Money Saving Mom®

It’s Day 9 of the $100 Savings Challenge and I am SO excited to tell you what I found!! I had some extra time to go through a folder I had in my email where I had stashed a few hundred personal/family emails that I thought I might want to refer to later.

I had completely forgotten what else I had stashed in that folder!!

Today, we saved by…

-Choosing to go to the TN Aquarium instead of the Atlanta Aquarium. We priced it out and realized that while the Atlanta one might be a little cooler, there would likely be a lot fewer people, we could bring our stroller and drinks in, AND we’d save over $200!!

-I ended up taking Kierstyn and Micah to the aquarium while Jesse, Silas, and David went and did some other things. They LOVED the aquarium

-Afterwards, the guys met up with us and we played in the water outside the aquarium for an hour. It was the best free fun!!

And now, onto the $100 Savings Challenge! If you haven’t signed up for the $100 Savings Challenge, be sure follow the directions to sign up (there are prizes!!):

How To Participate in the $100 Savings Challenge

1. Go sign up for the $100 Savings Challenge to get your free 14-day plan.
2. Every week day of the challenge, I’ll be posting on Instagram, Facebook, and here on the blog as I work through the challenge myself.
3. I will invite you to do the daily challenges with me and to share your successes! Every day that you complete the challenge and submit it, you’ll be entered to win one of 5 $100 Amazon gift cards we’re giving away randomly at the end.
4. You can participate every day or just some of the days — whatever works for you! But every day that you participate and fill out the simple form, you are entered to win!

Day 9 Challenge:

Use Gift Cards or Rewards: Check your wallet or apps for unused gift cards, points, or rewards. Apply them. (Found money: $5–$20)

When I went through my inbox (because I had some extra time while on vacation!), guess what I discovered? There was a $100 Chili’s gift card + a $100 Hotels.com gift card + 4 Krispy Kreme coupons for a free dozen doughnuts. All of these were things I had gotten two years ago and stashed in that folder and them completely forgotten about!!!

I decided I’m only going to count $50 of that toward this week, though, because we are going to use the Chili’s gift card to pay for our usual one night of getting takeout per week this week.

So, with that added to my total, we are at $95.25 found/saved so far with the challenge. We are in the home-stretch and we are almost to $100! I didn’t know if I was going to make it, so I’m THRILLED that I think I’m going to hit $100!!

How much have you saved/found so far as part of the challenge?

Enter to Win a $100 Amazon Gift Card (we’re giving 5 away!)

Go sign up for the challenge here! And just for fun — and to motivate you to join us for the challenge — if you do today’s challenge and fill out the form linked here, you will be entered to win one of 5 $100 Amazon gift cards I’m giving away at the end of the challenge!

Note: We may possibly share a few of the best entries over the course of the challenge, so by submitting the form, you are giving us permission to possibly post your entry. If you’d rather we don’t post it, please note that on your entry.

Did you participate today? I’d love to hear how today went for you!

It’s Day 8 of the $100 Savings Challenge and I didn’t fully follow the directions today (I’ll share more below why that’s the case!), but I did cancel an auto-renewal and that’s going to guarantee we don’t accidentally spend $100 on an auto-renewal.

We’re in Atlanta for the baseball tournament through tomorrow. We are having a great time and the kids are doing so well overall (except for struggling to sleep for the first few nights, but otherwise doing well!).

Today, we saved by…

-Bringing our own snacks and drinks to the ball park (we have gone to the grocery store a few times to re-stock while here!) These Chocolate Peanut Butter Quest bars are my new fave! (Did you see this hot deal on Quest bars right now??)

-Using ice from the hotel ice machine instead of buying it (by the way, our Stanley cooler has been coming in clutch! We are loving it — and it doubles as a chair to sit on and a stool to stand on, too! And it’s on sale for $66 again!!)

-Enjoying lots of free fun — playing at the baseball park and at the hotel. The kids also got to watch Bluey on the hotel TV while eating snacks after a long day of playing and being outside and they were SO excited. I wish you could have heard them laughing… they think Bluey is hilarious!

And now, onto the $100 Savings Challenge! If you haven’t signed up for the $100 Savings Challenge, be sure follow the directions to sign up (there are prizes!!):

How To Participate in the $100 Savings Challenge

1. Go sign up for the $100 Savings Challenge to get your free 14-day plan.
2. Every week day of the challenge, I’ll be posting on Instagram, Facebook, and here on the blog as I work through the challenge myself.
3. I will invite you to do the daily challenges with me and to share your successes! Every day that you complete the challenge and submit it, you’ll be entered to win one of 5 $100 Amazon gift cards we’re giving away randomly at the end.
4. You can participate every day or just some of the days — whatever works for you! But every day that you participate and fill out the simple form, you are entered to win!

Day 8 Challenge:

Day 8 Challenge: Price Check Insurance, Phone Plan, or Internet Service: Call and see if you have the best rate possible and if there are any changes you can make to lower your monthly expenses. Or check online to compare rates. You might unlock savings that will pay off month after month! (Save: $5–$10+/month)

We recently re-ran our health insurance rates and chose a different plan. We are privately insured and have a high deductible with 100% coverage after we meet the deductible (we met ours already this year due to Kathrynne’s hospital stay at the start of the year + a few other medical things). We get our rates through Zander and really appreciate how they help us to get the best bang for our buck when it comes to health insurance. We always check plans once a year and look to see if there are any better options or rates.

So we didn’t need to price check our insurance. And because our phone plan and internet service are one of the most important parts of our business and we are really happy with what we have right now, I don’t want to change to something else and potentially mess up coverage (plus, my phone and our internet are a business expense), so we decided against trying to switch to something else.

One Quick Way We Guaranteed We’ll Not Pay $113

I figured out how to go in and turn off auto-renew for Craftsy — that way I don’t have to remember to cancel when it’s close to my year being up!

You just go into your account, click on membership, and then there’s a button to click to cancel auto-renew. It literally took me 30 seconds!

By the way, you can sign up for a completely FREE Craftsy account right now (we’ve never seen it free — this gives you access to over 1500 crafting classes!) and then go in and click to not auto-renew and you will get a year for free without having to worry about remembering to cancel!

I’m not going to count the Craftsy cancellation in the money saved, since I likely would have remembered to cancel that, so I’m going to say that we are still at $45.25 found/saved so far with the challenge. How much have you saved/found so far as part of the challenge?

Enter to Win a $100 Amazon Gift Card (we’re giving 5 away!)

Go sign up for the challenge here! And just for fun — and to motivate you to join us for the challenge — if you do today’s challenge and fill out the form linked here, you will be entered to win one of 5 $100 Amazon gift cards I’m giving away at the end of the challenge!

Note: We may possibly share a few of the best entries over the course of the challenge, so by submitting the form, you are giving us permission to possibly post your entry. If you’d rather we don’t post it, please note that on your entry.

Did you participate today? I’d love to hear how today went for you!