money-saving

Movies & Popcorn

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There are. many places to rent/borrow movies for your stay-cation movie day. In addition to Redbox, Netflix, Amazon Prime, your cable’s on-demand channel, don’t forget to check your local library. Hey, you might also have some of these movies in your own collection. While these are movies that my family watch, please use your own judgment on what’s appropriate for your children.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy

2. Ant-Man

3. The Harry Potter movies

4. The Avengers

5. The Martian

6. Brave

7. The Lego Movie

8. Annie

9. The Hunger Games Movies

10. Despicable Me 1 & 2

Others that were recommended by my kids (10 & 11):

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Minions

Inside Out

Tomorrowland

Pixels

Big Hero 6

Tangled

I don’t believe any of these are rated R, but some are rated PG-13. Please check before showing them to your kids. Several of these were movies that I wasn’t sure about. I knew the kids would like them, but I didn’t think they were for me. It turned out that one of these movies turned out to be my absolute favorite, Guardians of the Galaxy. It just kind of proves that you never know.

Vacationing at Home

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Times are a bit different than when I was a kid. Things are more expensive, kids are busier…parents are busier. There are divorced and single families, families with two jobs for each adult. Teenagers who work. We’re swamped. When I was a kid, I was pretty much guaranteed a winter vacation in Florida, visiting my family and going to Disney World and Sea World, Cypress Gardens and the Fountain of Youth. We never flew anywhere, so my parents would pull us out of school a day early, maybe even bring us back a day late and we’d leave at four in the morning and drive all day. We’d spend the night near South of the Border usually, once we stayed in Georgia, but there were brush fires and that put Georgia off for my parents after that.

Two days of driving, staying in a motel where you parked in front of the door. I don’t know how we survived those first floor, open windows, doors that led to the parking lot motor inns. We were sent to the office for ice, tourist information. At some point one of two of us were sent outside (to separate us from the other one) and we were expected to sit in the fresh air on the plastic lawn chairs that were paired under the big picture window that my mother always insisted we draw the drapes. Free roaming even near the swimming pool.

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Travel – Money- Saving Ideas

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Taking a family on vacation can be a ridiculous amount of money. Even when I’ve traveled alone and stayed with friends, it can sometimes be more expensive than I’d like.

Car travel gives you the space to bring more with you and save money on the other end. These can all be adapted to other forms of travel. The only difference (at the moment) would be liquids on airplanes. Check the TSA website for your specific airport information.

Starting a trip, I always try to eat breakfast at home. Whether that’s picking up bagels at the supermarket and toasting them at home or using up the milk with our cereal, it’s better than getting half an hour into a trip and everyone’s starving. Frozen waffles and home brewed or instant coffee are two other ways to save money before you leave.

Once you’re on the trip, if you’re traveling by car, what can you bring with you? Sure, you can pick stuff up when you get there, but it’s not always practical. I will bring a 12-pack of soda and a bottle of juice for the kids. It really is so much cheaper than getting individual ones out of the hotel vending machines. You can always use the ice machine, and most hotel rooms come equipped with a mini-fridge and a microwave.

The microwave can be a good thing to have if you bring popcorn for snacks or microwavable Easy Mac mac&cheese. Everybody loves mac&cheese.

Other snacks that pack well include Cheerios, pretzels, crackers, and water bottles. Cheese doodles and chocolate are pretty much the worse snacks. The doodles are incredibly messy and the chocolate will melt, even in the winter.

Bring your own shampoo and soap.

Don’t buy anything in a convenience store and avoid supermarkets for anything that’s not food. Stick to Target and Wal-Mart for what you need, if you shop at those stores.

Bring an empty water bottle and fill it up at the water fountain on the other side of security. If you each have your own reusable water bottles, you can buy a gallon of water and share it around instead of buying individual disposable water bottles.

Look around when you’re packing and see what you can bring instead of buying. By the same token, be careful not to overpack. Weigh out what’s worth buying.

On Target with Money Practicalities

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Every time I shop in Target they offer me a credit or debit card. I already have their credit card and usually ignore the quick hard sell for the debit card. After all, I don’t want another bank account and the credit card is great. They give you a 5% discount when you use it in store and they take a percentage of your purchases and donate that amount of money to the school of your choice even if your kids are not in school, so it’s great for grandparents and aunts and friends, etc.

What I didn’t know is that with the debit card, you don’t need to open a new checking account. You hook their card up to your regular checking account at your own bank. They need a blank check to set it up.

This is a great option for two reasons:

1. You still get the 5% off when you use the debit card.

2. You pay for the purchase with the money in your checking account, so it’s like using cash. No monthly bills.

I’ve had the debit card for a couple of months now. You use it like any other debit card, with a pin number, and you only use it in Target. Since we get a lot of our groceries at Target and all of our bathroom items and kids’ school things there as well, we save a lot of money with the 5% off and never pay an interest charge since it’s paid for out of our checking account.

If you shop a lot at Target, do yourself a favor and look into it.