A number friends are have or are expecting babies this year - if that's you, you'll find this helpful - it will save you lots of money!

I was buying a peapod* because our pack-and-play broke when I came across diapers.com. It's a great place for diapers, but also for baby and kid supplies in general.

I just bought a box of pampers that works out to $0.13 per diaper! Thirteen cents!

• The prices are the same as or less than Babies R Us, and shipping is free.
• You can use manufacturer's coupons for diapers! (You mail them your diaper coupons, and they'll add them to your account)
• There's lots of coupons here.
• If you put in my referral code: JGRE1366 , you get $10 off your first order, and I get $1 off my next order :) Then you get a referral code you can give out to your friends.
  
• If you go to this link to get there, through bing.com, you'll get 3-10% cashback, on top of the coupons and low prices!
  

Oh, and a peapod is basically a tent for a baby or little kid with a little inflating mattress inside. It folds up to be very small and light, not as bulky as a pack-n-play. I couldn't find it anywhere locally, so I've bought it online after reading a ton of reviews - all very positive. Here's what it is:

I recommended WaMu as a bank in the past, but the bank is under new ownership and everything has gone downhill.

• 1% on what used to be 4% interest on savings .
  
• $12 fee that they refuse to refund for what used to be free overdraft transfers from savings to checking so I could keep my money in savings and have it automatically transfer over as needed.
• They closed my accounts and re-opened them with different account numbers so several checks bounced and electronic payments were canceled.

Move to another bank that gives free checks for life and better service.

A superbowl party wasn't the best way to start No Spend February. We dropped some good cash at the grocery store on February 1. Also this week we had my high school small group over to watch Ironman (blu-ray), and we made food for them. That cost us some cash too, but the guys pitched in a few bucks each, which helped some.

Other than that, we've been very good. We've spent some cash on produce and milk, but nothing on household supplies, home improvement or clothes, and instead of our weekly dinner date we went to Starbucks. That saved us $10-15 right there (we always share a dish when we eat out, so it's not that expensive normally).

We've also been discovering what frozen, canned and boxed foods we have. What we have to eat largely depends on what we have in the pantry rather than what we're hungry for.

February is exactly 4 weeks long, so we're 25% done. I hope we can save up some money to give away at the end of the month. It's only 3 more weeks of not spending.

Along with some friends, we're spending as little money as possible this February to sacrifice to give money away to the Denver Rescue Mission or some other non-profit. Inspired by our study of the Gospel of John, we're applying what we learn rather than leaving it in the realm of the theoretical.

We're eating lots of simple food, hitting Starbucks for our dinner date instead of a restaurant (and even then just buying a tall tea instead of a grande hot chocolate) and having friends pitch-in for lunch at our house on Sundays instead of going out to eat.

We're skimping on household supplies, home improvement is suspended for the month, our milk delivery and Netflix are on hold. No clothes purchases for the month, no miscelaneous/fun spending money.

This isn't an exercise in budgeting, it's about sacrificial giving.

It was surprising at how easy it was to say "I don't have anything to give" or "I don't have any expenses I can cut back on."

It ought not take long to see the sin in that. Has God not provided for our needs? Has God not commanded us to be generous? I was able to give money to church, even if it was only $1/week when I was in college and unemployed. How selfish is it to believe that God hasn't provided enough to me for me to be obedient to the command of generosity?

So, in addition to helping people by sacrificing this month, hopefully it will help us get away from believing the lie that we have nothing to give, and that we can't trust God so we have to hoard everything he gives us.

I signed up for mint.com a few months ago and love it with few reservations. I highly recommend it if you haven't found a good and simple way to track your expenses and investments.

Mint.com signs into your online bank, credit card, mortgage, and investment accounts, and downloads all of your transactions into one place - whether you wrote a check, paid with a credit card, or earned interest in your bank, you see it all at once, in one place.

