Post Your Wins

[disneysteve]

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.

That’s great! $320/month freed up is certainly a nice win.

[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.

My wife finished the other valance and they came by this afternoon to get it. She asked for $45 as this time around, she logged the time it took her and she was basing it on $30/hr. Well they wrote the check for $65 which was very generous. So she made a total of $190 for the 2 jobs. Other than her time, her expenses were minimal as they provided the material. She just had to provide the thread to sew it all together, so the money is almost entirely profit.

[james.hendrickson]

My wife picked up a win at Safeway - she got a bunch of dollar off coupons and selected several dollar items, applied the coupons and scored some free food.

[jenn_jenn]

I started a new job this week and my salary increased by $15k. My current salary meets the goal I had set for myself by age 30 - three years ahead of schedule. It is also enabling me to meet my savings goal for the year.

Over the past two years, my income has increased by almost 50%. Despite reports claiming a significant reduction in value, earning an MBA has helped me greatly.

[Thrif-t]

That's a great win Jen, Congratulations!!!

[williamlucas]

Thats great jenn

[disneysteve]

It's that time of year when restaurants do their gift card promotions. Typically it's a 20% bonus - buy $50 and get $10 free or buy $100 and get $20 free. A local chain that we like had an even better deal. Buy $75 and get $20 free plus 50 reward club points (which equates to a $5 value). I went over today and bought the $75 card so we now have $95 worth of gift cards to use plus we're 50 points closer to the next reward ($20 credit for 200 points). That will cover a couple of dinners out for my wife and I.

[scfr]

We got $2.20 in checks from one of the big box banks for interest owed. I don't know the details, but you better believe I'll take it.

[disneysteve]

I just redeemed $43.60 in cashback from my Discover card. My wife has $59.61 to redeem which I'll do shortly. I just need to get her password. That's $103.21 in free money just for spending money we would spend anyway.

[amastewa93]

I just redeemed $43.60 in cashback from my Discover card. My wife has $59.61 to redeem which I'll do shortly. I just need to get her password. That's $103.21 in free money just for spending money we would spend anyway.

Gotta love cash back rewards! We get them through B of A and can pick certain stores. They recently added Aldi and we racked up some serious rewards cash!

[bjl584]

Gotta love cash back rewards! We get them through B of A and can pick certain stores. They recently added Aldi and we racked up some serious rewards cash!

I have a little over $500 in cash back sitting in my Citi account. Think I might take a vacation with it once it gets around the $1000 mark.

[corn18]

We've earned $3,648.66 on our cash back card. Also transferred 132,000 airline points from my corporate Amex to my Delta account.

[disneysteve]

We've earned $3,648.66 on our cash back card. Also transferred 132,000 airline points from my corporate Amex to my Delta account.

We only use our Discover cards for the 5% bonus categories. For almost everything else, we use our Marriott Visa so we’ve currently got over 300,000 Marriott Reward points (free nights start at 10,000 points).

[LivingAlmostLarge]

We use discover too with the 5% cash back categories. We have the chase sapphire reserve recently so we're at 65000 points probably more after the month we've had. And we keep the alaska card. I bought $10k each of i-bonds yesterday!

[disneysteve]

We shop on Amazon a lot. All 3 of us place orders at various times. I honestly don't typically price check things that my wife or daughter throw in the cart unless they ask me to. My daughter mentioned last night that she put a lip balm in the cart. I was on there shopping this morning and noticed that the lip balm was $7.50 which I thought was crazy high. I check a couple of other places (Wegman's, Target) that didn't have it. Then I did a Google shopping search and found it at Walgreens.com for $2.79 and buy one get one half off with free shipping to a store.So I was able to get her 2 for $4.18 instead of 1 for $7.50. Only difference is we need to go pick it up but that's easy enough for the $11 savings on 2 items.