Post Your Wins

[scfr]

We had a $50 virtual prepaid debit card that DH received for test driving a car. He tried to use it at the grocery store, but couldn't since there is no physical card to swipe. Instead, I used it to order online for curbside grocery pickup (worth it to me to pay the 3% upcharge in price that my store charges in order to be able to use the virtual card). I ordered just slightly over $49 worth of groceries and scheduled my order. Unfortunately, 2 items were "unavailable" so my order came to only $45.40 which means I still have a $4.60 balance on the card. (I had selected "no substitutions" because I wanted to eliminate the risk of the order going over $50 causing the entire order to be rejected.)
When I got to the store I went inside and purchased the 2 "unavailable" items, so my meal plan is intact.

Not exactly a gold medal win, but close-to-free groceries are still a win in my book.

[Thrif-t]

I had a small win today! My cable bill went up $23. It used to be Time Warner, but now it's Spectrum. Called to complain and the rep took me off a Time Warner Promotional Rate and switched me over to Spectrum service and my bill only went up $8(what a racket, only $8!). She told me that not being on a TW Promotional Rate I won't have to worry about my bill jumping so much year to year, she said it will only go up 2 or 3% yearly, we shall see.

[disneysteve]

Had the day off. Wife and I went out to lunch to a fairly new Latin place right near my office. There was a Groupon+ deal for 30% cashback. Lunch came to $19.09 and I got $5.72 cashback so lunch for 2 for $13.37 and we took home enough leftovers for another meal. I'll probably take it to work for dinner tomorrow. So just over $13 for 3 meals isn't bad at all.

[scfr]

We hit 20 years of ownership on our Camry!

And speaking of old things ... I had to bid adieu to a favorite pair of flannel pajama pants. After 14 years, the knee wore through. When I looked at them closely, I realized they weren't worth mending, they had gotten so threadbare. At first I thought it was a loss, but then I realized that getting so much wear out of something I liked, that gave fond memories of the person who gifted them to me, and that kept me warm until they truly wore out was a win.

[Homebody]

My 12 year old Toyota Camry was totaled with me in it on 9/30/18. Not happy. It had less than 80,000 miles on it. I did get the $8725 3 days later and reimbursement for a brand new car seat for my 4 year old granddaughter. Very irritating. My new son-in-law gifted me his inherited 2004 Mercedes Benz S55 AMG with less than 80,000 in perfect condition. I think it will probably be my last car.

My big win was the bread store was having a "sale" on a lunch rolls. They were a $1 a bag of 6. Bought 3 of them along with other breads

[amastewa93]

We hit 20 years of ownership on our Camry!

And speaking of old things ... I had to bid adieu to a favorite pair of flannel pajama pants. After 14 years, the knee wore through. When I looked at them closely, I realized they weren't worth mending, they had gotten so threadbare. At first I thought it was a loss, but then I realized that getting so much wear out of something I liked, that gave fond memories of the person who gifted them to me, and that kept me warm until they truly wore out was a win.

1. I love Camrys. My Pawpaw bought one in the late 80s/early 90s and just continued to buy Camrys after that. Whenever he wanted something "new" he just got a new Camry haha. They are great cars!!

2. I feel like people seldom wear clothes until they wear out anymore, so that is AWESOME!! We are all about wearing things until they have holes in them... then with old t-shirts we sometimes sew a few together to make a large t-shirt quilt if they are tied to memories (shirts from trips, gifts, 5ks, etc). They are really warm, comfy, and don't cost much to put together.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Just wrote a check of $18,091.98 to pay off our lease and the car is ours. Now all that's left is 1 car loan for ~$18k and our mortgage. That is a big crunchy number. still it's nice to own a car again. 3 more years to own the other one. I wonder how far into paying off the house we'll be.

[james.hendrickson]

Just wrote a check of $18,091.98 to pay off our lease and the car is ours. Now all that's left is 1 car loan for ~$18k and our mortgage. That is a big crunchy number. still it's nice to own a car again. 3 more years to own the other one. I wonder how far into paying off the house we'll be.

excellent!!!!!!!

