Checking In

Hello everyone!

I hope you're all doing well & enjoying summer. Nothing exciting happening in Goose Land. Just the same old, same old. 

It looks like I might be going to court this month. Still waiting on the ex and I'm now fed up with the constant  postponements I've had to file. The only way to get things done is to go to court. 

The housing market seem to be picking up again, but houses are wayyyy overpriced. I've seen houses sitting for a while. There are 2 new ones near me - both way over my budget. As in $100k over budget. I'm debating contacting my realtor to go to the open house, but the one I like said it's contingent on seller finding a new home. WTH? I don't want to buy a house, then wait on the seller to move. No sir, I want to move immediately. 

So while I was out running errands today, I stopped by the other house that's $40k less than the one I like (house is dated and they keep relisting it online at a lower price), to check the location. Well, I can scrap that one. The house is in a cul de sac and there's a house (in the neighboring cul de sac) that's backed up so close to this house, it looks like it's on the same property. So this one's a no-go for me. There's no fences and I don't want the backyard neighbor smack dab in my face. Geez! Besides, that house has pink bathroom sinks. Yuck! I'm not THAT much of a girly girl...lol

I need to discuss some things with my better half before buying a house though. If we're gonna go ahead with what we're both in agreement on (I'm all in), then I don't want to spend so much over budget, because what we want is expensive. We also need to figure out our living arrangements, my employment, etc. Ms G is a planner, so I want to be sure we're on the same page about the rest of things. Thankfully, neither of us are KUWTJ types, so I know we'll be better than fine financially. We can live well on a small budget.  After all, Ms G has some skills...lol  

What else has been happening:

• My grocery budget is doing much better since I haven't done any stockpiling for a while. 
  
  
• I stumbled upon a 25% off Red Robin (RR) gc deal at Costco last week. I was just thinking that I need to order more from Sams, since I'm running low again. I took DS to dinner on July 4th, so used extra gcs to pay (unexpected trip, but I needed to get out). I never even knew that Costco sells RR gcs and their regular price is 20% off, compared to 15% off at Sams. Well, 25% was way better, so I ordered them and had it in my inbox 30 minutes later. I printed a copy of every gc, but they also give you an option to forward the individual cards as a gift to someone else. The limit was 10 (2 x $50 gcs), but I didn't buy the full amount. The savings I scored more than covered my membership for the year, so I'm a happy mama. 
  
  
• RA has select gift cards Buy $100 get $20 BC (limit 5) this month. I've decided to get Kohls, since that's one of my 'go to' stores. Firstly, I decided to buy just one gc, because I have a BC offer for 'visit store 4 times, earn $10' BC Challenge reward. I wanted to see if the GC would count as a visit, but it's sadly excluded. I'll buy $500 Kohls gcs and earn $100 BC. There's no way I'm gonna pass up a free $100 for a store that I frequent. That $100 can be rolled into new BC deals throughout the year.
  
  Why Kohls? I always do BF shopping at Kohls (will probably be used for household items this year). That's one of the few times you can earn $15 KC (instead of the regular $10). So, if I spend the entire $500, I'll earn $150 KC + $25 Monthly KC. That's $175 KC. Then I'll use the KC to purchase clearance items to resell for a profit (I do this every year, to cover the cost of our BF shopping). I sometimes purchase rebate items too, that earns me extra cash back. 
  
  I usually go through Rakuten to earn extra cash back, but they've been stingy with Kohls. 1% - I think not! Of course, Ms G came up with a better plan. Swagbucks!!! I can't put a $ figure on it, because it varies throughout the year. Even better, you still get a monthly discount on a $25 gc (22000 SB points, instead of 25000), so you're better off using Swagbucks instead of Rakuten.
  
  It gets better...lol. I was going to pay cash for my gcs, but then I remembered that I earn 1.5% cash on my CCs. So favourite CC it is (the one with discounted gcs). Well, as I checked my latest earned CC points, I saw that I earn 3% cash back at drugstores. How did I forget about that? So instead of earning $7.50, I'll earn $15 through my CC. Whoo-hoo! I know this is all confusing (except for Sluggy...lol) , so here's the breakdown:

Purchase $500 Kohls gcs (less $12 already saved. see below), so $488 OOP

Earn: 

RA BC : $100.00

CC rewards : $15.00? Maybe $14.64, due to $12 discount

KC rewards : $175.00

Swagbucks rewards : ????

Total earned : $390.00

Then sell the items for a profit. So we'll get $500 worth of free goods from Kohls + earn a profit on it. Nobody's just gonna pay me $390+ to purchase gcs and shop for ourselves. Show me the money honey...lol.

BUT...

