As I’ve mentioned in a few earlier posts, I’m a sucker for a good deal. My frugality combined with the recent downturn in the economy and my shift from career woman to stay-at-home mom have turned me into a mega-couponer. I’m often the first person in the door at CVS and Walgreens on Sunday morning. After all, I have to be sure I can snag the best deals!

I came across this couponing graphic, and I thought you all might enjoy it as well.  I think I began my couponing adventure as the Convert but have since graduated to the Collector. What type  are you? And where do you find the best deals?

Source: coupons.org

Have you heard of Plastic Jungle? You can buy gift cards to your favorite stores — including Target, Home Depot, Babies R Us, Barnes & Noble, and many more — at a discounted price. I’ve save tons of money by buying gift cards on Plastic Jungle before making purchases at many stores.

Just wanted to pass along this tip. Check out Plastic Jungle to save some moolah!

Have you heard about the Amazon Mom program? Parents can sign up for the program and receive 30% off diapers, free shipping, and other coupons. Many of my friends use this program and rave about it.

Since I switched to cloth diapers, I no longer buy disposables regularly, but when I did I looked into the Amazon Mom program. In order to get the 30% discount on diapers and wipes, you have to sign up for the Subscribe & Save option. Through Subscribe & Save, you select the diapers you want and you select a time interval (i.e. 2 weeks). Amazon will then send you diapers every 2 weeks and charge you automatically. I wasn’t too keen on this method—I didn’t want to be stuck with too many diapers (especially once my son graduated to the next size up), but I also didn’t want to run out of diapers before the next shipment came. Still, people who use the program say it works really well—and 30% off is definitely a great deal. If you use disposable diapers and wipes, the Amazon Mom program is certainly worth looking into.

Have you joined the Amazon Moms program? What do you think of it?

Thanks to Meredith for the blog post topic!

Also, today is the last day to enter my Spiffies tooth wipes giveaway! Don’t miss your chance to win! Enter here!

I had to run a second post today because this deal is too good to pass up! If anyone is still looking for last-minute Christmas gifts, or if you want a great place to spend any gift money you receive over the holidays, check out EcoMom.com. They have a great selection of toys, baby gear, nursing accessories, and lots of eco-friendly items. Best of all, here’s a coupon code for 15% your entire order: SB006344. The coupon code doesn’t expire, but it’s only good on your first order with EcoMom. The site also offers free 7-day ground shipping. It’s a great deal at a great store!

In the third and final post in the Surf and Earn series, I’ll introduce you to RedGage. The RedGage program is only a few years old, and I just discovered it over the summer. Basically, RedGage pays you for any original content you create. You retain full ownership rights over your work, but RedGage pays you per view of your content. So, if you upload a photo and 1,000 people view it, you might make about 80 cents. It doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but I figure it’s better than the $0 you would earn otherwise. While page views will pay you a few cents, the best way to make money on RedGage is to get your content featured. The RedGage editors will routinely select high-quality content to be featured and will pay a “feature bonus” from about $2.00 to $5.00. That’s where the real money is. So, if you upload particularly well-written, relevant, or interesting blog posts, photos, or documents, you are likely to be featured once in a while.

The program is ideal for bloggers since we regularly create new content (each new post). If bloggers get into the habit of uploading each post to RedGage, over time, they can generate some income. It takes me only a few seconds a day to upload my posts onto RedGage. Some people even upload their Facebook statuses and Twitter tweets—any original content is eligible for inclusion on the site. Once you make $25, RedGage will send you your earnings via a Visa gift card. So, will you get rich on RedGage? No way, but if you blog just for fun, RedGage is a great way to make a little money over time.

Note: I had trouble getting RedGage to function properly when I used Internet Explorer, but it works well using Google Chrome. Just a heads up.

As the second part of my Surf and Earn series, I’m going to delve into the world of online survey sites. If you didn’t get a chance to read my previous post on Swagbucks, check it out here. Swagbucks is an awesome program that I highly recommend!

Ok, on to survey sites. So, I began doing online surveys about 3 years ago. Originally, I was very enamored with online surveys because the surveys are often quite fun to take and pay relatively well (considering that you can take them while watching TV). However, over the past few years, I think many of the programs have lost some of their luster. The payouts are now lower, and new surveys are posted quite infrequently. Still, despite the downsides, surveys are an easy way for stay-at-home moms to make a little extra cash from home.

There are countless survey sites online, but the vast majority are either scams or require you to have a very high minimum before you can cash out. There are only three sites that I would recommend: Sunshine Rewards, SurveySavvy, and MySurvey.

Sunshine Rewards is probably the best site of all. The site allows you to take seven surveys daily, which could earn you as much as $4.75 a day. However, in reality, it’s very rare that you would qualify for all seven surveys in a single day (many surveys are only open to people in certain demographics). Still, on any given day, you will probably qualify for about 3 surveys, which would make $1.50-$2.00. Not bad for work you can do while your baby naps. Sunshine Rewards requires you to have $20.00 in your account before you can cash out, but with all the daily surveys, you can reach that target fairly quickly.

SurveySavvy is great mostly because it has no minimum payout. If you take a survey for $1.00 and wish to cash out right away, you can. The downside is that SurveySavvy offers fewer survey opportunities than Sunshine Rewards, and many of the opportunities are only open to select demographics. But many of the surveys pay more (I took one survey that paid $30!), so I still think the site is worth it. 

