Starting off the week with a bang!

Yesterday was a great day for me as far as freebies go! When I arrived at work, I had an email from HR that a representative from Chase bank would be in the breakroom from 10-12 and that as employees, if we opened a new checking account with a minimum of $100 and signed up for direct deposit, Chase would match our $100 deposit. I headed over to the breakroom and found out that I would still get my $100 even if I didn't have my whole paycheck deposited and that they would give me the $1oo after my first direct deposit. I signed up for a new account and signed up to have $20 direct deposited out of each paycheck. (I've been looking for one of these offers since I saw a post Carrie made over at Money Saving Methods.) When I returned to my office, I had an email from Jill over at Frugal Plus saying I had won a personalized Bible in this giveaway! For dinner last night, we had spaghetti with one of our $.34 loaves of Pepperidge Farm Garlic Bread. And to top it all off, I got a bunch of great deals at CVS!

Today's mail was quite pleasant! Now that we are following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, I'm not as intimidated by our mail. I know what bills should be coming in (and I have money set aside to pay for them) and since I have been trying to cut back on our spending, I have found lots of websites with Freebies. Today's mail contained a couple of bills, some freebies, and the coupons I bought on ebay last week. I was then able to take the coupons to Kroger and walk out with some steals. I bought 16 more loaves of Pepperidge Farm Garlic Bread (at $.34 after coupons you can't beat it!), 4 boxes of Cap' N Crunch ($1.08 each), 10 Banquet Frozen meals ($.70 each, not a great deal, but my kids like them for lunch), and some very expensive V-8 (It wasn't on sale and my husband only likes it in the cans...He was with me and since we had a coupon, he insisted we get the cans! $3.48 after the coupons) We also bought some mac and cheese and a few other small things! Our grand total was $23.48! That's less than what the garlic bread alone would have cost! The only snag in my night was when my coupons didn't triple at Kroger (they didn't even double!). Our Kroger triples coupons up to $.50 and everything over $.50 is redeemed at face value. For some reason, my coupons didn't triple tonight. I mentioned it to the cashier and he called a manager over. Neither of them could figure out why they didn't triple and I wasn't sure as I had used the same coupons last week and they all tripled! I was quite relieved when the manager told me it must be a glitch in the system and manually tripled my coupons. Without the triple coupons, my bill would have been $20 more!!!

I love weeks that start off on the right foot!