I stopped at RA today, because $30 of my $50 BC expires this weekend. There's nothing good at RA, but I wanted something that would earn more BC back. So I did the Colgate deal (Spend $20 get $10 - limit 2). So here's what I did

6 x Colgate @ 7.99 $47.94

2 x $100 Kohls gc

Less 2 x $3 DQ (6.00)

Less mailer Q (0.50)

Less 6/30 mailer Q (6.00)

Less BC (50.00)

Tax 2.49

OOP $187.93

Earned $60.00 BC ($40 Kohls, $20 Colgate) + I should get another $7 BC for the Colgate Challenge. 

This transaction left the cashier stumped, because we all know that BC can't be used on gcs. However, I know that the register usually applies the Q amounts in BC if you purchase gcs in the same transaction. So I was very happy to save an extra $12 on my gcs. Whoo hoo! I still need to purchase $200 gcs. I'm loving it! I bought 6 t/p (only select ones were tagged), because I wasn't sure if RA applies the 98% rule like CVS does (You only need to spend 98% of the required amount, to earn reward). 

I also earned another $7/35 Q, so I'll check what's good at RA next week. 

I also did a small MM deal at CVS last week, to build my EBs again. They sent me a $4 Q that I wasn't gonna waste. I just received another $4 Q, so I need to make a plan. Well, between the 3 drugstores, I have almost $400 in rewards to use. I'll be rolling these suckers to buy household cleaning items & HBA for our new home. 

Even more good news. My Aldi now has self checkout. I hate that you can't pay cash at self checkout, but when I checked my CC rewards, I noticed that I earn 5% cash back on my card. I knew about this, but I like to pay cash. Not anymore, especially at Sams. I normally use the other CC at Sams, but I'm switching things up now. More CC purchases to earn back more cash. Why not take advantage of free money offers?

Well, my Sams only applied 1.5% cash back 😭 I do remember that the 5% offer is not applicable at Walmart (so I'm guessing Sams too) and I think Target. Well, I'll use this CC at the other grocery stores. No problemo.

• I've been struggling to get my ipad to charge. I tried everything under the sun. Then googled it and tried some more things, including cleaning the charger port (which had zero debris, but I was desperate). My Ipad is 9 years old and still works great! The screen has a huge crack across it, but man I love this thing. I don't even have a case for it and it's been in perfect working condition. I knew that I would need to replace it, so I searched around. Well, I found one and just added it to my cart. I wasn't ready to make the purchase yet. 
  
  However, when I checked my cart the other day (I check regularly to see if there's any price drops), I saw that it was reduced by $50 (I guess Prime day had everyone offering discounts/sales) and 500 people have already purchased the item and another 200-300 had the item in their carts. So I decided to bite the bullet before it sells out. Any Apple user knows that their products rarely go on sale or have big discounts (except for their older model phones and airpods). In under a year, I've had to replace my desktop, laptop & ipad. I'm not happy! So in typical Ms G fashion, I pulled some items from my closet (well my containers, since most of the clothes are packed) and listed it for sale, to help offset the cost. Yeah, I can just write it off to savings, but I feel better recouping the cash. I did manage to get the old ipad to charge, but it's lots of wiggling & bending the wires and some other tweaks just to get it to charge every day. 
  
  
• You know the semi annual sales are bad when I hardly purchase anything. Everything's way overpriced everywhere and I definitely don't need anything. I did buy this pair of boots though. Those boots were already paid for before I purchased it for $35 and I had a $5 reward, because I sold some of my old shoes previously. Then I received another $5 reward that's good until October, so I'm not even bothered by it. 
  
  
• Well, the boots matches my new Chicos olive camo anorak perfectly. I woke up at 4:30 again one morning (I should know how this works by now) and wondered why I'm wide awake so early. I finally got up, got coffee and went online. Turns out the anorak was on sale for $9.99 and there it was in my size. Say no more! Remember the blue camo anorak I bought at the same price during the last sale? Well, I have the exact same boots in Officer Blue too, so I know these items match perfectly...lol $200 boots for free and a $10 anorak. This mama is very happy :)

On the food front. I haven't been feeling cooking much lately. We're eating light and from the freezer. DS is happy as long as he gets to bake muffins on Sundays. A few weeks ago, I didn't have any lemons to make lemon blueberry muffins, so we used OJ to make orange blueberry muffins instead. Holy cow, were those muffins good. I told DS it's some of the best muffins he ever made. 

I had a lot of leftover tortilla chip pieces. You all know those tiny pieces that can't be used for nachos. So I decided to try making Taco Bell Crunch wraps again. I decided to replace the tostada with the leftover chips and it worked great. Same with adding chip pieces to make crunchy burritos. I found that the tostadas were too big to fold the tortilla closed completely, so I never made it again. Well, the chips gave me good reason to try again. No more chips waste. We have new menu items for it. 

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to cash out my lottery ticket from almost a year ago and then buy a new ticket for that big Powerball jackpot. I haven't dreamed of any numbers (let's hope I dream of it tonight 😂) and then hope I win big 🤣🤣🤣 

That's all for me right now. I need to catch up on reading everyone's blogs again, so I apologise for not commenting anywhere. 

Have a wonderful weekend peeps!!