Monday, November 16, 2009

Good News and More Good News!

I posted awhile back about the cost of getting oral surgery done. The good news is that last week, I received a letter from my health insurance company (Aetna) saying that the surgery is approved! That would have been a huge relief had I not received even more good news about 3 weeks earlier. :)

The other news is that I might not need the surgery after all! My orthodontist took me completely by surprise last month when he told me that. You can read more about that here.

Whether I end up needing the surgery or not, I really am glad to know it's covered.

Monday, October 12, 2009

What I Got for $1.49

I picked up some amazing grocery deals lately by combining sales and coupons. Check it out!

My grand total for this deal was 99 cents! I picked this up a couple of weeks ago at the local Piggly Wiggly, which I never shop at. I read on a blog that there was a great deal available if a person had some $1.60 off a bag of nut clusters coupons. I had received a bunch in the mail, so I cashed in :)

I got all of this for 50 cents last night! Whoo-Hoo! I love when things work out just right.

I had noticed a really good deal in our Copps/Pick N Save ad yesterday. I thought about trying to make a deal out of it on Wednesday (double coupon day at Copps/PNS), but then noticed that a bunch of coupons I needed to get a good deal were expiring on Oct. 11th. I talked the hubby into grabbing some backpacks last night and taking our nightly walk to the grocery store :)

I thought we were going to get these items for 25 cents each after coupons, but I had a free item coupon for the Rice Krispies. The cashier took off the full price for the Rice Krispies, which is how my total got so low.

There you have it. I got everything in those two pictures for $1.49. Deal shopping is so much fun!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Teeth Are Expensive

As I've mentioned in the past (and talked about more on my personal blog), I am in the process of getting my teeth prepared for oral surgery (in other words, I have braces). As of my most recent conversation with my orthodontist, the surgery is looking to be early next year.

Since I'm now about 6 months away from surgery, I'm starting to think about it a lot more. As a result, I've joined some online forums and groups for people going through jaw surgery (this is a nasty surgery - trust me, support groups are very helpful!). While reading through these forums, I've come to the realization that I never really got any hard numbers for how much this surgery will cost.

When I first discussed oral surgery with my surgeon (almost 2 years ago), his office sent a "Request for Benefits" to my insurance at the time. That came back with a cost of just under $10,000 for the surgery. I've kept that number in the back of my mind all this time.

As I've been reading through the forums lately, I've discovered that the $10,000 is just my surgeon's fee! The big cost is actually the hospital bill, which could run up to another $25,000! Yikes!

The reason this is a big deal is that it can be difficult to get this surgery covered through insurance. It gets submitted to your medical insurance, not your dental insurance. From what I hear, medical insurance companies like to deny it on the basis of it being "cosmetic". I may need to submit extra documents/xrays/etc. to try to prove to them that I need surgery because of a jaw deficiency.

At any rate, I called the oral surgeon's office last week and asked them to submit for approval from my current medical insurance company. Please say a little prayer that they will cover the surgery. I really don't want to have to try to come up with $35,000!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Frugalest Strawberries Ever!

Two nights ago, at about 9:45pm, my husband and I were in the kitchen, just about ready to head to bed. Suddenly, our doorbell rings. Very odd. My husband goes to the door and there stands our elderly neighbor with a box of fresh strawberries!

Our neighbor's name is Dot and she's a real sweetheart. She explains that her daughter is visiting from out of state and they went strawberry picking that day. They picked more strawberries than they could handle, so they dropped the extras off with us! So thoughtful!

The coolest part of the story is that I was just telling my husband last weekend that I wanted to go strawberry picking so I could freeze some fresh strawberries. I thought it might be cheaper than buying frozen bagged strawberries at the store. Instead, free strawberries showed up at our doorstep :)

Here's a picture of the strawberries I froze:


I re-used two frozen strawberry bags I had kept in the freezer after using them up. They are crammed full, with the extras going into a Ziploc bag.

This is what I make with my frozen strawberries:


Yummy!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Part Time Has Begun!

I am in the middle of my first week of working part time! A young woman who has done some temp work in my company was interested in the position and she started on Monday! She will be working Mondays and Tuesdays and I'll be working Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I am really excited!

I am going to be training with her a little bit this month. My boss doesn't want to have to pay either of us overtime, so I went in for one hour on Monday and one hour yesterday. Then, she went home an hour early on Monday and I'll go home an hour early on Friday to make up for it. Not ideal, but we're working with it.

I can already tell that I am not going to have any problems filling up my two days off. I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished this week. I think my biggest challenge is going to be to not waste too much time on the Internet :)

Financially, I should be getting a lump sum payout of my unused vacation time in with my next paycheck. I plan to use that to top off our emergency fund, which will then be at our goal amount! Anything left over will probably be split between the car fund and the home improvement fund.

