August Savings

August Monthly Totals - I cringe when I end up actually spending money for the month. A whopping $60 for almost $1,500 of merchandise and all my groceries, and I feel like its an awful month. Its amazing how far I've come from the months where I'd spend a couple hundred bucks on much less stuff.

Looked back through my spreadsheet after posting this and realized I'd included a purse I bought at Target into my numbers for the month. I normally wouldn't include items like that, but I'd paid with $30 of rewards gift cards I got from doing surveys for Biore. I feel a smidge better about spending more like $30 for grocery/household/personal items for the month than I do about $60.

• Merchandise Total (before coupons): $1,468.11
• Value of Coupons & Store Sales: $623.93
• Rewards/Gift Cards/EB's Used: $581.68
• Rewards/Gift Cards/EB's Earned: $333.32
• Rebates: $554.42
• Total Cost to me for the Month: $59.70 (this includes the cost of the rebate forms and coupons I purchased for the month)
• # of Items Purchased: 396, # of Free Items: 283

Rebates Received - FYI - never received rebates for the Pssssst shampoo I purchased back in March so I just returned them. They were peelie rebates on the bottles, so if you see them, I'd just ignore them.

• $3 Cortaid rebate - parents' address
• $3 Barefoot Wines seasonal purchase NBPR rebate - my address & DBF's address
• $3 Absolut rebate on produce x3 - my address & DBF's address
• $5 Columbia Crest NBPR - parents' address
• $5 Smirnoff NBPR on $5.01 of groceries - DBF's address & parents' address
• $5 Heineken on $5.01 of energy drinks - parents' address
• $5 Sorrento Snack Cheeses - DBF's address
• $6 Budweiser NBPR on $10 of chicken - my address & DBF's address
• $7.99 Schick Hydro rebate - parents' address & DBF's address
• $8 Budweiser NBPR on summer items - parents' address
• $10 P&G Back to School Rebate - my address, DBF's address & parents' address
• $11.99 Zegerid rebate - DBF's address
• $12.99 Tena rebate - DBF's address & parents' address
• $20 Smirnoff NBPR rebate (off $20.01 of groceries) - parents' address
• $30 rebate for a prescription
• $79.95 RA rebate - DBF's account
• $89.64 RA rebate - my account

Rebates Purchased

• One Kellogg's Fuel for School rebate - $10 WYB 10 qualifying items Exp. 8/14 (bought the items for this before I had the rebate form in hand) $1.94
• One Heineken NBPR rebate - $5 WYB $5.01 of salty snacks and/or ice Exp. 8/31 $1.60
• 2 Budweiser NBPR rebates - $8 WYB $10 of fresh or prepared deli items or chicken Exp. 10/30 $2.43
• 3 Budweiser NBPR rebates - $3 off $3.01 of snacks Exp. 9/8 $2.43
• 3 Coors Light Silver Ticket NBPR rebates -$10 WYB $30 or more of Tostitos Tortilla Chips, Dips or Salsa, water, soda, ice, plastic/paper plates or condiments (any brand, any size) Exp. 9/30 $3.49
• 3 Budweiser NBPR rebates - $8 WYB $ of salty snacks, ice, charcoal, propane, coolers, dips, condiments, buns, meat snacks, deli sandwiches, bottled water and/or prepared food from the deli Exp. 9/6 $4.98
• 3 Ronzoni Pasta rebates ($3 WYB 6 boxes) Exp. 10/29 $3.25
• 5 Smart Source coupon inserts for 8/15 $5.49 - DBF's mom scored a bunch of RP inserts for me, so there was no need to place my normal order from Mad Coupons.
• 10 SS coupon inserts for 8/22 $9.95 - since there wasn't a RP insert this week, it was a smidge cheaper to buy my inserts from ebay for this week (I would normally pay $10.50 from Mad Coupons)
• 10 coupon inserts for 8/1, 8/8 and 8/29 - $10.50 each (Mad Coupons orders)

Random Money Stuffs

• Increased my contribution to my 401(k) plan to 11% of my salary and upped my monthly contribution to my Roth IRA to $130 (from $120). Every little bit helps, right?
• I'm also working on rolling over my 401(k) from my former employer to my current plan. The annual rate of return on that money is in the ballpark of 2.9% (ouch!) so I'm much rather have it all in one spot and earning me more money each year.