What We Did To Save Money This Month: May

[This month's savings: $501]

Hi all! This month we took advantage of Memorial Day sales to save on groceries & stock-up items. We also took advantage of a couple of one-time rebate and cash-back offers (it pays to do a quick web search for specific product coupons). We're still reaping the rewards from switching over to TWC (from AT&T) and I paid off a 0% interest for 6 months loan, freeing up an extra $137 in the budget (which, hopefully, we can put towards paying down our credit card debt—but we'll see what the Universe throws at us).

Next month is going to be more of a challenge because we're adjusting our diet to include only pasture-raised, grass-fed dairy and poultry, which is more expensive. Summer months too, are when we do a majority of our Farmers Market shopping, so we'll see if that saves us any money.

In garden news, it looks like we may have the beginnings of some peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini. Now, let's just hope we can keep the critters away (any suggestions you have would be welcome).

The Ebates Experiment Continues

A few weeks ago I bought a plane ticket through Travelocity and used the Ebates cash-back button to get "up to 7%" back. Today I got a notice letting me know that my Travelocity cash-back rebate was deposited into my account. (Woo Hoo!)  7% of $323 is $22 and change. Not a huge dent, but nothing to shake a stick at.

Prime Music vs. Pandora vs. Spotify

Amazon Prime Music vs. Pandora vs. Spotify vs. Slacker Radio

Alright, so the days of tuning your over-the-air radio to your radio station of choice are fast becoming a memory. Thanks to technology, we now live in the future where music is streamed through our TVs and phones, and TINY little bluetooth speakers.

For most of us, streaming music is streaming music—whether it comes from Apple, Pandora, Spotify or any number of other services—but which service actually gives you the most bang for your buck? I compared Amazon Prime Music to Pandora, Spotify, and Slacker Radio to see who provides the best service, sound, and selection for the best price.

Amazon Prime vs. Netflix vs. Hulu

Amazon Prime vs. Netflix vs. Hulu

I know a lot of people are scaling their cable packages back or cutting them altogether in favor of streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. But how do you know which service is the best to get? They all have award winning exclusive & original shows, and for the most part, they're all around the same monthly cost.

9 Benefits to Amazon Prime Beyond 2-Day Shipping

Amazon Prime is so much more than free 2-day shipping. If you thought it wasn't worth it before, you may want to take another look at all of the money saving options available.

I wasn't always a fan of Amazon Prime. When it was first introduced I didn't see the benefit to paying $99 a year for free shipping, especially since I didn't think I spent that much in shipping costs. Since it's incarnation, though, Amazon Prime has expanded it's offerings to include a lot more than just free expedited shipping.

10 Things We Did to Save Money Last Month

All of the things we did to save money last month aren't amazing epiphanies. (Well, most aren't.) They're the same things that make everyone's top 10 list. These money saving ideas just happen to be what worked for us last month. Some things are simple to execute, others are definitely more challenging. What we found is, if you put in even the slightest bit of extra effort, you'll start to see some savings.

What We Did to Save Money This Month: April

[This month's savings: $657]

Thankfully, we made it through tax season. Usually, this time of year, I haul out the TurboTax and every receipt I can find, along with the calculator and a perpetual pot of coffee. Last year, after going over all of our numbers, our business expenses, the quarterly taxes paid, and our plethora of donations and write offs—we still owed the government $3,000 and change. The previous year, we owed half that & our income hadn't increased (it actually decreased). Everyone I talked to said that something was off.

Turned out it was the new tax laws and the Turbo Tax software (and the fact that I'm not a CPA).