Saving Families Money Since 2007
I’ve never been a big fan of Frappes as I prefer my coffee hot. However, I saw this recipe for a Pumpkin Pie Frappe and knew I had to try it.
It didn’t disappoint. I changed a few things — as is to be expected of me! 🙂 I swapped whole milk for the coconut milk, raw sugar for the Stevia, and just threw in a lot of ice instead of actually freezing the coffee.
The end result was delicious — as pronounced by every family member at dinner tonight when I served it as a special treat. 🙂
Here’s another way to earn free gift cards, submitted by reader Ilyssa:
I had an idea to offer for your 31 Ways to Earn Extra Cash Before Christmas series. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with, or have joined, Crowdtap yet. It’s a newer website that allows you to complete actions (very unique actions) to earn points. Your points can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards. I’ve only been a member for 5 months and I’ve already earned $75 in Amazon gift cards.
The actions are pretty fun actually. First, you can answer “Quick Hits” that are quick questions like, “What is your favorite fall accessory?” The Quick Hits range in point value from 10-50 points each. They also give you challenges which are worth 1,000 points to 40,000 points.
Recently, I’ve been challenged to make an AT&T themed pumpkin (1,000 points), have an Old Navy party where Crowdtap provided me with free coupons for 4 cardigans, skirts, and scarves (10,000 points), tweet about Woolite (1,000 points), share things on my Facebook wall (800 points) and the list goes on.
The Old Navy party has been my favorite action so far. I got to invite 3 friends to shop with me at Old Navy. Crowdtap provided us each with a coupon for a cardigan, skirt and scarf. We took tons of pictures and truly had a wonderful time.
I’ve had a great time on the site. I find the creative challenges fun and interesting. It’s really easy to join. And you can earn gift cards quick. A $10 Amazon gift card is only 20,000 points.
If you haven’t joined yet, it’s totally worth your time. Here’s my referral link, if you’re interested. They give 100 points for each person you refer. -Ilyssa
Today’s question is from Katie:
I would love some insight on the following question: How do you stay inside a tight food budget during pregnancy — especially during the first trimester of morning sickness and random cravings? I’ll make a meal plan, go shopping, and two days later everything on the plan makes me queasy. I can squeeze some money out of the budget for snacks, but not for a new snack every day. Worse, my biggest cravings are for pricier foods like roasted nuts and fish and tons of whole fruit. -Katie
Do you have a question you’d like to ask Money Saving Mom® readers? Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.
ICanTeachMyChild.com shows you how to make homemade wooden snap blocks.
Do you have a fun and frugal DIY idea to share? I’d love to hear about it! Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.
Bing Rewards is a way to earn credits for searching online and participating in daily offers. By spending just a few minutes per day, you can easily earn a $5 Amazon gift card every month.
Here’s what Jennifer says about Bing Rewards:
My husband and I use Bing Rewards to save up for things like free Redbox codes, Amazon gift cards, Xbox Live passes, etc. It works very much like Swagbucks. You make a free account and for every 2 searches using Bing, you earn points. Points are redeemable for a whole list of prizes. There are other daily deals and specials to earn extra points. Plus, the more lifetime points you earn the more privileges you get. Imagine giving each each of your kids a few Redbox codes in their Christmas stockings for the movie of their choice on family movie nights! -Jennifer
Click here and sign up for an account. It appears like a Facebook account is required and the sign-up process takes less than a minute to complete.
Once you’ve signed up, go to the Bing Dashboard and you’ll have a few different offers you can complete and ways to fill out your profile in order to earn some credits from the get-go. I was able to earn 25 credits just by completing these things.
Every day, log into your Bing Rewards account and do 30 quick searches. You’ll earn a credit for every two searches you do. You can also check your Bing Rewards dashboard to see if there is a daily offer to complete to earn you 1-2 more credits.
