My Good Cents

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day! We attended the Spring Busker Festival and walked around by the water. If you want a peek into my yesterday I took a few photos and put them on Flickr.

On to the money, this week I received the following :

$25.00 Target Gift Card from an Herbal Essence Sweepstakes (over)
$12.07 Walgreens Gift Card from rebates
$10.00 from Synovate Global Opinion Panels
$5.00 Amazon from Baker Street
$20.00 Amazon from Swagbucks

May Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $10.00
Gift Cards : $72.07
Total : $82.07

Strangely enough I only found one penny this week (on the sidewalk). I did find a dime in the washer but I won’t count it because it was probably ours to begin with.

May Found Money Totals : $.37
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $11.68

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Happy Cinco De Mayo! Here are my extra money totals since May 1st.

$10.00 Amazon from Baker Street

May Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $0.00
Gift Cards : $10.00
Total : $10.00

Money on the ground!

On Thursday I found one shiny penny right in the middle of the sidewalk while walking to work. Saturday I found an equally shiny quarter (insert happy quarter dance) near my house. And on Sunday, I grabbed a dime on the sidewalk in between CVS and Henrys Market.

I also spotted one penny in the street on Sunday. I did a quick risk analysis and realized there was a 50/50 chance I would get hit by a car so I skipped it. I also skipped a penny on the floor in Big Lots for no reason at all. My husband would be so proud.

May Found Money Totals : $.36
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $11.67

Click here to see how I’m spending money. I’ve challenged myself to $200 for the entire month. So far? I’m failing miserably.

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April is over, I’m not sure how that happened.

Since Monday’s post I won a $5 Amazon gift certificate from searching at Blingo and found six pennies at CVS.

The pennies were all together outside the door. There was an extremely intoxicated homeless guy asking for change at the door. When I was leaving, he was leaving. He took all the silver change and left the pennies. I find this to be pretty common with the dwelling challenged folk and it blows my mind. I would think you would want all the money you can get.

I started to tell this story to my husband and before I was finished he in terror was shaking his head “no, NO, do not tell me you picked up the pennies, please just tell me you left them, please just tell me that”. All I could say with a shrug was “I sanitized my hands”.

April Extra Money Totals :

April Found Money Totals : $2.20
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $11.37

I joined Twitter this month, come follow me!
Follow me everywhere if you would like, I like company.

If you haven’t entered the April sweepstakes yet, it ends midnightish tonight. A new giveaway for May will be posted this week.

Oh, and one last thing.. It’s Wedgie Free Wednesday so if you haven’t entered to win your free pair of underwear from Hanes, you can do that here. They give away 500 pair a week. I received mine a few days ago. Completely the wrong size but a pair of underwear none the less.

I’ve been working at my real job quite a bit this last week. Boring. I much prefer the at home typing on my little machine job… Unfortunately, it isn’t bringing in the millions quite yet, but it is bringing in a little extra.

Here are my little extras since last Monday.

$10.00 from Pinecone (2 checks)
$50.00 from an Ebay Sweepstakes (over)
$21.00 from Opinion Outpost
$10.00 from My Survey
$75.00 from Washington Mutual (for opening an account)

I was stoked when I received notice from PayPal that $50 had been deposited into my account from the Ebay Shop Victoriously Sweepstakes that ended last October. I had no idea that I had won.

The $75 came in Amex Gift Check form and was for opening a new account. I already have WAMU accounts so I found it a little strange when I received a letter from them offering me $75 to open a new account. I went ahead and did it but wasn’t completely expecting to receive the money so that was a really nice surprise when it came!

April Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $264.59
Gift Cards : $33.00
Total : $297.59

Moving on to random change I’ve picked up since my last post… On Monday I found a dime inside the Vons change return. I didn’t pay cash so I grabbed it all sneaky like on my way out which I’m sure wasn’t sneaky at all.

On Wednesday I picked up a penny off the floor at CVS.

On Thursday I found twenty cents. One dime on the way to work, nine pennies (in a pile) while taking Starbucks to my sweet in need of caffiene husband and one final penny at Ralphs. I watched the lady drop it, look down and walk away. I kept shopping and later while walking by that area I picked it up since no one else had.

And finally, during the weekend I found six cents. One nickel and one penny. I can’t remember where I picked up the nickel but the penny was found in the Gaslamp Quarter where we went to eat dinner on Sunday. I actually spotted quite a few pennies while out but I decided against embarrassing my husband on date night.

April Found Money Totals : $2.14
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $11.31

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Since my last money post, I’ve received the following :

$2.50 from Survey Savvy
$10.00 from American Consumer Opinion
$7.99 from Schick (rebate)

April Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $98.59
Gift Cards : $33.00
Total : $131.59

At work on Friday I found one quarter on the floor. On Saturday while walking back from the store with a thirty grams of fat ice cream cookie, I found one penny in the road. That’s like more than a days worth of fat in one little treat. It was good.

