Welcome to How I Save Money visits ! Today we visit:

Wealth, Money & Life Network

“Pocket Change Portfolio” at Dividends 4 Life .

“Update to Hair Dying” at Dollar Frugal . The beginning photo is horrid but we know the results look great. My hair is VERY black and I tried to dye it reddish brown at home….did not really work out. You can only barely see hints of red if I am standing in the sun.

“How Much Will My Taxes Really Be This Year?” at Her Every Cent Counts . I started a Just In Case Tax fund at ING where I am socking away money every month. It might not be enough if I have to end up paying taxes but it is a start, so that I will not be caught totally unaware when April rolls around.

“How The Recession has Affected Me” at How I Save Money . I have pretty much stuck to my behavior before the recession talk started. I am working on getting my debt paid off so I know that I cannot afford to be extravagant.

“Succesful Depression Era Investor” at Living Off Dividends and Passive Income .

“Not Together Either” at Saving For a Home Of My Own . I understand how she feels. I feel so crazy about my life right now. I am unsatisfied and bored.

Debt Bloggers Network

“How To Survive the Collapse of The American Empire” at Debt Reduction Formula. This basically tells you not to panic because we can get through the recession.

“5 Ways to Save Money” at How I Save Money. List of simple ways to save money.

“DIY Jubilee” at The Financial Wellness Project. Hey a new carnival is in town!

“Countdown To Holiday Savings” at On a Quest To Be Debt Free. Practical tips on holiday money.

Around the personal finance world:

“Congratulations to Web Development 2“at Life Of Baz . WebDevelopment2 is responsible for my new theme so please go out and show some love. The theme is still being tweaked to fit my needs so your feedback is important.

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• How I Save Money Visits: July 27
• How I Save Money Visits: Wealth Money & Life Network
• How I Save Money Visits: July 19
• How I Save Money Visits: June 6
• 101 Ways to Detoxify and Save Money too

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• How I Save Money At CVS : November 9
• How I Save Money At CVS: October 26
• How I Save Money At CVS: September 19
• How I Save Money At CVS: November 2
• How I Save Money at CVS: August 4

Change is good…..since I need it to do laundry. Okay, seriously Change is good. I have decided to get a new theme for the blog because the old one was a bit boring and cluttered and it was just taken directly from a free theme.

This one is also free  ( hey I am trying to SAVE money here) but it is being customized to fit me and what I really want out of my theme at this level.  Over the next few days you will be seeing some more changes to the theme as WebDevelopment 2 tweaks the things around to fit my crazy mind.

If you have any suggestions for the blog please let me know as I really do appreciate your feedback. I am still playing with a few ideas so bear with me as the blog goes through its metamorphosis.

Yes I will be changing the color since this orange is not my thing…….but I am waiting on the developer to get back to it. If you are looking for  customized theme you might also want to check out Web Development 2 or 3HN Designs to get your own personalized look.

What do you think of the new layout?

Remember to Subscribe to My Feed if you like what you read here.

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• New Theme
• Looking for a Web Designer?
• The T Mobile story ends
• Site Changes at How I Save Money
• Contact lens

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• Tracking my Finances in February: Day 15
• Tracking my Finances in March: Day 6
• Tracking My Finances in June: Day 3
• Tracking my Finances in November: Day 16
• Tracking my Finances in January: Day 12

I usually LOVE going to CVS but there was one time I had a really bad experience with a cashier. This is a series of reposts about that original experience.

How Much To Refund?

The manager tells her she needs to give me the coupons back (that is what I said 10 minutes ago) because I returned ALL the items and was going to start fresh. Manager does override and walks off.

I think it is going to be ok now but I am in for some more adventures with Ms. Needs to be trained some more.

She somehow messes up the return and now kicks out that I get all my coupons refunded as cash instead of the actual coupons. The total of the coupons was over $15 and this confused her. She thought she had to give me a gift card for $15+ AND give back the paper coupons. She knew this was too much but just could not figure it out. I told her to cancel the gift card since she was giving me $0.74 in cash and give me back my paper coupons.

Confused yet readers?

This made her need to call the manager again because I was confusing her and she just did not know what to do.

So the manager comes back and I get my $0.74 in cash and my paper coupons and the store gets its items back.

