Holiday Countdown!

It is that time- like it or not the holidays are in full swing! 47 days until Christmas!
I wanted to start giving some tips on getting ready for the holidays and ideas to stretch the budget this year!  So stay tuned this week for lots of ideas.

First of all, I would love if you would leave comments with any holidays items you are looking for this year.  I see so many deals each day and it is really helpful for me to get ideas of the popular items so I can prioritize my posting.

Second, the holidays seem to have started with a bang from my perspective.  I will be posting all sorts of deals on popular items and just random stuff I find.  Many items will go really quickly- some won’t even last a day.  You can always follow me on Twitter or Facebook- I usually post the best deals there as well as on the blog- or you might consider checking into the blog a bit more frequently.  I typically post 15-20 times a day and there will be lots of days that is doubled during the holiday season.  I try not to overwhelm people but I can’t pass up a hot deal so some days my fingers are on fire!

I have had a few questions recently about Swagbucks.  I know many of you have been saving them for holiday shopping this year so I thought I’d share a few tips with you.

Cash them in.  If you have been saving your bucks, I would strongly suggest cashing them in.  Swagbucks limits you to cashing in 2 like gift cards per day.  So if you want to cash in for several $5 Amazon cards, you are limited to requesting 2 per day.  You are also limited to (5) like cards per month.  So that means you can only request 5 total of those $5 gift cards each month.   They often take 2-3 weeks to credit to your account, so if you intend to use them for holiday shopping you want to get them cashed in now so they are available.

Redeeming Your Cards. You can redeem as many cards as you have.  So if you have $30 in Amazon gift cards and you want to purchase an item for $28- you can absolutely use all (6) of your $5 cards to pay 0 for your item.  If you have money left over as in the case above, the balance will remain available in your Amazon account until you order again.

Amazon had some amazing deals last year and many of them went really fast!  Amazon offers free shipping with a $25 purchase or they also have free shipping with Prime.  You might consider registering for Amazon Mom now so you can get Prime for the holidays.  It is totally free and you will get free shipping on any order you place (some exceptions apply with 3rd party shippers.)  I ordered tons of stuff last year- like $1 books and the awesome $5 Leapfrog toys- all sorts of stuff.  I had Prime last year so my shipping was always free and it almost always arrives in 2 days.

Stay tuned as I will be posting several more tips for the holiday shopping season throughout the week!

Thanks MyFrugalAdventures

PS:  I've earned a total of 1799 Swagbucks for searching the internet - this will become 4-$5 Amazon Gift Cards making $20 to use for Christmas and I'm still earning!