In keeping with my theme of introducing you or reminding you of different types of snowflake sources, I have another one for you. Clicking for snowflakes!

If you have a few extra minutes of time, you can earn gift cards and cash for free! I have used these small bits of cash and gift cards to help meet our financial goals. Right now, the goal is to pay down our mortgage. Our mortgage doesn't accept gift cards of course, but when I spend them on things I would be buying anyway, I send the cash I would have used for the purchase to our mortgage.

The main site I have used to accumulate the most money is

Swagbucks. The site lets you earn Swagbucks points for watching videos, using their search engine, shopping, taking surveys and more. In 2013, I earned over $600 from Swagbucks. I have scaled back my time on the site so I can be more productive in other areas, but I still hop on nearly everyday to click some of the easier tasks. Once you sign up, feel free to read my post about How to Swag. It is a little outdated, but it should give you enough information to get started. Their Facebook page is also very helpful.

I'm currently active on Bing as well. This one is a straight forward search engine that provides you with results and points for a certain number of searches each day. It only takes a few minutes to complete each day. I'm able to accumulate my points(known as Swagbucks) to redeem a Swagbucks code that I use on their site to redeem for Amazon.com gift cards. If you are going Swag, you might as well Bing as well!

Another legitimate site for earning gift cards is MyPoints, which also lets you do searches, participate in special offers, click on emails, take surveys and more. I have fallen off the wagon on this site, but I have earned gift cards with them and it is pretty easy to do.

There are probably plenty of other sites you can participate in to earn gift cards for doing free tasks. The key word there is FREE. Do not pay to join any site. EVER.

Do you Swag, Bing or use MyPoints? Do you have another free site you use to earn gift cards and cash? What do you use your earnings for?

The links for Swagbucks and Bing above are my affiliate links. If you are interested in being referred to MyPoints, you are welcome to leave your name and email address in the comments. I will enter your information on their site and they will send you a referral email. I will delete your personal information from my site for your protection. You can also send me a private message on the forum section of Saving Advice.

If you are looking for extra cash to apply towards your debt or savings, I have found that selling things you no longer need can provide that extra cash.

Since the beginning of 2014, I have sold books, cds, a couch and loveseat, kitchen table, side tables and a tv cart. I also had a garage sale in May, and sold all sorts of various items, including clothing and tools. In all, I've sold over $500 worth of our used items!

I would much rather get rid of something I own than be in debt, especially credit card debt. The interest these cards charge when you don't pay your balance in full is your hard earned money! I personally like to keep as much of the money we earn as possible.

Everybody has something they can sell. I have a friend, that last I knew had six shelves full of DVD movies. My guess is these were bought soon after a movie came out, so likely nearly full price. I know they watch them and have been generous with loaning them to people, too. I look at those shelves and think CASH! Sure some of them are dated and not likely to fetch much money, but at $1 each they easily have $180 worth of movies they could sell. My thinking is that one can still find plenty of free options for entertainment. The library for one has just as many movies that one can borrow for free.

A few years ago, I had a challenge on this blog to make $100 a month selling on Ebay. I think my average was less than that in the end, maybe $80, but it challenged and encouraged me to find things in our home we didn't need. At the time, I think the proceeds were applied to a car loan pay down or a home equity loan. I didn't sell anything unique. My kids had outgrown jeans, shoes, toys and books. I sold (and still do) Box Tops for Education, and old army paraphernalia. Anything I found that I was done with I checked Ebay to see if there was a demand for the item. If there was I sold it. If it didn't sell on Ebay I would save it for a garage sale, which back then my neighbors and I would have two times a year. If items didn't sell at the garage sale I would donate them.

As consumers, we are bringing in new things to our home on a regular basis. I think of selling the old kind of like getting a rebate on the original cost of the item, or a discount on the new item I purchased. If we never get rid of anything when we bring in new, we get overrun with our own stuff! I challenge you to look at your stuff in a new way. It can be turned into cash to help you with your financial goal of paying down debt or saving. You will feel less stress with less debt and less stuff. I guarantee it!!

