When checking my email tonight, I came across this coupon for Walgreens, where you get $5 off your in-store purchase of $20 or more. There are a few stipulations, but if you do the Easy Saver Program, maybe you can combine your free after rebate items with the coupon, and other necessities you need. It’s a great coupon, and I wanted to pass it on!

I’ve got a dilemma. It involves the hardwood floors that we were going to install a few weeks ago. I decided that I would just hire someone to install them, and I called for a quote the other day. $2.50 a square foot for installation. Not bad, I thought. As I was talking to the guy, he asked how large of an area we planned on doing, and I told him just the hallway. The hallway is not that large and he thought it would not be worth his time to come out and do just the hallway. So, I told him I’d think about doing the bedroom and the living room at the same time because we want to do those areas as well. I was thinking it wouldn’t be more than $2000 for all of it, because I assumed those three areas were maybe 300 square feet total. Wrong. They total around 575 square feet. That would cost us $3737.50 for the materials and installation!! We only have $1200 in our hardwood floor fund right now, and that’s [...]

A few months ago, I wrote about how you can try to talk your way out of an overdraft fee. On Thursday, I was again reminded of how it seems like people still are having problems managing their money. Every morning I check the overdraft report. This report tells me who has gone overdrawn, and if necessary, I shut down their debit card. A typical day will show about 25-30 people on the report. In the past few weeks, we’ve been averaging 50-60! That’s double the amount! It amazes me that people pay $30-$36 for an overdraft charge, yet continue to use the account. The number one cause of people going overdrawn is due to the lack of a check register. How can you know how much money you have available to spend if you don’t have a record of what you have spent? Online banking, telephone banking, and asking the tellers for a balance are not reliable methods of tracking money. They don’t know what checks are outstanding or what check card transactions haven’t posted yet. The “posting” process [...]