Hard Habits To Break!

It is very hard to change habits. I have habits like eating, spending too much money on "stuff" and spoiling my kids. It had been a while (OK, just January) since we had made the weekend trip to the big city to buy tons of stuff to satisfy the spending urge. Withdrawl was kicking in. I needed a fix and we think we have found the solution to the spending too much money problem.

As we try to tidy up our finances a little more this year, we were going through the "drawer". Within this cavern of paperwork, warranties, receipts, etc were several gift cards. Some were christmas gifts, birthday gifts, thank you gifts for speaking at a conference or even from winning a potluck at work.

We buckled the kids in the van, assembled the gift cards and coupons and headed to the city.

• Best Buy: $25 plus $5 in reward zone money and 10% off coupons - bought a Simon & Garfunkel Concert DVD
• Target: $15 - Ashlie needed a new swimsuit and Jake needed a new thermos
• Blockbuster: $50 - USED MOVIE FRENZY! Ended up getting 10 movies. Good stuff!
• Barnes & Noble: $25 - Overspent here - not unexpected. Our "usual" is about $70 and we hit $68 this trip (before the gift card). Picked up book 2 in the PJ Tracy series and a great book on cruising the Hawaiian Islands.

Believe it or not, I did not spend all of the Best Buy card. The rest were destroyed!

This was fun as we spent more than the cards had on them in most cases but had a blast doing it without much ill effect on our bottom line.

To those of you responsible for the gift cards, THANK YOU! It was fun!