Do you have a habit of selling your old things? Do you sell on Ebay, craigslist or at garage sales? What do you do with your proceeds? Anyone interested in an Ebay challenge for the remainder of the year?

I use

Ebates, when I remember, when I'm doing any online shopping. A little rebate for going through their site as you shop on another site is EASY!

This week I purchased two t-shirts for my youngest daughter for her birthday next week. I purchased from RedBubble, but not before I went through Ebates to get 2.5% back, which amounted to $1.15. I also used a coupon code that gave me 10% off my order so that helped defray the cost of shipping. I still spent $50, but she will be VERY happy with these as they were specifically requested and on the top of her list.

I also purchased a family photo we took last year on my parents land. We used it on our Christmas card. As I was taking it off my fridge, um this week, I decided it was a really good picture and we should have it enlarged to put on our wall. I logged on to Ebates and found that Snapfish offers 10% rebates on their orders. I ordered an 11x14 print that I will pick up at Walmart today for $6.86 plus tax. Ebates is giving me $0.69 back.

Right now I only have $3.04 in rebates, but over the last couple years I have been using them I have earned over $65 in rebates. Those small little rebates add up!

There are other shopping sites that offer cash back, but Ebates seems to be the one that works for me. I think I have used Shop At Home in the past. It is a good idea to check another site to see if the rebate is larger or if they have a store that one site doesn't have. And if you use a rewards credit card for making these online purchases you are getting even more benefit for your purchases online!

Do you use a online shopping rewards site? Do you use more than one? Which one is your favorite?

I received $3 in my PayPal account for completing a survey from Pinecone Research earlier this week. That's another snowflake for June!

I was proud of myself yesterday for waiting to go to the grocery store. I was able to find lunch and dinner for my family with things we already had on hand. I wasn't sure I could as the cupboard and fridge are getting bare! My daughters had pancakes for dinner. My husband and I had eggs, turkey bacon and toast. I may have that same thing for lunch today.

I will need to get for the store today as I keep finding things I need to get...coffee, toilet paper and more! I hope to get everything I need to make it through the weekend. We are having guests one night so I need to plan for that as well.

I had to go to the store to buy a specific item this morning. I ended up buying three because I could get a $5 Target gift card if I did. This is something we will definitely use, so not a big deal to stock up.

I will count that $5 gift card as a snowflake and send that $5 to the mortgage since Target will give me $5 off my next purchase!

Snowflakes are all around us if we take time to notice! I hope to get a post up this week about my sources of snowflakes and other ideas for you to look into. Did you find any money recently that you can put towards your snowflake goal?

I put a new post on

Your Organized Friend about my new cleaning task today.

I sold some pretty inexpensive furniture on Craigslist this morning. An end table, a coffee table and tv stand that we originally purchased for $70 at Walmart. I had them listed for $35, but lowered the price to $30. The man asked if I would take $20. I said yes, since I was ready to have them moved on. Now I have $20 cash and less clutter!

We did some decluttering in my daughter's room yesterday. There is more to do as she is a little slow in going through things. We found a few picture books and trinkets my sister can use with her kindergarten students. I have a new post up on

Your Organized Friend about a quick clean up I did with pictures.

I'd really like to get some items posted to Ebay tonight. I let you know if that actually happens! Are you selling or decluttering right now? Where did you get your last snowflake of money?

I used up the $60 in referral credits that were applied to our USAA credit card this weekend. We originally had $7.70 charged before the credits were applied. That left $52.30 that I was able to spend!

I spent $39.58 at PetSmart for cat food. I was very tempted to adopt a 10 week old kitten for $25, but decided now isn't time for a kitten!

We also stopped at Subway for lunch today. I spent $18.46 for that splurge. We also like our trips to Subway.

($52.30)
($39.58)
($18.46)
__$5.74

It looks like I will still owe the credit card company a little cash. The money that I spent and I would have owed except for the credit will be sent to our mortgage as part of our pay down goal.

