Shake your Money-Maker... a Rebate deal to get me started!

I saw this on http://moneysavingmom.com/ this morning. I think this will be a nice way to start my earnings!

Buy 3 Shout 4-pack Travel Size Wipes at $0.97 each (I have seen these at Target)

Use 3 $0.55/1 coupon from the 3/21 SmartSource insert (no size restrictions)

Spend $1.26 plus tax out of pocket (about $1.43 with tax in Idaho I believe)

...then submit for the $5 SC Johnson Rebate (factor in $.44 postage to mail)

Free plus a profit of approximately $3.13 after coupons and rebate

(Thanks, Common Sense with Money!)

An Idea is Born...

As a Stay-At-Home-Mom, I am always looking for ways to save money, earn money, or get something for free, so when I heard about the $20 Bill Challenge on a blog I found today, Life As I See It at http://paulsbride.blogspot.com/2010/04/20-bill-challenge.html , I couldn't wait to get started!

The idea is this: start out with a $20 bill and see how you can use that money to make more! The challenge part comes in when you and your spouse/significant other compete to see who can make the most out of their money by a certain date. I haven't totally convinced my hubby yet but he's pretty competitive so I think I'll get him on that aspect alone :)

Payday is Friday so I'll have to wait patiently to get my nice crisp greenback. But until then I will be busy plotting my first plan of attack.

Here are a few ideas I have come up with already:

Buy 20 lottery tickets and hope for the best (gotcha! but maybe I will buy one here and there... when my numbers are in the black of course)

Buy a few supplies to make hair-bows and sell them. I already have most of what I will need since I have made these in the past.

Bake-sale! I never hear about these anymore; not sure why but I LOVE the idea of all those yummy treats all together in one place (wiping away drool now)... of course, I may end up eating my profits.

Sell some used books and DVDs on www.half.com . I would need to use a few bucks for envelopes for shipping, but should be able to recoup most of that.

REBATES! I just started couponing in February, but I'm hooked (like I-might-need-a-12-step-program hooked). There are a lot of times you can actually make money by buying certain products. A recent example of this was on Scrubbing Bubbles. I used coupons, in-store sales and gift-cards, along with mail-in rebates and made about $9.00 to buy 6 cans of cleaning products.

So there's just a few of my ideas. I hope you'll follow me and even start your own challenge. I would love to hear how this goes for everyone.