Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Giveaways: Budget Stretcher or Waste of Time?

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Giveaways are nothing new.  Just read a handful of blogs and you’ll likely find plenty of giveaways.  But are they worth the time and effort?  Can you ever win something good?

I’ll be honest, my husband and I are digging out of a hole of debt.  The good news is that we’ve paid off over half of our debt.  Yeah!

However, we’ve reached a point where we firmly refuse to acquire any new debt.  Meanwhile, our car is 10 years old and has 150,000 miles on it, our 10 year old needs braces, and we’ve just had nearly $2,000 in medical and dental work. . .

Our money is stretched to the max.

GiveawaysSo, I decided to try my hand at giveaways.

Right now, we just don’t have a lot of extra money to pay for presents and fun items for the kids, so I thought giveaways could be a good way to get some of the luxuries we can’t afford.

So far, in three months (December through February), I’ve won 5 prizes:

  • A $50 Visa gift card
  • A board game for my 10 year old ($29.95 RV)
  • A $10 bookstore gift card
  • A movie
  • A book

During these past three months, I entered 47 giveaways, meaning I won 10% of the giveaways I entered.  Not bad.

How Much Time Do I Spend Entering Giveaways

I know there are some people that spend A LOT of time entering giveaways, but I don’t have time for that.  Instead, I enter giveaways once or twice a week for 30 to 60 minutes at a time.  I often enter the giveaways when my kids are watching television in the afternoon (they get an hour a day of tv time), or in the evening when I’m too tired to do anymore work.  (Unlike just vegging and watching Netflix, entering giveaways has the prospect of giving me something back.)

I don’t enter giveaways just to enter giveaways.  Instead, I focus on ones that offer cash or gift cards (though these are the most competitive and difficult to win), ones that have products my kids would like or that would make nice gifts, and ones that offer homeschool curriculum.

If you want to start entering giveaways, deciding what you would like to focus on winning is a good way to limit the amount of time you spend entering giveaways.

Where I Find Giveaways to Enter

To maximize my time entering giveaways, I try to enter ones that have low entries.

I have found some Facebook groups to join where people advertise their giveaways.

Another site I love is Tightwad in Utah.  She lists low entry giveaways that are ending in the next week.

If you’d like to enter giveaways and don’t really care if they’re low entry or not, you can use this link or this link to find linkies for giveaways from a wide array of bloggers.

Finally, if there is a blogger who routinely offers the types of giveaways you’d like to win, make sure to come back and visit the site regularly.  Chances are that entry requirements for the giveaway are to like the site’s Facebook or Twitter pages.  Just do this once, and for every subsequent giveaway on that blog, you’ve already met those requirements.

I don’t expect to get rich from entering giveaways or even to be able to supply all of my kids’ presents.  However, it is nice to get free stuff in the mail, especially if some of it can be used to offset the expense of Christmas and birthday presents.

Do you enter giveaways?  Why or why not?  If you do, how much success have you had?  How much time do you spend entering giveaways?

Are You a “Frugaler”?

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Ok, I’ll admit it, I made that word up. Well, at least as it would be a name instead of an action/habit.  It occurred to me while watching an episode of Wife Swap on Friday evening.  You’ve seen it, or a show like it, I’m sure.  They take the wives from two families and then the wives swap families.  The producers make sure that you get maximum drama by making sure that the families and wives are polar opposites.

In the episode that I watched, the one family lived in Florida and basically partied all the time.  The other family, however, was a different story.  They were “Sweepers”.  No, they don’t use a broom or even a swiffer.  A “sweeper” (article on sweeping) is someone who devotes a large block of time on a regular basis to entering sweepstakes.  And this family was nutzo about it.  They claimed to spend 8-10 hours a day on sweep related tasks.  From sending letters off to entering them online, they had made it a full time job.  They even went about collecting pop tops and candy bar wrappers for chances to win those contests.  Crazy, right?

Sure, but maybe not as crazy as you think.  In the end, the “sweepers” agreed that they maybe, might, kinda have a bit of an addiction.  And the cut back a little on the “sweeping”.  Nearly happy endings for all involved.  The husband still gets antsy when the mail truck doesn’t stop with new sweeps to enter.

This all led me to think about things that can become just as much of an addiction.  Actions for making a quick buck or getting something for much less than normal.  That’s what “sweeping” is.  It’s the action of entering contests and sweeps in an effort to win things that you couldn’t normally buy.  Something for nothing, or little to nothing after you figure in stamps.  We won’t talk about the time spent.

You know what else that sounds like though?  Frugality.  Being “frugal” is the action of finding the best/easiest ways to save oneself some money.  To get something for much less than normal.  It’s the action of using coupons and sales and saving methods in an effort to pay less than retail for an item or service.  Something for nothing, or little to nothing is the goal.

Does that sound familiar to you?  Do you spend time on a regular basis surfing through the deal forums in search of a great deal on something you need?  Do you clip every coupon you get in case you need a Belgian Waffle Maker someday before the coupon expires?  Or, do you clip every coupon you get for the purpose of trading them with others for coupons you need?  Or, maybe you refinanced your $300 loan for that 0.25% rate drop to save the $1 in interest. (that’s not a scientific calculation, please don’t try and correct it. It’s for dramatic effect.)  You just might be (gasp!) a “Frugaler”.

Them “Sweepers” don’t sound as crazy now, do they?