We used $6.98 in Amazon credits (earned from Swagbucks and Bing) for some movie rentals this week. I'm matching those purchases with cash towards the mortgage as well.

That makes for a whopping mortgage snowflake payment of $66.98. Can't complain about less debt! I'm mean who would!!

Just giving those of you who do not already have a Capital One 360 Checking or Savings account but are interested. You will likely want to wait until June 30 to take advantage of their sale they have each year.



As you can see from the ad, the sale runs from June 30 to July 3rd. In the past the bonuses for signing up have been up to $100 for a savings account which is double the normal bonus. They have even larger bonuses if you open a Sharebuilder account. My understanding is that you cannot double dip on these offers.

I would appreciate it if you would use my referral when these bonus are announced if you heard of this great deal from me. I will likely get a bonus for referring you. And you know I like snowflakes!

The nice thing about the Capital One accounts is there are no minimum balances or fees. There is usually no direct deposit requirement, although you may have to deposit some cash to qualify or make a few debit purchases on the checking account. The details will be announced soon so stay tuned?

Does this offer interest you? Did you take advantage of Capital One's sale in the past?

Well, all in one day we are done spending on both credit cards we have been working on. A little crazy, but I did know we had some big purchases and expenses coming up.

The transactions are still pending, so I don't know how quickly the rewards will post, but likely by the time the statements close. For the Southwest card that should be in the next week or so, but the Wells Fargo Amex just closed two days ago! We will have to wait another month to get that reward, which is $400. The Southwest Rapids Rewards card will be worth $500 in gift cards.

The rewards are going to the mortgage as part my snowflake goal this year, which is $4000. These new credit card bonus snowflakes will put us to goal and we are really only half way through the year. As a result, I'm revising the goal to $8,000. This does seem like a stretch, but I'm willing to reach for it. There is no downside to not reaching it, so I might as well go for it, right?

The new goal will likely make me look for other offers I can take advantage of, participate in Swagbucks more, try a few bank checking offers, sell more things, and I'm sure another credit card or two. (I have decided that DH will not apply for any more cards until after our next move). Here's to a new goal!!

Today I logged on to my

Capital One 360 Savings account to check my balance. I currently have $772.18. This account is where I'm saving my 52 Week Saving Challenge money. I'm saving $57 every pay period, which for us is twice per month. I believe I started at the beginning of last December with the goal of saving $1378, which is the amount that these 52 Week Savings Challenges total at the end of one year. At this point I have saved up Weeks 1-17 and 4-52.

Originally I didn't have any plan for the money other than to save it. That has changed! I am saving the money for my oldest daughter's band trip to Disney World in the spring. We have been told the estimated cost is $1599. We have already made our first $200 deposit out of our regular cash, so that leaves $1399 to save. It seems I'm more than halfway there!

I just love that the saving challenge turned out to be a blessing to get the trip funded without too much hassle. Kind of a 'it pays to save for a rainy day' type of thing. Kind of.

Any chance you have something you need to be saving for over the next 6 months or more? You can sign up for a Capital One 360 Savings account and earn a $50 bonus. Or if a checking account is better, you can earn $25. Or both! Don't forget the fine print, and know that I do receive $20 for each referral, but I don't get any personal information about you. You will be anonymous to me. I plan to save the referral money towards my daughter's trip, too! I'm sure she will need some spending money.

I also became aware that I can refer people to the Chase Freedom card and receive a bonus. This is the credit card that is currently offering a $200 cash bonus after you spend $500 on the card. I wish I could refer you with a link, but Chase requires I send an email. If you leave your first and last name and email I will input it into the form. You will then receive an email from Chase asking you to apply for the offer. I will delete emails from the blog and will not spam you! I also will not know you applied and whether or not you were approved or denied. I get no personal information. I do need to submit your email by June 20th, so act fast if you are interested!



I think the Chase Freedom card is one of the best cards for the average consumer since it has no annual fee. Of course, please do not apply for credit if you are working on paying off debt or cannot pay off your balance in full each month!

