I read about The Grocery Game in the December 2005 Issue of Money Magazine … I’ve never been a coupon clipper, but this sounded like fun, in addition to saving money, so I signed up for “Teri’s List” … my first week I saved 45% on my grocery bill! Before you click, note that this service is not free (except for the Walgreens List – that one is free). The grocery store lists cost about $1.00 a week – but they’re so confident you will love The Grocery Game that they are giving away 4 weeks for $1.00 so you can try it out! AND if you refer friends to them, you can get free weeks! So if you do sign up, please list bolwebster@aol.com as the email address who refered you. Read on to find out more.

What is The Grocery Game?

The Grocery Game is a fun, easy way to save hundreds of dollars on groceries each month. TERI’S LIST reveals the “rock bottom” prices on hundreds of products each week and matches them up with manufacturers’ coupons for the best possible savings at your local supermarket. The Grocery Game has exclusive databases that track manufacturers’ coupons along with weekly sales and specials, both advertised and UN-advertised. With TERI’S LIST, the days of time consuming work required for effective coupon-ing are over. The Grocery Game does all the hard work and research, presented in a quick reference format on the internet each week, as TERI’S LIST. Members log in, spend a few minutes with a pair of scissors, and they’re off to win The Grocery Game!

Start Your $1.00 Trial Today
And be sure to say that bolwebster@aol.com referred you!

Why can’t I just do this on my own?

People who are great at coupon-ing typically spend hours each week preparing for their shopping trip. These “coupon pros” research sales in the ads, matching up their coupons to those sales. Once at the supermarket they soon discover there may be twice as many more un-advertised sales. So, after spending many hours at home with the sales ad, they spend even more hours standing in the supermarket aisles sifting through their coupon files once again, searching for even more coupons to match those sales. This is what we call making a career out of coupon-ing. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the time for this type of shopping.

In contrast, members of The Grocery Game eliminate all of those time consuming hours and usually save even more time and money than most “coupon pros”. Even “coupon pros” can make costly mistakes. Just because an item is on sale doesn’t mean its time to play your coupon. The Grocery Game databases differentiate between “phantom sales” and “rock bottom” sales, saving members even more money. Now, the best possible savings are quickly accessible to “coupon pros”, busy professionals, overworked moms, single adults and anyone who wants to cut their grocery bill by as much as half or even more.

How Do We Play The Grocery Game?

If you have your Sunday newspaper and TERI’S LIST, you will have everything you need to play The Grocery Game. Each week, TERI’S LIST matches sales to coupons from weeks or months past, along with new coupons from this week’s Sunday paper.

You can get started with our $1 TRIAL. This will give you 4 weeks of playing The Grocery Game. You will log in to TERI’S LIST each week, check off the items you want to buy, print your customized list, pull the corresponding coupons and you’re off to win like a pro!

You will want to read TERI’S GAME RULES, for all of the best savings strategies and how to get the most out of TERI’S LIST.

What does Teri’s Receipt Look Like?
My Original Total was $42.86.
I paid $1.82
That’s a 97% savings !

I didn’t NEED much because I’ve been stockpiling for several weeks. So I bought only a few choice GREEN items ( FREE ) and BLUE items ( best deals for stockpiling ).

Most members save an average of 67% each week.

What does TERI’S LIST Cost?

If you’re a first time member, you can try out TERI’S LIST for 4 weeks for only $1! After that, TERI’S LIST is just $10 every 8 weeks for one store. Most areas offer only one store LIST. But if you happen to be in an area where more than one LIST is available, for each additional store list you choose, you’ll be billed an additional $5 every 8 weeks. For example, if you subscribe to TERI’S LIST for only one store, you’re billed $10 every 8 weeks. If you subscribe to two store lists, you’re billed $15 every 8 weeks. Three stores, $20 every 8 weeks, and so on.

Start Your $1.00 Trial Today
And be sure to say that bolwebster@aol.com referred you!

