I did end up redeeming $300 worth of gift cards with my Southwest Rapids Rewards. I can't remember the breakdown, but I got gift cards for Amazon, Walmart, Lowe's and Kohl's. I have another 20K+ points I can redeem for an airline ticket or gift cards, but I'm waiting to decide if I do want to use them for an airline ticket or not.

I also requested cancellation of my Southwest Visa from Chase. I had a negative balance on the card of just over $119, which was from a trip my husband took and had the charges reversed. (There's a blog post about it if you are really interested in those details.) Of course, I requested the funds be return to me, in addition to the annual fee.

I expect I will get a check and the gift cards in about a week or so. The check will get cash and then use the funds towards payment on another card. As I use the gift cards I will match the money that would have been spent with a payment to the mortgage.

I don't have any card rewards we are currently working on, so I expect I will apply for the Citi Thank You Preferred card I mentioned a little while back. My mailed offer is for 20,000 points after charging $1500 . The points are redeemable for gift cards and in the past I was able to redeem for a check made payable to our mortgage company, which is what I would prefer to do again today.

Today, I'm taking the girls shopping for school supplies. The needs for high school are not nearly as extensive as elementary in my opinion. Folders, paper, pens and pencils usually covers it. I will try to find a deal on tissues as those are a constant need it seems.

Are you school shopping for supplies or clothes yet? Have you applied for a new rewards credit card? Or redeemed any credit card rewards?

If anyone here was considering changing to Ooma, today is the last day to receive the unit for $99 after a $30 activation rebate.

I have already referred one person this time around! For me that means a $20 credit to my credit card in about six weeks. The Ooma can actually make you money when you refer people to the service.

If interested, use my

Southwest has awarded my bonus points to my rewards account. I now have 52,683 points. I think my husband's account has about 600+ points that I may transfer over to round up to 53,000. That would mean I could redeem $525 worth of gift cards.

I may however not redeem all of my points. I have a friend that recently moved to the Houston area. I might want to go visit, but I'm not sure yet if that is really realistic schedule wise since we both have high school kids with busy schedules. The airfare is a better deal for the points than redeeming for gift cards. I'm still pondering, but I expect to redeem a little more than half the points for gift cards.

We received two surprise snowflake checks in the mail today. I love these types of snowflakes the most! My husband and I each got a check for $25.60 from a Trans Union class action settlement. We first requested to be part of the class action in September 2008!! That is not a typo. 2008. Crazy. But hey, I take my cash where I can get it. I've deposited the checks and I'm going to send the money to our mortgage pay down goal, which is where all snowflakes go to rest.

Do you use Southwest rewards for airline tickets rather than gift cards? Did you receive a class action check lately?

I love mail days with checks!!

We received three separate checks from Wells Fargo Rewards today adding up to $450. I deposited them online using my phone. Easy!!

That was quick. I think I requested those this past Sunday. I will make a extra principal payment to our Wells Fargo mortgage for the same $450.

In other news, we are splurging on Garth Brooks tickets. We had a misunderstanding this morning so I wasn't online buying them when they went on sale. As a result we are buying from Stub Hub, and at a price OVER the face value. But the seats are pretty good and if the tickets were that price direct I would likely have paid it. I've always wanted to go and missed my chance the first time around. My husband and I are going with his coworker and his wife. Should be fun!!

Have you received a credit card reward recently? The Wells Fargo reward? Are you a Garth Brooks fan? Are you going to a concert this summer?

I'm just slightly over $600 away from meeting my Roth IRA balance of $100K! Maybe today?! It helps that the market was up yesterday and my regular contribution posted.

I'm looking into a couple new snowflakes. I may apply for the Citi Thank You Preferred to get a $200 gift card bonus after spending $1500. I think it is available online, but I have a mailed offer, too. I have had this card in the past and obtained a bonus on it. I will need to read the fine print to double check that I would be eligible.

The other possibility is to open a US Bank Checking account to get $150. A direct deposit is one way to obtain the bonus; the other is to make three bill pay transactions. It's for first time customers and some of the checking accounts are free if you have a US Bank credit card, which I do. I also have to leave the account open for 180 days. That seems like forever, but it wouldn't be too hard to make it work.