How are you doing on your 52 Week Savings Challenge? Where do you save your money? Do you receive referral money from any products you endorse? What products are they and how much have you earned?

It seems I have received the cash for the last Ooma referrals. I had three at $20 each, so I have a credit on our USAA card in the amount of $60. They don't ever really tell you when they are going to pay out, so it is a little bit of a surprise. Money in our pocket is always a nice surprise! I will likely use the credit for basic expenses, probably one tank of gas! Since the $60 is a snowflake I will then get that money sent to the mortgage.



My husband had some Army travel a little while back and has been reimbursed. Some of his expenses went on our Wells Fargo American Express card, so I need to get those paid off with the cash received from the Army. There is more travel coming up soon for him and I'm going to make sure he uses the current cards we are working on for bonuses. We might as well get benefit from spending that is going to get reimbursed!

I received our first Verizon bill. I have only seen the balance, which seems a little high, but I think it is likely a prorated thing. I will double check before I pay it. I think making this payment on the WF Amex card will put us VERY close to meeting our $3K spending requirement. It will then be time to switch to the Southwest Rapids Rewards card.

I'm trying to sell some furniture on Craigslist, but so far no interest. The spammers aren't even interested. I think someone will want them, but it may be not the right time or the price is a bit too high. Worse case they items will be donated. I will not be keeping these items around indefinitely.

I have another post up on

Your Organized Friend. I'd love you to stop by over there. Share the site with friends, too!

I have accumulated a few snowflakes for June already!! Pinecone deposited $6 into my PayPal account. And I received two $5 Amazon.com gift cards from Swagbucks (one of those was accumulated with Bing rewards).

Today has been productive! I ran errands and worked out at the gym. I first went to the laundromat and put a comforter in one of the big washers and then left while it was still washing. I figured no one can get it out while it is running since it is locked. I knew what time to be back. I left to drop off three winter coats at the dry cleaner. I then went to Goodwill to drop off some more items left over from the garage sale. After that I stopped to put fuel in my van. At this point it was time to get back to the laundromat. I waited a few minutes while the cycle completed and then moved it to a dryer. I walked to a store to buy an item and return to wait for the dryer, which was just another 15 minutes.

After all those errands, it was time for the workout. But since I have been home, I have run two loads of laundry, cut up fruits and vegetables for dinner, and started cleaning my oven (I'm doing it in stages).

I sure enjoy productive days AND snowflakes! Has your day been productive? Have you accumulated any June snowflakes yet?

I received an offer from US Bank to open a checking account with direct deposit of at least $500 and receive $200. There are a lot of details and deadlines. For example if I don't open the account by the end of this month the offer drops to $150.

I might actually do this offer because I think that increased income that will come with promotion could easily be the direct deposit! For now, I'm going to wait until promotion comes through and I hear when the new pay actually starts. This may mean I miss out on $50. I don't have to keep the account open very long either, so it would be in just long enough to get the bonus money.

Our mortgage payment for June posted. Our principal portion was $464.60. We also include $103.72 towards principal. The number is odd, but the whole payment is even! We have now surpassed paying down more than 50% of our $13,992 goal for 2014, with $7,425.45 paid towards principal. It is nice to see the plan working!

Have you dipped in for a checking or savings account offer recently? How much debt have you already paid in June? Are you exceeding a financial goal you have for the year?

I wrote about my plans for running errands on

Your Organized Friend, but make sure you read the comments on that one, too! Tomorrow I will have a post about getting organized as school winds down for the year. Remember you can sign up to get email updates for my blog at anytime!

I closed my Capital One credit card. This is the one which was upgraded to Quicksilver offering 1.5% rewards and no annual fee. In an effort to reduce our open lines of credit, we decided to close my account and leave my husband's open. I am an authorized user on it, so we each have a card. Right now we aren't using the card since we are working on obtaining the bonus reward with the Wells Fargo American Express Propel World card. But it is a good 'go to' card for earning rewards. I like that I don't always have to track the 5% categories like some cards.