Although most new parents are completely shocked by the massive amounts of money they need to shell out upon the arrival of a new baby, there are some steps you can take to lessen the financial burden. The very best thing you can do is to take some steps in order to save money now before your baby makes a grand appearance.

In most instances it is usually much easier to save money before the baby comes as opposed to after the baby comes. Take the time before your baby is born to do some saving, even if you can’t manage to save a small fortune.

Here are some tips for saving money before your baby arrives:

1. Don’t get too frivolous with your spending. You will have the urge to spend a lot of money on items for your baby, but the truth is that newborns don’t need a lot of the things parents rush out to buy. You can save yourself a ton of money if you concentrate on age-appropriate items in the beginning. Do you really need a safety gate for a baby that won’t even sit up for a few months?

2. Save money on interest. By paying off as many bills as you can you’re not only freeing up some extra money for after the baby comes, but you’re also saving some money in interest charges. You may be paying more in interest every month than you even realize, especially if you carry a large balance on your credit cards. Make a concerted effort to pay your bills down before your baby arrives and you might even manage to get some bills paid off completely.

3. Earn money with the money you save. If you have a substantial amount of money already sitting in a bank account in case of emergencies then you should do a little comparison shopping to see if there is a different account that might earn you a higher interest rate, and therefore give you more money. This is one of the less painful ways to save some money before the baby arrives, and it is relatively effortless.

4. Consider a temporary second job. You probably don’t want to work a second job after the baby arrives unless it absolutely necessary, but now is the time to take on a temporary job in order to pad up your savings account or pay down some of your bills. After the baby comes there is a good chance that you won’t have the energy to work two jobs.

5. Analyze your budget. When was the last time you actually sat down and scrutinized where your money goes? You may be surprised to find out how much of your money goes to unnecessary expenses. By actually taking the time to look at your budget – and maybe doing a little adjusting – you can probably save yourself quite a bit of money before the baby comes.

6. Downgrade. If you are going to lose an income after the baby comes then you may want to consider that now is the time to move to a less expensive home or get a less expensive car. Do what you can now in order to make the transition to parenthood as easy as possible. You’ll have enough on your plate after the baby is born.

7. Lose some extras. Do you pay for premium cable channels? Do you have a gym membership that you never use? Examine what you might be able to do without and start dropping all the extra services you don’t really need. You might lose a little bit of convenience when you do this – for example, dropping your cable modem and going back to dial-up in an effort to save money – but this is one surefire way to save before baby comes.

8. Compare services. You might be able to save a great deal of money by comparing the offerings of other companies that sell the same services you purchase through another source. When was the last time you did a comparison on your auto insurance policy or your cell phone provider? In some instances, switching from one provider to another can be a very wise financial decision and save you quite a bit of money.

Trying to save some money before your baby arrives is a wise decision because in most instances it’s much harder to save money after the baby comes. If you manage to save up some money before your baby arrives you will be glad you made the effort.

by Andrea SteedMany scrapbookers want to know how to save money and keep from buying things they won’t necessarily use. I always suggest buying only the items they need for each layout, rather than just buying whatever looks interesting to them. It can be hard to do with all of the fun new products coming out, but it can be done!

Bring your photos. Bring the photos that you want to work on in the next few weeks with you when you go to the scrapbook store. I like to separate the photos by layout so that I can work with one set of photos at a time. Portable photo organizers are great for this.

Choose cardstock and patterned paper. Use your set of photos to choose background and accent papers that coordinate with the colors in the photos. The best way to do this is to hold the photos next to the papers as you walk through the store. Be sure to choose enough paper for the background, matting, accents, journaling blocks and any title blocks. It’s a good idea to start thinking of a general design for the layout so that you can estimate how many sheets of paper you will need.

Choose coordinating embellishments. Since the paper is the base of the layout, next you can choose the embellishments. The colors and patterns in the paper will help you decide what embellishments will work best with the layout, whether it be tags, stickers, die cuts, fibers, charms, etc. Avoid buying every embellishment that would work on your page (because inevitably there will be many), and choose the one or two that will feature your photos best.

