The Nothing Goes Right Weekend

This past weekend was a real pip.

I'm feeling real sorry for #2 Son especially.
He was been run ragged what with all his musical extracurricular activities--marching band, pitt orchestra for the high school musical, concert band.
He's a bit rundown.
Then he had to get up the crack of dawn on Saturday to go take the SAT at a downtown high school......he missed the PSAT, so we had him take the SAT as a Junior just to get a "baseline", as he is planning on taking it again next Fall as a Senior.
Anyway, he sat for that thing for 4 hours Saturday morning.
Then sleep deprived and now tired from thinking for 4 hours, Hubs made him drive home.
He's still working on the 60 hour "behind the wheel" requirement to get your license here in PA.
I know nobody here makes their kid actually log 60 hours in all kinds of weather before they take the road test but us.  We are hard asses. 8-)

So he's driving home from the test with Hubs and he runs a stop sign(one of those rolling stop deals from a merge lane....he says he didn't even see the stop sign).
Unfortunately, a police car was sitting about 100 yds. up from where he merged/ran the stop sign, so #2 Son got to experience his 1st time being pulled over.
He handled himself well and only got a warning from the officer.

Then after getting home and giving me all the details of his thrilling morning, he goes upstairs and I hear him stomping around more than usual.
He comes down to tell me he has lost his wallet.
The last time he saw it was at the SAT when he had to take his ID out to show to get into the high school for the test.
And he had $70 in it.  8-(
I told #2 Son that he was most definitely the BUG and not the Windshield this past weekend.....

$70 hard earned money.....gone.
Mind you, this is the kid who wants a $400 cell phone for Christmas!....which he is Not getting by the way.  I don't know what it is, but those teen hormones are doing wacky things to his brain lately.  He has gotten so absentminded!  He loses everything......even his train of thought.  If he was a bit older I'd swear he was going through menopause. lol

Then he started running a fever on Sunday and he missed the pitt rehearsal.
Then I started running a fever Sunday night, followed by chills and a queasy stomach.

It's not been a fun day today for either of us as well, though the chills are gone the low-grade fever and the queasies are not.

But the good news is that someone turned in #2's wallet at the downtown high school.  Since it was a VANS wallet(coveted by teenagers the world over lol) I figured it was gone for good.  I'll lay money that the $70 won't be in it when we get it back.

Hubs got the Christmas tree out of the garage and set it up this weekend.  It's still nekkid however.
And he's set storage tubs of Holiday accoutrements willy-nilly all over the living room, so I can't get to my eBay items should someone purchase one.
And yah, the eBay stuff isn't going so great this Holiday season.  I need to get some more listings up this week and hope for the best.

So how was your weekend?

I've got some errands to do and a Menu to figure out post, and 2 giveaways to post winners for so maybe I'll get to that tonight.
Stay tuned.

Sluggy

NOVEMBER 2012 Budget Results....Food & Toiletries Spending

Here are my FOOD BUDGET spending totals for NOVEMBER 2012.

I have posted November's totals on the right side bar under Total Grocery Savings for 2012 and updated the Yearly Totals.
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in November.  If you aren't interested in that much detail, just skip to the bottom for the Totals Summary.

My spending includes Food, Toiletries/HBA, Pet Supplies, Cleaning Products, Paper Goods & tax where applicable.We are a family of 5(4 at home this month)& 2 dogs. No kids under 16.
******************

BREAD OUTLET
OOP   $10.89

Value   $25.42

Savings  57.16%

KEYCO(restaurant supply store)

OOP   $37.55

Value   $70.88

Savings   47.02%

PRICE CHOPPER

OOP   $32.39

Qs/Ads  $35.96

Value   $68.35

Savings   52%

RITE-AID

OOP  $1.25

Qs/Ads/+Ups/Gift Card  $491.38

Value  $492.63

Savings   99.74%

SHURSAVE STORES(small local independent affiliated stores)
OOP  $269.64

Qs/Ads  $244.16

Value  $513.80

Savings  47.52%

WEIS MARKETS

OOP  $26.85

Qs/Ads  $69.90

Value  $96.75

Savings  72.25%

I don't track Rite-Aid's +Ups here, nor CVS's ECBs & Walgreen's RRs. They will be included when used on purchases under "Coupons".   I'll keep track of what rebates are received monthly.  Rebate money/gift cards will be considered 'income' & will go into the Food/Toiletries budget, offsetting the Out of Pocket. Cash will go immediately into the Budget kitty, while Gift Cards will be calculated in when spent.

REBATE CHECKS RECEIVED IN November

Rite-Aid Single Check Rebate.......$10.00

GIFT CARDS and CERTIFICATES...$0.00

TOTAL Value of Cash/Store Checks/Gift Card Rebates Received...$10.00

COUPONS and FREEBIES

1 Giveaway wins--Progresso Lunch Set with 2 free cans of soup, Green Giant apron and bowl set with FREE veggie coupon

*********************
My best 3 Store Savings Totals were the Rite-Aid at 99.74%,  Weis at 72.25%, and the Bread Outlet at 57.16%.  l shopped at 6 different stores this past month.