I'm also going to look into closing my husband's Chase Freedom account. We only have one card for it and I don't think we have used it since he received his bonus reward months and months ago. It may have 0% interest, but I don't think we need to keep it open even with that offer! Hopefully you saw my previous post about a limited time offer to open a Chase Freedom account to get a $200 bonus for spending $500. Best return I think I've ever seen!

Have you reduce any of your credit cards lately? Did you open an account lately?

I have several new posts on

Your Organized Friend if you are interested.

I can't partake in this offer as we both already have the Chase Freedom card. For a limited time, you can open the account, spend $500 and get $200!! That is a 40% return. I have never seen an offer that high for the low spending threshold.

I read about the deal on My Money Blog, you can look into it

here.

I applied last night for the Southwest Rapids Rewards card. My husband has applied and received bonuses for two of their cards. Now it is my turn. I was approved for $23K limit. The card has crazy high limits!

The offer is for spending $2K in 3 months to receive 50,000 bonus points, which is equal to $500 in gift cards if one doesn't use the rewards for airline tickets, which we likely won't. There is a $99 fee, which will be refunded if we close the account within the first two months.

We are still working on the Wells Fargo Propel Amex card. We have already spent over $1800 of the $3,000 needed for the $400 reward. I decided this time of year is our most expensive and expect it won't take much longer to reach that spending requirement. It will work out well to have the Southwest card on its way now, so it is ready to go when we meet the Amex spending. My husband has some travel this next month and that alone will help us meet both of these goals.

I'm about to close my Capital One Quicksilver. My husband will keep his open. I'm trying to make sure we don't have more cards open then we really need. I have been keeping cards open with 0% interest just in case. Probably not necessary since we don't really need it.

In other news, I now have my first smart phone. It has been quite amusing trying to get used to something new. It feels really foreign. I did figure out how to download My Fitness Pal so I can track my calories away from home. I might have to find one of the apps that lets me make money while I stay fit.

Did you apply for the Southwest card? Are you close to meeting the Amex requirement? Any tips for a first time smart phone user?

I'm closing the books on the May snowflakes. I don't expect anymore to arrive before Saturday and if they do I will add them to June.

In all we accumulated $478.01 in snowflake money from many, many sources. Rewards from our normal spending on credit cards has made a difference in how fast we accumulate funds. All snowflakes were sent to pay down the mortgage, so this means less debt, which I love!!



Year to date, I have accumulated $2,964.96 in snowflakes!! My goal is $4,000. Clearly I'm ahead on this goal. I suppose a revised goal may be in order. I will decide that later.

Are you tracking your snowflakes still? Do you apply your extra funds toward a savings or debt pay down goal? Do you use your snowflakes to help with everyday spending?

Spending seems to be high for us right now. Band expenses, getting new phones, items for the yard, and a few spring clothing items.

I want to go looking for curtain rods for our bedroom and maybe new curtains. (I thought our old ones would work, but they are not wide enough...should have left them with the old house I guess). I also wouldn't mind some spring clothes for this smaller body I seem to be getting with losing weight. I decided that for this week, just this week, I can wait on those items. We have really already spent all the money we set aside to spend this month. I don't feel those items are worth using our savings for.

Instead, I have decided to work on things at home that don't cost any money. Already this morning I pulled out previously purchased paint and put one coat on one wall of our bedroom (it is an accent color). I will do the other coat in a little while. I will spend some time working out, which is free or already paid for. I have some organizing tasks I want to complete, which also require no spending. And I have an item I previously purchased at Target I need to get price adjusted, as well as return an item to Lowe's.

I think I have enough things to keep me busy this week and out of the stores buying things. I will still likely buy the items, but just wait until we have spending money again on the first of June. It doesn't hurt to wait.

In other updates, I sold a book on Ebay. And I have another Pinecone survey payment coming in. So a few more snowflakes to end the month of May!

Has your spending been higher than it was a few months ago? Do you find spring and summer to be more expensive than other months? Are you waiting to make any purchases?

I finally got around to paying bills last night. When I paid off the credit cards I used the rewards available on the Capital One cards. Between the two cards, we had $31.89 in cash. I had the rewards applied to the accounts as credits.

