Post Your Wins

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

I think my husband got an unusual deal today-- 50% off any wine or liquor in the grocery store. I wasn't with him and haven't seen the stash yet, but it sounds like he got about ten bottles. I would have stocked up much more than that, but my husband has always had qualms about stocking up on alcohol. Ordinarily he will not even buy the six bottles it takes to get a 10% discount, which is always the offer.

A major grocery chain is closing many of its stores so DH went to see if there might be any great deals. Since some of the stores will stay open, they are still putting out a weekly ad and the closing stores honor that ad. So the 50% discount was after the sales price. Pretty good. DH said that it was like a feeding frenzy in the alcohol aisle and that people were headed to the check-out with carts full of bottles.

[james.hendrickson]

Could he have used a coupon? My wife is wizard with finding deals, then adding a coupon on top of it.

[disneysteve]

I think my husband got an unusual deal today-- 50% off any wine or liquor in the grocery store.

Oh my. That would have been dangerous. We would have filled a cart for sure.

[amastewa93]

We will be paying off our first account next Monday! I just set up the auto-pay for the final payment of $203, knocking our debt down some more.

FYI - and I'm sure no one needs to be told - NEVER buy anything at Rent-a-Center. Biggest mistake of my financial life.

[disneysteve]

FYI - and I'm sure no one needs to be told - NEVER buy anything at Rent-a-Center. Biggest mistake of my financial life.

Those places are right up there with payday loans, title loans, and tax refund loans. They prey on the poor and uneducated with astronomical fees and interest rates.

I just took a random look at RAC's website. A 50" Samsung TV is $20/week for 52 weeks. That's a total of $1,040.
I looked up the exact same TV on Amazon. It's only $430 and includes a wall mount kit, a surge protector, and a few other goodies. That's almost 60% less.

Of course, one could also argue that if you're broke, you've got no business owning a 50" 4K LED TV anyway. If you need a TV, go to Goodwill and pick one up for $20 or go on Amazon and they have TVs starting at $65. The rent to own places are just a way for people to go broke getting stuff they can't afford and probably don't even need.

[amastewa93]

The rent to own places are just a way for people to go broke getting stuff they can't afford and probably don't even need.

Totally agree! We'd never dealt with a place like that before and we won't EVER do it again!

[disneysteve]

My wife does a lot of sewing and quilting and occasionally does paid work for others. A few weeks ago, a neighbor who recently moved asked her to cover a valance for one of their windows. She had never done anything quite like that before but figured it all out and it came out really nice. They came to pick it up today and asked how much she wanted. She's lousy at charging for her work normally, and in this case, really didn't have a clue how much to charge. They wanted to give her $150 but she said that was way too much. They compromised at $100 but after they left and she looked at the check, they had written it for $125. Even better, they have another valance that they need her to adjust. It won't be as involved as this one. They just need it shortened a few inches, but she'll be making some additional money for that one.

One of these days, I'll convince her to start marketing herself, doing craft shows, etc. People love buying homemade stuff instead of the mass produced items from Walmart and Target and they're willing to pay good money for it too.

[disneysteve]

Our daughter is away at a wedding today so it was just my wife and I for dinner. I worked today and was in the mood for Mexican food. I was thinking about coming home from work and seeing if she wanted to go out to a local Mexican restaurant. Instead, I came home and suggested we make Mexican for dinner at home. We made chicken enchiladas with Mexican rice. It was way cheaper and better for us than anything we would have gotten in a restaurant. Dinner out would have easily cost $40 or more. Cooking at home probably cost no more than $5 or $6. So I'd call that a win.

[disneysteve]

Second win for today. I saw on the Disney forum that BJ's has Disney gift cards on sale for 8% off. We're going in a couple of weeks so I just bought $500 of gift cards for $460. Nothing wrong with that.

[Gailete]

Big wins this week. At our twice a year library book sales, ALL sewing/crafting books are normally gone by noon on Mondays. I walked in on Wednesday and there was a huge stash of them apparently just waiting for me I paid $69 and brought home bags and bags of books and magazines. I haven't even gone through all the bags yet. Some will be kept for my own use, some to be resold and some to be donated back or saved for the next time someone at my house needs a book on how to do quilting, knitting, etc. I could tell that almost all the of the books came from the same donation as there were bunches of Danish books on counted cross stitch including about 10-15 desk calendars with designs in them. Those of the ones that are available are going for $25-40 each! Plus any others that will bring a nice payday on Amazon, and a bunch of new reading material for me. A bunch of the magazines was donated by the same family as the name tags were still on them, including a quilt magazine still in its plastic mailing sleeve - never opened! Went to bag day and brought two more bags home!

Our biggest win has nothing to do with finances though. Yesterday my very first grandchild, a precious little girl was born! Beautiful baby and so thankful that my DIL is okay. About two hours after delivery she had trouble which meant she ended up getting a unit of blood last night. Some she and my son are basically going on not much sleep for the last two days. Bust oh so precious and so long waited for. I only had boys and so have had to wait a very long time for a little girl in the family!

Not nearly as good news as the baby, but we got the tenant out of our rental and hubby is finally willing to sell it! It is just too much for him to deal with.

[disneysteve]

Congrats on the new baby, Gailete!

[scfr]

Our biggest win has nothing to do with finances though. Yesterday my very first grandchild, a precious little girl was born! Beautiful baby and so thankful that my DIL is okay. About two hours after delivery she had trouble which meant she ended up getting a unit of blood last night. Some she and my son are basically going on not much sleep for the last two days. Bust oh so precious and so long waited for. I only had boys and so have had to wait a very long time for a little girl in the family!

So exciting - congratulations!

[Gailete]

Thanks, guys. She is so gorgeous. We just keep staring at her photos. A boy would have been fine, but the day they found out the sex of the baby I was the first one they called as my son knew it would be the most special news for me and her mom had three daughters. My ex was MAD that it wasn't going to be a boy! Boy does he have a few screws loose. These kids had been married for 7 years already and the bio clocks were ticking. One of the cutest things was my other son so excited about her being born and he was thinking of all the things that he wanted to do with her. Let's say she is loved from about every quarter.

[disneysteve]

One of my favorite bourbons is very hard to find at any price. We went to a rye tasting tonight and afterwards I asked the store owner if he had any idea if he’d be getting any of that bourbon. He said they just had some the other day. I was bummed but then he said he still had a bottle up in his office. Would I like it? Yes! So he went up and got it for me. I didn’t even ask the price and was shocked when it rang up for $23.99 which is the cheapest I’ve ever seen it.

[amastewa93]

We PAID OFF an account this month! Not a huge "win" but it'll save us about $320 per month, which will help pad our emergency savings and snowball more of our debt.