March Freebie Roundup

A little bit of everything made its way into March's freebies.

February was officially out-freebied last month! February's collection, as you might recall, fit easily in one photo, but capturing March's haul in a single frame took a bit of work.  Here's what we scored and how we did it:

• Two boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, courtesy of the "Macsurance" promotion they ran earlier this year on Facebook.  The rules allowed three boxes to be claimed per household, but the coupons went so quickly that we counted ourselves lucky to have even snagged one.
• Two boxes of Pop Secret popcorn, used with the last of the free product coupons we earned from the Disney Rewards program throughout 2011.  (Note: We earned these points without buying Disney products, using all-purpose codes Disney Rewards issues every month.)  Pop Secret is no longer available as a prize there but has returned periodically in the past, so we continue to amass points in the hope that it will pop up again later this year.
• One package of Kraft Fresh Take, which we bought using a free product coupon offered through the Kraft First Taste website.  I've been a member for over a year and was never invited to take part in previous free product promotions, so being selected for this one was exciting. 
• Three bottles of Up & Up ibuprofen, purchased at Target using a $1 coupon that was offered on Target's website.  The 24-ct. bottles of their store brand ibuprofen are regularly priced at $0.97, making them free after coupon. (The hard part is finding the bottles in stock.)
• Two Tide Pods laundry detergent samples.  Tide ran a free sample promo twice in the span of a week or so and we tried it both times and both times it came through.  You can't always count on that happening with freebies, so it's always a nice surprise when it works.
• Quaker Oatmeal Squares cereal sample, requested via Facebook.  They run a similar offer every month or two, so keep an eye on their Facebook page if you'd like to try this cereal for free.
• A Keebler Jumbo Fudge bar, another offer that has already popped up two or three times this year, once through Keebler and once through an affiliated website.  
• One Purex UltraPack laundry detergent sample and one Purex liquid laundry detergent sample, both requested through the Purex website during a limited-time offer.
• Beneful Baked Delights dog treats, requested through their website, and this was a neat, unusually generous one because they shipped two bags in one box, each a different flavor.  
• One can each of Purina Pro Plan dog food and Hill's Science Diet cat food, picked up for free at Petco using coupons offered to Petco Pals rewards members.  It's free to join and many of the coupons can be printed right from your computer. 
• Two Simple-brand facial wash products, one full-size and one sample-size.  The full-size was offered to qualifying SheSpeaks members, the sample was offered through the CVS website.
• One package of Always panty-liners and one package of Carefree panty-liners, both free at Target after using $1 manufacturer's coupons.
• Maybelline Baby Lips lip balm, regularly priced $2.99 at Target, or free after stacking a $2 manufacturer's coupon with a $1 Target coupon.
• CoverGirl LashBlast mascara, won through a Facebook promotion.
• Up & Up dental floss, regularly priced at $0.97, was free after using a $1 Target coupon.
• Free Always and Tampax samples are offered with great frequency, sometimes through Facebook, sometimes through the manufacturer's site and sometimes through other P&G promotions.  I don't remember the origins of the samples we received in March.
• Mucinex sinus medication and Garnier shampoo and conditioner samples were requested via Facebook.
• Prilosec, Crest toothpaste and whitening strips, Scope mouthwash, Dawn dish-washing soap, Downy Unstoppables and Pampers samples came via Procter & Gamble promotions.  (The Pampers will go to a neighbor.)
• Gevalia coffee sample, requested via Facebook and, once this picture was taken, passed along to my father.

Not pictured: A small sample jar of Valspar paint that came with two complimentary tiny rollers.

Phew, that's a lot of free stuff!  Sometimes, I must admit, I don't like waiting around on a Facebook page, hitting "refresh" and hoping the application doesn't crash or the connection doesn't time out just so we can get a tiny bottle of mouthwash or a packet of laundry detergent.  It sounds silly, since it's an activity I personally choose to take part in, but it can still get a little exhausting.

There's a snowball effect though, once you've done it long enough that you've built a stockpile of, say, allergy pill samples or lip balm or lotion.  Suddenly, if your household is as small as ours, there are a number of items you probably won't have to buy for at least a year or two (or maybe longer, if similar offers continually surface).  And samples often come with coupons that, if used during the right sale, can yield even more free, or nearly free, products.  So, for the time being, I'll keep hitting "refresh" - and keep taking pictures of the results, because it helps me see that we really are getting something for our efforts.