April Found Money Totals : $1.77
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $10.94

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Are your taxes done?
I waited until yesterday to mail the checks. I don’t like giving away my money.

It was a bummer looking at the bank account this morning so I made a batch of peanut butter cookies. Eating cookies for breakfast really did miracles for my tax day spirit!

Since my last update I’ve received the following checks:

$10.00 from My Survey
$3.00 from Noxema (rebate)

April Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $78.10
Gift Cards : $33.00
Total : $111.10

I have also found three pennies. One penny was outside Ross (I didn’t buy anything) and one was on the ground at the bus stop.

The final penny was at Ralphs. I spotted it near the self-checkout lane as we were leaving. I had no intention of picking it up but jokingly I said to my husband, “hey, grab me that penny”, and he did! I couldn’t believe it and nor could he. He had that confused did I seriously just do that look on his face. But he did, oh yes! And now I have it in writing.

April Found Money Totals : $1.52
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $10.69

This week I received the following checks:

$5.00 from Pinecone
$10.00 from Livewire
$5.99 from Oral B (rebate)
$12.99 from Sambucal (rebate)
$18.13 from Viewpoint

I also received a $3.00 Amazon Gift certificate from Consumer Village. Last week I forgot to post that I received a $5 Sears card by signing up for emails (offer over) and a $25 gift card to Pure Romance (an adult gift shop) for an online survey project that I never actually kept up with so wasn’t expecting to get it.

On a side note, my husband received a $25 Target gift card from work yesterday for being so damn fantastic. Love me some Target. I’m not including that in the totals as the point of this is to show that you can make extra money by doing little things on and offline but I just wanted to share. Go husband!

April Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $65.10
Gift Cards : $33.00
Total : $98.10

Now let’s move on to my habit of picking up dirty money off the ground.

On Sunday I found two pennies while dear husband and I were shopping. One in the mall and one outside Food 4 Less where we popped in to buy milk. 2 for $4.50, what a deal!

On Monday I found one penny on a table at McDonalds where we enjoyed ice cream and a free iced coffee. I also found four pennies on the ground at a gas station where my little bundle of husband barely even blinked an eye when I bent down to grab them.

On Wednesday I found two more pennies while walking.

And finally on Thursday, I hit the paper money jackpot while walking home from work. A one dollar bill was waiting for me on the sidewalk.

To make a long story kind of short. I actually passed by the dollar once and didn’t see it. There was a guy in a truck who kept stopping and trying to get me to get in his vehicle and then would drive on turn around and come back to do it again. This went on four or five times until I finally got quite uncomfortable, called my husband and walked back to a convenient store to wait for my him. Walking back to the store I happened to see the dollar.

April Found Money Totals : $1.49
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $10.66

The last weekend in March we went to the casino for a little getaway. While searching for overpriced extra strength Excedrin in the casino gift shop I spotted a quarter and a dime. I never updated but my March found money grand total was $2.27.

On to April, I found a dime in the Vons parking lot on Wednesday. One penny at work on Thursday. A quarter in the gas station parking lot and a penny inside Ralphs on Friday.

Today I found two pennies inside Big Lots and one penny on the sidewalk outside of CVS (where by the way I scored the last five bottles of Soft Soap Spa).

April Found Money Totals : .40
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $9.57

As for the extra money department, this week I received $5.00 from Pinecone and $7.99 from Schick (rebate from a razor).

April Extra Money Totals :

Cash : $12.99
Gift Cards : $0.00
Total : $12.99

I’m having a hard time staying put this month… It looks like we are taking off for the rest of the weekend. I’ll be back Monday afternoon.

I haven’t been to the grocery store or CVS (gasp!) for almost two weeks but next week I should be settled back in to a normal routine.

Today I found .13 cents. One dime and three pennies while walking around Hillcrest. I actually spotted five pennies in all but occasionally I give my husband a break.

March Found Money Totals : $1.92
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $8.82

I basically spent all of yesterday on the couch watching America’s Next Top Model reruns but I still managed to earn a little cash.

My fourth favorite guy (the mailman) brought me one check.

$5.00 from Synovate.

March Extra Money Totals :

Cash: $91.40
Gift Cards: $15.00
Total : $106.40

And during my limited sun time, I almost broke into the happy coin dance after spotting the rare but exciting twenty-five cent piece in the grass near my house.

C’mon you know you love the quarters as much as I do! Unless of course your one of those fancy pants washer/dryer owners that doesn’t need piles of quarters to do your laundry.

March Found Money Totals : $1.79
Money Found Since 01/01/08 : $8.69