At some point, I will likely apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card again. I know it has been over a year since I applied. My husband has done the offer twice since then, so it is my turn again. This one is actually the most lucrative offering 40,000 bonus points for spending $3000 in 3 months, plus an additional 5000 points for adding an authorized user. And that equates to $450 in cash. I will likely wait until later in the year for this one, with my fingers crossed the bonus goes up a little bit!

There may be other great offers out there, and plenty of websites that share them if you want to go looking. These are the few that have caught my eye that I'm considering doing before the year is out. At this point I have stopped signing my husband up for offers since he has the job and is most likely the one to sign for any new mortgages that could be about a year away...or more. Right now we don't know.

What credit card or bank offers are you doing to get more cash in your wallet? Is your retirement account reaching a milestone of any kind?

I seemed to have several updates today, so I'll just throw them all into one post.

Swagbucks posted my most recent $5 Amazon gift card. The points were actually accumulated through Bing Rewards. We just used $4.99 in Amazon gift cards this weekend. So with the new gift card that posted we are back to $10.01 in Amazon credit. That gift card money used does count as a snowflake!!

Yesterday, I requested a refund on my husband's government card, since we had a negative balance of $35.47. He overpaid the card over a month ago. I thought he would get it corrected but he forgot and paid the same amount he charged thus we still had money owed to us. It looks like it will go to our bank account, rather than a check.

I have made over $95 in various charges to our Southwest Rapids Rewards card in the last several days. I thought we had met the requirement for spending, but when my husband had a hotel charge reversed we were short by about $95. The statement closes around the 26th of the month, so we are now set to met the requirement and I expect be rewarded our 50,000 bonus points (equal to $500 in gift cards). I plan to close the card after I redeem the points. At the time of closing we will have a negative balance of over $100 because of the reversed hotel charge. I expect Southwest will mail the money along with a return of the $99 annual fee.

I did end up redeeming our Wells Fargo American Express Propel World card points in the form of checks. I expect those will arrive quickly! I will then deposit them to our account and make an extra mortgage payment. This is likely far quicker than the 4-6 weeks predicted to credit the points to our Wells Fargo mortgage directly.

I can feel that summer is winding down, and school preparations are ramping up. Registration materials have arrived along with bus schedule and school supply lists. We will owe $130 in registration fees next week. I hope to get a clear list of the items we need to buy for supplies in the next day or two. There are already great sales out there! We do check our stash and reuse items when we can. I know backpacks, lunch bags, padlocks, pencils, pens and even paper are covered. I plan to buy hand sanitizer and tissues to give to my sister who teaches kindergarten.

I have not listed anything new for sale on Craigslist or eBay yet. I did have a couple things on Craigslist earlier this month but was getting a lot of spam replies, so I pulled things down. I have things for eBay but honestly have not been motivated. I also don't like to list things and have them end when I'm out of town, which is a possibility soon. It will all happen eventually!

Are you already getting ready for kids to return to school? Have you redeemed any Swagbucks or listed on eBay? Have you earned any credit card rewards?

It seems our 40,000 bonus points have been applied to our Wells Fargo American Express Rewards card. These points are worth $400 cash. I was beginning to make a redemption, but noticed that a check would arrive in 7-10 DAYS, but a credit to our Wells Fargo mortgage account could take 4-6 WEEKS!! Wow. That is quite a discrepancy in time.

Has anyone redeemed their rewards for a credit to their Wells Fargo mortgage or credit card statement? Did it really take more than 4 weeks?

I may end up redeeming for checks, to get the money into our Wells Fargo mortgage account quicker. I was looking forward to a direct credit, but I don't want to wait 4 weeks or more!!

If you have considered using the

We had met our spending requirement for the Southwest credit card a few weeks ago. I had just paid the entire thing off, too. I was waiting for statement to close, points to be awarded (and then redeemed), and then close the account.

My husband had charged two nights at a hotel to the Southwest card. All good until a coworker realized he was charged for extra rooms. A phone call to the hotel to confirm the entire groups charges. My husband could not confirm the charge for his room was on the right card because he no longer had it in his wallet. So they reversed the charge on the Southwest card and he had it charged to our Wells Fargo Amex.

He was trying to do the right thing, but it really was all okay. He didn't need to do anything. After the charge is reversed we are short by $95 of meeting the requirement. I charged $5 yesterday at Walmart, and signed my daughter up for the ACT exam in September for a charge of $38, so I need to spend another $52 before the statement closes in about a week. It should be no problem as I know I need gas for my van and we need to purchase rock for our landscaping.

