Vacation Fund 2013

I know its been awhile. Please don't add salt to the wound. With the holidays and life and work I couldn't keep up. But I was diligent at writing everything down. Even if I don't have pictures for it all. So here is the run down for our Disneyland Vacation Fund.  I haven't put the exact numbers down for our budget but I am guessing right now we need about $1000.

So what I have to add to the fund since the last time I wrote (which was October) is:

November:

• $5 Target gift card 
• sold some toys on craigslist = $28
• sold another toy on craigslist = $10
• $5 paypal from Epoll surveys

December:

• $10 Target gift card for buying bulk (probably diapers)
• $10 Target Gift card for using the coupon that said to spend $50 and get $10 GC
• $15 My Survey redemtion
• $10 iTunes GC from Swagbucks (I used it for a Christmas gift and swapped from the Christmas fund)
• $5 Target GC
• $10 Target GC for using another coupon with the spend $50 get $10
• $5 Target GC for buying 10 products in the food aisle

January:

• $5 Target GC for buying 10 more products
• $10 Amazon GC from swagbucks
• $20 paypal from I-Say surveys
• $10 Safeway GC from My Points 
• $8.10 in spare change
• $10 GC for Safeway from My Points
• $10 Amazon Gift card from I-Say

 

I will be swapping with my grocery budget for these and buying our paper products on Amazon.

So there you go...Add them all up and we have - $186.10

Take that and add to it to our fund and we have a total off: $414.65 And we are going in early September 2013!

Zehring Christmas Traditions

My husband has been working retail full time for over 2 years now. It has been a blessing and a curse. But most of the time its been a HUGE blessing. The Lord provided this job for Joel when we were looking at losing $500 a month in income through one job or another. We were both working hard and taking care of a 1 year old at the time. When this position came up we were nervous (we had been discussing it for a year and kept putting it off) but super excited over the possibilities.

It all started right after my oldest was born. I always thought I would be a working mom. I thought I would make it work. But after my maternity leave was up, I didn't want to go back to work. I wanted to be with my baby at home. And the Lord provided for me to do that by doing in-home child care. Then I started substitute teaching when child care wasn't enough. Then, the pay cuts with Joel's job started happening. That's when retail management started entering our conversations. Long story short, Joel took the job and I am home more than ever before. I am also at the tail end of my working out of the house. And its been wonderful to see an end in sight and my chance to finally stay home full time. With the exception of  holidays, Joel's job has been a wonderful change to our family. He his home more and we have extra income.

But during the Christmas season, we would never see him. Dinners at families houses were not happening because of Black Friday and overnight inventory. And he always seemed to be the one that closed on Christmas Eve. Which meant that he didn't participate in any of our traditions that Nathan and I started. Then this year, Target gave us the BEST gift ever. They allowed all management to either have Christmas Eve or the 26th off. We chose Christmas Eve. And by far, the best day ever. Here is what we do on Christmas Eve and how Joel was able to join us this year.

First, we introduce Nathan to Santa. We track him on google maps and see how close he is to where we live. We also sprinkled reindeer food for Santa's reindeer. Nathan chose our front walkway because its right by his window and maybe he will hear them. :)

After that, we went to Costco for pizza before we headed over to Winterhaven. Its a neighborhood that goes all out for Christmas and is completely free for people to walk through. All they ask for is donations to the food bank. So we clear out my stock pile of food and head on over. Nathan was actually on the news two Christmases ago while we at Winterhaven.

 

When we got back home, we tracked Santa one more time. Then came the baths, Christmas PJs, and some thing Joel got to do for the first time, the reading of the birth of Christ from Luke 2. After that its getting a plate of cookies for Santa and some Christmas books are read. Then bedtime.

 

 

After the boys are asleep, Santa comes, eats some cookies, and he ALWAYS leaves a Thank You note for our boys.

BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!

How did I earn my Christmas fund in 6 months???

Christmas came and went and it was a blast! Having a 4 year old and an one and a half year old made this time of year AWESOME! I love my kids and I love their excitement for life. I did a lot of posts on how my goal for Christmas was $600 and I made that goal happen here. It only took about 6 months to save that much for Christmas. I also have a huge family to shop for, so knowing how to shop clearance and online deals helps. It looked like I spent a lot on some one, when in reality I spent $10 or less. Shhh, don't tell them. :) I take part in about 5-6 survey sites. Some I use for surveys and others I use for just collecting points. Some one asked me to break those down, so here it goes...

Swagbucks.com: by far my favorite site. They have surveys, polls, videos to watch, shop and earn, web searching and my favorite is using coupons from their site. All of these allow me to earn points. You can join this site by clicking on my points bar on the blog.

MySurvey.com: Strictly surveys. I love them because they some times send free products to test out. I have gotten perfume, toilet paper, paper towels, diapers, food, and other great stuff. You earn a good amount of points too.

Mypoints. com: they are similar to swagbucks but I don't take surveys on this site. They have the shop and earn (similar to ebates.com). But I earn most of my points by email. Now you have to be ok with junk mail to do this site. You earn points just by going to the webiste that is in the email. Most emails give you 5 points just for clicking on the link to go to the website. There is nothing else to it. I get about 50-60 points a week doing this.

Epoll: very slow moving site. But when you do get a survey emailed to you its worth a lot of points.

I have about 2 more survey sites that I am a part of but my Windows crashed and my sites are on that and I can't remember the names of them right now. Sorry.

I also earn extra cash by saving all my gift cards I earn by buying things in bulk that I would normally buy eventually. I use coupons as well and that brings down my price.

I recycle cans too. I also save all my spare change. I never pay with change. Anything I sell on craigslist or a yard sale gets put towards the fund. And the last thing I do and you don't need kids for this, is I am signed up with Pampers Gifts to Grow and Huggies rewards. You get point codes that add up to get great stuff. I got a gift card off one and a toy for my youngest on the other. You just search for codes or follow them on facebook and they post codes all the time.

Hope this helps some of you out there wondering how to start fund and save for it. Let me know if you have more questions. I will be updating our vacation fund soon. Stay tuned. I hope to have Windows up and running again soon so I can post some pictures too!.