Decide on the title style. Titles can be the hardest part of a layout. Luckily there are tons of products that make them easier, whether it’s a die cut title, sticker title, eyelet letter title, punched title, letters on tags, or any of the many variations. The colors and embellishments that you’ve already chosen will probably help you determine which type of title will work best on your layout.
Once you’ve chosen all of the products you need, your layout will be ready to assemble. You can move on to choosing the products for the next set of photos. After you’ve bought the products, put them into page protectors with the photos for the layout, and you’ll have everything you need to complete your page in one spot. Using this system will make scrapbooking a much faster process when you sit down to complete the layouts since all of the products will be chosen already – and you’ll be saving money by only buying what you need.

About the Author
Andrea Steed is the author and creator of Scrap Tutor, a web site and CD-ROM that teaches you how to create scrapbooks and how to perform many popular techniques used in scrapbooking. For more information, visit www.scraptutor.com.

by: Eddie Allen

In 1992, Becky Thane started an organization to assist at the military bases overseas. She knew there is nothing worse than finding a great coupon only to realize that it has already expired. She also knew that the bases were the answer to that problem. They accept coupons that have expired.

Military commissaries overseas accept manufacturer coupons for up to six months past their printed expiration dates. That means that coupons that are useless to you can still save overseas military families some money by your sending these coupons to them no more than 2 months expired.

Initially the OCP was run as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity under the name ‘Overseas Coupon Project’. Acts of Congress in 2001 and 2002 increased active duty military pay. Congress also commited to keep military pay higher. This has brought the vast majority of active duty service families above the Federal poverty level. Because of these changes, OCP was unable to maintain non-profit status.

We still felt, however, that many military families appreciate and need our help. So, we restructured our organization and changed the name to the Overseas Coupon Program. At that time I (Edward W. Allen III) took over the program. I had been with OCP for 5 years as an assistant running the Western USA distribution under the old program.

The program is now at www.ocpnet.org and is run fully on the internet. Most Americans have access to the internet or to someone that can access it for them. This site gives information on how to participate in the program:

To adopt a base and gives the base address.

To cut, sort and dollar total the coupons and how to ship them

To report the totals to the OCP to be posted at our web site

You can contribute as an individual or organization. A typical sunday news paper may have over $100 worth of coupons.

The base staff and the OCP staff are all voluntary. We do the best we can with our small staffs. The bases will not always be able to contact you and acknowledge receipt. They concentrate on getting the coupons out.

We at the OCP also get busy with real life at times and cannot always get back to you immediately. Remember that we do try to work on this every day but real life sometimes gets in the way.

About the Article:
Find out more about sending your expired coupons to military families overseas at www.ocpnet.org.

Pregnancy is supposed to be a wonderful, exciting, time for a woman. They pee on a stick, find out they are pregnant, call their doctor, schedule a prenatal check-up, and take their insurance card in with them. But what happens when a woman doesn’t have maternity insurance?

This happens more often than some people realize. Many times insurance offered by an employer does not cover prenatal care, and the woman is not made aware of this until she needs the insurance after she conceives. It can leave a pregnant women panicking wondering how she will be able to afford all the cost of prenatal care and delivery without the help of insurance.

There is now help available to 90% of the country’s uninsured pregnant mothers, whether they lack insurance because of a lack of employment, their employer doesn’t offer insurance, or because their insurance plan doesn’t cover prenatal care. It is called the MaternityCard.

The MaternityCard was created by the Austin based company Affordable Health Care Options (ACHO), to help expectant mothers find financial relief in the growing high costs of prenatal care, when they have no insurance. It was created for women who do not have health insurance, don’t qualify for government assistance because their income is too high, or are not offered prenatal coverage through their current insurance plan.

MaternityCard can save a woman up to 60% off of what she would pay out of pocket if she had to pay for all prenatal and delivery care on her own. The premiums are not high, there are no co-pays or deductibles, and a woman is not turned away for an pre-existing conditions, which she might find with other insurance companies she investigates.

