I bought another pack of 4 of those 13 watt flourescent bulbs at BJs with a $4 instant rebate, making them less than $1.50 each. I installed two of them in the ceiling fan in my room. I only had one out of 4 of the 60 watt bulbs working in that light before. THis gives me twice as much light for less than twice the power. I used a third to replace a 60 watt bulb in the hallway between the kids rooms and the secondary bathroom. My Son at only 4 years old knows that we should use this light instead of turning on the bathroom light which uses 2 (I loosened 2 of the four) of those mini sun bulbs at 60 watts each.

We would not expect guests to leave the door open while using the potty, so I loosened half the bulbs to save energy from our guests' bathroom usage as well.
My little genius tells me that the hallway light is only one bulbs and the bathroom light uses two, so if he uses the hall light instead taht leaves more money for milk. I am very proud of him and his understanding of money concepts. Using a 13 watt bulb increases the savings even more. I have one more bulb to decide where I want to use it. The lights in the kids rooms are rarely used as they are sleeping when it is dark and playing when the sun brightens their rooms for free. The living room already has flourescents, and the itchen has the long flourescent tubes,leaving me pretty much the seldom used light in the laundry room as my only option.

Made you look!!

Don't you have some money to save or debt to reduce, or a challenge to conquer, why are you reading articles about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie???

I was thinking about little things that can really affect the monthly budget, and I came up with a few to watch out for. Beverages: the more popular or healthier it is, the more expensive it probably is, too. if you drink sports drinks, get a giant vat of gatorade from BJs and mix it yourself. If you drink water, buy a filtered pitcher and a thermos and take your own instead of spending the money on it from the vending machine or cafe...it's only water...

Snacks: try the same BJs trick of getting a big box of treats instead of buying one bag of chips each day from the machine or snack bar. Or better yet, get a bunch of bananas.

Parking: see if you can find a cheaper lot or deck that is maybe a few blocks away and walk the rest of the way. My parking is free, but not everyone's is.

Entertainment: get a library card. As long as you do not keep the books past the due date, free books beat netflix monthly fee or blockbuster, and most libraries offer movies if you absolutely have no imagination or can not read...
(I have to admit that I like movies a lot, but my brother is a platinum card carrying member of the Columbia House DVD club, so I just borrow from him.)

Food: is important because it is proably second only to your mortgage in monthly expense, unless you overbought your vehicle or already eat on the cheap, but cut the food down. I mean literally cut the food, like water it down. Let me give you an example, I love tacos, so I prefer to have them often. By adding a can of tomatoes and a can of refried beans, I can make double the tacos without doubling the amount of meat required. This leaves leftovers for my lunch, and sometimes more without making the cost of the dinner go up much. We have rice and pasta a lot and use a variety of cheap sauces to flavor them frugally.

Some people refer to a lightbulb moment as a moment in time when the fictional lightbulb in their mind illuminated. That moment when *bang* an idea hits you and starts you thinking. I am not using the phrase 'lightbulb moment' as a metaphor. I am literaly refering to the moment at which I turned off a few lightbulbs. Get it?

In both of my bathrooms, I have light fixtures that use those really big super bright like the sun bulbs. The guest bathroom has 4 and the master bath 6. These are 60 watts each, making the master bath light the third highest consuming device in my house behind the refrigerator and the air conditioner. My light bulb moment came a few months after one of those 6 miniature stars faded out.

I had not replaced the black hole (a dead star is a black hole, have to point out that reference.) and the bathroom was none the dimmer without it. I walked into the bathroom, with the lights out for a while to ensure those microscale suns were not full on flaming hot, and unscrewed another of the bulbs a bit to take it out of the loop of electric power, so to speak. After turning on the switch, I loosened another and the bathroom is still bright. With half of the bulbs not on, I am using half of the power thereby saving money every month. I may try one more bulb as well as loosening 1 or 2 from the guest bathroom as well. I shall have to cehck for savings on the monthly electric bill to determine the 'value' of my lightbulb moment.

I have an Ing account as many readers of this forum do. If you do not , why don't you...it is a savings account..you want or have a savings account right? You deposit $250 or more and if *cough* someone *cough* invites you, you get an extra $25 and I, err, the person who refers you gets $10. Then you can refer someone else and get your own $10. The interest is better than any standard, or as they say in the business, brick and mortar bank.

So I mention all of these benefits to my Mother...her response of course was 'What's the catch?' Why does everything have to have a catch?

I explain that they don't have banks on every corner for you to drive by and think 'oh yeah I need a savings account,' so they pay account holders, like myself, to say 'Hey, you need a savings account' for them.

She still hasn't asked for a referral.

I know I am putting this under the heading that has the word scams in it, but so many people think that everything that has to do with getting money is a scam.

My Category name is a play on the fact that anytime my friends or I had a money making idea, either my Mom or Grandma would call it a scam, so we just started calling them scams to, even the legit ones.

You talk to someone about signing up for an ING account and mention you can send them a referral and they will get a $25 bonus. The first thing they say is either 'can I trust an online bank?' or 'what is the catch?'

If you see something that you think someone will like on the freebies (thanx Kimmie) and send them the link, they will reply saying what is the catch. I talk to them and say hey did you get the free samples from that link I sent you and they tell me that they did not sign up because they did not want to be bothered with all of the junk mail and email that they figured they would get, or they read it twice and didn't see what the catch was.

The thought that someone, particularly a large company with a lot of money will give away something free or at a good discount, like a dealer, and then get you hooked before turning you lose to pay retail price, does not compute to most people.

Dove can and will send you a free sample of their new calming soap, because they want you to try it and like it and pay full price for it after that. Pampers sends out a free diaper in the mail to all addresses that they get for newborns from hospitals but there are still those out there that will not sign up for freebies at pampers.com because 'there must be a catch'

Take advantage of all the samples and freebies that you can get.

There are a lot of great coupon deals out there. But buying something you do not need and then claiming the $5 off from that coupon does not constitute an actual savings of $5.

I can recall going to visit my Aunt one time, she was a huge coupon freak. She asks my brother and I, 'Do you boys like Orange Crush?' We nodded expecting to get a glass to drink. Instead she takes my father to the basement and they come up with over a dozen bottles of fizzy orange goodness. She got them for a quarter each with a coupon but no one in her family drank the stuff.

My brother and I decided we had to go down and see what else she had in that basement that we could pillage from her. She a pair of very nice cabinets built in the wall and two shelves that ran a good eight feet long on either side of the cabinets and these were all stocked like a supermarket with goods she bought with her coupons.

She had dozens of boxes of this or that, scores or packets of dog treats and, her prized possession, about thirty travel sized tubes of Colgate toothpaste. You see she is the reason why coupons now say not to exceed value of the product on them. She bought trial sized Colgate that was on sale for 49 cents with a 25 cent coupon on double coupon day meaning the store gave her a penny for each tube of toothpaste that they had in stock that day. She got a lot of great deals, but some things that she bought and did not use, or need took away from her actual savings.


Look for a coupon for eveything you buy, but do not buy everything that you have a coupon for!

Anyone with an Ing account and children who did not refer their children and open an account in their names did not get as much out of the deal as they could have. Anyone out there saying but you have to put in a minimum if $250 to get the bonus needs to know that they only have to leave the $250 in the account for a month after the bonus posts and then they can take it back.

Did you know that the accounts you opened for the kids have their own 25 referrals to use?