Showing posts with label Save a Loonie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save a Loonie. Show all posts

17 May 2011

~BBQ Season!~

So let’s be honest…we’re Canadian.  So we BBQ year round.  Winter just means that the BBQ is closer to the door and we eat inside!  But when summer comes we BBQ almost every night of the week.  There is nothing better then a good steak on the Barbie.  It’s not something we have every day, about twice a month we’ll have a great steak with all the fixings.  We wouldn’t want to ruin our stylish figure right?

Anyhow, during the winter when we want steak we run to Blackmans Butcher Shop just down the street and grab a yummy Rib Eye steak.  A hot $30 or so dollars later we are home…too expensive for us to do very often!  So when summer comes I head over to Costco and buy a whole Rib-Eye and make my own steaks. 

For $117.65 we got enough steak for Randy and I to have 9 Steak dinners…..$13.07 a meal, a much better improvement on the prices we pay at Blackmans.  Quality wise I think the they are just as good as the ones we get from Blackmans and for 20 minutes worth of using my butcher knife we get to enjoy steak almost all summer!  As you can see from the pictures I cut a generous steak, so if you don’t like your steak as thick you could get many more meals then I did!  I got this huge cost saving trick from my BFF Melissa.  Thanks chicky! 

And yes, I do wear an apron when cooking…it’s my fancy Williams Sonoma apron…I feel like a chef in it, LOL!  Someday my pink and white kitchen will be re-done so that my apron matches it, LOL!  For now, I bring the style to it….well enough of that!  Enjoy your BBQ’s this summer, I know we are going to…let us know you’re coming, I’ll pull some steak out!

15 March 2009

~Am I crazy?~

I'm wondering if my family and friends think I'm crazy sometimes...I coupon, I clip UPCs, I scrounge for deals, I complete surveys for money, mystery shop... I guess it seems like a bit much for some of you. Good thing it's all my time though. So in an effort to win over some approval, LOL, like I care, LOL; I thought I would share some numbers!

Coupon Savings:
January 2009: $186.04
February 2009: $285.29
March 2009 to date: $48.99

Club Card Savings:
January 2009: $73.89
Febraury 2009: $109.94
March 2009 to date: $9.58 - there is more then this, Randy lost some receipts on me!

Survey Money Earned:
January 2009: $13.00
February 2009: $3.00
March 2009 to date: $23.00

Survey Gift Certificates Earned:
2009 to date: Chapters $20

Futura Money Earned:
January 2009: $44.99
Febraury 2009: $10.00
March 2009 to date: $59.54

Mystery Shopping $ Earned:
January 2009: $1118.88
February 2009: $1032.50
March 2009 to date: $1008.50

Coupon Trades for Gift Certificates 2009:
Chapters GCs $35.00
Walmart GC $20.00

Rebates & Cash Back on Purchases:
Smart Canucks Cash Back $13.22
Walmart Gift Cards $70.00

I would say that I spend maybe an hour to two a month doing surveys. I spend about 5 full 8 hour days a month doing mystery shopping. I enjoy surfing coupon websites and forums for deals and doing coupon trades and trains so I don't track my time doing that. I collect and clip Futura UPCs and spend about 20 minutes every two to three weeks arranging them and then about 1 hour every three months to fill out the paperwork and mail them in.

I just signed up to some more survey sites today that are better paying and come highly recommended. I can't wait to see how often they give surveys and how much they pay!

I started another blog: Save a Loonie where I plan on sharing tricks and tips to doing what I do. I'm trying to make it a money making blog so please feel free to click on my ads to help me out! I know that it will be useful to people too, I get alot of requests for help with this topic. Some people can't dedicate the time I did to get into it and understand it so that is why I thought I would blog it. There are other blogs out there on the same topic but I looked at them and they aren't very good. I'm hoping that mine, with all Canadian content, will provide information on a wide variety of topics from not only couponing and rebates but maximizing tax savings, saving money for your kids education and more. Leave me some comments over there on what you think of it and tell your friends!

Also, let me know what you think of my numbers, am I crazy? I really don't think so!