the next morning and I could hardly see the darn screen! I had to turn it every which way to even see anything. So I emailed LeapFrog and let them know what was happening, and they gave me somethings to try and I did try with no luck. I emailed them this morning saying it didn't work and within a couple of hours they emailed me back saying they will make an exception and send me a brand new one!


I have to say I am very impressed with their customer service. The first time I emailed them it didn't take long to respond either. We have so many LeapFrog toys and that is what I get for most of my nieces and nephews now. I'm just so happy because he uses this thing a lot and really likes it (right now the Sonic game he is playing is teaching him to count by 5's!).

If I didn't ask or take 3 minutes of my time to email them to let them know the issue I was having, I honestly would have broke down and bought another one, that is how much we love this product. But I did ask and I got an even better response then I thought!

Moral of the story: Always call if you are unsatisfied with a product, you might get more then you expect! 

$1 Restaurant.com certificate!

Hurry hurry to get 90% off your restaurant.com purchase.  You can get a $25 gift certificate for $1 by using the code NINETY.  This will also work on the $10 ones.  I looove getting these for Christmas gifts (yeah I know I am starting my shopping early), and my most favorite place is the Melting Pot.  The stipulations on this one aren't as bad as I've seen before so I'm super excited.  Me, my mom and sis usually go there for a girls few hours out, oh its soooo yummy!  I'm drooling just thinking about the chocolate fondue! 

Tiring Day!

I think this weather has me feeling tired!  I didn't sleep very good today so that didn't make for a good day back to work after the long weekend!  Here's what we ate today - all from the stockpile.

Breakfast - the boys had cereal and I had a bagel at work
Lunch - leftover chicken bruchetta
Dinner - chicken marsala, side salad and broccoli with cheese

There should be enough left over for my husband or I for a lunch tomorrow, I'll just have to figure out another lunch for the other of us!

I was surfing the net for a few before I hop on Wii Fit, and I found this interesting frugal story...read it if you have a few minutes.

Frugal Article

August Totals!

Here are my August totals I promised.  I try to stay around $250 a month and this includes feeding my hubby, me and our son.  This is for food, healthy and beauty and household items (cleaners, tp, pt, etc).

Number of items - 469
Retail value - $1,209.08
Coupon value - $957.60
Paid out of pocket - $264.19
Savings percentage - 79.2%
Cost per item - $0.62

Not too shabby I must say.  Hopefully September will be even better with the stockpile challenge.  I have to admit, we were awfully lazy today, I mean really lazy.  We had a good crockpot chicken recipe to try and neither one of us wanted to get up and make it, so we got pizza tonight.  Anyone just have those days or is it just me?

Keepin' it real

So this eating out of the stockpile thing isn't going too bad, I've had to get a couple of things but they should last us a bit and we can use them for multiple meals. 

Went to Costco and got milk, bananas, eggs, pickles (hubby and son eat this like no other and will probably last a couple of weeks) and I splurged and got myself a big tub of hummos (this will probably last a bit too, but I will take it to work for a mid day snack).  I'm having my parents, sister and aunt and uncle over today for my aunts 60th birthday so I'll have to run to Kroger in a bit to get some cheese and a veggie, for some reason I thought I had more cheese then I do, but still at least its just a few things!  Oh yeah and we also bought some beer this weekend....oyy guess this isn't going as good as I thought! 

So in honor of keeping it real and making myself accountable I figured I'd post what we eat for the rest of the month and if I had to run to the store to get anything!

Yesterday we had yogurt for breakfast, and then we bought lunch at the Toledo zoo, (it was only $13 for 3 of us which I thought was good!) and then for dinner we had grilled chicken sandwiches, rice and a salad. 

Today was a pop tart or cereal for breakfast, lunch was pb&j with fruit and a few chips, and tonight will be chicken bruchetta with salad and a veggie (I'm thinking asparagus). 

That's all I got for today, I'll be posting my August totals later on today, enjoy the gorgeous weather!

Friday Shopping!

Betcha can't guess how much all of this was?!?!?  $2 and some change!  Yep, you read it right, I paid under $3 for all of this.  I know its a little hard to see so here is what I got!

Target

4 GM cereal cups - $1.00 each
     Use 4 $1 off GM cereal Target coupon here

8 Chef Michael dog food - $4.26 each
     Use 8 $1.50 off Chef Michael Target coupon here AND $3 off Chef Michael from 8/23 RP

4 Gerber bottles - $1.00 each
     Use $1 off Gerber feeding accessory Target coupon here

2 Kit Kats (oops already ate them haha) - $.52 each

5 Schick Quattro Razors - $6.99 each
     Use $4 off Target coupon from 8/30 SS AND $4 manufacture coupon from 8/23 SS

7 64 count Kotex liners - $2.94 each
     Use $2 Target coupon from 7/26 AND $1 manufacture coupon from 7/19 SS or 8/23 SS

12 Chef Michael wet dog food - $.84 each
     Use BOGO Target coupon from here or 8/30 SS AND BOGO coupon from 8/23 RP

I did this between two different Targets and the first transaction went crazy.  I think the BOGO coupons actually applied to the dog food because it looks like $4.26 was taken off instead of the .84 for the cans!  I ended up having to take back 4 or 5 coupons back and still ended up with a negative $1.22.  So thats why I had to grab the two candy bars - ended up being .58 for that transaction.

The second transaction I had to take back a couple of the BOGO can food coupons because of the overage I got from the razors - usually you don't get overage but this lady just kept scanning!  My total on that transaction was $1.23.

Kmart

1 Leapster game - $19.99
     Used $5 printable coupon and $5 Kmart Q - Xmas present for my little one

5 Ponds cloths - $2.50 each
     Used $1.25 Q from 6/28 RP

8 Kotex liners - $1.29 each
     Used $1 or .75 Q from 7/19 SS or 8/23 SS

1 Suave hair gel - $2.49

1 Neutra Air - $2.67
     Used $1.50 Q from 7/12 SS

10 different kinds of dog treats - $2.50 each to $3.99

This was done at two different stores, and my total for both stores was $12.12 - $9.99 of which was the Leapster game! 

Anybody get any good deals this week?

I <3 Kmart

Well I finished my two finals today - I know I got an A in one class, and I'm hoping for a C in my Stats class....yeah needless to say I didn't care for that class!

I started making my stuffed pepper soup to have for this week and realized I needed tomato sauce so I ran to Aldi's.  I also got some squash for the crockpot soup I'll make later in the week.  As I was leaving I saw this HUGE cloud of black smoke, so me being curious I tried to "follow" the smoke.  I thought it was literally half a mile up the road so I went about 1.5 miles and then realized it was still far away.  On my way home there was a Kmart calling my name!

Here is the quick run down from Kmart:

3 Beggin Strips - 2.50 each
3 Canadian Bacon Strips - 2.50 each
2 Pupperoni treats - 2.99 each
3 Trio building sets - 4.99 each (after instant $5 off for the monthly ad)
2 Scotch tape pop up holders - 2.49 each

Total was 43.xx

Coupons used:

3 - 1.00 off Beggin Strips
3 - 1.50 off Beggin Strips
2 - 1.00  off Pupperoni
3 - 5.00 off Trio building set
2 - 2.00 off scotch tape

My total was .07!!  The ladies behind me were so amazed it was hilarious!  I hope I can grab some coupons from my mom tomorrow and get some more loot! 

Anyone else get any good deals this week so far?