Not much new today. Worked. No spending. No fast-foods.
Walked for 50 min.

Finished listening to Kiss me while I sleep by Linda Howard. Good book on tape I got from the Library.

I think it's a rip-off that Kleenex and Puffs both sell their square boxes of tissue for the same price as their rectangular boxes. The sqaure boxes only have 85 sheets and the rectangular boxes have 160 sheets. Whenever they are on sale I get the rectangular boxes and get almost twice as many tissues.

However, since I like the square boxes in the bathroom because they take less room I just open the bottom and take tissues from the rectangular box, fold them in half and put them in the square box and tape the bottom closed. It's a little thing, but it causes me no pain, and saves a few cents, so I like to do it.

Tommorrow is a shopping day, need to run several errands. I really like to shop when I go to a mall with friends or family. Just looking usually satisfies me and I rarely spend much. But I hate errand shopping. I can be going to the exact same stores, but if I'm actually looking for something I don't like to shop. Perverse of me, I know

Not much happening today. Worked as usual. No spending, No Fast foods and no walking.

I did exfoliate my face. This is a really cheap way to do that and it makes my skin feel very soft and smooth the next day. Mix some baking soda and water into a paste and gently rub into skin, then rinse with warm water. Super cheap and works great

Walked with mom for 40 minutes.

I've read several journals now and I've seen ING mentioned several times. I got a similar deal last year through www.nesteggz.com This is a rebate site that gives you a percentage of your purchase price back. They are affiliated with a Mastercard that gives you 1% back on all purchases and 3% back on gasoline purchases, but the card is not necessary to shop through the site. The sign-up is free.

The deal that reminds me of the ING deal is under financial services and is for Net Bank. This is an online bank and if you open a money-market account with $500 for 6 months they give you two $25 rebates: one for opening the account and one for keeping $500 in the account for 6 months. I did this last year and actually got the full $50 rebate in the second month. I left my money in there for 6 months and then canceled the account. That's a 10% interest rate on top of their regular interest rate.

Nesteggz offers a wide variety of rebates on financial services, telecommunications and even refinancing your home as well as internet shopping rebates. And if you set up a new long-distance account with one of their companies you save 6% a month on the bill.

Another one of my favorites here is a 10% rebate when purchasing certificates from restaraunts.com. 11% if you use the card.

Also at Christmas I was buying some stuff on Amazon and after I got the final price I used the Nesteggz site to buy an email Gift certificate from GiftCertificates.com. I got the email certificate in 10 minutes and because it's an email certificate there are no fees and no shipping charges. I got a 5% rebate from Gift Certificates plus a 1% rebate from the credit card. I used the email certificate to complete my purchase and saved an extra 6% on the price. I see that they don't offer amazon.com gift certificates anymore, but they do offer others such as Barnes and Nobel.

So far I've gotten 3 checks from them for $133 in the last year. If you want they will either send you a check anytime your account gets to $25 or they will deposit that amount in a retirement fund of your choice.

This is the type of savings that I like the most. Painless Getting back money for doing something I would do anyways and a very small amount of time involved.

Instead of tracking no spend days I think I need to track no fast-food days.

Had my usual celery, peanut butter, fruit breakfast and baked potato, hard-boiled egg, veggies lunch. I don't mind having the same thing for breakfast and lunch everyday, but I don't like the same thing two days in a row for dinner.

Anyways the plan was to walk after work today with my mom. She couldn't do it then so we decided to walk at 7 instead. I planned to fix dinner at 5:30 and eat because I find it uncomfortable to walk right after eating. I work on a computer all day and my eyes are usually tired by the end of the day so I laid down to rest them. The phone woke me up at 6, it was my mom calling and asking if I wanted to walk now. I hadn't meant to fall asleep. So went over to mom's and walked for 45 minutes, but by that time I was starving so instead of fixing dinner like I had planned I went to Arby's and bought large size potato cakes, a chicken sandwich and a Roast Turkey and Swiss sandwich for lunch tomorrow. Almost $10 and then I was too full/uncomfortable after eating the potato cakes and sandwich. Oh well, as Scarlett says, "Tomorrow is another day"

I got a book-on-tape from the library that I listened to while working today. To Die For by Linda Howard. Very funny, she always has great dialog in her books. She writes mystery/romance stories. The main character in her book, Blair, reminds me of Reese Whitherspoon in Legally Blonde. Made the day go much faster.

I'm the fast food/frozen foods queen. One of my goals this year is to eat less processed food and cook at least two times a week.

I did my food prep for the week. Chopped celery, green onions and radishes. Boiled eggs. Packaged grapes into portions. I've found that if I have everything ready to go, it's much easier to eat better - no excuses

I had celery, peanut butter and grapes for breakfast.
Baked potato with green onions and mozzarella, hard-boiled egg and radishes for lunch.
Cheeseburger with grilled onions on an English Muffin, corn on the cob, and sliced tomatoes for dinner.

I like English muffins instead of hamburger buns. I think they have more flavor.
I butter and salt the corn while it's cold and wrap it in waxed paper and put it in the microwave for 3 minutes, (4 if frozen). Yummm! The butter melts on the corn and it's so much easier/faster than boiling water and then trying to butter hot corn.

Walked with mom for 45 minutes.

I just finished reading Getting a Life by Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller. Excellent, excellent book. It basically tells stories about how people applied the steps in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominques and Vicki Robin to allow them to retire early. Made me feel like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound - or at least meet my goal of retiring early.

I'm obsessed with this subject. My family and friends are probably tired of hearing me talk about it, but now I have a new way of talking about it. I can write about it here and possibly save their ears - but probably not.

I've been reading a couple of journal's a day to catch up. It's very interesting reading and I've already read two great tips. You all must be very proud of yourselves for the progress you've made.

I got a haircut at Great Clips yesterday. $12 + $2 tip - $3 coupon from the entertainment.com website. I just recently found out that entertainment.com has coupons that aren't in their book that you can print out and use.

Went to Albertson's for the sunday paper and got a 10 lb bag of potatoes for $1.

This is amazing to me, there is no way someone can grow 10 lbs of potatoes, pick them, package them, transport them, display them, ring them up and then bag them for $1. But if the store wants to sell them for that price, I will be glad to accept their offer.

Went to my mom's last night and walked for 55 minutes. Found a way to drive to her house that takes a mile off round-trip. That's cool. I have a treadmill and could walk at home, but it's boring and I just never do it. I've found that if I make a commitment to walk with someone else, I'll do it everytime. So it's worth it to spend the gas money to drive to her house to walk. She only lives 3.5 miles away so it's not too bad.

I was reading a book last night about people who retired early and it struck me how often the people interviewed said, "I wish I had saved more" or "I wish I had started saving earlier". Nobody said "I wish I had spent more on eating out, or entertainment, etc."

I think this is a great idea to motivate me to save more money. Being able to track the small successes over time and see how they add up should provide incentive to continue.

My main goal for saving money is to retire when I'm 50. That's 5 1/2 years from now. I've been saving towards this for a lot of years, but now I'm so close I live and breathe the goal.