FREE Money This Christmas

Okay, the title is kinda misleading. Because I'm not really helping you get free money, I'm just telling you how I did! I'm so very excited!

My 4 year old son has been saying for 2 months now that all he wants for Christmas is Handy Manny's Repair Shop. Every time there is a commercial on for it, it tells me (and we watch the Disney Channel, so we see it A LOT anymore!) and every time we go to ANY store he tells me we should buy it then and we went to the mall the other day and he saw that they were setting up Santa's chair and he told me he needed to see Santa so he could tell him that he wanted Handy Manny's Repair Shop for Christmas! He said "Mommy, he HAS to know! I HAVE to tell him!" So, unless I want a disappointed boy on Christmas morning, I was going to have to buy this toy. Have I mentioned that it's $100?!?! Ugh. I mean, even if we hadn't been on such a tight budget because of lack of employment for most of the year, $100 is still A LOT to spend on a toy for a 4 year old! I knew he would really play with it because he almost exclusively only plays with his other Handy Manny toys and fixes everything in the house! We thought about just asking everyone for money for him before Christmas and compiling it all to buy it, then I had a stroke of GENIUS!!

I've told you before about Swagbucks, but let me tell you again! It's a search engine, not unlike Google or Yahoo that gives you bucks (points really, they just call them bucks to be cute!) when you search. You do not get them every time you search, but they do add up. The best way to earn bucks? Refer your friends! If a friend signs up because of your referral, you get a point every time they do, up to 100 points per referral! Most of my points I actually earned myself, but I think I have about 300 points from my friends using Swagbucks! That really helps your total add up! I also added the search bar to my browser so that I don't have to go to Swagbucks.com every time I want to search, it makes it MUCH easier to earn those Bucks!

Okay, I told you that to tell you this: I cashed in my Swagbucks and now have $80 in gift cards to Target! (I've been using Swagbucks for about about 8 months now, so you won't be able to get much before Christmas, but if you start now you will be able to do it next year!) So, Target actually had the Repair Shop on sale online (it works out to be a discount equal to the amount of shipping, basically making it have free shipping) AND has a coupon that is for $10 off the Repair Shop, taking the price down to $90 (after shipping). Just to do the math for you, I'm going to be able to get this highly requested toy for only about $10!!! I told you it was a genius idea! I'm ordering it through Ebates, so I get 3% of my purchase price back (not a lot but you get $5 just for signing up and with the rate that I use Ebay, it really adds up for me!)

So, long story short, my son's Christmas morning will be VERY happy and I couldn't be more thrilled! I just needed to share with you my excitement!

Saving Money with Swagbucks

Okay, so I know I've talked about this before, but I really want everyone to know about it! Swagbucks is awesome! I have been using Swagbucks for about a month and a half and I am seriously raking in the bucks!

For those of you who don't know, Swagbucks is a search engine that randomly give you "bucks" (points) while you are searching. Those bucks can be redeemed for prizes! I already have enough for a $20 Target Gift Card and would have enough left over for a $5 Starbucks Gift Card! You can even get electronics; I'm debating if I should hold onto my points until I have enough to get an iPod Touch!

The only thing I have done differently in my browsing is I downloaded the Swagbucks Bar to do my searching in, this means I don't have to keep going back to the Swagbucks site to search. That's it! Everything else is the exact same as before except that I'm getting points to get great FREE stuff! You all know how much I LOVE free stuff! I usually average around 3 - 5 points a day by searching, but I also get points for buying things online. When I buy my coupons from E-bay, I get more points! So, coupons to get stuff at the store for FREE while I get points to get more stuff for FREE; sounds like a win/win to me!

If you have not checked out Swagbucks yet, I suggest you do it now and start getting paid to search the web!

Happy Savings!