TOTAL Out of Pocket........$378.57

TOTAL Coupons & Store Sales Savings...$889.26

TOTAL Value of Items Purchased............$1,267.83

TOTAL Savings of...................................70.14%

TOTAL Out of Pocket after Rebates received this Month......$368.57
TOTAL Savings after Rebates of..........................70.92%

This closes out the November spending.

THOUGHTS & COMMENTS for this month.....

I went into November with $400 budgeted for food/toiletries for the month.  I was able to keep under my food budget with more than $20 leftover.

My grocery savings hovered at just below 71% for November after rebates.  If you take the Rite-Aid purchases out of the equation, my savings percentage falls to around 52%, which is quite good actually.  I'm usually around 33% savings for just the food stores.

I continued to shop the loss leaders and sales and stocked up when things were at rock bottom price in the sales cycles.  I also continued to not use many coupons at all at the food shops but I did take advantage of Catalina Deals and Store Instant Savings Promotions that were offered for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Of course, the small pile of coupons used at the grocery stores does NOT include the vast amounts I utilize at Rite-Aid.  I am indeed the Coupon Diva at Rite-Aid. ;-)

 

LOOKING AHEAD TO DECEMBER......

I will be keeping my food budget at $400 for December. We will be doing a fair amount of eating out in December after my oldest comes home for Christmas, but that money doesn't come out of the Food Budget.  It will come out of the money put aside for Christmas.
There will be some Holiday cooking and extra baking but at this point I have already picked up many of the supplies for that in November.
So $400 should be adequate for our needs in December.

How did you do in November with your Food Budget?
Did you stick to your budget?
Did you find any good rock bottom prices to stock up on groceries?

Please leave a comment or link to your post and let us hear about your progress!  By sharing our struggles and efforts we can help each other stick to our budgets and learn to be better guardians of our resources.

Sluggy

Christmas Shopping for Almost Free Using Credit Card Points

One of my children may want a HOT video game this year for Christmas from Santa.
This may or may not be an image of said game....... ;-)

So Santa went in search of this game.  And Santa wanted to find it for a deal without having to actually set foot into a store.

Santa first went to her accumulated credit card points website.  They offered the game in question for 7,500 pts.
Before I hit that buy button Santa then went to see if Amazon had anyone on there selling this game.
And I found it from a Seller, being fulfilled by Amazon so it would be shipped free since it was a $60 game.  Plus the seller in question was selling this new sealed game for $5 less than the suggested retail.

With that information in hand, I went back to my Credit Card's Points website to see how many points I had to pay for an Amazon $50 gift card.
That was only 5,000 points but the actual game from them was 7,500 points.

So you know what I did next, don't you?
I bought an Amazon electronic gift card code, which they emailed me right away.  Physical gift cards take a couple of weeks to be snail mailed to you but digital codes come immediately.  So I spent 5,000 of my credit card points.
I then went onto Amazon and purchased the game using my free gift card code and $5 cash.
I used my credit card for the $5 so I'll get more points for that spending. ;-)

In the end, the game cost Santa $5 cash and Santa saved 2,500 credit card points to use on something else.

Santa is one smart dude dudette!

What kind of deals has Your Santa found lately?

Sluggy

Cran-Pistachio Oat Cookies Recipe...A Good Holiday Cookie

I got this recipe out of the local grocery store health magazine found free in the store.
After getting a request for the recipe, here is a link to the company's website...

CRAN-PISTACHIO OAT COOKIES

You can go there and cut and paste it into a document and print it out.

And here is the YouTube Video if you like a visual....(You can also watch this from the Weis website as it's embedded there too)....

They taste very good even though they are "healthy". ;-)
And they are nice and festive for the Holidays.

And if you believe margarine ("I Can't Believe It's Not Butter")is NOT healthy, feel free to use the stuff found in nature--butter--like I did instead.
You have my permission.  ;-)

Sluggy

The P&G Celebrate The Season REBATE

I talked about the new P&G Rebate in this post HERE.
It's a spend $50 in select P&G products and get a $15 Rebate in the form of a Visa gift card.
The form is online HERE.

Among the product lines are Herbal Essence, Pantene and Cover Girl.
Last week I spent $31.34 on Cover Girl items.
And earlier in late October I spend $12 in Herbal Essence items.
Combined that put me at $43.34 spent toward the $50.

I forgot that I also spent $7 on 2 bottles of Pantene on my last transaction at Rite-Aid last week and this puts me at $50.34, so I've earned that $15 gift card.
8-)
My out of pocket spending at Rite-Aid in November was $1.25 but between my $2 SavingStar cash rebate and my P&G gift card rebate of $15 I did much better than FREE at the drugstore!

Sluggy