I like Bing Rewards because it has a cap on how many points you can earn a day, which is nice because it’s quick, easy, and done, and then you don’t have to dwell on it. I’ve been doing it for 3 months now. You get 1 point per 2 searches, so it’s not a gambling game like Swagbucks. I just click on “related searches” on the side until I hit my goal. -From an email written by Cat who blogs at Cartwheels and Windmills
You can earn 15 credits per day by searching (30 searches = 15 credits). Plus, you should be able to complete one or two daily offers each day to net you another 1-2 credits. This totals 480 credits in a typical month if you log in every day and earn 16 points. This gives you enough to almost earn a free $5 Amazon gift card in one month.
If you achieve Gold status (which you can achieve pretty easily by being an active member of Bing Rewards for two months), an Amazon gift card is only 475 credits — which makes it totally doable to earn one $5 Amazon gift card each month!
You can purchase Amazon gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, Groupon credit, Skype credit, Redbox rentals, and more! Plus, they also offer you the opportunity to donate your credits through DonorsChoose. Here’s what Cat says:
One of my favorite rewards is a DonorsChoose.org $5 gift card. DonorsChoose is a site where teachers can submit projects they would like funded for their classrooms and people or foundations can donate to them. My sister is a teacher in a low-income elementary school and has posted a few projects to DonorsChoose. I told her I would alternate my Amazon gift cards with DonorsChoose ones–that was until Bing price dropped the DonorsChoose reward to 99 points! So instead of giving my sister’s class $5 for the project, they got $25. I’m throwing all my points at that until the promotion ends on 11/1.
Actually, no. In fact, you can only earn credits for the first 5 friends you refer. So this makes it fair for everyone — and those who have a larger social network won’t necessarily have any advantage over those who don’t have a big social media following.
Note: If you sign up, can you leave your referral link in the comments so that others can sign up under you? Update your comment to let us know when you’ve gotten five referrals. We want to help each other out as much as possible!
Have you used Bing Rewards before? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences!
So I really, really bombed my goals last week. I started the week with high hopes and then those high hopes were quickly dashed by lots of unexpected interruptions, more pressing life things, and just plain tiredness.
I was kind of embarrassed to even post this update, but I figured maybe seeing so few things crossed off my list would encourage some of you who may be feeling like last week was a blur, too! So here goes…
Last week’s goals:
Family/Marriage/Mothering Goals
1. Read 3 chapters of The Stolen Necklace aloud to Kathrynne. Read 3 chapters of Still More Stories From Grandma’s Attic aloud to Kaitlynn. Read 10 picture books to Silas. Read at least 3 chapters of A Way Through the Sea aloud to the kids.
2. Write a love note to Jesse.
3.
Have a playdate with friends.
Personal Goals
4. Finish reading Whose Voice the Waters Heard, Greater, Fully Alive, The Promise of a Mother’s Prayers,
Return, and Now, Discover Your Strengths.
5. Finish listening to Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
6. Exercise at least five times.
Homemaking Goals
7. Finish 25 more rows of the scarf I’m working on knitting.
8. Make at least two new recipes.
9. Have a garage sale.Business Goals
10. Write three posts for other sites.
Family/Marriage/Mothering Goals
1. Read 3 chapters of The Stolen Necklace aloud to Kathrynne. Read 3 chapters of Still More Stories From Grandma’s Attic aloud to Kaitlynn. Read 10 picture books to Silas. Read at least 3 chapters of A Way Through the Sea aloud to the kids.
2. Write a love note to Jesse.
Personal Goals
3. Finish reading Whose Voice the Waters Heard, Greater, Fully Alive, The Promise of a Mother’s Prayers, and Now, Discover Your Strengths.
4. Finish listening to Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
5. Exercise at least five times. Start Couch to 10 K.
6. Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night (I figured out some of my tiredness is a result of just plain not getting enough sleep — so I’m aiming to do what I can to resolve that issue this week!)
Homemaking Goals
7. Finish 25 more rows of the scarf I’m working on knitting.
8. Make at least two new recipes.
9. Host a baby shower.
Business Goals
10. Write three posts for other sites.
How did you do on last week’s goals? What are your goals for this week? I’d love to have you share your progress on last week’s goals and your goals for this coming week in the comments. Of, if you’ve blogged about it, leave your direct link below. Let’s cheer each other on to live purposeful and productive lives!
You can download a free customizable weekly goal-planning sheet here.
