$25 Gift Certificates for $2 at Restaurant.com Today

Today Restaurant.com has a special where you can buy a $25 Gift Certificate to many restaurants for just $2.

Restaurant.com is a great site that normally offers you $25 gift certificates at participating restaurants for $10. Today, though, they have an 80% off special if you put in the code TREATS at checkout. Offer expires at 11:59pm October 31st.

I just snagged $100 worth of certificates for $8 for restaurants that my husband and I already go to. Certificates are valid for one year, but be sure to check the restaurant terms because most have a minimum purchase requirement.

Thanks to Get Rich Slowly for posting this initially!

October Round Up

It's been another quiet month here at Distilled Rose Personal Finance, but it's about to get a lot louder now that I am down to one job and have some dedicated blogging time!

This months most popular articles were:

Frugal Food: Three Ideas for Frugal Dinners

101 Top Personal Finance Tips - Part 5

Book Giveaway : Stop the 401(k) Rip Off

The winner of my book giveaway was Garnishments! Garnishments, please let me know your email address so I can get some information for you. 

Thanks to everyone who commented in October!

My top referrers this month were:

Aridni

Where Are You Now

Frugal Babe

And the most searched for terms were:

"atlanta gas crisis"

"ing direct high yield"

"passive forms of income"

So thanks to my 482 visitors and 49 subscribers!

So here is my question from last month again (since I got no replies).

What do you most enjoy reading about on Distilled Rose? Do you like reading about finance news, opinions, being frugal, my personal journey getting out of debt.... what do I post about that peaks your interest?

Here is how last month went:

September Round Up

A Very Pricey Chocolate Cake

Image by JessicaFM

Every Tuesday, my husband and I have date night. This Tuesday, we decided to do something a little different and bake something together. We flipped through my cookbook and settled on a really delicious and unhealthy Chocolate Cake. It was complex, and would take about two hours to make. We didn't have most of the ingredients, so we toddled off to the store and bought:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Used 10.5 of 12oz) - $3.99
Organic Milk Chocolate (Used 1.5 of 12oz) - $3.99
Organic Eggs (Used 8 of 12) - $3.99
Organic Vanilla Extract (Used 1 Tbsp of 15Tbsp) - $8.99
Organic Dark Brown Sugar (Used 4oz of 32oz) - $3.99
Organic Granulated Sugar (Used 4oz of 32oz) - $5.99
Unsalted Butter (Used 1.5 Sticks of 4 Sticks) - $2.69

Plus 8% Tax

Total Spent - $36.36

We picked up a few other things that we "needed", which brought our total to a whopping $69.31.

To me, thats a very expensive chocolate cake. I worked out that we ended up using $10.23 worth of ingredients, the rest will be used in other things. Thats not a bad price per serving for a high end cake, but it's the other items we bought while at the store that caused problems.

Where we went wrong

Impulse buying is what did it. I picked up some Vital Wheat Gluten which will get used at some point, I'm sure but certain wasn't necessary that day. We also bought a smoothie for my husband and two energy bars for me which we didn't need. Those came to more than $5. We also bought food for a small dinner we had last night, one of the items being a $6.50 block of cheese. If we had been at Publix instead of Whole Foods, we probably would have paid about $3 for the cheese.

Stick to your list

I went in with a list and we didn't stick to it, which usually happens when my husband and I go to a grocery store together. We are both easily distracted and tend to put a lot more than we should in the cart. Next week begins the start of a new budget for us, and hopefully having a strict budget will enable us to lower our impulse buying. I'm a bit concerned, though. I think we'll have to lay off the chocolate cake for a while.

By the way, it was quite delicious.

Back Down to One Job

Today I quit my other secondary job and now I work just one job. I'm very relieved! I'm glad that I did that extra work for a few months and made the extra money because it did enable me to pay off my car and medical bills early, but I'm also very glad that I'll be able to get some rest and work on writing and this blog more. 

I know that I could use the extra money to pay my debt down more quickly, but I would rather do that freelancing. My emotional well-being is worth it!

Pulling out of Prosper

Prosper is not currently accepting new loans while it goes through a new verification process. They are also canceling their referral program.
I'm a big big fan of Prosper, and my intent has been to keep re-investing the money that I get when loan payments come in. Since they are holding you from making new loans, though, I'm going to start pulling that money out of my Prosper account, keeping track of the totals, and putting it in my savings account.
When Prosper reopens new loans, I will put the money back in.
I'm hoping it will reopen soon because I love the person to person lending concept!

Christmas Is Coming: A Plan for Painless Shopping

Image by Sister72

I confess, I'm not a fan of Christmas. I love the idea that you get together with your family and have a day of gifts and happiness, but most of my family lives 4,000 miles away from me and I usually can't get home more than once a year. 

The one thing about Christmas that wears me down is how expensive it can get. If you play your cards right and get ahead of the game, though, it can make everything easier and less stressful. 

Make a Shopping Plan

Now is the time to figure out what you want to get everyone. Make a list of what you would like to get for everyone. Include a dollar amount that you will be spending. Total that dollar amount up and add ten per cent to cover tax and the fact that you are likely to have forgotten something. There are 9 weeks until Christmas, but you want everything to be in your hot little hands a week before to minimize stress and allow yourself some wiggle room. Divide what the amount you need by 8 and that shows you how much money a week you'll be spending on Christmas up until Christmas. 

Now every week take your money and see what on your list you could buy with it. If you have items you can pick up, go and grab a few of them in your lunch hour or on your way to run another errand. If you don't have enough that week for an item, roll it over to the next week and keep going until you do. If you have a week where you aren't picking an item up, take the time you would spend doing that wrapping presents that you have previously bought.

If you follow this, you have the week before Christmas to do any additional preparation like cleaning the house up or cooking in advance, or picking up things you might have forgotten. 

Make Presents if You Can

I'm a huge fan of handmade presents. I knit a lot of gifts at Christmas time and I hope that they are well received. Knitted items are great, but another good inexpensive idea is to make up things like bread or cake mix, or pancake mix and gift that to people that you tend to give smaller gifts to. Pancake mix is a really good one because home made mix is cost effective and simple, and most people have the pans and added ingredients in their homes to make the mix up without having to buy anything new (like a bread pan). Some nice cellophane bags and ribbons along with hand written instructions on a small card can make this simple gift look sweet and special. 

If you aren't into making presents but still love the handmade feel, check out Etsy for handmade items. They have just about everything you can think of.

If you send Christmas cards, now is also a good time to start preparing them. You can purchase them and write up a few a week, then send them all in the first week of December. 

What other ways to you prepare for Christmas?

 

3 Months Ago on Distilled Rose Personal Finance

Weekly Financial Round Up 06/22