Family "Cents": ideas

We don't do "Halloween" so much in my household, but we did allow our little one to dress up as something "good" for his school. I don't decorate with ghosts and witches, but usually fall decorations. Even so, I still manage to find some things in the Halloween clearance for other things.

Be on the lookout for clearanced Halloween items. Everything from costumes and decorations, to candy and treats are being discounted.

I found at my local Kroger and Kmart, all of their Halloween merchandise was 50% off yesterday, while a friend of mine found Walgreens had theirs at 75% off.
"Halloween" things you can find on clearance with other uses:

Princess costumes are great gifts for little girls that like to play dress up and there's no better time to find them for next to nothing.
Super hero costumes costumes are great for boys as well
You can often find fall decorations mixed in with the Halloween ones. It depends on your tastes, but sometimes they have tablecloths, pumpkins, baskets and such.
Noisemakers... my girlfriend found some of these this year & thought they may make good Christmas gifts for some of the kids. They were meant to go along with costumes, but could be used just for make believe.
Candy... that's a given I know, but I often find that the outer wrappers are "Halloween" so they discount it, but the inner wrappers are normal so could be used for other things such as making little gift/goody bags for Christmas. Let your child help you and let them take some to their friends.

For other frugal ideas about toys this week,
check out works-for-me wednesday.

I don't know how all of you that are coupon & rebate gurus do your rebates, but I often find myself having trouble spending my allocated grocery money on rebates items even when they will be free. I have always tried to use my grocery money on them and when I get the money back I put it back into my grocery money whenever I cash it out.

I think my problem in not purchasing the freebie items is having that cash that I wouldn't have spent tied up for 6-12 weeks. It just doesn't work for me.

My answer? As I cash the incoming rebates checks they will have a separate envelope in my coupon box for me to use only to purchase rebate items. This way I will have a revolving fund to use on rebates and won't feel the guilt in tying up the money in the grocery fund for this.

I just went last week to cash the several checks I had waiting for a trip to the bank and I have close to $15 in that fund to get me started. I realize that sometimes I may have to still pull from my grocery $ to help supplement the rebate purchases, but won't feel the pressure to make the grocery budget work, and won't miss the extra $2-$5 here and there returning from rebates.

Now I know that this won't work for me on stores like Walgreens and Menard's, but those rotate already... huh...novel idea :)

Why didn't I think of that before?