Stream a Movie for Free at Amazon

If you have a Twitter account, you can claim a $3 Amazon Instant Video credit by clicking here and allowing their Twitter application.  Newer releases generally cost $3.99 to stream, so you might consider looking for a free Redbox code instead if you're interested in, say, The Iron Lady or The Descendants, but older releases are frequently priced anywhere from $0.99 to $2.99, so who knows what you might find in your price range.  Expires May 1st at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Another Free $2 MP3 Credit at Amazon

You can collect your free $2 MP3 store credit at Amazon by entering the code MOMROCKS and clicking the "apply" button.  This offer expires at 11:59 p.m. PST on April 22, 2012.  Last time around, Nelly and I used our credits to buy songs off the same album, and we'll do so again this evening.  By May or June, whenever Amazon holds their next MP3 store promotion, we'll have downloaded an entire album free of charge.  Not too shabby!

Spending Tracker: The First Two Weeks of April

A typical trip to the health food store...

Holy moly, the first two weeks of April have zipped by in a flash, and I've fallen behind in my weekly spending tracker posts, so we have a lot to catch up on!  Let's dig right in.

Grocery and Household Supplies

Happily, my favorite supermarket held their "Get $10 Off When You Buy $50 Worth of Groceries" promo two weeks in a row, and we were able to go both times and get an additional $5 off each trip by using Entertainment Book coupons.  On the first trip we bought $74.24 worth of groceries for $35.26 after sales and coupons, paid for entirely by gift card.  Highlights included 8 oz. blocks of cheese for $1.18 each, pickles for $0.85 per jar, peanut butter for $1.25 per jar, 75 sq. ft. rolls of aluminum foil for $0.90 each, Pringles at $0.95 per tin, and a $0.70 Funfetti cake mix that we'll use to bake cookies.  On our second trip we purchased $70 worth of groceries, mostly fresh and frozen produce, for $32.09, once again covered by gift card, and we'll get back an additional $4 via mail-in rebate.  

At a second grocery store we spent $9.83 last week.  Land O'Lakes butter was on sale for $1.75 per pound after coupon, so we bought two pounds worth that went directly into the freezer.  But our biggest score came courtesy of a Kraft sale that saw us combine sales, coupons and a $5 off instantly at checkout promotion: $1.96 of that $9.83 went towards two blocks of cream cheese, four pudding mixes and four bags of marshmallows.  We had no immediate need for any of those things but know we'll be able to use them all in good time.  This week we spent $8.05 at the same store, on heavily discounted broccoli, potatoes and bacon.  

Rounding out the grocery and household supply shopping was a $5.93 stop by Target last week for a handful of sale items, including two-dozen eggs for a total of $1.33 after coupons and more cheap Country Crock.  After using the $5 gift card we'd earned buying Charmin last month, we spent only $0.93 out of pocket. 

Miscellaneous Spending

My first haircut in nearly a year cost $28, which included a large tip. 

Fancy Transportation Machine (Also Known as 'Automobile') Expenses

We're officially house-hunting now (though it's still possible we'll stick with the apartment) and driving more as a result.  We've already spent $27.47 on gas this month, although the $13.67 we spent at the end of this week was less about necessity than wanting to take advantage of a $0.20-per-gallon price drop before it disappeared.

Total spent the last two weeks: $74.28

Total spent this year: $472.46

March Spending and Savings Report

As it was happening, the month of March was one big financial question mark to me.  It didn't seem as though we had much extra income coming in, and it was questionable whether the cable company that provides our Internet service was going to properly credit our account for a billing error they made (in their favor, naturally) the month prior.  When the dust settled we did slightly better than I would have imagined, but March was still, for the time being, our worst money month of the year.

What We Earned

Between my take-home pay of $1,766.70 and additional earnings of $205.69 (which came from grocery rebates, taking part in a couple of focus groups and savings account interest), we made a total of $1,972.39 in March.  It's our lowest monthly total of the year so far, but I'm happy with any number larger than $1,766.70!

What We Spent

My "Spending Tracker" updates outline our weekly shopping habits, but those only give you part of the picture.  Our regular monthly budget, which can be found in the "Where We're Starting From" post, includes the rest of our expenses, and once again this month's numbers fell within that budget.