Have you ever had to deal with getting a refund back from a cashier who thought you should get less than you were actually due?

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• Revisiting Bad CVS Customer Service…Part Two
• Customer Service Issues At CVS
• Revisting Bad CVS Customer Service…Part One
• How I Save Money At CVS: September 19
• How I Save Money does CVS: My First CVS Experience

You guys and gals might be wondering if you are on the same site….since I have a new theme. We are still working on it but please feel free to let me know what you think so far.

I have someone working on customizing this theme for me because the old theme was not really cutting it.

I will be getting rid of the orange and going back to blue…..but it is just taking a while to get a few things straightened out.

What do you think of the new layout?

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• New Theme At How I Save Money
• Tracking My Finances In September: Day 17
• Get FREE Gift Cards from Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Changes to the blog
• Makeover!

Today’s free sample comes from Arm & Hammer toothpaste.  Go to true taste of clean to get your FREE sample of toothpaste.

I love Arm & Hammer toothpaste because I have sensitive teeth and it does not hurt my teeth but still works really well.

I also love free stuff so this is a win win situation. The sample takes about 6 to 8 weeks to arrive once you fill in the forms.

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• Biotene toothpaste takes the pain away
• Get A FREE Sample of Kashi Granola
• Free Samples
• Free Stuff
• Shiny Teeth

You guys and gals know that I am a part of the recently formed Debt Bloggers Network. We strive to share our personal stories of dealing with debt in order to help others not make the same mistakes that we did.

Every month we write on a group topic and the topic for the month of November is *The Recession*.

Whether you want to want to call it a recession or not, the recent trends in the economy have pointed to some bad financial times for almost everyone.

I have had to do a few things to make sure I am on the right financial track in light of what has been happening lately.

Gas

Even though gas prices have been coming down lately I still continue to practice the various hypermiling techniques that I did in the past. I still drive slowly and take my foot off the gas when I am approaching a red light so that I can coast to a stop instead of having to use my brakes. This has led me to have a consistently high gas mileage per gallon of gas that I buy.

I used to go to Walmart three (or four or five) times a week but I cut that down to my one essential trip on Sundays.

I used to drive out of town about twice a month and this has been cut down to once a month. I have been saving money on gas because I do not use as much as I used to, even though the price is now much lower.

Credit

I still continue to pay my credit cards to the best of my ability. I currently pay $10 more than the minimum on all cards except for the card that is the focus of my snowball. This card gets a bit of extra money sent to it as a snowflake payment during the month. This extra payments is in an effort to reduce the amount of debt that I still have left on the card so that I can reduce my total debt.

Budget

I have had to tweak my budget a little bit to make the best use of my money. In my food budget for example I usually had $25 designated as dining out money and this was under a separate category in my excel spreadsheet.

I would normally use this money to get a 555 special once a month from Dominos and the pizza would last me an entire week (eating pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner).

Lately I have decided to use that money to get Subway instead of pizza. I have to drive out to Subway to get the food and it is very difficult to get out of the parking lot and back onto the main road. As a result, I have only gone to Subway once for the month and spent $5.41 on dining out.

I will not be going back for the rest of the month because of the difficulty I have in navigating their horrible parking lot so I have reduced my spending on dining out.

I also used to make sure that I got a package of sugar cookies (they taste GREAT frozen!!!) as part of my regular grocery budget. Because of the tight financial times I have removed that from my budget (also a great way to help me lose some weight) and have resorted to spending less of my grocery budget on silly snacks.

Future plans

I wanted to go back to school (to work on a PhD) next year but I am going to have to put that off for a little longer. I am going to work for about three more years before I reconsider going back to school because right now it is just not going to be worth it.

Those are just a few of the things that I have really thought about because of the recession right now. What are some of the ways the recession has affected you?

If you have a post about the ways the recession has affected you, please consider submitting it to the group writing project by sending an email to groupwritingproject [at] debtbloggersnetwork [dot] com. Include the following information in your email: your name, the link to your post, trackback link, and the title of your post.

More Articles About the Recession

If you’d like to participate in this group writing project, and get a bunch of free links to your site, read the announcement here.

Here are links to all those who’ve participated so far:

• And I Thought I Was Immune from the Recession
• How To Survive The Collapse of The American Empire
• How Will The Economy Impact Your Business?

Popularity: 1% [?]