Breakfasts
Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets, Cereal, Toast, Eggs, and/or Fruit
Lunches
Lunch at Cracker Barrel
Snack-y lunch, fresh carrot/orange juice
Mac & cheese, veggies, fruit
Cheese Quesadillas, oranges, carrot sticks
Peanut Butter Banana Smoothies, fruit, veggies
Leftovers x 2Snacks
Fruit/Veggies
Cheese/Crackers
Pumpkin Recipes
Hard-boiled eggsFreezer Cooking
Pumpkin Recipes
Healthful Oatmeal Chocolate Chip MuffinsDinners
Dinner with extended family
Taco Soup, Bread Machine Buttery Rolls, fruit, veggies
Lasagna, green salad, fruit salad, muffins (leftovers from my birthday dinner that my mom made & sent home with us)
Steak, Twice-Baked Potatoes, steamed veggies, fruit
Breakfast for dinner: Pumpkin Pancakes, scrambled eggs, fruit
Meatballs, steamed veggies, Pumpkin Crescent Rolls, mashed potatoes
Dinner with extended family
What’s on your menu this week? Share details and/or your link to your menu plan in the comments.
I was really hopeful about this recipe. I mean, I love pumpkin and I love Magic Bars. So combining the two should work well, right?
Well, actually not, in my opinion. It just tasted off. Like a flavor collision gone wrong. They were also a little too gooey (notice dripping bar in the photos?).
It might just be me, though. So if you try the recipe for 7-Layer Pumpkin Magic Bars, let us know what you think!
By the way, I know I said I was only doing a week of pumpkin recipes, but I found five more recipes I really wanted to try. So you’ll just have to bear with two weeks of pumpkin recipes. 🙂 If you don’t like pumpkin, don’t worry, We’ll be spotlighting apple recipes a little later this month!
Here’s an email I got from Patricia:
I am enjoying your series on how to make money to use for Christmas. I wanted to share about a job I have that “fell in my lap” because of my skills.
The job is working five hours a week as a children’s assistant. I was hired because of my volunteerism with my church. Our Children’s Director needed a “helper” because she was responsible for our After-School Center, our Infant and Toddler Child Care, and our Children’s Church. She couldn’t leave the church to run to the store to buy supplies! So I was hired as a “go-for”.
I go to Walmart to buy drinks, snacks or supplies we don’t order from a catalog. I took this job about eight years ago and am paid $15.00/hour. It is very flexible — I can work the five hours anytime I want and if I want to take off, I just work 10 hours the week before. I do all kinds of things around the church — bulletin boards, children’s worship bags, setting up for Sunday School (all supplies), and also some stuff no one else wants to do — like clean out cabinets and preview curriculum.
I want to encourage your readers who are looking for ways to earn more income to think of what they do best and find a way to sell it to someone as a job. You may even sell it to someone who never thought of paying for it before — like my church!
You may be a great cook: could you sell cakes or pies to a local restaurant? You may love crafts: could you put some on consignment? Do you have skills you could market, like I did? (You would not believe how many teachers have asked me to come do their bulletin boards for pay!).
Also. check into church childcare centers. Ours is always hiring. And if you work for a childcare center, you often get childcare free or less expensive than normal rates.
Lots of ideas are out there! Sometimes, it just takes the right person being in the right place. -Patricia
photo courtesy of Big Stock
Guest post from Heather of Creative Family Moments
We rarely go out for dinners or paid attractions, but when we do it’s because we have a coupon, deal, or special event. And when we do, I smile.
Not only at friends and people I know, though. I smile at everyone. Not like a “creeper” as my teenage daughter would say. Just a simple genuine smile that says, “Thanks for helping me.”
If we’ve never been to the particular venue (which is often the case when using coupons/deals), I always let the waitress or owner know that it’s our first time, cite the deal, and ask for their opinion on the best way to experience the place. In rare instances, I get a shrug. Most often, I get to hear what makes their place unique and find out their specialty. To me, this is part of the fun of going out.
I never really analyzed my behavior, until we celebrated the first day of school. I had a coupon for one large pizza at a location within biking distance. For a family of five, this isn’t much food but I promised the family we could eat more once we got home. It was a special treat, after all.