The coverage includes every aspect of pregnancy from the first doctor’s appointments, to prescriptions, lab work, labor and delivery, and postnatal care for both mom and baby. It is the newest alternative for the new, uninsured mom-to-be.

New mom, Kelly Jones from Nevada said that MaternityCard not only saved her THOUSANDS of dollars on one doctors bill, but allowed her to free up her time to spend taking care of her newborn twins, instead of spending hours on the phone dealing with the hospital on the fees from her care. She states, “When I finally decided to make the call, everyone was so helpful and supportive. It really made me feel more at ease knowing I had some help when I needed it.” That confidence that you are not dealing with the rising costs of having a baby all by yourself would put any new pregnant woman at ease.

If you are without insurance and looking for help with your doctor, hospital and lab bills, please visit www.maternitycard.com.

By Criss White

Even with modern technology like email and cell phones, printed invitations have remained the most common way to let people know about your upcoming party and will continue to remain popular due to the timeless rules of party etiquette. Invitations can be a major cost, especially for large parties, like weddings and some baby showers. However, with a little creativity and time, you can make your own printable invitations, even if you have no artistic skills.

1. The first step is designing your card. You can use a simple word processor like Microsoft Word and if you want, you can go to the Adobe’s website at http://createpdf.adobe.com to convert your file into a pdf file. Select the proper dimensions and print out a sample on some plain white paper just to make sure it is the right size.

2. Next, you will want to find the proper card stock to print out your invitations on. Your local office supply store will have these and you can purchase them inexpensively there.

3. Use the word processor to insert text boxes with the words you want on your invitation. Play around with the fonts and text color.

4. There are many sites that offer free clip art and pictures that you can use for your invitations. Just do a search for “free clip art” on the search engines and you will find many sites that provide these services for free. Browse through and download the pictures you want and then insert them into your card at the desired location.

5. If you use a background image, make sure it does not obscure the text on the card. Ideally, background images should be watermarked. Most word processors will allow you to select background images and make them watermarks. Another alternative is to click on all the text boxes and give them solid colored backgrounds.

6. Need a catchy poem or verse? Once again, you can search the internet for related verses. For example, if I am making baby shower invitations, then I can search for “baby shower poem” or “baby verse” and any other related phrases.

7. Save the master copy of the finished card and print out a sample copy on plain paper to see what it will look like. If it looks good, then you can start personalizing each card and printing it out on card stock.

8. If you do not have a color printer, then create a personalized copy for each guest and save it as a separate file on a disk. Take the disk to your local print shop and have them print out a invitation for each guest. Some print shops may even print out the invitations for you if you give them the guest list and template. A print shop will cost more than printing them out yourself, but probably less than buying invitations from somewhere else. Plus the product should look very professional and they may even have the right card stock available. Additionally, print shops can do engraved invitations as well, which are good for upscale occasions like weddings.

Some other guidelines include try to stick to a central theme, don’t try to use too many pictures and colors, and compare your card to others at card stores to get a feel for what a good invitation should look like. Remember that most invitations are simple and have just a few graphics and maybe one verse. As you can see, there are infinite possibilities when creating your own party invitations and not only is it a fun project, but will also save you money.

About the Author:
Criss White is a professional web writer on baby and new mother topics for baby and pregnancy websites. For more personalized gift ideas, go to Personalized Baby Shower Favors and for more candle gift ideas, see Baby Shower Candle Favors.

By Roy Thomsitt

When you first bring home your Bouncing New Baby, you will surely feel you want to watch over her and be with her much of the time, especially if you are a first time parent. Newborn babies are fascinating even if they are not yours; when they are your own, that special feeling takes off into the stratosphere. You may feel tempted to hold them, watch them and chat to them the whole time; even when they are asleep you will enjoy standing silently over them and observe them in their slumbers.