• Rent was $900.
• Electricity was $67.18, or $17.82 under budget.
• Grocery, household and gas spending totaled $97.35 (thanks to careful use of gift cards), coming in $62.65 under budget.  I'm particularly pleased with these numbers because we'll be getting back at least $20 after mail-in rebates, and Nelly and I managed to earn several more grocery store gift cards this month that should help keep our grocery costs minimal for months to come. 
• Nelly's health insurance premium was $150.53.
• Internet, cable and cellphone contracts totaled $118.96, which is slightly less than usual due to the cable company's error-correction credit, but in my experience with them it's always one step forward and two steps back, so I'm not holding my breath that our billing issue has been fully resolved.  
• We incurred an additional one-time expense of $109.12 to load what should be a year's worth of minutes to my new prepaid phone, and I spent $6.48 on a protective case for the phone.
• As usual, our Netflix and weekend newspaper subscriptions cost a combined total of $16.77.

What We Saved

Of the $1,972.39 we made in March, we spent $1,466.39, which made my eyes bulge at first since it seemed so high, but on closer inspection I'm not as alarmed since the Tracfone expense will not be recurring and soon the weather will be mild enough that our electricity bill will drop yet again.  That left us with $506 in savings, $416.66 of which was added to my Roth IRA.  Our total savings so far in 2012 is $2,024.94, or $774.88 after retirement contributions.  That modest little number makes me very, very, very glad that I saved like a fiend in the years before I met Nelly, and equally glad we don't have a car payment! 

Spending Tracker: Week of 3/25/2012

If only toilet paper were as easy to store as jars of salsa.

Last week was expensive: With a single mouse-click, we spent almost as much on Tracfone minutes (minutes that should, admittedly, last for a year) as we'd spent on groceries, household supplies, gas and miscellaneous items so far this year.  It was slightly painful.  This week brought signs of a recovery.

Grocery and Household Supplies

We spent $17.66 at one grocery store - the one for which we have a seemingly never-ending supply of gift cards, so no out of pocket cost there - on produce, milk, and an unexpected splurge: half-price pizza.  Generally we go the homemade pizza route, but there's a brand of frozen pizza that Nelly is partial to that costs, on average, nearly $8 per pizza.  She refuses to spend that much and only buys it a few times a year, when it's on sale at half price.  It's a bit of a joke-y weekly ritual for us to stroll down the pizza aisle and recoil in horror at the $7.98 price tag, but this week brought a happy surprise: an unadvertised sale price of $3.99.  How Nelly has managed not to rip that thing open and devour it whole while I'm at work, I do not know, as it has been many months since she last had one.  I admire her restraint.

At a second grocery store, we spent $14.20 on produce and salsa, which was once again on sale for $1 per jar, and at Target we spent $19.42 after coupons and gift cards.  Our haul there included a handful of grocery items (best deal: two tubs of Country Crock for $0.47 each) and a bunch of toilet paper.  We already have a decent toilet paper stockpile, but we had several unusually high-value Charmin coupons that were about to expire and using them during this particular sale netted us a low per-roll cost and a complimentary $5 Target gift card, so buying more now made sense.  Toilet paper is one of those things that can be a real pain to store if you have limited space, but when you find the right deal the savings can be truly incredible.  As a result, our toilet paper stockpile is definitely my favorite non-food stockpile.

Total spent this week: $33.62
Total spent this year:  $398.18

The Power of Complaint

So many options to choose from!

Last month, as you might recall, Clorox tried to pull one over on me.  It had distributed toilet bowl cleaning gel with a defective cap last year, a problem that was supposedly fixed by the end of 2011.  But you can still find these "bad seed" bottles on store shelves, and in my case they were bundled in so-called "value packs" that contained one bottle with a good cap and one bottle with a leaky cap shrink-wrapped together and placed on price cut. 

When I posted about that sneaky maneuver here a couple weeks ago, Linda at Practical Parsimony suggested I contact Clorox.  I thought that was a good idea; earlier in the year I'd had a bad experience with a food item, contacted the manufacturer and received a very nice letter and coupon in response.  So I wrote to Clorox, and within a day or two received an e-mail response that was not particularly helpful.  Their lack of contrition didn't irritate me too much, as I'd already mapped out work-arounds for the bum caps, but it hardly endeared the brand to me.  I didn't bother replying. 

A few days later, a piece of snail mail arrived containing the coupon pictured above.  It's good for a free product from Clorox or one of their affiliated cleaning brands.  It was accompanied by a letter that was more specific to my complaint than the initial e-mail response I'd received.  I don't believe in complaining just to get coupons (a dishonest practice I've seen mentioned periodically on a very popular couponing blog), but I do believe in sharing your experiences, good and bad alike, with companies that serve you in any capacity, whether they manufacture your shampoo or install your cable.  It helps them to constantly refine their service, which benefits everyone, especially beleaguered consumers with runaway toilet bowl cleaner on their hands.