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• Baz over Budget
• Tracking My Finances In August: Day 28
• Saved $4 on Parking At the Hospital
• Spent $17.86 on meals for the 3.5 days
• How I Saved Money on Hospital Parking

I recently wrote about how Saving Money At Work Makes My Coworkers Mad and I just had another round with some of them. We had a teacher workday last week and the principal announced that we would be having one hour for lunch.

This was a big deal to everyone because teachers (at least all that I know of) only get 30 minutes for lunch. I decided that it would be a normal day for me and I brought my little blue lunch bag in to work like I do every day.

There was no discussion of anyone buying lunch or doing anything different so I thought that the day would be just like every other day.

Well on the day I guess everyone decided to go and get lunch together and two people looked at me and my lunch bag. They both asked if I had brought my lunch, to which I replied yes. They then asked if I was going to go to lunch with them………

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I just said that I already brought my lunch but I will still answer that question. Um no, I will not be going to lunch because I brought my lunch *see the lunch bag?*

One lady said that I could still come along if I wanted to. I politely refused and said that it was ok. Wow! Just because we get an extra 30 minutes I am  supposed to just throw my frugality to the wind and go out to lunch (at some place I probably don’t even like…like that stupid restaurant where the cashier overcharged my card for the tip ….which I later had to fight to get fixed).

No thank you. I enjoyed my tuna sandwich and cranberry juice and granola bar and I did not waste gas (yeah, they ALL took their OWN CARS even though they were all going to the same place!).

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• Tracking My Finances In November: Day 5
• How I saved money by bagging my Lunch
• There is such a thing as a free lunch
• Office lunch and ornament exchange
• Clear bagging it

I am on a quest to see how much stuff I can get from CVS without spending any extra money out of my pocket. Today I paid $9.08 for $27.32 worth of items. I got $@^&$@# out of $1.59 because of being careless and not watching each item properly. I will definitely have to make up for that mess next week. I got a $10 gift card to add to last week’s balance so that was used to pay for this week’s items.

Transaction 1

Item: L’oreal Moisturizer

Price: $11.99

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $11.99 (this is FREE)

Coupon used: $1 MFR + $11.49 ECB

Item: Garnier conditioner

Price: $2.99

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $0 (given as a store credit since it has not been printing)

Coupon used: $1 MFR

Transaction 2

Item: Colgate total with toothbrush

Price: $3.49

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $0 (given as a store coupon)

Coupon used: $0.75 MFR + $1 store

Item: Rimmell mascara

Price: $6.99

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $4.00

Coupon used: $1 MFR

Item: Glaceau water

Price: $1.49

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned : should have been $1.59 (this is where I messed up)

Amount Due today (paid with gift card): $9.08

Total out of pocket today: $0

Total CVS Extra Care Bucks earned today: $15.99

Total out of pocket to date: $139.14

Gift Card balance : $1.17

Total CVS Extra Care Bucks earned to date: $366.22

CVS Extra Care Bucks Used to date: $350.23

CVS Extra Care Bucks Balance: $15.99

Abbreviations used

MFR = manufacturer coupon

ECB = extra care bucks

Join me next time as I look for more ways to save money as I visit CVS.

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• How I Save Money At CVS: November 16
• How I Save Money At CVS: October 18 and 19
• How I Save Money At CVS: October 5
• How I Save Money At CVS: November 2
• How I Save Money At CVS: September 28

I usually LOVE going to CVS but there was one time I had a really bad experience with a cashier. This is a series of reposts about that original experience.

I Want My Coupons Lady!

When the cashier did the return the machine said I had a $0.74 refund, which she decided to give me in cash instead of returning it to the gift card. I don’t like touching cash (used to work at a bank) but I said I would take it so she took the items back from me and I told her to put the cash on the counter next to the coupons.

She looks at me with a crazy look and says she cannot return the coupons because the computer did not say she could. Now remember that this is the $11.99 ECB which can be used like cash for ANY item (except prescriptions, lottery tickets and stuff like that) PLUS my manufacturer coupons that I cut out of the newspaper on Sunday morning. I told her, you have the monitor and the toothpaste and toothbrush…so CVS has its property…so I want my coupons.

She repeats…like I am deaf…that the computer said I get a $0.74 refund. I told her I know this because I paid you with a gift card….but I also need my coupons back.

