Love the article and the blogs that y’all post here.

A money-saving hack that I do is the envelope system that we’ve found to be handy especially when we’re doing our biweekly budgeting meeting with the hubby. Doesn’t seem like a fancy thing to do but we feel it’s critical in order to be on the same page with OUR money- not just our individual checks combined. We have a select category to put our money in that we budget for the two weeks and once we use it all up, we don’t use it or take it from another envelope. .. or else that’ll be cheating the system of having a budget! We do have an expense tracker we write down that we input also to keep ourselves accountable for what we’re spending each time we spend cash or our debit card.

Hope that helps!

I use Shopkick when I shop to gather “kicks” (or points)… for every 1250 points earned, I redeem for $5 gift cards. There are many to choose from, but I’ve been using them for Starbucks cards FOREVER, and can happily say I’ve never bought my coffee from there. Plus, you want to have a Starbucks GOLD CARD (free) to transfer your gift card to, then you get the rewards as a Starbucks customer as well. I take advantage of their challenges, earning “stars” for free coffee, or food!

Recently, the Shopkick app now offers more ways to redeem my points. Now, for every 6500 points, I cash out $25 to my PayPal account!

I use Ibotta to earn cash back, and stack with some grocery coupons to make items earned completely FREE, or money-makers! To date, I’ve earned more than $3,200!

I also use Receipt Hog and Fetch to take pictures of my receipts! It can’t get easier than that! For every 6500 points I cash out $40 from Receipt Hog, plus you can earn more points by completing surveys and playing the Hog Slots!

Fetch is an app where you also take pictures of your receipts for points, then you cash your points out for gift cards or cold hard cash. You can earn a wide range of gifts, but here, I hold out for the big bucks…every 52,500 points, I earn $50…just for taking pictures of receipts!

My Sams club credit card is also my membership, and earns me variable percentages back from them, besides 5% by using my credit card…I let this accumulate for the year, then cash out in October, or November when I start shopping for Christmas.

Same for the Costco card is also a Citibank credit card and doubles as my membership card. Money-back from Costco annually, as well as money back from Citibank every month. I let these accumulate then cash out at the end of the year for Christmas shopping money. Never charging for Christmas!

I have a Discover card that I use to pay bills with, just to accumulate rewards. I don’t have a running balance because I’m paying bills anyway. I just use the card for the rewards.

The last thing I use is an “envelope system” for our car insurance and vehicle registration. I withdraw the cash monthly from our checking account and distribute it in these envelopes. It makes saving up for these bills so easy, and stress-free. But the best part is, when the bill is due, I pay the bill with my Discover card, getting more rewards for charging, then just pay the bill with the money from my envelopes. no interest, ever!

That’s how I save money for my family.

Another fun idea for saving money is to do product reviews on Product Tube and they give you Amazon gift cards for doing an activity! They are easy to do and can be done from the comfort of your own home too!