Put it on your to do list to check your credit cards and track the rewards that you have. Make some notes also about when they expire (because they will if you don’t use them). Check out the things that you can get with the points. Some of it is junk, but some things I’m sure you will be able to use, like gas, hotel rooms, flights, and gifts (remember that Christmas is only about six months away). Just remember to use them on things that you actually need. We’ll be resuming our usual posting schedule as well.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

Summer Savings for you.

This issue brought to you by

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++ News -

We’ll be out of the loop for the next couple of weeks as we work on completing a project. Our next issue should be the first or second week of July.

Super Savings Site

Here’s a great place to plunder around in for a while. I really like the credit card repayment calculator.

http://www.mymoney.gov/

++ Savings Tip of the Week

We’ll start the paying off your bills in our July issues. We’ll start out with an overview - then we’ll dig in.

I read an article this week about ink and how much we spend on it. Did you know that if you’re a ‘normal’ computer user then you’ll spend 3 or 4 times the amount you paid for your printer on ink. Some ink cartridges will cost you $66.

Here is a good calculator to find out how much your spending.

http://www.consumercalculator.org/printer_calculator.php

Here is an excellent article that discusses how to figure out the costs (and which printer costs less).

Our Next Issues

Pay your bill off plan.

Here is a link we stumbled on today - 66 ways to save money.

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/money/66ways/

Enjoy your day and we’ll talk with you again on Saturday.

Summer Savings for you.

This issue brought to you by

Wildflower Seeds

10 ways to save money this Summer.

Here are 10 ways you can save money this summer.

1. Clean the air filter in your air conditioner. Do it now and then do it at least every 30 days.
2. If you have an outside unit for your air condtioner make sure that there is no dirt / leaves / debris around it.
3. Turn your thermostat up a couple of degrees. Once your body gets used to that temperature turn it up a degree after a week.
4. Skip one trip out per month.
5. While your air conditioner is on feel around your windows and doors for any air coming in. If you find any buy some caulk and caulk the windows. Some more information can be found here.
6. Make a plan to pay your bills off. We’ll work on helping you do that in some later issues.
7. You can start by paying an extra 10% on the bill with the highest interest rate.
8. Take a look at your grocery bill each month. Whatever you’re spending the most on, decide today to cut that expense by 10%.
9. If you take any short trips by car, try to walk to do them.
10. Start saving $1 / day. By the start of next Summer you’ll have $365.00.

Our Next Issues

Pay your bills off plan.

Yahoo Deals - http://deals.yahoo.com/

This site is broken up into sections.

The main page gives you a breakdown of deals (this changes several times a day).

The coupon page had over 4,000 different coupons. Everything from drug stores to electronics.

Storewide sales shows snippets from the front pages of stores that are having sales.

Weekly ads show the circulars from stores that are near you.

Saved coupons allows you to save coupons that you want to use later. You can use your yahoo account to access these.

Overall I like this site quite a bit, especially the coupon section which is arranged nicely and have expiration dates displayed.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

Saving Money when you go out on the town.

This issue brought to you by

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++ News -

I heard a report yesterday that gas prices had nearly doubled over the last few months. The good news is that it is still less than the record prices from last year.

++ Savings Tip of the Week

If you’re thinking about buying a new home, maybe now is the time to buy. Hud recently announced that you can get an ‘advance’ on the 8k tax credit. You can find some details about that here.

Saving Money when you go out on the town.

1. Drinks are expensive - if possible limit your drinks at a club or restauraunt to one or two.
2. Check out your local paper (or local websites) for deals.
3. Call the places you’re thinking about going and ask for deals.
4. Go during happy hour.
5. Ask friends / neighbors for any good tips / deals they may have.
6. Instead of going out - why not have a party at home?

We hope you have a wonderful weekend.

The biggest cost for our trip was the tickets. Tickets at the gate were almost $50.00. We bought our tickets online and that saved us about $20.00. If we had more time we could have bought tickets for 2 days for the price of 1 day (and if we lived closer we would have saved a ton buying a season ticket). Parking set us back $10 - we didn’t have much of a choice here. A good option if you’re staying a couple of days is to get a hotel with tram service to the park - two days would save you 20 bucks. Many hotels offer packages for room and a visit to the park. Again the best way to find out how much you can save is to comparison shop. Don’t forget to search online forums, talk to your friends as well.

The next biggest cost for our trip was food. Dinner for four people (burgers, fries, drinks) ran us about $50.00.  It was hot during the day and drinks were pretty mandantory or we would have gotten very dehydrated. Most of the parks now restrict what you can bring into the park. So eat a good breakfast. Hydrate well before leaving and bring a cooler and have some drinks for when you leave the park.

We didn’t shop any for trinkets. We did take lots of pictures (which we can make into trinkets if we want). We did have a wonderful trip and my daughter had a great time.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

Saving Money at the Movies

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++ News -

We hope you and your family have a wonderful Holiday weekend.

++ Savings Tip of the Week

Here are some money saving tips on grilling.

http://frugal.families.com/blog/frugal-barbecue-grill

Saving Money The Nitty Gritty - How to Save Money on Movies and Video

The average movie ticket price for 2008 was $7.18. So for a family of four the price (without popcorn) would run you $28.72.

The first thing you’ll need to figure out is how long can you wait to see hit movies.

We have talked some about how you can save some money when going to the theater .

We also talked about some ways to get tv for free - those links would also help you find movies for nothing.

DVD prices again have a broad range - again this is usually based on how long the dvd has been out. The longer it’s been out the cheaper it is. Taking a look at Amazon the price of a recent Blu-Ray movie is about $25.00.
“Normal” DVDs have a price of around $16.00.

It doesn’t matter to me exactly when I see a movie. With our cable service we subscribe to all the movie channels. That means I get to watch movies about 6 months or so after they’ve been in the theaters. But the thing to remember is that the movie is ‘new’ to me… so when it came out doesn’t really matter.

The key here is to make a budget and stick to it.

You should be keeping track of how you’re spending any money that you spend, but if you’re not for the next couple of weeks you’ll want to do that.

This weekend we’ll talk about saving Money at the movies.

Till then I found this link that may have some ways of saving money that you haven’t thought about (in fact 25 ways.)

http://www.mytwodollars.com/2006/11/30/sometimes-the-simple-things-can-save-the-most-money/

Saving Money on Car Maintenance

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++ News -

Gas prices have been risen about 12% in the past few weeks. Details on that can be found here.

Saving Money The Nitty Gritty - How to Save Money on your Car Maintenance

If you’re trying to save money by not buying a new car and/or working on your gas mileage then you will definitely want to do some car maintenace.

You can either do the maintenance yourself or you can hire a mechanic to do it.

1. Doing it yourself.

If you’re mechanically inclined and have no problem with your car maintenance then I applaud you.

There are a few different ways you can learn how.

If you want to do something specific then do a search online.

You can also learn quite a bit from books, many local community colleges and tech schools have courses that you can take.

Hang around a garage, get with someone that knows what they are doing and you can get some hands on experience.

2. Hire someone to do it.

Get references from friends / family and your neighbors.

Call around to get prices on things that need to be done.

Ask how much parts are going to be if it’s a big job and ask can you buy the parts yourself (you may get off cheaper that way).

Next Issues and what’s up:

Entertainment -

An Overview
Doing the Audit
Entertainment alternatives