I was thinking I could charge these, make the payment for the new charges and request a refund of the hotel charge in full which is over $200. But I realized the card likely won't let me make a payment if I already have a negative balance. I just need to make the charges needed (with our regular spending) and then request the $100 plus that will remain as a credit balance. I may not be able to do this until the card is closed.

The hotel charge that is now on the other card will get paid with the credit balance received and our regular spending cash that I would have spent on the things we buy anyway, but charged to the card. Make sense?

A complication to the whole process, but it all works out in the end! I think my husband panics about charges sometimes. If he could have texted me while on the call with customer service I would have been able to verify that the card the hotel charged was correct. But he didn't do that. I'm not just mad, but I do need to keep track of where we are and get it all corrected.

Fun times with the credit card rewards!!

My husband's paycheck is pending in our account, so I started paying bills. All of them are online!

I paid off the Southwest Rapid Rewards Visa card in full. I pulled money from savings for this one since it was the card I put my daughter's new computer on. The statement ends on the 23rd, so I should see my Rapid Rewards points soon after. Then it will be time to redeem more gift cards!!

I saved $57 in my Capital One 360 Savings account for the 52 Week Savings Challenge. That means I have now covered Weeks 1-19, and Weeks 38-52. This money is going to that band trip in the spring. I will easily have it funded by November!!

I paid our Target Red card that we put all of our groceries on, in addition to the Chase Freedom card that we put other expenses on when we aren't working on a particular bonus card. Chase Freedom is offering 5% cash back on gas stations this quarter. Our reward for this statement was over $15. We cannot redeem the rewards until they are over $20, so we have to wait awhile longer.

I also recorded the automatic savings for our Roth contributions of $458.33 each and $167 to each of our daughter's college fund. It is so easy to keep investing when the money is transferred automatically. I don't have to think about it much, except to record the transaction in our check register.

I paid an additional $275 to our mortgage, which is planned on the 15 each month. I added $40.64 in snowflakes for a total principal reduction of $315.64. Less debt! Yes.

The other good news is that I was able to set aside $231.78 in savings for this pay period. It may get pulled back out for some upcoming expenses, but it is there for later and that feels good.

The weather is cool, and way less humid this week, so I'm going to try to keep the windows open and the air conditioning off as much as possible, so save a few extra dollars. It does make one of my cats quite frisky smelling all that fresh air!

Did you pay extra on your mortgage this month? Are you using a rewards card to get cash back on gas this month? Are you still participating in the 52 Week Savings Challenge?

I paid our Verizon bill with my US Bank card so we can get 5% cash back. On this card you get to choose categories, and this quarter cell phone bills was one option for 5% back.

I'm now waiting for the statement to close, so the rewards will post. I will then have the rewards post as a credit, and pay the balance. The reward money will go to the mortgage!

I thought the statement would post yesterday, but it didn't happen. Sometimes you just want to pay a bill. Of course, I can pay the bill, but then the rewards would need to wait. I'll just wait a little longer for my rewards.

Do ever feel annoyed about getting a bill paid? Or is it just me?

I have a Pinecone survey waiting to be completed. That means I will have $3 to apply to my snowflake goal.

I redeemed Bing and Swagbucks points for Amazon gift cards awhile back. They have posted to my Swagbucks account and I have added them to Amazon. Ten dollars waiting to be spent!

I got my bathroom painting done yesterday. I do have some touch ups to do. The next project I will be working on is to make decorator pillow covers for my sister.

The girls and I need to do some shopping. They have a couple of semi dressy events coming up. I think we will look for dresses and hope for some clearance!! I'm also planning to treat them to lunch out since our errand will correspond with lunch time and it will be out of the way to drive all the way home after our first appointment today. The frugal me should just pack a lunch, but we rarely eat out, so I'm going for it.

As mentioned before, my husband is on the promotion list for Major. We are still waiting for orders that make it official. They are often issued at the first of the month. It didn't happen this month, so hoping for August! The plan is to save the money, but I need to figure out if some of that pay increase should be put towards retirement.

My only sale this week was the Box Tops. I didn't get items listed on Ebay on Tuesday night like I planned. There is a box of things ready to sell. I will try again soon to get more listed.

See? Random thoughts! Have you found a good clearance deal lately? Have you sold anything or found a little money (snowflake) recently?

