Sense to Save

Free $37 credit at Overstock.com — Today only

I saw a great deal on SlickDeals today that I wanted to pass along. Click the link to find out more details, but basically, you can get a $37 credit in your Overstock.com shopping cart. By the way, once you click through to SlickDeals and find out what you need to do, the Overstock.com link you need to click is in the top right corner on the Woot site.

It apparently works for just one item, so try to find one item at $37.01 or more. Oh, and in the SlickDeals forum, some people are saying the code won’t work on media items.

Remember, it’s only a deal if you actually need the item!

I’ve been trying to find something I could use, but I’ve had a hard time so far. I’ve looked into bedding, furniture, baby things, clothing…but nothing is sticking out yet. Let me know if you find something good on the site!

UPDATE: I ended up buying Shane some brown dress shoes. I thought maybe I could combine my Ebates account with this deal, but it wouldn’t work (it’s either one deal or the other, and in this case, the Woot deal is the best).

I also took a screenshot of our confirmation page (Hit your ‘prtscreen” key then open Paint, go to Edit and click ‘paste’ and save it as a jpg) so I could have a record of it being $5.94 with shipping.

Saturday morning links of interest

Here are some links that caught my attention this week.

PaidTwice has a fantastic list of ways to stay in debt forever. When you read her list, you might think, “That’s so obvious–I would never do that!” But people do those things every day. I’ve been guilty of several of these before I started to get a clue.

When I started my blog last September, I wanted a venue to write about whatever I wanted, figure out how to save money, help others save, and have a fun hobby. I didn’t expect my blog to earn money. It took awhile, but thanks to ads and affiliate links, I’m starting to earn a nice trickle of funds. Mrs. Micah has a great post for those of you who either have a blog already or are thinking about starting one with the hopes of maybe making some cash.

Love getting free food in the mail? You can be sure that I do. Freebies4Mom has a roundup of some current food freebies that you’ll wanna check out.

Ashley sent me a link to a story about what some retailers are doing to encourage consumers to spend money with them, even though people seem to be spending less lately.

Want to check out some top personal finance blogs? Visit Fire Finance to see this month’s top 100 blogs by reported feed traffic.

Month of May highlights & snowflakes, and June goals

I love May. It’s the month the leaves really start forming on trees, flowers are blooming, and the weather warms up a bit. This May was fun–I told you we’re having a baby, Shane and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, and we went on a lovely trip to Florida.

At the beginning of May, I told you that in 2009, we hope to either max out our retirement accounts, or come really close. I have no idea if this is even in the neighborhood of being realistic, but we’ll see.

I outlined just two goals I wanted to accomplish in May. First, to only spend cash in Florida to keep tabs on our spending while there. Achieved that no problem.

Second, I hoped that we could put $2,500 into our emergency fund in May. We had our $1,200 economic stimulus check arrive, which was quite a nice boost.

So let’s see. Did we do it? By my records, at the beginning of May, we had $4,441 in our emergency fund. An extra $2,500 would mean we’d need to have $6,941 in that account. Today, I transferred some money from our main checking into our emergency fund that will put it at $7,006. We did it! Yay! Only about $3,000 to go to have our six-month emergency fund.

May snowflakes

Note: These links below are affiliate referral links.

$40 from Revolution Money Exchange Note: I know that people who refer others will get $10, but I don’t know if you’ll get $25 for signing up for an account anymore. If you use my referral link and sign up, but don’t get that $25, I’ll split my bonus with you and we’ll each get $5. Just e-mail me to let me know.

$20 from ING Direct (E-mail me if you’d like to open an account with them with an initial deposit of $250 or more. You’ll get $25, I’ll get $10)

$13.15 in ING Direct account interest

$520.11 from Ebates– Wow. This is mostly referral bonuses from you amazing readers. Thank you so much! I’m a huge fan of Ebates for online shopping, and it’s not just because of the referral bonuses.

$30 Target gift cards (from Ebates)

$15.42 from Clickbank — I totally forgot about Clickbank. A long time ago, I set up an account with them, but I didn’t think I’d ever get a payout. Cool surprise.

$6 from Pinecone Research

$11.42 Cashcrate — Didn’t know I had any money coming from them, either. Nice.

Total: $626.10 + $30 in gift cards

Goals for June

Let’s just see if we can add $1,500 more to our emergency fund in June, bringing the balance to $8,500 by the end of the month.

I’d also like to find new ways to save money. I feel like I’ve got the basics pretty well understood. Time to find some new, creative ways to cut costs.

I will turn 23 years old in June. I want to go out to a nice dinner with Shane to celebrate. Also, sometimes relatives give me money for my birthday. If that’s the case, I’m going to do my best to spend at least a little of that money on myself, rather than save it all.

That’s all I can think of for now. Here’s to a great June for everyone!