I have a bit of a confession and a big lesson learned for anyone reading this.

For the past couple years, I’ve been living at home helping my mom with her finances. Living at home definitely has it’s perks. I won’t lie. One of those perks I took advantage of was not having bills. Aside from the $900 I gave her each month, I had very few “bills” and even then they were more like conveniences (Netflix, Birchbox, etc.) The result – I blew my money away like no tomorrow. If I saw something, I bought it. A trip to the grocery store for dinner for one night might have been $40 bucks. Seriously what was I thinking?

Word to the wise: don’t do what I did. I’d be in a much better situation without the $2K in debt. Thankfully that’s all I have.

Fast forward to today, I’m looking to buy a home. If my offer on this home goes through, by the time closing comes, I’ll have nearly $13,000 in the bank to put towards a small downpayment, a part of closing costs and some minor expenses when I move in. All I can think of is had I saved my money instead of blowing it, I’d have more money to put down, and more money for repairs afterwards. But, live and learn.

So not wanting to put more money on credit cards and wanting to be as thrifty as possible, I’ve started getting creative with options, and here’s what I’ve accumulated over the past week and all for free:

– $95 in Home Depot gift cards from Nielsen Mobile Rewards and MyPoints

– a side by side fridge

– a George Foreman grill – why not?

– a blender

– a full set of silverware

– gifts of $2500 from family – THANK YOU!

Sure it’s just a start and it’s going to take work to get everything that I want done, but even so that’s significant amount of savings that I won’t need to be paying out of pocket or on credit cards when I move in, which means more money left over that can go towards the new floors and saving for other improvements and paying down the credit cards.

In fact knowing I made nearly $5 in Amazon gift cards this afternoon alone gives me hope that provided I curtail my spending {I have to…}, stop buying retail first and check out thrift stores, and find other means to do things has given me a new goal – Try to pay for everything on Amazon with gift cards and cash back offers as much as possible.

Next on the list, sell some of my old things I don’t use – tons of American Eagle Jeans and other clothes, a full size Yamaha digital piano, an acoustic guitar, some old text books, and a few other gadgets here and there.

It won’t be instantaneous, but slow and steady is going to have to win my race because as far as I know, I’m not getting a raise anytime soon {although if any of my employers are reading this, one would certainly help out the financials :)}.

Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully I have good news shortly.