We live in a state that charges us $0.05 bottle deposit on wine bottles, soda cans and bottles, and beer cans. We do consume these things so we have bottles that need to be returned a couple times a month to get our money back.

Today, my husband returned 53 bottles. At five cents each, he received $2.65 in cash. I let him keep the money.

I could ask that he give me the cash and make sure I get it applied to our mortgage pay down, but it really is easier to just let him spend it on his next purchase at the convenience store.

Aluminum cans can be collected in any state and sold by the pound to be recycle. It doesn't add up to a lot of money, but if you buy beverages in aluminum cans anyway the cash back can make a little dent in your snowflake goal.

Don't underestimate the power of the small savings! Do you purchase beverages in cans or bottles? Do you recycle them? Does your state charge a deposit when you make a purchase?

I participate in Lean Cuisine's rewards program, since I purchase these meals with some frequency. The outside cardboard packaging has a letter code printed on the inside that I need to enter into their website. Each code is worth 20 points in most cases.

The reward program offers some gift cards, magazines and many kitchen tools. I have redeemed for a reusable shopping bag, reusable sandwich bags, amazon gift cards, movie tickets, towels and wash clothes.

I recently learned that the program with Lean Cuisine is ending as of the end of 2014. This does seem to happen with many of these programs.

At one time I participated in Coke Rewards, but it became too tedious to keep up with my husband's soda consumption. I think the program still exists.

Some of the items I received from Lean Cuisine I was able to resell, other are in use in our home and others, like the gift cards were spent and counted as snowflakes!

Do you participate in a rewards program for any product? Tell us which ones and what you earn from participating? Are you a Lean Cuisine Rewards participant and did you know the program was ending?

Lots of posts today to catch up on all the things I like to keep you up to date on. Scroll down to see more updates!

In yesterday's mail I received a Naked Juice rebate check. I think it was actually for some sort of class action law suit and I'm pretty sure I heard it from Saving Advice owner, Jeffrey, on one of his blog posts. It was for $6.67. That makes for the first snowflake in July!

I also received $40 for referring a Savings Advice member to Capital One 360 accounts during the Independence Day sale. This is a snowflake, but I may just leave that money in my savings account with Capital One to go towards my daughter's band trip.

Have you found any snowflake or extra money since the beginning of the month? Are you expecting any snowflakes?

We paid $1015.16 towards the principal balance on our mortgage in the month of June. Considering we are looking to pay down nearly $14K on it this year, I feel really good about that much debt paid off in one month!

The debt paid off made up of the principal portion of our regular payment which was $464.60. At the same time I send in an extra $103.72 each month to round up the payment to an even amount. Later in the month on the next payday, I send in another $275 towards the principal. All other funds come from snowflake money which this month was $171.84.

So far this year, in just six short months, we have paid down $7,872.29 on our mortgage balance. That is 56% of our pay down goal in 6 months!! The goal is moving right along as planned. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how much beyond the goal we will get.

How much mortgage debt did you pay off in June? Or other debt paid? Are you ahead of your debt pay off for the year?

June was not as lucrative for snowflakes as some months, but I do know that we have earned $900 in credit card rewards that will hopefully be arriving in July. So no complaints to have saved and earned $171.84 in extra cash.

I didn't really work too hard for the June snowflakes. The credit card reward cards were spent on regular expenses and matched with cash to the mortgage. So pretty easy!

With the addition of June snowflakes, I have saved a total of $3,136.80 for the first half of the year. Considering my original goal for the entire year was $4,000 I'm way ahead of schedule. I did change the goal amount, but I need to go back and look to see what I changed it to. $6,000 or $8,0000 I think.

Here's where the snowflakes came from in June:



Did you beat me in snowflake accumulations? Were you close? Any amount of snowflake accumulation is a good thing in my book! High five to all of you.

We earned $27.72 in interest on our money market account in the month of June. Currently, we simply just leave our interest in the account to earn a little more interest and grow our savings. Since rates are so low, it does not add up fast.

I could pull the money out of this account each month, or even just twice a year and count them as a true snowflakes towards our debt reduction goal. An extra $300 or so off the mortgage wouldn't be a bad thing.

If you have your emergency fund in a savings account and are earning interest you might consider using the interest earned as a snowflake or extra payment towards your debt. This is especially a good idea if your interest on the debt is very high.

Do you count your interest earnings as a snowflake? Do you use your interest earned to pay down debt? Do you save your interest like I do?