I had a non paying bidder on one item last week on Ebay. It has now been relisted. Profits last week were $10.68 on one item. I also had $6 from Pinecone, with another $3 being deposited today.

I added those proceeds and garage sale profits of $141.25 to our regularly planned extra mortgage payment of $275. That is an extra payment of $464.82! Yea. I like less debt. In fact, including our regular payment we have paid down $1,238.21 on our mortgage debt since May 1!

We did spend some of our Lowe's gift cards yesterday. About $65 worth. I plan to match that money spent with an extra payment to the mortgage, too. We bought trash bags, lawn bags, a wheeled cart, four bags of salt and three furnace filters, a pop and a water. I may not need that cart. I have to decide if it is worth the $25 we paid.

Any big snowflakes for you recently? How much debt have you paid down so far this month?

I'm considering the garage sale a success!! We were open for about 5 hours and brought in about $185. Several big items left our home and plenty of little ones as well. My profit is only $140, since I did sell some items for a friend.

Traffic dropped off significantly after 1 pm, so we closed early by about three hours. Very worth it to me to get cleaned up and then be able to spend some time with my family today. We also dropped our garage sale leftovers at Habitat for Humanity ReStore and Goodwill...most of the clutter is gone!

I have not come up with a plan for the sale profits. I'm hoping the money will go to some new furniture, but it may just get thrown to the mortgage so it doesn't melt before I get the furniture!

I planned to pay bills on Friday, but I didn't get it done since I was setting up the garage sale. It will be a priority for Sunday.

Did you sell anything this weekend? Do you still have bills to pay? Did you buy anything at a garage sale?

The Chase Southwest Credit Card is again offering 50,000 bonus points for spending $2,000 in three months. I read about the offer on

My Money Blog written by Jonathan Ping. Those points equal $500 in gift cards if you aren't interested in apply the points to airfare.

I likely will apply for the card within the next week. My husband has had both cards Southwest offers, but I have not yet applied for any. I should review our spending plans first to make sure we can meet the requirement at the same time we are working on the Wells Fargo American Express card. I will skip it if it doesn't seem possible. It would be a waste to apply if we can't spend that much in three months.

I need to pay bills today and get some of those most current charges on the cards we have used recently paid off.

I did get paid for one of my Ebay sales yesterday. I have already mailed it off. I still have one more that I'm waiting payment on. I really do try to be patient with these buyers, but it is hard to wait. I want the money and I want the item gone!!

I did send in a $131+ snowflake to the mortgage on Monday. Mid month is when I normally send another $275 to knock off more principal. Right now I plan to do that, but I do need to pay bills and see where we really stand and if that payment still works. It seems there has been quite a bit of spending lately!

I am prepping for the garage sale on Saturday. I will haul everything I have priced that is in the basement up to the garage today. I likely will not set up until Friday, since I have a trip planned for tomorrow. If you want to see my garage sale piles or the mess that it is making in my basement I have pictures posted

here.

It seems I know many people moving and packing right now. And that always leads to people decluttering. I think that is why I have really been able to dig deep this time and pull out a lot of things we don't use. Clutter comes in all forms too. In fact after reading another blog post I was inspired to do some decluttering that would not have come up in preparing for the garage sale. I have a post on Your Organized Friend today about that!

This is my second post today. I did an update about the Wells Fargo Amex card in my previous post. I also keep thinking there is some else financial to share, but it is not staying with me. If it comes to me, expect to see a third post!!

As I stated before, I wanted to check in with Wells Fargo to make sure we would still be eligible for the rewards offer even though we already have an American Express credit card and have earned a reward through them. I do not have an official statement from them, but I did see these two screens on the Wells Fargo Rewards site for our account.





In my opinion this confirms the offer stands and should be honored if we meet the requirements stated. This is Wells Fargos program not American Express, thus the difference some people may have experienced not getting more than one reward bonus with American Express.

As soon as I hear anything else from Wells Fargo I will let you know.