The service currently monitors for me:

• 5 checking accounts
• 7 savings accounts
• 6 credit cards
• 3 investment accounts (1 IRA and 2 401Ks)
• mortgage loans
  

Mint.com alerts me when my credit card interest rates or credit limits changes, and even 5 days before a credit card payment is due.

I've also set up a basic budget with mint.com, and it emails me and sends me an sms text message the moment it finds out about transactions that put me over budget in a given category.

Here's other things you can do:

• Edit the names and categories of transactions
• Split a transaction into multiple parts to categorize it differently.
  
• Create new categories for transactions that aren't built-in
• Compare the history of your investment accounts against the stock market
• Compare your accounts to others to make better interest, or get better credit card rewards.

*No, I don't get paid to blog about this, or get referral bonuses, just writing about a service I like and I think you'll like.

Days I've Blogged in a Row: 2 (100%)

Winning the lottery is contributing to and profiting from this system that manipulates people's weaknesses to their severe detriment. The same holds for casinos. They work to get people addicted to gambling, then they use that to rob the people blind.

But is all gambling/betting wrong?

If I invest in Google because I want them to use my money to build a better company, and get me a return on my money - that's not gambling. But if I invest in Google to buy-low-sell-high, then I am gambling on the market. Then I don't care what they do with my money, I just want to gamble on the market and pull some money out.

That's what happens with my IRA and your 401k every day.

What brought this up is the future markets at intrade.com . You can buy (you want shares to go up) or sell (you want shares to go down) on possibilities for the future. Today I could sell you a share of "Obama wins the election" for $6, and if he wins the election, you get $10 - a profit of $4 per share from me, or if he loses, I keep the $6 you paid me to buy the share. You can sell your shares at any time to try to make money or cut your losses.

Is that gambling? Seems to be. Is that wrong?

If it is wrong, doesn't that means it's wrong to have a retirement account that works the same way by trading stocks to try to make a profit?

Let me know what you think (comment form).

View all Money Maven Monday postsHave you ever tried searching the web for store coupons? Most search results are junk pages from 'coupon websites' that don't have any coupons.

Ends up there are a lot of people who search the web for deals, and they've started forums in a few places. My favorite is Slickdeals.net , another is fatwallet.com .

Just a couple of things I've done within the last 30 days thanks to Slick Deals:

• Saved $30 on fish and supplies for my aquarium from Petsmart with printable coupons
  
• Have a rebate coupon to get 4 free movie tickets for spending $3 at Del Taco on my American Express card
• Found Lord of the Rings hardcover boxed set for $10 at Barnes & Noble online store (with coupons from the forum)
  
• Compared interest rates on dozens of banks

It's worth a shot to search the slick deals forum before making your next purchase.

Free is always a good price for the buyer. So when you're the buyer, why not get it for free?

Craig's List
Craig's List (free online classifieds) has a free section for every city, so you can give away stuff, or pick up stuff that other's are giving away. We gave away our old fridge for free on Craig's List, and I got 3 emails about it within 10 minutes, and it was picked up that night.

I'm currently keeping an eye out for free bricks for a landscaping/curb appeal project for this summer, but there's all kinds of free stuff. The Denver Free stuff is here.

Free After Rebate
I've forgotten to send in the majority of rebate items I've purchased, but it's really worth it if you can take the time to address, stamp, and stuff an envelope. You fill out a form with your name and address, a copy of the receipt, and the UPC cut out from the item, and 8 weeks later you'll receive a check in the mail.

Freeafterrebate.info is the best site I've found for rebates. Everything on this site is $5 or less after rebate, and there's some nice stuff on there. Mostly tech stuff, but if you need some writable DVDs, a new keyboard, or a variety of other things, it's worth a look.

(As always, this post is personal opinion only, and not paid for by anyone.)

Ok, maybe not everything is cheaper online, but most things.

Most major online retailers have affiliate programs - if you send a visitor from your website to their store, and a purchase is made, they'll give you a percentage of the purchase price.