[scfr]

Scored a bunch of clean, used only once picture boxes and packing paper today for free off of a community swap page.

[disneysteve]

I had a rough day at work yesterday and told my wife I wanted to do something fun today (I'm off). I had no idea what that might be but I wanted to go somewhere we don't usually go, have lunch out, etc.

We drove around a bit and came upon the Habitat for Humanity store. If you've never been in one, it is a thrift store that sells a lot of furniture, building materials, and a smattering of small household items. We found a brand new mandolin slicer priced at $5.00 and a silicone egg cooker thing price at $2.00 so we grabbed both of those. While walking around the store, I looked up the mandolin on Amazon and it said I had purchased that identical item in August 2017. I asked my wife because I knew we didn't have it. She remembered that we got it as a bridal shower gift for our neighbor's daughter. It was funny that it was the exact same one. It sells now on Amazon for $32. And the egg thing sells for $10.

We got up to the register with our $2 and $5 items and the cashier says our total was $3.75. Turns out everything was 50% off. So we got $42 worth of stuff for $3.75, and both things are brand new still sealed. That was a nice win. We even went back and bought a 2nd egg thing as they had 2 on the shelf, so spent another $1.07.

Then we went to lunch at a local place we like. Our bill was $37. We paid with a $20 gift card we got as a free bonus for buying a $75 card last month, and paid the balance with part of our $20 reward from their customer loyalty program. So lunch was free except for the $7 tip for our server. And I brought half of mine home so I'll get another meal out of it. So 3 meals for $7 total. Not bad at all.

[scfr]

While walking around the store, I looked up the mandolin on Amazon and it said I had purchased that identical item in August 2017. I asked my wife because I knew we didn't have it. She remembered that we got it as a bridal shower gift for our neighbor's daughter. It was funny that it was the exact same one.

Maybe it literally was the exact same one.
You never know.
That would be kind of hilarious.

Glad you had a good day.

[disneysteve]

Maybe it literally was the exact same one.
You never know.
That would be kind of hilarious.

That would be funny, but I'm actually sure it isn't. DW said the box is different. The one we bought is in the original box from China written entirely in Chinese. She said the one we got on Amazon was in English.

[disneysteve]

I posted this elsewhere but it fits here, too. Our dryer broke yesterday. I was pretty sure the problem was the belt had snapped. The motor was running but the drum wasn't turning. I watched a YouTube video of how to fix it. I opened the top this morning and sure enough it was the belt. I ran over to Lowe's and got the belt and came home and DW and I took the dryer apart and got the new belt installed. I also cleaned out a ton of built up crud from the lint vent. The whole job took about an hour and cost us a whopping $8.51. I'm sure calling a repair guy would have been $100 minimum. And cleaning out the exhaust should help the dryer work more efficiently which may save some energy.

[skives]

Our local fire departments iso rating dropped from 10 to 6 for our area. Called our insurance agent and got new quote on our homeowners insurance and we saved $213 a year cause of the new iso rating. Not exactly sure what iso rating for fire departments means but thanks to an article in the local paper and my dad reading it we save a nice bit of money on our homeowners insurance.

[corn18]

I think my wife is willing to cut the cord. Kindof. We have always had DirecTV and that ran about $162/mo and we had no premium channels. With the move, I have been exploring YouTube TV (YTTV), DirecTV Now (DTVN), Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sling, Hulu, Roku, Chromecast and who knows what else. After using Roku + YTTV for the past few days, I think she is good with that. Just missing one of her favorite channels HGTV. YTTV is $40 / month and we can watch it anywhere.

Now we are trying to decide whether to use Roku or Chromecast. Roku has an on TV interface that is easy to use but I can't use Google Home to control it. Chromecast lets us use Google Home, but you have to control the TV with a smartphone, too. The master bedroom TV has Chromecast + Google Home and the den has Roku. I am leaning towards Roku.