Using Time Wisely

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Archives for 2011

Gas: Walmart Promotion

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Photograph Credit: Walmart

Are you looking for ways to save at the pump? I am! With the fuelperks! program through our local Bi-Lo, I was able to save $.70 per gallon on my last refill. Of course, I pumped all 20 gallons, 16 gallons into my vehicle’s gas tank and the remaining 4 gallons into our gas container. Even with the promotion, I still paid over $50 for a tank of gas. Yikes! I’m probably dating myself, but I still remember when gas was $.87 a gallon. (I guess those days are l-o-n-g gone.)

With gas prices remaining above $3 a gallon (here in South Carolina, USA), every little bit of savings helps keep the out-of-pocket expenses to a minimum. In an effort to stretch hard earned dollars, Walmart is offering customers, at participating Murphy USA and Walmart gas stations, a savings of 10 cents a gallon. To take advantage of this deal:

  1. Visit Walmart’s announcement to find a participating location,
  2. Use a Walmart card: reloadable gift card, MoneyCard, or credit card, and
  3. Purchase gas between now and September 30, 2011.

This promotion requires a little advanced planning (purchasing or obtaining a qualifying Walmart card and finding a location), but using your time wisely to prepare for your visit can stretch your dollars at the pump.

Do you have a great tip for stretching your dollars? If so, please share in the comments.

7-Eleven: Free Slurpee on Monday, July 11, 2011

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Photograph Credit: 7-Eleven

Need a cool treat on these hot summer days? How about a free Slurpee to cool you down?

On Monday, July 11, 7-Eleven will be celebrating their birthday by giving away free 7.11 oz. Slurpee drinks.

This event begins at midnight and run all day until 11:59 p.m.

Click here to find a participating location.

If you will be near a participating 7-Eleven on Monday, then stop in to wish them a “happy birthday,” and enjoy a cool treat.

Milk Option: Smart Balance

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With the price of milk rising (with all the other grocery prices) and my need to purchase a minimum of 2 gallons of milk each week, I have been watching for milk deals. Unfortunately, I have not found any great sales.

My family of 5 drinks whole milk. My 17-month old needs the fat in the milk, and I prefer to purchase one type rather than remember “who gets what milk” first thing in the morning. In our household, we currently get the “red milk” because the cap on whole milk is red. We used to purchase “blue milk” since the cap on the 2% is blue. (Yea, we keep it simple.)

While still searching for sales, I continue to purchase our milk (for drinking) at Aldi for around $2.89 per gallon which is the least expensive price in our area.

Besides drinking milk, our family uses milk for cooking. Here is where I can stretch my grocery budget because I can find sales on fat free milk and other varieties. My current milk of choice for cooking is Smart Balance.

Recently, I purchased Smart Balance: Fat Free Milk and Calcium at Publix. The half gallon containers were on sale 2 for $5. Combining this sale with the $1.50 and $1 off coupons from the June 5, Smart Source insert in the newspaper, I was able to purchase 2 half gallon cartons totaling $2.50. The savings was $.38, but the Smart Balance has a much longer shelf life than the whole milk.

Thus far, my family has not noticed a change in the baked chicken, pork chop sauce, stroganoff, macaroni and cheese, tomato soup, or pudding – where I have replaced the whole milk with the Smart Balance milk. Without coupons and a sale, I would have by-passed the Smart Balance. However, if I can get milk below the $2.89 price, then I will purchase it and use it for cooking.

Have you considered using one milk for drinking and another for cooking? Without the sale, I would not have considered it. Now, I like the idea. The next time I can nab a gallon of milk below my rock bottom price of $2.89, I will not hesitate to try it. Happy savings!

RSS: Feed Reader – Part 4 of 5

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Photograph Credit: Wikipedia

How’s your Google Reader working? Well, I hope. Making one stop at your Google Reader to read all the latest news assists you in using your time wisely. If you have missed parts to this series, you can click on these links to catch up: Part 1 – RSS explained, Part 2 – Google Reader setup, and Part 3 – Adding subscriptions.

Hopefully, you have added your favorite sites and have navigated your way between the posts. Today, I will share my 4 favorite ways to customize Google Reader to maximize my time.

1. Use expanded format. On the top right side of your Google Reader, you can choose to show the posts in an expanded or list format. To read the posts in a list format, you click on each one to open the information. In the expanded format, all the information is listed. You only need to scroll down to read each post.

2. Choose ALL ITEMS to “set as start page.” Instead of seeing the HOME page with excerpts of the posts, I choose to view ALL ITEMS when I open my Google Reader. This setting saves me from clicking on ALL ITEMS on each visit.

Here’s how to set your start page:

  • Click on ALL ITEMS.
  • Locate the VIEW SETTINGS button in the menu bar at the top of your listed posts. Click to see the drop down menu.
  • From the drop down menu, select SET AS START PAGE. Now when you open your Google Reader, you will see all the unread posts.

3. Sort posts newest to oldest. You could also choose oldest to newest or by magic. The BY MAGIC option ranks your unread posts by your interests based on your time at Google Reader. The idea is that Google Reader sorts your posts most interesting to you to least interesting to you. Since I find all the posts interesting (which is why I subscribe), I choose the newest to oldest.

If you want to read all the posts from one web site, then click on the web site’s name on the left sidebar under subscriptions, and all the posts from that site will load on the right side of your reader. (NOTE: The viewable items will be the read and unread items in the order you have chosen to sort.)

4. Star items. As I read through the posts, I star items I want to keep for later. After reading through all my posts, I can then go to the left sidebar, select STARRED ITEMS, and all the starred items will be listed. When you are done with a starred post, you can unstar it.

Star Shortcut: Hit “s” while on the post to star and/or unstar it. When starred, the gray or blue star at the top of the post (by the title) and at the bottom of the post will change to yellow. For other keyboard shortcuts, visit Google Reader’s common questions.

There you have it! These are my tips for customizing Google Reader to help me use my time wisely while staying connected to my favorite web sites. If you have other tips or tricks for using Google Reader, please share in the comments. Next week, I will conclude this series with a couple troubleshooting solutions.