Mommy's Hobby

I'll admit, I don't really have a hobby. I have lots of things I enjoy doing but might not do on a regular basis. I'd love to learn to play an instrument someday, and I fully intend on getting back into scrapbooking when finances allow it. But for the most part, I just enjoy spending time with my boys, and helping manage our seemingly busy lives. I was thinking about it today, and I DO have a hobby afterall. One that I actually do daily, I'm not sure it has a title, but we'll call it couponing/sweepstaking/freebieing for the moment :)! About a year ago, my mom said something about making sure I do my part in helping our family save and conserve money wherever possible. I definitely don't always do that, and I'll be the first to admit that finances overwhelm me, but it got me thinking, and researching, and I stumbled upon the website www.freebies4mom.com and a passion I didn't know I had!

This website has some great tools to helping families save money. In the beginning, I mostly took part in the "Freebies" aspect of things. The website is very reputable and I have never gotten junk email or mail from anything I have requested. In the past year, we've received COUNTless freebies, everything from pet products, to shampoos and conditioners, cleaning products, to lotions, feminine products, and lots of coupons for free food. These freebies make getting the mail everyday really fun, but they also help us save a lot of money! One, because if I am going to run out of shampoo or something, I often have these kinds of things lying around, so I dont have to go buy shampoo locally (where its pretty expensive) and can wait till our next trip to Walmart, and two, because most freebies come with some great coupons! And then, I fell in love with coupons. We don't get a newspaper, so unfortunately I miss out on a lot of the coupon inserts, but I print most of our coupons from coupons.com. I hold out for coupons that are for items we use on a regular basis, or coupons that are high in value that make it more affordable to get items we usually dont get. Just in today's mail I received a coupon pamphlet from Kraft, with $20 in FREE coupons. Not buy one get one free, but absolutely free coupons, for things like Koolaid, Macaroni and Cheese, Oscar Meyer Deli Meat, and 100 Calorie Packs. And lastly, Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes band wagon was the last one for me to jump on, because I just think sweepstakes seem kind of scammy, and like a waste of time. I still only do them when I have a free minute, if its a sweepstakes where you get an instant answer, and if its one that doesn't take too long to apply for. So far in sweepstakes I have won a $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Nobles, 3 free jars of Pace Salsa, and most recently a $25 Discover Gift Card (that I haven't received yet but should be on its way soon).
Also from the freebies4mom site, I found out about two websites that I also use frequently. The first is PineCone research. It is a company that "hires" people to take surveys online about products, and compensates you $3 for every survey. I have been doing these surveys (which range from about 2-4 surveys a month) for about 9 months now, and have easily made $75-$100. It's fun because they deposit the money into our paypal account (you can have them mail you out a check if you'd prefer), so when we are going to make an ebay purchase, it automatically deducts whatever credits we have from Pinecone before we pay, leaving us with a much smaller amount due :)!
And lastly, www.swagbucks.com. I don't know why more people don't sign up for swagbucks. It's a search engine, just like Google, that pays you for searching. You use their search engine, and every so often (a few times daily usually) you are rewarded with swagbucks. You save swagbucks up until you have enough to make a purchase. My favorite is the Amazon $5 gift card. It's only 450 swagbucks which takes no time at all to get. Many of my family members use swagbucks too and love it! There are other ways to get a few swagbucks daily by participating in a daily poll, searching through the special offers, and they often offer "swagcodes" which you can enter to earn more bucks. If you haven't checked it out, I suggest you at least try it! You can get 30 swagbucks just for signing up. And if you click my refferal link you can earn me 50 swagbucks! :) http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/KincaidsinLove
But enough of sounding sales-lady-like. I really just enjoy doing this for our family. It's fun to have a few extra bucks because we clipped coupons, or like last week at the grocery store, save as much as we spent (sure it was only $10, but it could have been $20!). The best part is every now and then when Mike says, "all that savings stuff you do, really adds up!" Yes, my "sighs-when-his-wife-pulls-out-a-coupon" husband has even seen the light :). There it is. Mommy's Hobby.