Cheap Entertainment Books

In the mail yesterday I received my 2009 Entertainment book. When my husband saw it sitting on the counter he questioned why I had purchased it. He thought I had paid the regular retail price of $30.00. You’d think by now he would know me better then that. I got the book for only $5.00 and there was free shipping. We will definitely get our money back on this purchase.

So, how can you get a 2009 Entertainment book super cheap too? First you need to sign up for a Cashbaq account. You get a $5.00 bonus just for signing up and you get $10.00 back for purchasing a 2009 Entertainment book. Plus, the Entertainment books are running $10.00 off their regular retail price right now. Regular retail prices are $25-$45 depending on the specific book you. The Baltimore book is $30.00 regular retail, so I paid $20.00 and got free shipping. Then I got back $15 from Cashbaq ($5.00 sign up bonus + $10.00 Entertainment rebate). That made my net cost for the Entertainment book $5.00. Just keep in mind that you do have to wait for your rebate check from Cashbaq.

The Cashbaq program is similar to Ebates. You do your shopping through the links on their site and get back a percentage of your purchase price. The percentages vary by retailer. Before I do any online shopping I check both Cashbaq and Ebates. Usually one of them gives a higher percentage then the other for a specific retailer. Or a retailer may be on one and not the other. It never hurts to check around.

Even if you don’t want to take advantage of the Entertainment deal, if you do any online shopping, it is worth setting up an account with Ebates and Cashbaq.

Free Chick-Fil-A Chicken Biscuit

On Thursday, January 1, 2009, you can get a coupon for a free Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuit. Simply stop in to your local Chick-Fil-A between 10:30 am - 6:00 pm and make a purchase. You will then be given a coupon good for a FREE chicken biscuit on your next visit. I love breakfast at Chick-Fil-A. If you haven't had their breakfast before, here is a good way to be able to try it out free.

For all the details and fine print, click here.

Menu Plan - Chicken Week

These last two weeks or so I have really been slipping with my menu planning and couponing. Christmas and everything else just got to be a bit overwhelming. I definitely need to get myself better organized. That is something that I will be working on in the coming weeks, so don't be surprised if you see some posts on it. I use to be a fairly organized person, but since I've had my daughter I feel like my life has been slipping into chaos. For my own sanity I need to get back to being organized.

Getting back to the menu planning, this week we are heavy on the chicken because I am trying to use up a large pack that I had thawed out. We also have two events to attend this week so I don't have to worry about dinners on those nights. That is one nice thing about this time of year. So, without further ado, here is our menu plan for this week.

• Sunday - Chicken with veggies
• Monday - Chicken Quesadillas
• Tuesday - Cheeseburgers
• Wednesday - New Years Eve Party
• Thursday - Chicken BBQ
• Friday - Tuna Melts
• Saturday - At Another Party

To check out other menu plans for this week, head over to Org Junkie.

364 Days Until Christmas

Now that Christmas is over for this year, you now have 364 days left until Christmas 2009. Have you started your Christmas savings for 2009 yet?

This year I am very happy to be able to say that I stuck to my Christmas budget and all the gifts we gave have been paid for. The money was already set aside to cover it. I have also started my savings for Christmas 2009. Here are some of the ways that we save for Christmas.

1. Start a Christmas Club account and setup an automatic deposit to it every pay day. This way you don't even have to think about it. Even $10 a week gives you $520 in year not including the interest you should receive.
2. Keep a coin jar. It is VERY easy to save up over $100 in a year by keeping a coin jar. This year we had over $140 in our coin jar. We cashed it in at Coinstar for free and sent in for the $10 holiday bonus. To get the free cash in with Coinstar you have to redeem your coins for a gift card so make sure you get it for a store where you can do a good deal of your holiday shopping. We got ours for Amazon.
3. I love to read and tend to read many books a year. I also typically buy my books instead of getting them from the library (very un-frugal of my I know). So once I finish reading the books I sell them on Amazon Marketplace. The money I get from this goes into our Christmas club account. You could also have a yard sale or list items on Criagslist and put the proceeds into your Christmas Club account.
4. Bonus money. This year my husband got a few bonuses and each time we got one we put part of the money from it into our Christmas Club account. So far the bonus outlook doesn't look good for 2009, but if you are one of the lucky few who gets a bonus next year, consider putting part of it away for Christmas.
5. Rebates. By combining coupons and rebates it is possible to make money buying items. Whenever you manage to do this, why not put that money away for Christmas?

So, have you started your Christmas Savings Account yet? What are you waiting for?

Menu Plan

I'm a wee bit late posting my menu plan this week. At least I am finally getting around to it though. We didn't do any real grocery shopping this week. I just ran to the grocery store to pick up milk and bread. It's nice because it's saving us some grocery money and cleaning out some of the stuff from my stock pile.

Sunday - Anniversary dinner with Hubby at Cheesecake Factory
Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Grilled Cheese
Wednesday - Hot Dogs
Thursday - Chicken Florentine
Friday - Spaghetti
Saturday - Pork Chops and Mashed Potatoes

Next week I hope to have a better menu plan up. I plan to actually have it up on time too.

Free Christmas Music

Ok, I absolutely love music. So I was very excited to see that Amazon is having a 25 Days of Free holiday music promotion. They reveal a new free song every day from December 1st through December 25th. The earlier songs are still free which is nice. I've downloaded mine, so why don't you head over and download yours? You can get them here.

Menu Plan Monday - First Birthday Edition

My daughter's first birthday is this week so we will probably have a bit of a busy week preparing for her party and celebrating with her. So I am very glad that I've got my menu plan done. It just makes things so much easier during the week. Anyway, here is my meal plan:
Sunday – Pizza

• Monday – Turkey Quesadillas
• Tuesday – Kielbasa and Macaroni and Cheese
• Wednesday – Tacos
• Thursday – Turkey Melts
• Friday – Turkey Chili
• Saturday – Punkin’s First Birthday Party

To check out more menu plans, head over to Orgjunkie.