Week #28 - Small Checks & Big Bills

So last week I was in a crappy mood and ended up posting the blog late because I took an extra day off to make a four day weekend over 4th of July. I don't have much of a story to tell this week, but I'll give you an update on some stuff that has gone on in the world of spending & saving..

1- I've been collecting 'Coke Points' off of the bottle caps & soda boxes for a couple of years now and I have over 5000 points saved on-line. I check the catalog of gifts you can get every once in a while to see if there is anything new and I have used points a few times to get a t-shirt, a coke bottle shaped cake pan & a few other things. Recently I needed a new lunch bag for bringing food to work and instead of buying one with real money, I found one on the Coca-Cola website and ordered it for 300 Coke Points which pretty much means I got it free!

2- I talked about making complaints when service or products are not what they should be and I recently got 2 $10 gift certificates from the corporate office of a local convenience store chain because of some band products I bought from one of their stores. When I brought them to the store and asked if I could use it to buy just 1 bottle of soda they said yes, but when I did they gave me back the remainder in cash.... once again... Free Money!

3- I didn't tell this story, but I went to Applebees with my wife and mother-in-law for dinner a couple of weeks ago and they screwed up 2 out of 3 meals. We let the waitress know and the manager came over and said they were remaking the food, but when we got the bill they had not taken even 1 item off the bill. We didn't say anything, but when I got home I sent an email and filled out a survey which got me a call from a district manager. I explained what happened and he apologized and then a few days later I got a $20 gift certificate in the mail!

4- I have a pretty standard Saturday routine that starts with a trip to Rubber Chicken Comics (Main St. Bellingham, MA) followed by lunch at the Subway next door. I have a points card for Subway and have accumulated over 200 points, which is enough for 3-4 free sandwiches, but can be used for free smaller items also. They just started a promotion called '$4 Lunch' which is a 6" sandwich and fountain soda for... you guessed it, $4. I have been getting the $4 lunch and using 15 of my 'Subway Points' to get a free bag of chips which means I'm eating a filling lunch for under $5!

5- I was on a shopping trip with my wife at an Old Navy store and while she was shopping I checked out the t-shirts. I found a pretty cool Delorean shirt that was actually just a Delorean graphic and not a Back to the Future image. Old Navy was having a 30% off everything sale, but I also managed to find the only shirt on the rack that had a discount price tag of $4.95 on it (regular price was $15.95 I think). When it was rung up it came up at full price, but when we pointed out to the clerk that there was a discount tag on it, he changed it to $4.95 and also gave us the 30% off making the shirt about $3.50. Even with the amount of shirts I already have I couldn't turn down that bargain!

Ok... so hopefully you can take a couple of those things and turn them into a bargain or savings of your own. Now on to the weekly wrap up... I got a paycheck for only $495.73 ($31.30 was added to my 401K) because I took July 5th off to make a 4 day weekend after the July 4th holiday. I was going to deposit the full check into the mortgage account because its a smaller check, but I'm still going to put $50 in the loan repayment account and the remaining $445.73 towards the mortgage. I also did my $20 vacation transfer again even though after paying my credit card bill the checking account is looking a little thin!

Here is the week 28 wrap up:
$31.30 to my 401K
$20.00 to my vacation fund
$50.00 to the loan repayment account

Which makes the 2013 totals:
$946.37 in my 401K
$560.00 in the vacation fund
$56.70 in the piggy bank
$400.00 in the quarterly loan payment account
$100.00 in my vet bill savings
$1258.00 in my money market
$882.99 in my car account

For this weeks bonus I'll just let you know that I got my car tax bill in last week. As much as it sucks to pay car taxes it was nice to know that I had money set aside to use for car expenses in my 'car savings account'. I just wrote a check, mailed it out and transferred the same amount from the car account to the regular checking account and I'm still left with money for repairs or a potential car down payment in the future. So start saving for those things now and you wont have to panic when the bills come in down the road!