She says well she will have to call a manager…like this is where I am supposed to be afraid. I used to work in retail lady…call the manager.

Have you ever had to deal with a manager about a mistake that an employee made?

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• Revisiting Bad CVS Customer Service…Part Three
• Customer Service Issues At CVS
• Revisting Bad CVS Customer Service…Part One
• How I Lost $25 by Being Too Early
• How I Saved Money on my Christmas Shopping.

Welcome to How I Save Money. I am on a quest to see how much stuff I can get from CVS without spending any extra money out of my pocket. Today I paid $ for $ worth of items.

Transaction 1

Item: Bayer glucose monitor

Price: $30.00

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $0

Coupon used: $30.00 manufacturer

Item: Ivory soap three pack

Price: $0.99

CVS Extra Care Bucks earned: $0

Coupon used: $0.25 manufacturer

Amount Due today (paid with gift card): $0.80

Total out of pocket today: $0

Total CVS Extra Care Bucks earned today: $0

Total out of pocket to date: $139.14

Gift Card balance : $0.25

Total CVS Extra Care Bucks earned to date: $350.23

CVS Extra Care Bucks Used to date: $338.74

CVS Extra Care Bucks Balance: $11.49

Join me next time as I look for more ways to save money as I visit CVS.

Remember to Subscribe to My Feed if you like what you read here.

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• How I Save Money At CVS : November 9
• How I Save Money At CVS: November 2
• How I Save Money At CVS: November 16
• How I Save Money At CVS: October 21
• How I Save Money At CVS: October 26

I am not getting married BUT I have been reading a few bridal magazines lately. I found out that many people tend to go overboard and go over their budgets when a wedding comes around.

I can understand that because I am seeing so many great things in the magazines that I would want to have for my OWN wedding and I don’t even have the money for them. Here are the Top Ten Wedding Money Mistakes that people normally make.

1. Not Setting Budget Priorities

2. Not Reading the Fine Print

3. Falling To Peer Pressure

4. Leaping Before Looking

5. Getting A Case Of The “Should Haves”

6. Not Knowing What BOTH People Want

7. Having The Incredible Growing Guest List

8. Over Feeding The Guests

9. Not Thinking Creatively

10. Doing It All Alone

I will be expanding on each of these points in an upcoming series so be sure to come back for each installment.

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• Looking For Guest Posts
• Cleaning out my blogroll
• MyPoints
• Summer Grocery Savings (Guest Post from PassiveFamilyIncome)
• 25 ways I save money: part 2 of 5

Welcome to How I Save Money visits ! Today we visit:

Wealth, Money & Life Network

“Dividend Stocks In Today’s Markets” at Dividends 4 Life .

“Running Shoes…What’s Your Rule?” at Dollar Frugal .

“Security Deposit Bounced” at Her Every Cent Counts .

“Paid $0.97 for $18.46 Worth of Items” at How I Save Money .

“$2884.13 In Online and Passive Income” at Living Off Dividends and Passive Income .

“October Spending Report” at Saving For a Home Of My Own . She did not really stick to the budget last month so let’s hope this month goes better.

Debt Bloggers Network

“We Stand On The Threshold” at Debt Reduction Formula. Some thoughts on the results of the latest Presidential election that Obama just won.

“Crazy Things That Kill Your Credit Score” at How I Save Money.

“Bulging Wallets Not So Good for your Health” at The Financial Wellness Project. I will never understand why people feel they need to carry EVERY credit card and membership card all day long. You don’t use all of those things every day so why lug that around?

“Stuffed Pepper Soup” at On a Quest To Be Debt Free. I might have to try this one as it looks delicious.

Around the personal finance world:

“CVS Challenge for November 2.”at Kingdom First Mom.

“Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs“at Fire Finance . I moved up from 69 to 65 woo hoo!!!!

Make Money Online with Deal Barbie.

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• How I Save Money Visits: October 23
• How I Save Money Visits: September 12
• How I Save Money Visits: October 17
• How I Save Money Visits: July 19
• Save Money With The Debt Bloggers Network

Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.

