One of the important things about saving money is setting goals and planning but another thing that is super important and probably takes precedence over goal setting and planning is being present in the moment. As Couponers, it's so easy for us to get addicted to rolling and spending store rewards, points, gift cards and PayPal debit cards that we can end up disregarding our goals.
Our three main goals should always be - food, shelter and clothing and everything else is a wish list of things we'd like to do like little Bobby's birthday party, a Disney World trip or your once a month breakfast with your best friend at a trendy restaurant.
Like for me, I don't understand how people go on cruises, trips to Disney, Hawaii, Bali and Dubai but you are still making car payments? Make it, make sense! Like we aren't even talking like a drive down the coast to Monterey, eat lunch/dinner, a little sightseeing and spend the night at a hotel and drive back home, the next day. People are taking these $5,000 and $10,000 vacations and throwing it on a credit card to pay for it overtime.
Just because you make $140,000 or $200,000 per year before taxes doesn't mean that you deserve an expensive vacation thrown on your credit card. You are not doing any better than the McDonald's worker if you are carrying debt.
Anyways, remember the free Pepsi Wild Cherry Soda (up to $2.50) rebate? Well, I kept forgetting about the offer almost up until the very last minute when I grab a Pepsi Wild Cherry Zero 12pk for $3.99 at Ralphs on the Weekly Digital Deal which made the 12 pack just $1.49 after rebate. I submitted my receipt right away since I was bumping up against the expiration clock and of course, something weird happened when I texted my receipt. To make a long story short - they ended up paying me the $2.50 twice (two different ID numbers) after the expiration date. Aaaahhhhmaazing!!!!!!!
Grab those receipts that are left in shopping carts and even at the self checkout because a couple of days ago, at Vons, someone had left a $118 receipt at self checkout but none of the purchases qualified for Ibotta except today when I looked at the Ibotta offers, there was a new Vital Farms eggs offer and I quickly scanned the receipt that I had found at Vons. It's only $0.75 but I'll take a free $0.75! The receipt also qualified for $0.80 Fetch Rewards!
I've received $188.76 from Ibotta, $35 Amazon gift card from Shopkick (including the FREE $5 gift card), $25 Amazon and $25 Target from Fetch, $10 Adidas gift card from Merryfield, $5 & $25 Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks, $10 & $25 Amazon gift cards from MyPoints (account #2).
My son's birthday is next week and I'm proud to say that I used my Amazon gift cards to pay for his birthday gifts!
Below are my favorite deals in the month of February:
$5 FREE Gift Card from Shopkick
FREE Best Food Mayo
FREE Canada Dry Fruit Splash 20 oz
FREE Dr. Pepper 20 oz
$0.25 Reese's Caramel Peanut Butter Cups
$0.97 Lay's Chips
$2 MM General Mills Loaded Cereal
$0.51 MM Degree Deodorant
$0.03 Avocados