However, when the pizza was served to us, my husband pointed out that they gave us a much bigger pizza than a large. “It’s your first time!” the waiter explained with a smile.
Hubby sat deep in thought while the kids enjoyed their slices. “Do you realize that this always happens to you?” he asked. I turned to him. “What do you mean?”
He started citing instance after instance. Free appetizers, free desserts, free tours, free rides, amazingly attentive service, etc. “Businesses seem to go out of their way to make sure you get to experience the best of what they have to offer,” he concluded.
Thinking about it, I realized he was right! When I let businesses know how genuinely excited I am to experience their venue, most of the time (not all) I’m rewarded with a better experience than I initially imagined.
I didn’t realize the kids were listening until a few weeks later. We took the family out to a local burger joint after church (with coupons). My eldest daughter came to the table holding a giant basket of fries, much larger than the few fries each the rest of us had on our plates. She grinned. “I told the lady up front that you guys had been here before but that this was my first time.”
It was true. And they just made sure my soon-to-drive daughter will be a loyal customer for years to come. So remember to smile!
Heather blogs at Creative Family Moments. With plenty of embarrassing moments and funny kid quotes along the way, she hopes to inspire others to live a life of celebration as well!
Guest post from Jan of The Nerdy Farm Wife.
A few months ago, my husband lost his job… a mere two days after I was laid off from my place of part-time employment. These two unfortunate events happened shortly after an eleven day power outage played havoc on our normal routine and budget, and wiped out our large supply of mostly home-raised foods stored in our chest freezer.
Talk about a scary time!
Being a man of action and not one to sit around and bemoan our losses, my husband immediately started the process of starting up his own masonry company and began securing small jobs that would payout within a few weeks. In the meantime though, we needed a source of quick cash in order to put enough food on the table to make it until income started trickling in again.
Fortunately, my brother just happened to be making his yearly run to the local scrap metal recycle center and dropped by to see if my husband wanted to ride along. We had vaguely paid attention to the fact that my brother collected soft drink cans every time there was a family function and had even laughed about the fact that he would rummage through the trash for them and how excited his four little girls would get when it was time for “beer can hunting walks with Daddy.”
Laughter quickly turned to admiration, however, once his 135 pounds of collected cans, combined with some ancient copper pipes, a few old radiators and an assorted pile of what could only be described as “junk”, ended up netting him almost $800.00, every bit of it paid out in cold, hard cash.
Inspired, we started scouring the house for items that we could take to the scrap yard, too! Our old stove had been sitting beside our shed, awaiting a trip to the landfill, which is where we normally took appliances once they were beyond repair. Into the truck it went along with our recently broken hot water heater, a badly bent aluminum badminton net frame, unusable scaffolding from my husband’s first home building business, a busted step-ladder, the frames from some ripped window screens and quite a few other odds and ends.
Our load, which was smaller and far less planned out than my brother’s, netted us $185.00. Not a bad pay rate for about five hours spent scouring the house and shed, loading the truck, driving to the scrap dealer, having everything inspected and weighed, getting paid and then driving back home with grocery money in hand!
To find a scrap metal dealer near you, try checking your phone book under “Scrap Metal Dealers.” What they accept will vary, but ours will take items such as: cast iron, motor blocks, air conditioner window units, radiators, broken appliances, copper pipes and wire, transmissions, anything aluminum, and car batteries.
So, check around your house for metal items that you no longer use. You just might find you’ve been sitting on an almost instant cash source!
Jan lives on a seven-acre hobby farm with her family and spends her days chasing chickens, homeschooling the kids, and experimenting with herbs & local plants to make jams, soaps and home remedies. She blogs about these things and more at The Nerdy Farm Wife.
Welcome to October’s series on 31 Ways to Earn Extra Cash Before Christmas. In this series, I’m highlighting simple and legitimate ways you can earn extra cash in the next three months for those of you who could use a little extra cash to help you pay for Christmas — or just for your living expenses if you’re in a tight spot right now.
If you’ve found a great way to make extra cash before Christmas that doesn’t require an outlay of cash upfront, please email me your tip. I’d love to hear it and possibly share it during this series!
