The Husband's Birthday!

Yesterday was the husband’s birthday!  And, like a fine wine, he is getting better with age although he continually reminds me that he is younger than I am—by 13 months and 2 days if it is not a leap year.

The husband has celebrated his birthday at sea as our first Disney Cruise was to celebrate him turning 40.  He has also celebrated his birthday at Walt Disney World as we took advantage of the special offers during one year of either getting a free ticket, a Disney gift card, or FastPasses for your group if you traveled to a Disney Park on your birthday.  We registered his birthday on-line to take advantage of the special.  We spent the evening at Hoop-Dee-Do Review and he had an extra special experience that he thought I had arranged but was all Disney magic at work.  (Click here toread more.)

Yesterday, we celebrated his birthday, just not as extravagantly.  I was actually challenging myself to see how much we could celebrate on less money.  Here’s what we did. . .

His favorite 3 pins

The day began with the husband getting his birthday gift.  50 Disney trading pins that I scored for FREE!  Amazon sells “lots” or groups of these pins and there was an offer of 50 pins for $39.95 that qualified for FREE shipping.  I just needed some Amazon gift cards to make the purchase.  I got the gift cards from 3 different programs.

MyCokeRewards offers a $10 Amazon gift card for 690 points at the “Silver Reward Level.”  If you haven’t started using MyCokeRewards, I highly recommend it.  Just grab some Coke product lids that have the codes inside or the codes from inside the 12-pack or larger products.  Even Powerade and Dasani Water have codes!

My Smartphone also helped me earn with the “Receipt Hog” app.  I downloaded the free app that is available for both I-Phone and Android and started “snapping” my receipts to earn coins.  The coins add up you can even earn more coins through “spins.”  Within a few weeks I was able to redeem my coins for a $10 Amazon gift card.  Earn 5 free spins when you join using code spud7623!

Swagbucks was another program I used to earn Amazon gift cards.  I earn Swagbucks when using it as a search engine—just like Google.  Users of Swagbucks can also earn through taking polls, entering Swagcodes released throughout the day, and playing videos.  The neat thing about Swagbucks is that you can earn on your computer but also by download the mobile apps for Swagbucks and Swagbucks TV.  I scored multiple Amazon gift cards through Swagbucks. Click here to get started using Swagbucks.

So, with all of that, the husband’s gift came for FREE!

Next, breakfast.  Coincidentally, a local grocery store was hosting a special Easter breakfast for the kids—12 and under—that allowed the kids to eat breakfast for free when an adult breakfast was purchased.  We took advantage and stacked on a few more coupons—free coffee, free drink, and a buy one meal, get another meal for ½ price.  When combining the boy’s free breakfast with the coupons used for the breakfast for both of us, our out of pocket cost was $10. 

Later in the day, we went to see the new DreamWorks movie “Home” featuring the voices of Jim Parsons (Sheldon on Big Bang Theory), Rihanna, and Jennifer Lopez.  The cost for admission for three of us—FREE!  Last fall we attended an open house of our local historical museum and won a door prize of free movie tickets.  There was a very long date for expiration and we kept a look-out as to what movies would not allow passes.  All pieces aligned yesterday and we very much enjoyed the movie. 

There you have it.  A great day, hopefully, for the husband with a gift he very much appreciated, a hearty meal, and a good movie.  All for $10.  And, according the husband, it’s not the price of the gift that counts, but the love behind it!