I sold two items on Ebay yesterday. A pair of shoes and a CD set. I'm still waiting for payment though. The gross amount of the sales was nearly $26. I want my money!!

We did some shopping at Kohl's this weekend. I used the rest of our Kohl's gift cards, so I need to get that money spent on gift cards sent to our mortgage. In this case we have used up $100 in gift cards from Kohl's.

I have two Pinecone payments totalling $6 in my PayPal account. I am waiting for my Ebay sale money before I send all that money to my checking account and then on to the mortgage.

We are finding more things for the garage sale. My husband and I went through an older tool box and found several things we don't need. We even found a rechargeable drill that no longer charges...will anyone buy that? I think it's trash unless someone knows how to replace the battery. Why store something that doesn't work, right?

Since I am mostly decluttering and staying focused on the garage sale, my organizing blog, Your Organized Friend has taken a back seat. However, I did post a little trick I have for

storing reusable water bottles today. You might also take a peek at my prior post, since there are pictures of my basement getting messy again!

I am waiting on our Wells Fargo American Express card to arrive. Fingers crossed it is today. Our gym membership expires today and we need to renew. We have been in talks with them hoping to negotiate a better deal, but the sales people are never there when we are to get things firmed up. I think they will let us wait a few days to pay on our new card if it doesn't arrive today. I also need to pay an electric bill and order photo prints for my daughter's art fair. It won't take long to meet that $3000 spending requirement!

Did you sell anything this weekend? Have you received your Wells Fargo Amex card yet? Did you do find any non working items in your recent decluttering?

We applied for a new credit card. We were approved, too. I was tipped off by Monkey Mama in my last post. It isn't for everyone, but it seems like the right offer to jump on for us. It is the Wells Fargo Propel World American Express card. We need to spend $3,000 in three months to receive 40,000 bonus points equal to $400. We should be able to redeem our points for a credit to our mortgage which is with Wells Fargo. And we all know tha I have been putting ALL bonus reward money towards paying down our mortgage so this really is perfect.

We won't keep the card long term since it has a crazy high annual fee after the first year. I think it is $175! I would never pay that unless I was getting major benefits to offset it.

We have quite a few things we can charge to the card to meet the spending requirement. One is our gym membership which is due any day now (fingers crossed the card arrives fast) and is over $700. We are also in the market for a used/refurbished Apple computer for our daughter. We have a little mini trip coming up, and some home improvements. Those things along with our regular spending will sure have us meeting the requirement in no time.

I'm paying the small charge on my husbands Discover card today. Once that posts, I will be requesting a cancellation of that card. I will also request a card from my Discover account for him. We will need it when the 5% cashback on gas comes up in July!

The money my husband had in his Capital One 360 checking and savings accounts has arrived in our primary checking account. It will get moved to savings. I have sent a request to CO360 about cancelling the accounts. I was able to do the savings when I made the transfer, but that didn't happen with the checking account.

I have also decided that I will cancel the Old Navy card. Yes, it is my oldest card and could effect my credit score. However, I'm okay with whatever results from that. It will only get worse the longer I wait and I really, really don't want the card anymore!

It feels good to get some of these financial tasks done and have things more consolidated. I like things simple really.

Is anyone else applying for the new Wells Fargo Amex card? Have you cancelled any credit card or bank accounts recently?

I finally got to cleaning up and decluttering in my garage yesterday. I posted many, many pictures of my progress on

Your Organized Friend!

I have three items to take to the post office this morning that I sold on Ebay. My daughter profited $22.57 for selling a set of six books. I profited $16.12 for selling a book, three cds and two dvds. She did better than I did! But I will take that profit and send it to the mortgage of course.

I relisted one item and listed three new items last night on Ebay. I have two more items I hope to get listed today or tomorrow. I sure like that I'm moving much of this stuff on to others.

I had a $15 coupon from Ebay last week. Some promotion. I used it to buy a hair product for my daughter that is being discountinued. It was priced at $14.99 and free shipping. Which means it was really free for us. I suppose it is a bit like getting a rebate on some of the Ebay fees I have paid over the years!