The following is a guest post by Alaina Forbes from Telecommuting Mommies:
The holidays are a great time to get hired as a seasonal worker working as a virtual call center agent. Often times, there can be an opportunity to stay on with these companies after the holiday season, or at least return the following holiday season.
Working as a virtual call center agent requires answering incoming phone calls that are routed to your home phone. Many of the virtual call center companies assign you to one specific client in order for you to become comfortable with that specific script and product.
Calls are mostly customer service based calls and may include helping people with their accounts or orders. Clients range from pizza delivery stores to credit card companies.
Some clients are more sales focused, and a few virtual call center companies also conduct outgoing calls. Read as much as possible about the company and the job description before applying and then choose one that you know you will feel comfortable doing.
To get a job as a virtual call center agent, you must own your own computer and each company has specific technical requirements that your computer must meet. In most cases, as long as your computer is not ancient and you have a decent amount of memory, you won’t have too much of a problem meeting these requirements.
Almost all companies also require that you have high speed internet and a land line phone. Cell phones are not usually acceptable, and a headset is usually required in order to type and talk at the same time. You’ll want to check out the individual requirements on each company’s website before applying to be sure that you can meet them.
A handful of companies, including Teletech and Alpine Access, will hire you as an employee, but many take you on as an independent contractor. These two options lead to a lot of variables between companies.
Being an independent contractor typically means less commitment as far as how much you are expected to work. Most allow you to log on and schedule yourself for shifts with only a very minimum number of hours required to stay on – sometimes as little as a shift a month.
Because of this, they usually have a lot of contractors employed in order to ensure they are always staffed, and this can make getting enough shifts more difficult depending on how much you want to work. Independent contractors are usually allowed to work for more than one virtual call center, so you may need to sign up for multiple companies in order to get steady work.
Conversely, companies that hire you as an employee will usually have a non-compete agreement and will not allow you to work with another virtual call center while employed with them. They may require you to commit to certain shifts each day of the week and work a minimum number of hours depending on if you are part-time or full-time.
This guarantees you plenty of work but may not have the flexibility some people — moms especially — may need. Evaluate what you really want out of this before applying. Can you commit to working full-time? Or do you just want some extra pocket money?
Another variable between companies is how the pay is calculated. Some call centers pay by the hour. These are usually the ones that hire you as an employee.
It is not uncommon, however, for some to pay by the minute of talk time – so if you happen to get a slow shift you may not make as much money as you were hoping. During the holidays this is usually not a problem, and most companies that pay by the minute make an attempt to not overschedule in order to keep everyone busy. You just want to be fully aware of all of these variables before you accept a position.
VIP Desk is currently hiring for a number of positions with November training classes. They are filling both part-time and full-time home-based concierge positions, as well as what they call “brand ambassador” seasonal positions.
Convergys is filling multiple positions for both full-time and part-time customer service agents for multiple clients.
Teletech is hiring for their part time customer service and season customer service positions.
LiveOps is hiring for their emergency roadside assistance call center team.
Transcom, West, Alpine Access and Working Solutions are all currently accepting applications.
Another option is applying directly with some of the companies who are now hiring their own virtual call center agents including 1-800-Flowers and U-Haul.
Have you worked as a virtual call center agent before? If so, tell us about your experiences!
Alaina shares her twelve years of work from home experience at her blog Telecommuting Mommies. She also opens up her personal life as a homeschooling, blogging, work at home Mom of four at The Maestro Mom. Follow her on Twitter at TelecommuterMom.
Welcome to Frugal Photo Friday! This month, I am partnering with Rebekah from SimplyRebekah.com. Each Friday we are sharing pictures of simple ways that we save money. This week’s themes are kids and bath & beauty.
We love the library! In fact, my kids would go there every day if we could!
We invest $25 per year to get the Gold Card to our local library so that we can have unlimited holds (they usually cost $0.25 per hold) and this is probably one of the best $25 we spend all year. Thanks to our local library, we have all sorts of adventures through books, make precious memories while cuddled up sharing a book together, and learn many new things each week — all for practically free!