I'm a little nervous about the large decrease in my paycheck. We've never relied on it for living expenses (it's all gone into savings funds), but I've become really accustomed to growing our savings accounts fairly quickly. We have a lot to save yet before we'll be ready to replace our old vehicles, and that's going to go a lot more slowly now. I know I just need to have faith, though, because I'm really sure that this is where God wants me.

I'm looking forward to a productive summer!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Part Time Update and More Free Stuff!

First, an update on my hopeful move to part time work from full time work. The job share position is now officially on my company's website as an open position. According to my boss, the hr department has already received 24 applications. They found four that they phone interviewed and only one was interested in the small number of hours we're looking to fill (16/hrs a week). We'll see what happens!

Also, I received more free stuff in the mail! Check it out:


I got this sweet box of stuff from a community that I am a part of called BzzAgent. I haven't been very active in the community, so this is the first thing I've gotten. I might have to get more involved :)

Friday, April 24, 2009

It's Official - I Am No Longer Cool

I know, you hadn't even realized I was cool before. Well, I was. For my eight years as the owner of a Ford Mustang. As of Tuesday, that time is over. We sold the Mustang for about Blue Book value.

I lowered the price on Monday, and that seemed to do the trick. I had three people contact me (two through Craigslist and one through Carsoup), and one of the Craigslist guys drove up from southern Wisconsin on Tuesday night and bought it!

About half of the money went back into our emergency fund, which is how we paid for the Mazda. The other half went into our New Car Fund for our next vehicle(s)!

To put salt in the wound, the wonderful state of Wisconsin sent me new license plates for the Mazda, which showed up yesterday. I was really fond of my old plates, which had been on my Mustang and we transferred to the Mazda. You see, Wisconsin license plates used to be three letters, a dash, and then three numbers. The three letters on my old plates were "RBL", which I took to mean "Rebel"!

A couple of years ago, they changed the plates to read three numbers, a dash, and then three letters. They are slowly moving all of the old plates over to the new system.

The letters on my new plates? "PUY"

Not cool.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Car Selling Tips?

As I mentioned a few months ago, my husband and I bought a new (used) car last winter and were waiting until spring to sell my really sweet Mustang. Well, spring has arrived and the Mustang is up for sale. We put it on Craigslist last Sunday (speaking of which, I should re-post it today) and have also put it on CarSoup.

So far, I've only had one reply, and that was from a kid who wanted to trade it for his 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse (umm, no thanks!).

We have some wiggle room in the price, so we'll probably drop it down soon. I priced it above Kelly Blue Book, but way below anything else comparable on CarSoup.

I'm beginning to wonder if we should also list the car on Cars.com??? I know our local newspaper links to Cars.com and so does Yahoo!, so the traffic is probably a lot heavier.

Anyone have any advice? Are people even buying cars right now? Should we list it on Cars.com? Any thoughts are appreciated!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A Little Update

Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you for leaving me, I haven't been very faithful around here!

I haven't had much to post about lately since life is still kind of in limbo. I'm hoping to scale back from working fulltime to working parttime and still don't know if/how that's going to work out.

I've had it in the back of my mind since last summer that I wanted to cut back my hours and spend more time being a homemaker. I was originally planning on doing it as soon as possible after the first of the year (I'm covered under my husband's health insurance plan now). Then the economy went haywire, and I was uncertain as to what I should do. I've decided to go ahead with my plans, and I've talked to my boss. Now we just need to find someone to job share with me! I'm hoping to be working parttime by June. We'll see how it goes!

Monday, February 9, 2009

An Ambassador? Sure!!!

Sorry to post two articles in a row about things I received in the mail, but this is too cool to not post about. Check out what was in the box I received in the mail the other day:


The box contained a full-size bottle of Jergens Naturals lotion, plus ten sample packs and ten coupons! Jergens included a letter asking me to be their ambassador by handing out the samples and coupons to my friends. How fun is that!?! I think I received this because of a survey I filled out awhile back, but I don't remember exactly.

Anyway, I'll try to post something more substantial on here soon :)

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Fun Mail Day

I received a ton of fun stuff in the mail today!


Here is what I got:
- Two $2.00 Purina coupons that I received after emailing Purina and letting them know how much my cats love their food!
- Two Home Made Simple coupon books. I'm not sure how I got two of them, but I'm not complaining!
- Nexxus shampoo and conditioner samples - but no coupons :(
- Two samples of Pamprin and coupon. Only one of the samples is in the picture because I used the other one already - how's that for perfect timing!
- $5 off any purchase at Famous Footwear coupon
- the best of all: three coupons for free items!!! I got these from a Kraft sweepstakes. It includes a coupon for a free Nabisco Cracker item, a free Planter's Peanut item, and a free Kraft Cheese item.

I love awesome mail days like this :)