Before this whole Debt Diet thing.... thank you Oprah...... we wasted so much money it was crazy. It never seemed like we had a shot of getting ahead. For example, I would love to get new living room furniture. The stuff we currently rest our behinds on is nearly 20 years old. A much appreciated hand me down from Linda and they have more than served their purpose. A month ago I couldn't see how we would be able to afford new furniture..... ever. I figured we'd sit on this stuff until it disentergrated and then fashion ourselves some new furniture out of milk crates and bed sheets. All that's changed now. Now that's not to say we're heading out to the Brick tomorrow or anything, but it is forseeable. Actually we'd like to purchase a new dryer first. Our current dryer is a somewhat older model and I'm sure a huge power sucker.
I have also become one serious bargain hunter. I know where all the best prices are. Last weekend I sent Mike to Fortinos, where we never shop normally, because they had liquid Tide on for $3.97. I visit the Frugal Shopper message boards daily to get the latest news on where the best deals are, what I can get for free and contests I can enter. That site alone is a virtual gold mine. It's a little pathetic how excited I get about finding a great deal. I brag to everyone I know... guess how much I paid for this. I may start a weekly shopping brag post.
Edited to add:
And what a better time to start than today?? A quick trip to my mail box this afternoon revealed a bounty of free schwag. Behold;
On the advice from the frugal shopper boards I had signed up at Nestle for their Nestle Baby program. The website promised free samples and valuable coupons. I was expecting a little envelope with a booklet hawking their products and a few dollar off coupons. Which I would have been happy with. Well imagine my surprise when I found a rather large package in my mail box. I was dying to run home to rip into the box and check out what I was getting, but I had Abby with me. In her glass slippers. So our pace was decidedly slower than I would have liked. I admit I let out a school girl shriek when I saw I was getting a backpack/diaper bag. I first saw one of those after I had already received a couple of conventional diaper bags for Abby. To me it seemed a better idea than the diaper bag I was carrying, but I couldn't see the sense in buying one to replace the one I had whether I liked it or not. You see even back then I was trying to be frugal.
Now I was thrilled to receive the bag. Just that would have been great, but there was more. Inside the bag was a can of Good Start powder. A 340g can, it's worth about 10ish dollars at the local WalMart. Now that would have been good enough too, but there was more. A 9 oz Avent bottle. A baby on board sign for the van and a freezable gel pack that fits into a special pocket in the back pack to keep Maya's bottle nice and cold while travelling. What a score!
Now if you've been paying close attention you're asking yourself... Did she get a War of the World's DVD in the bag too? Well wouldn't that be nice, but no. I got the DVD from zip.ca. It's an online DVD rental place like Netflix. I recently signed up for Snapdollars. It's your typical paid to read email and sign up for offers program. You do get $5 upon sign up and I get $5 for each person I refer. They were offering $13 to sign up for a free 2 week trial at zip.ca. So sign up I did. That's what brought War of the Worlds to my mail box. Zip suggests you keep a list of 20 movies you'd like to see and they will mail them out to you as they become available. They have a variety of packages available. My trial is for the $10/2 movies per month package. And yes return shipping is free. I would totally sign up if it wasn't for the current budget constraints. I believe Rogers also offers a similar program. I wonder if they have a free trial?
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