A few websites will give you some or all of that cash. I'll mention 2 today, that I use.

• Ebates - Tons of stores, great rates, and they automatically send you your cash quarterly. To date I've gotten $127 cash back in the last few years by using Ebates.com. Ebates is also a great source for coupons - search for a product or a store, and see what web coupons are available.
  
  Some sites for cashback from ebates: Buy.com, Old Navy, Barnes & Noble, Babies R Us...
  
  Sign up and you'll get $10 for free!
  

• ExtraBux - Extrabux does essentially the same thing, but with different cashback rates and some different stores. I bought Rosetta Stone language-learning software and am getting 12% cash back! Instead of paying quarterly, they hold each purchases' cashback for so many days, after which you can get a payout.
  
  Some sites for cash back from extrabux: Ebay, Walmart, priceine, skype, Best Buy, iTunes!
  
  Sign up for extrabux for cash back.
  

This blog post has not been sponsored or paid for by anyone - it is a personal blog post only.

I've done most of my banking at ING direct and Presidential Bank - out of state banks that offered much higher interest than anything local.

Both ING and Presidential have lowered their interest rates, which makes Washington Mutual one of the best bets for interest on personal savings, with online Savings with no minimum balance getting 4% Interest!

So, if you have any money in savings, and you're getting the average .25%, why not get 8 times that much interest at WaMu?

The customer service has so far been amazing as well.

Looking for banks? Check out:

• bankrate.com
  

I've learned not to over-commit, and when it comes to my blog, every commitment tends to be an over-commitment. So who knows how long I'll post Monday Money Maven tips, but here's #1. Yes, it was posted on a Tuesday.

Combine Liberty Bell and Grand Central to Save Money and get Better Service.

Liberty Bell:
Tom Martino is a consumer advocate - If you have a complaint about a company he will look into it for you, and he keeps a referral list of good companies with great customer service at referrallist.com.

Like the rest of us, Tom Martino had bad experiences with Qwest's customer service, so he started Liberty Bell Telecom. Liberty Bell resells Qwest services. While Qwest will still maintain the lines and send out technicians if there is a problem, but you only deal with Liberty Bell's customer service. In addition, instead of having to choose 3 features, you get all of them (call forwarding, caller id, etc.).

The service cost $6-8.50 less, but the voicemail is $6.

Meanwhile, GrandCentral provides free local phone numbers, free call forwarding, free voicemail, and much more. (Check out the list of features below.)

Today I had Liberty Bell change the settings on the line so after 4 rings the line forwards to my GrandCentral number instead of Liberty Bell's voice mail.

	1 Line	2 Lines
Cost Before	29.99	39.99
Cost Now	21.50	34.00
Monthly Savings	8.49	5.99
% Saved	28%	15%
Annual Savings	$101.08	$71.88

If you find this information useful, and choose to sign up with Liberty Bell, please give them my phone number as your referral - please contact me or click the link below to call me through GrandCentral.

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Here's the list of features for the two services mentioned today:

Liberty Bell

GrandCentral

Anonymous Call Rejection 3-way calling 900 - 976 Blocking Call Forwarding Call Rejection Call Waiting Call Waiting Caller ID Caller ID Caller ID Blocking Continuous Redial Custom Ringing Last Call Return Long Distance Alert Priority Call Speed Calling 30 Speed Calling 8 Selective Call Forwarding

Free local number of your choice Forward to multiple phone numbers with each call - whichever you pick up first gets the call Screen callers Listen in before taking the call Record calls on the fly and access recordings online Block selected callers Receive voicemail notifications via email or SMS One number that rings different phones based on who's calling Transfer a call from one of your phones to another mid-call. Different Greetings for Friends, Family, Work Contacts, etc. Access voicemail online or over the phone Cool web buttons like the one used above to allow people to call you without revealing your phone number.