January Report

Time seems to be zooming by. The first month of the year has already ended. I thought it would be a good time to look back and assess how the month went. In doing so, I hope to celebrate my victories, however small, and learn from my mistakes.

One of the changes I started in December was to keep track of my online earnings in a separate spreadsheet. Once I had that in place, it was easy to continue onto this year. I also decided not to spend any of that money. Instead, I'm socking it away. It's part of my plan to reach one of my goals_destination no. 2 in the Crown Money Map. I am doing the same thing with my rebates. Instead of treating these two as extra income, I'm using them as savings. For this month, my totals are:

                           YouData     =  0.46
                           CrownGPT =  5.00 (Amazon giftcard)
                           Lightspeed  =  5.00
                           Swagbucks =10.00
                           Opinion Outpost = 12.80 

The cash plus the $48.98 in rebates I received are welcome additions to my savings account. I'm also waiting for three $5.00 Amazon gift card codes to be added to my Swagbucks account. The codes won't post until Monday today, because the month ended on a weekend. That's fine with me, as I'm saving everything up in my Amazon account for future use anyway.

Another Free $5.00 Amazon Gift Card

Yesterday, I redeemed a $5.00 Amazon gift card from CrownGPT. This morning, the code's already in my inbox! That is so cool! What's even better, it only took me a week five days to earn it. I did not have to buy anything. I just visited CrownGPT once a day, probably 10 minutes each time, to check for any offers and did the ones I liked. I could have probably earned this faster but I just did not have the time. Still, my time spent at CrownGPT seems to have paid off nicely.

$10.00 in PayPal from Swagbucks

Today is a great day for my savings account. Swagbucks just deposited $10.00 in my PayPal account. This is $10.00 just for using Swagbucks as my search engine. I did not buy anything. I did not spend any money to earn it. Even the time investment is minimal. I am just so happy with Swagbucks. I only wish I found out about Swagbucks sooner. Oh well, better late than never, :).

My CVS Deals

Braving the rain and wind, I ventured to CVS today to buy dishwashing liquid. I was looking for the Dawn 2 pack for $6.99 that would have given an ECB back (I forget how much). Since I already had a $1.00 and a $4.00 ECBs from the previous week, .99c for a two pack was, in my mind, worth the trip.

Alas, when I got there, the item was out of stock. Since I did not want to waste my trip, I looked for an alternative. They had the smaller bottles of Dawn on sale for .96c. With the .50 coupon from last Sunday, my total would have been $1.84 plus tax. I would have not been able to use my $4 ECB. If I had used my $1, I would have to pay .84c. I thought of another way. This is what I came up with :

Transaction #1
1 Dawn 9.5 0z .96
2 Oust Surface and Air 7.98

1 Dawn coupon .50
1 Oust Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupon 3.99
1 ECB 4.00

Subtotal .45
Tax .87
Total 1.32
ECBs earned 6.00

Transaction #2
3 Dawn 9.5 oz 2.88
1 Scrubbing Bubbles 6.99

3 Dawn coupons 1.50
1 Scrubbing Bubbles coupon 1.00
1 ECB from transaction#1 6.00
1 ECB from previous week 1.00

Total .37
Tax .96
Total 1.33
ECB earned 2.00

Total value of items:18.81
Total value of coupons used: 6.99
Total ECBs earned: 8.00
Total ECBs used: 11.00 (including from previous week)
Total out of pocket: 2.65


Even if I did not have the $5.00 ECBs from the previous week, it is possible to snag this deal. Of course, the total out of pocket would be more. For transaction#1, $4.45, earning $6.00 ECB. For transaction#2, using the ECB from transaction#1, $1.37. Still a pretty good deal.