Finding Money and Saving Money

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope everyone had a good week. This week turned out to be a pretty good money-finding week as well as some other fun stuff.

I found $11.05 this week, including $7.14 on Saturday with a $5.00 bill and $1.00 bill sitting right there for the taking on a main road. I love it. Also on Saturday, I saw a few sets of bunny ears and a My Little Pony doll. There must have been some Easter bar parties on Friday night and perhaps a little girl's play date as well. I hadn't seen a My Little Pony in years, didn't know they were still out there. None of those things were still there this morning so hopefully someone else is getting some use out of them. To add to my foreign money totals, I found another full euro coin.

This week was also a mini gold mine for coupons. I'm a big coupon clipper - nowhere near the people on TV- but I do enjoy getting the coupons from the Sunday paper and online websites. This probably doesn't come as much as a surprise as this blog is all about finding money. So when I can save money while running as well, I'll take it. On Thursday, I found two free drink coupons on any Southwest Airlines flight, which will come in quite handy as I am flying Southwest to a wedding in June. On Saturday, I found a $2.00 off coupon to Jewel, which also came in handy as I was planning on shopping there this weekend. Lastly, today I found a $25 off coupon to Sports Authority. To be fair, I saw about 10 of them because they are a giveaway at Cubs games, but I do need a few things from there, so that will also come in handy. Finding coupons isn't as fun as cold, hard cash, but it is a nice change of pace!

I look forward to sharing my monthyl total next week. Until then, have a great last week of April!

First Race of the Season

Yesterday I kicked off my "summer" racing season with a 10 mile race along the lakefront. It was pretty awesome with the 20 mph winds and cold rain for the first 5 miles. The rain stopped after the first half, but the wind did not. Oh well, I finished the race at a pretty easy pace and felt good afterwards. One thing I love about races is all of the sponsors set up afterwards giving away free stuff. I took home quite the stash of water, energy drinks, fruit and chips. Since I sacrificed a lucrative Saturday morning normal run, I guess I can't complain with what I got.

Since I did miss my Saturday run, my weekly total was $1.81. Not bad but not great either. This week I saw a fun big, fancy wig that I hope was part of a costume, a motorcycle kickstand just by itself and a book of CD's. The CD book had about 15 CD's in it including Missy Elliot Under Construction, Bob Marley's Greatest Hits, Alicia Keys Unplugged among others. If I had been walking I may have picked it up, but hopefully its owner was able to go back and find it.

Other than that, nothing too exciting this week. Have a great one!

Vodka Neat...on the Street

So I always see a lot of empty beer bottles, cans, liquor bottles and sometimes even wine bottles when I'm out running. Every once in a while one gives me pause and I wonder how it got there. This week, I saw a bottle of Grey Goose on the sidewalk. It was a big bottle and it wasn't near someone's porch, it was just randomly sitting on the sidewalk. So I have to wonder...someone spent some good money on a bottle of a vodka and then felt compelled to drink it on the sidewalk straight out of the bottle? If I splurge for the Grey Goose, I'm going to fake being classy and have some nice drinks in my house.

Now that may not be what happened, but that's the best I could come up with so I'm sticking with it. And, it's fun for me to picture someone drinking straight Grey Goose from the bottle, walking down the sidewalk, finishing it, setting it down and then continuing down the street. These may be the same people that drop their change on the ground.

Speaking of change on the ground...I found $7.97 this week, including a $5.00 bill. In the foreign money-finding department, I also found a Canadian penny, 20 Euro cents and what I'm assuming is some type of coin from Switzerland because it says Helvetica on it. All in all, another good week.

Until next time, have a great week!

A Quarter Down

I kinda can't believe that it's April already, a quarter of 2011 is over. It's been a great three months of finding money, and I've enjoyed sharing my findings on this blog. March was a great month for me with a total of $58.35 in found cash. Finding two twenties lead to that, but I'll take $18.35 by itself any month. I found 285 pennies in March, which is at least 100 more than I've ever found in a month before. Through the first quarter of the year I have $93.97. At this point last year I had $36.06, so I'll say it's been a good three months.

April is off to a good start as well. This week I found $11.76, including $8.05 today with a $5.00 bill and a $1.00 bill. With baseball beginning again, I love running by Wrigley Field the mornings after games. I don't always find money at that time, but my chances go way up.

I also saw some strange things this week, including an eyelash curler, two tubes of toothpaste (both about half full), the two of hearts (yay!), another full sheet cake and a package of brand new rain ponchos. I even found someone's paycheck. Luckily the person's address was on there so I mailed it to him.

Until next time, I hope everyone has a great week!