{You can see the chapter books we’ve read aloud this year so far here. We also go through dozens of picture books each month, plus the girls and I check out lots of books to read independently.}
Cooking together is a such a fun way to get things done, while enjoying being together at the same time. Plus, I’ve found that it can double as math practice for youngsters: we count the cups and teaspoons of ingredients as we put them in and talk about simple addition and subtraction.
{Pictured: Making Homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes with Silas.}
Who says you have to buy expensive toys to have fun? Our kids love playing with boxes, creating with paper, and pretending their playset in the backyard is their spy team headquarters. A little imagination and creativity can provide hours of free fun!
{Pictured: The Paper Doll Chains we made for our Early American History study recently.}
Kaitlynn made a picnic for us to enjoy outside on the deck while we worked on our homeschool lessons one day this week (she even put a fresh flower she’d picked on each of our trays!). Free Vitamin D, fresh air, and memories all while getting lunch and lessons in = score! 🙂
Um, I’ve got pretty much nothing on the bath & beauty part as that’s not really my cup ‘o tea. Unless you count the fact that I don’t use shaving cream or that I only have six mix and match outfits. 🙂
Head over to SimplyRebekah to see the savings that Rebekah is sharing today.
Now it is your turn to share the simple ways that you save. Share your link below or on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #FrugalPhotoFriday. All of the link-up details and themes for each week can be found here.
While you might not be able to earn a gift card in time for Christmas, Katherine emailed in this simple way you can earn a few gift cards every year:
I use My Points to earn points towards gift cards by clicking on emails. My Points sends a few emails each day, which each get you 5 points for clicking through.
I have mine auto-directed into folders in my email and take about 5 minutes to click through them once a week or so. I have been a member of My Points for 6 years and I have earned several $10-$25 gift cards each year. Definitely worth the time investment for me! -Katherine
(Note: The link in this post is my referral link. Read my disclosure policy here.)
Welcome to October’s series on 31 Ways to Earn Extra Cash Before Christmas. In this series, I’m highlighting simple and legitimate ways you can earn extra cash in the next three months for those of you who could use a little extra cash to help you pay for Christmas — or just for your living expenses if you’re in a tight spot right now.
Want to earn some Amazon gift cards to help pay for Christmas gifts? You definitely must check out Amazon’s Trade-In Program. Here’s what reader Chelsea said:
Last week, I discovered Amazon’s trade-in store, and ended up having almost $400 worth of credit between six textbooks! After researching what the books were worth, I found that Amazon was offering me a very fair price. I was able to ship the books for free and quickly received the credit in my account.
Besides textbooks, Amazon also accepts electronics, movies and television series, video games, consoles, and accessories for trade. I would highly encourage MoneySavingMom® readers to check out this program. Paired with free shipping and price matching, the store credit could really come in handy. -Chelsea
Here’s how Amazon’s Trade-In Program works:
Go through your home and find any DVDs, Books, Video Games, or electronics you no longer need or use.
Do a search on the Amazon Trade-In Store to see how much Amazon will pay you for a Trade In. If the price seems fair, click through to verify the condition, title, and price.
Follow the steps to print the postage-paid shipping label. You can choose to go with free UPS shipping (you’ll need to drop your package off at the nearest UPS location) or shipping via the U.S. Postal Service (you can give your package to your mail carrier or drop it off at the nearest post office).
Ship out the item in a timely manner. Once it has been received by Amazon, they will check it to verify that it is eligible and in the condition you promised. Items considered to be not acceptable will be returned. Return shipping is free, but you will not receive any Amazon.com Gift Card amount for the returned items.
After your item has been received and approved by Amazon.com, they will issue your Amazon credit. You can use this credit to purchase anything on Amazon.com. I’d suggest hanging onto it and letting your credit build until you are ready to spend it on Christmas gifts!
It’s that simple! Here’s what Lydia from Five 4 Five Meals emailed into me:
Earlier this year I cleaned out our entire DVD collection by “selling” them to Amazon. In exchange for your DVDs they give you a gift card based on their resale value.
I made around $100 and decluttered our house. The bonus is you don’t pay shipping, Amazon does. -Lydia
Have you used Amazon’s Trade-In Program before? If so, I’d love to hear what your experiences — good or bad — have been with it.