If you are interested in how I organize my gift wrap, you can see a post about that today on

Your Organized Friend. It is mostly pictures! And just another reminder, that if you want an email update when I post on my organizing blog, there is an option on the sidebar to sign up.

Did you get that Ebay coupon? Did you sell anything this weekend, or find anything to donate? How do you keep your gift wrap organized?

Cash in the mail yesterday! A check from Chase Southwest for the $69 annual fee we paid on a card we cancelled within the first two months. I also received an Applebee's gift card from a friend. It was her way of thanking me for helping her pack for her move. I will save the gift card for a night when I don't want to cook or a night out with my husband.

Do you save your receipts for items you purchase? I do. I wrote about how I keep them from taking over on

Your Organized Friend. I also have a couple AFTER pictures of my basement shelves in today's post. I still have work to do, but things are improving!

I sold an item on Ebay, as did my daughter. I also have three auctions ending today. Two have bids, so those will sell. I expect to list at least another three or four items later today.

Did you get any money in your mail yesterday? Are you still decluttering and organizing this month?

Wow, this month is starting off well for snowflakes already. I received $20 as a referral to someone opening a Capital One account. (Thanks for using my link, if that was you! ) Our water bill was under budget by just $1.93, but I'm counting that as a snowflake. I used a $50 gift card at Walmart yesterday, so I'm sending the money I would have spent there to the mortgage as a snowflake. And finally, I used the Amex offers for a PetSmart and I'm counting that $5 as well.

That brings May snowflakes to $76.93! I'm sending that money in today so my snowflakes do not melt. This means less debt, which we know I love. As it turns out, with that snowflake payment, our regular payment yesterday and the extra we tack on, we have $642.23 less debt owed!

In decluttering news, I was able to drop a pair of eyeglasses at the donation bin in Walmart's optical. It helped that I put the glasses in my purse a couple weeks earlier. I also tackled a pile of papers on my file cabinet this week. I wrote about it on

Your Organized Friend, of course!

Are you continuing with the decluttering? Do you have a place to recycle eye glasses in your area? Have you received any extra funds for May yet?

Time is going fast! We have already made it through four months of 2014. Time for an status update on our mortgage goal. As a reminder the goal is to pay down $13,993 in principal by the end of the year. This would bring us to an even balance on our mortgage of $X15,000.

We are making our regular payment and rounding that payment up to include about $103 towards principal at the beginning of the month. At mid month, we are sending in an additional $275 towards principal. All the extra funds we find, which I call snowflakes, are sent to the mortgage to help us reach our goal. Those snowflakes really add up and make a difference.

Here's all the payments that were made to our mortgage in the month of April:



As of April 30, we have paid $5,538.82 towards reducing our mortgage balance. That is 39.5% of our goal so we are ahead of schedule right now! We have just another $8,454.17 to go in order to meet the goal.

Today on

Your Organized Friend, I have another AFTER picture of my basement organization. But you also get to see another pile that is forming! Ack.

What percentage of your financial goal have you completed during the first four months of the year? Are you on track or behind? How did your decluttering go for April? Will you continue in May?

I tallied up our extra funds received (snowflakes) for the month of April using my Excel spread sheet. It was a great month! We found $876.07 in extra money. It ALL went to the mortgage. You will see there are plenty of credit card rewards and bonuses. But notice, too, that I saved a refund, Pinecone survey money, and so forth. There are ways to save extra money with out participating in credit cards.

(Just remembering that we did sell furniture for $300, that is a snowflake, too. We have not decided on a plan for that yet, so it is not included officially.)

Here's where all those snowflakes fell from:



I have 'After' pictures on

Your Organized Friend today! I have my mother visiting and I found an item in our basement that we aren't using but that she can, so I have given it to her. Last week I found a cable my Dad needs that we aren't currently using, so it is his now. Less clutter and helping others feels good.

Have you recently given anything of yours to a family member or friend that you are no longer using? How many snowflakes did you accumulate this month?