**With all the bills I charged this past month (MRI, summer school), I was able to redeem $100 to my ROTH this month.

**I was able to redeem $50 from our gas/groceries rewards, and so I added $50 to my next mortgage payment. (This one was also twice as much as usual, but you can only redeem in $25 increments, and I might have had $24 stored up from prior months. Kind of the same think with my ROTH bonus too).

**Not redeemed yet, but also got $152 in Capital One Bonuses.

My dad also signed up, but did not use my link. (My other friend also did not follow through or use link). SO, thank goodness I found two SA-ers for my bonus. THANK YOU!!

My dad offered to call and explain to get my bonus, but at that point it was only $20 per bonus. I was more concerned about the $76 bonus for two referrals, and so told him not to waste his time. It was okay. If nothing else, I think my Dad does enough for me that I don't want him wasting his time with that. If *I* could have called and taken care of it, I would have taken the $20! But, you know, I just had him wrestling with garbage disposal for several hours, the other day.

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I saw a tip on MyMoneyBlog. I could generally buy Amazon gift cards at grocery stores, and all my grocery store purchases get us 6% cash back. So that translates to a 6% discount on Amazon gift cards.

DUH - Why didn't *I* think of that?

The caveat is there is a $6,000 per year limit on these purchases. But, with our Target grocery shopping, we only do about $5,000 per year at actual grocery stores. So, I think $1,000 per year in Amazon gift cards (or other gift cards) is more than we would ever use. Will have to keep in mind for gifts, too.

Oh, so I had totally forgotten about this tip. Then dh tells me the other day about a convoluted Amazon affiliate thing you can set up to get discounts. Basically, it was recommended to sign up as an affiliate, have your friend sign up as an affiliate, and then buy through each others' links. (Since they generally catch on when you buy through your own affiliate link).

I told dh, "Um, how much would this save?" He said something like on average 4%. (Though sometimes a LOT more).

I said, "Um, or you could just buy Amazon gift cards at the grocery store and save 6%."

So, that jogged my memory...

(Overall, I think the affiliate thing sounds like way more hassle than it is worth).

So, anyway, then MIL said she was going to get the kids some Amazon gift cards for their birthday, so dh offered to pick them up and get reimbursed from her later. He picked up $50 today, so 6% of that will be another $3 to our mortgage in a couple of months. Yay!