Income for the month to date: $326.94

Expenses for the month to date: $917.48

Net effect: -$590.54

I paid the water bill and just spent $46.84 out of my $60 unexpected/fun money budget. I got myself three magazine subscriptions that are all one one year long. I did this for the following reasons:

1. I love to read

2. Those magazines have coupons

3. I love getting things in the mail

I will be getting those three different magazines to read and keep me occupied, thus reducing the amount of time I spend watching television or lounging on the internet. The benefits of this $46.84 will be spread out over one year so even though I spent that money now I will be reaping the benefits all year long.

I have spent $5.41 on dining out so far out of my budget of $25 because I forgot my lunch one day and decided to get Subway because it was closer to work. I am so mad at myself for forgetting my lunch because it was a really silly mistake. Every morning I prepare my sandwich and put it in the refrigerator next to my bottle of water. When I am ready to leave I grab the water, sandwich, juice and my snack and put them in my trusty little blue lunch bag. On the day I left my lunch I put the water, juice and TWO snacks in the bag and left the sandwich.

My snacks for the day were little fruit bars and there is NO WAY I could have handled eating only that for the day. Stupid stupid stupid!!!!!

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and become debt free!!!!

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• Tracking my Finances in February: Day 2
• Saving More Money At Work…Silly Coworkers
• Tracking My Finances In May: Day 26
• Tracking My Finances In April: Day 12
• Tracking My Finances In September: Day 25

With CNN showing the following results

Obama 333

McCain 155

it has been decided that Obama will be president. As I type this McCain is giving a concession speech. This is truly a day to go down in the history books of the United States. The FIRST black president!!!!!!!

While there are a few issues to deal with I must say this has been very interesting. Let us see how America reacts to this moment. Pray for President Obama and his family. He has  TOUGH job ahead of him.

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• Presidential Race is Crazy
• Vote in 2008
• A funny thing happened at work today.
• How I Save Money Visits: August 9
• Flat broke and still alive

So far CNN is predicting Obama to win the election. At 10:06 pm the predictions were as follows

Obama 297

McCain 139

That is a big lead in the predictive votes and we just have a short time left to see who will actually win. It is going to be an interesting day at work tomorrow that’s for sure.

I guess now people see how important it is to actually GO out and VOTE. Don’t cry if your candidate loses and you did not vote. All those who chose not to vote have no one to blame but themselves.

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• Vote in 2008
• Barack Obama Is President…McCain Gives Concession Speech
• Save or Spend.com
• Profigg.com
• Poll added to sidebar

Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.

Income for the month to date: $181.42

Expenses for the month to date: $715.94

Net effect: -$534.52

Additional income for the month so far was in the form of a check for $63.35 from one of my rewards cards. This card sends you out a check once a year on your anniversary so there is no other way to redeem the rewards. I am going to snowflake that money over to a credit card payment so that I can bring down my debt even further.

I paid $14.98 for groceries and did two loads of laundry (which I line dried to save money) at a cost of $2.00 Gas is currently at $2.12 but I have a full tank so I should not need to buy gas this week.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and become debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In October: Day 2
• Tracking My Finances In September: Day 16
• Tracking My Finances In June: Day 9
• Tracking My Finances In November: Day 17
• Tracking my Finances in November: Day 2

!!

I am so excited at the energy today surrounding voting. Obama vs McCain. Who will win?

I cannot vote…but if I could you KNOW who I would vote for. If you are able to vote you NEED to take the time out today and go to cast your vote.

You have the right so use it. There are some people who WISH they could vote but are not able to do so. Vote in 2008 and make your vote count.

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• Presidential Race is Crazy
• Barack Obama Is President…McCain Gives Concession Speech
• Poll added to sidebar
• Profigg.com
• Vote for me at saveorspend

I got an interesting comment from a reader and we need your input.

“… I’ll like to know how to pay off £11,000 in 6 months with an annual income of £18,000. I really do need some advice.”

My response to the reader was that this is NOT possible unless he/she:

1. Has some MAJOR savings hidden away that can be easily accessed

2. Wins the lottery

3. Gets someone to pay it off for them

In order to pay off this money in six months the reader would have to pay $1833 per month but he is making $1500 per month. Does anyone have any ideas?

Check out my Experiences with LASIK surgery

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• Help a reader out with Grand Central
• Tracking my finances in July: day 2
• Home based business
• Did I save money in April: day 3
• How I dealt with a Google Page Rank drop at How I Save Money