Those first few days are a magical time, but then a transformation may take place. For the first few nights, the night feed may be a novelty, and you may even feel “great, she’s awake, I can see her again”. But then sleep interruption may start to irritate you rather than be a signal for pleasure; tiredness begins to take a hold as your sleep is disturbed so often. Night feeds, cholic, bringing up her milk; all can contribute to an interrupted night. Insufficient sleep mixed with aggravation can start to eat away at that feeling of wonder you had when your baby first came home.

Your baby has not changed; but you have. She is the same gorgeous baby you brought home from hospital. Her simple life is evolving only very slowly to her; it is yours that is changing most rapidly. Those rapid changes, maybe mixed with a new level of tiredness you have not felt before, represent the first exertion of pressure on that very special relationship – you and your baby.

Then there is day time. The old day to day pressures are still there; the need to rush around to the shops, worrying about money, wondering how to deal with work, job and baby; the car not starting, the leak in the pipe under the sink, the washing machine seizing up under the constant use. The days spent wishing you could get a good night’s sleep, wishing you were back at work earning more money, and being with your work colleagues. The time you spend thinking: “where’s my life gone? I have no control anymore. That baby is my jailer in the day time and tormentor at night.”

Stop! That is a train of thought you must either not board, or at least get off at the first station. It is a train fuelled by self pity, and heading down the track to unhappiness for you, your partner, and your baby. You are the only one who controls your life; you choose between the track to contentment and joy, or to discontent and misery.

Remember, that baby loves you more than anyone else ever has, unless you have had a baby before. Her devotion, her admiration, and her dependence are total. It is for you to decide whether that is something to cause resentment in you, or the overwhelming joy that it should. That little miracle of a baby is the biggest responsibility you have ever had, but she can also be the source of the greatest pleasure and joy.

Compare your baby’s devotion with your work colleagues you miss; in 10 years time you will probably have lost contact with most or all of them. Your workplace is like a busy junction where people cross over. Your work? If you are employed, your bosses will ditch you as soon as they need to if they see a “better” alternative. Your car, your washing machine, your leaking pipe; do you really think they are important compared to that unique and potentially wonderful relationship that is in your arms, the relationship with your baby?

You make the choices; you take the actions. You have experienced in the first few days with baby at home that there can be sheer joy and excitement; wonderment and appreciation. The baby loves you to bits; you can love her to bits too, and put the exterior trivia in their rightful place. Or, the baby loves you to bits and you can wallow in resentment because she’s interrupting your life, demanding attention when you have a leaking pipe or a car that won’t start.

In black and white, on paper, it’s a simple choice; but how can you make that choice and achieve the right balance in your life? Think about it quietly for a while; somewhere on your own. Think of the pleasure the baby gives you in those precious moments when you do not feel stressed. Then, make a conscious decision to perpetuate those moments; to make each moment you have with your baby, infant and child a moment when you and she are there simply for each other.

As your baby grows, there will be countless moments of development that can bring you a lot of pleasure and pride; learning to walk, getting out of her crib, her kisses and cuddles, her first word and every new word thereafter; her expressions, mimicry, her laughter and her first attempt to dance to the music on the radio; her attempts to control and manipulate you, and learning to use her charm to get her own way. All can be moments of intense pleasure, if you allow them to be.

Such developments you can allow to merge into the noisy background of life’s trivia, and miss the joy they can bring you. In so doing you are increasing the chances of an unhappy baby, and an unhappy you. Or, you can make each moment you spend with your baby one for you to enjoy to the full, shutting out life’s trivia for those times you are sharing with your offspring. In so doing you would increase the chances of a happy baby and a happy you. 

You make the choices; you take the actions. For your own sake and the baby’s, spend as much time with your baby as you can, and set out to enjoy it to the full. Shut out the trivia that are trying to spoil your unique relationship, and your life will be considerably better for it.

It is not always possible, but try to organise the trivia around your time with baby. The more you give her precedence, and willingly, the more happy you will both be. Enjoy every single moment of watching her development. It is something that cannot be repeated. 

About the Author:
This baby care article was written by Roy Thomsitt, owner author of the Bouncing New Baby website. Ably assisted by his baby daughter, he is also responsible for the Baby Blog.