Don't Overlook Local Savings

The customer service agent at the grocery store in town caught us as we were leaving check-out to remind us we had a gift card in to be picked up. I had forgotten all about it! We take advantage of the opportunity to accrue "points" at both of the local grocery stores which have reward programs. The primary store we use, Ridleys, typically earns us $50 a year in gift cards to places such as Toys R Us or K-Mart (we get to pick from a wide variety). The other store, Paul's, accrues points good for items in their store that are non-food. I'll usually cash those in once a year for a pair of jeans for the hubby or shoes for the kids. Do they track what I'm buying? Certainly. It only serves to help improve their carrying of stock so that doesn't bother me at all. The benefits greatly outweigh theoretic privacy concerns for us.

Many grocery stores offer programs like these, though some are admittedly mainly for tracking your purchases to guide their ordering. If you have the opportunity to earn some "free money" while simply doing your grocery shopping, take advantage of it!

DIYing things you'd never think to DIY

Upon the untimely coinciding of our main vehicle dying right when we were in the process of moving to a new (and slightly more expensive) rental we decided our food and household budget was the only place that could take a hit. I poured over the previous few months receipts and identified some things we could simply cut out--such as my beloved Propel water packets. Those cuts weren't enough still, though, so I launched into the great "what all can I DIY?" scheme. I kicked the natural laundry detergent and dish soap off the list, replaced with a homemade mix of borax, washing soda and fels naphtha soap that I grate in my food processor. Frozen broccoli turned into a couple hours of chopping, blanching and freezing monthly. Most of our meat-analog budget turned into potatoes and other soup ingredients to process and freeze monthly. Instead of Idahoan cans in my cart there's now bulk bags from Winco with powdered potatoes. Several gallons of milk a week turned into a giant box of milk powder from Walmart. After more painful cuts than I could believe, we got it down to the point we could afford the new vehicle as well as the new house. It takes some real creativity at the end of the month to keep the troops happy with the by-then meager options, but what other option is there really!

All I needed was a place to host my swidget...

But I sign up here and learn there's such a thing as Amazon Associates! YAY! One more way to get a few pennies here and there, which really do add up in the end. So far I'm up to $185 using Amazon Mechanical Turk and $10 on Swagbucks. Not too shabby for a month's work!

I was skeptical about MTurk after reading reviews, but their gloomy predictions have not turned out to be very accurate. Maybe those reviewers didn't realize they can sort HITS or search by type? I have my MTurk page set to show highest paying first, use Turkopticon to sort out the bad requesters and always search for and do any academic surveys first things in the morning. I've done surveys paying up to $4 but those are snapped up quickly, so you always have to check early. I will do a writing job if it pays adequately or is painfully easy and worth at least $1. It only takes me ten minutes to bang out a quick 150 word article on some basic topic and even the larger ones (such as 600 word) only take half an hour or so. I double-check my articles through a spelling and grammar tool online to make sure they're not rejected. Prior to learning about Turkopticon I did get burned by a few ruthless requesters, but since then it's all been good. I'm working on bringing my percent of approval back up to 99% and am over 500 hits already.

As far as Swagbucks goes, I've seen friends post about it on Facebook for a while now but was reluctant to try until recently. Since our budget took a massive hit with my van dying, I no longer have the luxury of waiting around for things to improve. Upon biting the bullet and signing up I learned it was not really all that hard and only takes about five to ten minutes a day to complete. I earn a $5 Amazon.com gift card every week and a half at this point, though having signed up people under me as referrals that may speed up.

Since I needed a place to host Swagbuck's Swidget I started this blog and in so doing learned about the Amazon Associates program for bloggers. The purchases that anyone makes through the Amazon portals on my blog will provide a cash kickback to me. Another way to earn and save!