Finally, there’s MySurvey. A few months ago, I would have said that this was my favorite survey site. However, in the past month, MySurvey changed some of their practices, and now I rank them a distant third. They no longer tell you prior to a survey how much money you’ll earn for taking it, and they no longer pay for all of their surveys. While I’m frustrated by these changes, MySurvey may still be worth checking out because they offer lots of survey opportunities.

In general, you’re not going to get rich taking online surveys. But if you’re looking for a way to make a little bit of money during your little bit of free time, surveys are a great way to do that!

Are you getting excited for the most bargain-a-licious day of the year?! (Oh yeah, Thanksgiving’s coming up, too ) My family and I have always been gung-ho Black Friday shoppers, so when I married my husband and starting spending the Friday after Thanksgiving celebrating with his family, the one downside has been that I no longer get to enjoy the amazing deals on Black Friday. But, I can shop vicariously through all of you! And, thankfully, Cyber Monday also has some amazing deals, so hopefully I’ll still be able to do some serious cheapskate shopping!

Here’s a list of store opening times on Black Friday:

• Buy Buy Baby – 7am (call your local store)
• Babies R Us – 5 am
• Toys R Us – 10pm on Thanksgiving or midnight on BF (call your local store)
• Target – 5 am
• Walmart – 5 am
• Kmart – 6 am to 11 pm
• Old Navy – midnight or 3 am (call your local store)
• Macy’s – 5 am
• Kohl’s – 4 am
• JCPenney – 4 am to 11 pm

I’ve started to peruse the Black Friday/Cyber Monday ads for the best deals on baby items. Here’s what I’ve found so far. Feel free to let us know about other great baby deals coming this weekend!

• Amazon is the reigning king of Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts, and their famous Gold Lightning Deals are some of the best bargains out there. They are offering big discounts on toys and kids’ shoes all weekend.
• ThanksMama.com is a great site for cloth diapers and other diaper supplies. They are having a 15% off sale on Black Friday. Use the code “blackfriday” at checkout.
• Old Navy often has amazing Black Friday sales. They are selling performance fleece coats for $7 on BF. All outerwear is 50% off.
• I’ve heard through other blogs that Kohl’s is running a storewide 50% sale on BF, but I haven’t been able to confirm it on the Kohl’s website. Hopefully, it’s true!
• Walmart is selling classic board games (Candyland, Chutes & Ladders) for $4 on BF. Kids’ jeans will be $7-8. Lots of LeapFrog and Fisher Price toys will be sold at steep discounts, too.
• Target is selling kids’ pajamas for $5 on BF, the Easy Bake Oven for $16.99, and classic board games for $3.88 (I imagine they set this price after they found out about Walmart’s price!). Lots of other toys will be on sale, too.
• Toys R Us and Babies R Us (I’m annoyed with both of these stores, and—no surprise—their BF/CM deals are nothing to write home about, but I’m including them here for the sake of completeness) will be running sales on Fisher Price jumperoos and high chairs. Select toys are 50% off and Gerber formula will be 2 for $25.
• Stride Rite, PBS Kids, and LeapFrog are all planning big Cyber Monday deals, though I haven’t seen specifics yet.
• I’ve read that Zulily.com and The Mini Social are planning to offer good Cyber Monday deals, but I haven’t seen any specifics yet.
• OshKosh B’Gosh is advertising a 60% off sale for this entire week (note, though, that the ad says “save up to 60%,” so check prices carefully!). 

Know of any other great deals? Please let us all know!

As a fairly new stay-at-home mom still adjusting to life on one income, I’m always looking for ways that I can make a little money from home. As all stay-at-home moms know, “free” time is not exactly plentiful, so I am particularly interested in finding ways to make or save money that do not require a great deal of time. Thankfully, the internet has a plethora of sites that let you earn money or items. I’ve joined just about every money-saving and money-making site on the web, and while some are definitely worth it, others are a huge waste of time (some I’d even call scam sites).

So, I want to share what I’ve learned and help other moms out there who may be looking for ways to earn a little money in their “free” time. This post is the first in a series called “Surf and Earn” that I’ll be running over the next few weeks. I’ll highlight the programs that I’ve found most useful as well as the ones to avoid. For example, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of the Pampers Gifts to Grow. Be sure to check out my Rewards Points page for the latest codes. I definitely plan to stay engaged in this program even as I make the switch to cloth diapers—after all, Pampers sends out free codes all the time, so I’m not one to pass them up!

First up in this series: Swagbucks! Swagbucks is, in my opinion, the premiere web currency program. You can earn Swagbucks for doing a variety of things online: voting in a daily poll, taking online surveys, trading in old cell phones, and most importantly, searching the internet. While I occasionally vote in the daily poll (which earns 1 Swagbuck), the main way to earn bucks is by searching on Swagbucks. By using the Swagbucks search engine as your main search tool (instead of Google or Yahoo), you’ll occasionally earn Swagbucks (I’d say, for every 20 times you search, you’ll earn approximately 20-40 Swagbucks). The bucks are handed out randomly, so you may earn 60 in one day and only 10 the next. On average, I’d say I earn about 30 Swagbucks a day. These bucks can be traded in for merchandise, gift cards, and even cash. Personally, I think the Amazon gift card provides the best value—a $5 Amazon gift card costs 450 Swagbucks (versus 700 Swagbucks for $5 in cash). At 30 Swagbucks a day, it takes me about 15 days to earn a gift card. Not bad for just searching the web like I would anyway!

While Swagbucks is not a perfect program (the search engine results are peppered with sponsored links, so you often have to scroll down to find the site you are looking for), it is a great way to earn a little extra money online—without really spending any extra time to do so! If you want to learn more or sign up, you can use my referral link.