There are 24 entries in the festival of frugality today over at Free Money Finance. Yet again, I did not get an entry in, even after promising last week. Ah well, I guess the whole starting a part time job thing has thrown me off a bit more than expected. I shall get back on track soon.
As always, lots of great stuff to read. Here are the eight articles that really said something to me this week:
Pragmatic Finance (a new blog to me) has an interesting post discussing the Citi Dividend Platinum Select credit card, which can give you 5% back in cash on groceries, gas and drug store purchases. They compare it to a few other reward cards, and discuss the limitations-and there are some nice comments by other folks on which programs they like. I personally use an MBNA LLBean card which gives me coupon dollars back to LL Bean (a store with excellent quality but high prices) usually I won’t buy stuff there, so it sort of “gives me permission” when I have $60 worth of coupon dollars from them. But this post has me thinking that maybe I should get the Citi Dividend Platinum Select to at least use for my gas purchases. Hmmmm.
Stephanie at Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood has a “tour” of the inside of her frugal freezer. I like posts like these because they can help folks just starting out on their frugal journeys to see how all that theory works in a real home.
The Family CEO (on of my regular reads) has a good and timely article on how she has been saving money on all the parties this time of year. Graduations, birthdays and end of year sports/school/activity parties just abound this year don’t they? One thing she didn’t mention, if you know you are going to have someone in your family graduating next year, you may consider picking up some non dated graduation decorations etc soon when they go on sale. (you probably don’t want to use anything with “2006” imprinted on it J )
The Bargain Queen (who has a very original template design) talks about Towards a Better Life has a personal story about what 2 incidents made him start to really focus on saving.
Money and Values has an article about the benefits of being Frugal in downtown Chicago! I added this one as a nod to my sister and her husband, who live in Chicago (when she’s not deployed in Iraq that is)
Mom Advice has a bunch of freebies links (and we all love freebies, right?).
Last but not least, Story3girl has a post on reaching the end of her frugal rope, along with what she is trying to do to combat it.
Thanks and it’s okay…we’re all busy. I can relate to not contributing. I haven’t contributed a whole lot to my blog or any one elses lately. Actually really busy at work and home! But I always check the the Frugal Festival!
Thank you! I’m really glad you like the article. Have a great day!
Thanks for the mention! It’s nice when something you write speaks to someone. 🙂
Thank you so much for the mention- I really appreciate it. We actually got our entry in just under the gun 🙂 Every single time I say I am going to plan early…then it is an hour before and I am just sending it off. I will probably hate people like me when it comes my turn to host 🙂
Thanks again!
The Citi Platinum Rewards card gives you 5% on groceries/gas then 10,000 bonus thank you points to sign up. You cash your points in for gift cards (10,000 is $100). I charged $250 that first month and they gave me over 600 points, they counted Wal-Mart as groceries!
You go to http://www.apply.citicards.com offer code N1C1 – the weird thing is I work for Citi in a different department and didn’t know they had this card. An ad printed out on a coupon machine at the grocery store with all the details.
I have both the Citi Dividend card and LLbean card. I only use the citi now because the $ adds up faster and if I want something from LLbean I can buy it with the cash back money earned from the Citi Card. I use the bill pay option on my LLbean card to pay utility bills and other to give me an extra month float on those bills.