Grow Your Fund is a daily post that gives you a chance to win prizes by checking in on all the various challenges you are participating in. You can choose to participate in one, two or even all of the challenges giving you even more opportunities to Grow Your Fund!
The Challenges
No Dining Out: The concept is simple, lower your family’s dining out bill and add the money you save to your fund.
Minniemizing for the Mouse: Get in shape for your trip to Disney by walking at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. The average person walks 8 or more miles a day at Disney World. Your feet will thank you!
Not going to Disney? Don’t worry. You can participate too. Just commit to working out at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week!
Budget Challenge: Can your family stay on budget this month for groceries, entertainment, dining, etc? Do you think you could even challenge yourself not to spend a dime 5 days this month? Be sure to report on your spending vs your budget every day. The goal is to be able to add the extra money saved at the end of the month to your fund!
*If you haven’t set a budget yet, you might want to check out this post.
Decluttering Challenge: Is your stuff starting to overtake your house? Do you feel like your kids room is full of too much junk and not enough fun? If so, I challenge you to find a new home for just 25 items a day for the next 30 days. This could be 25 articles of clothing, 25 books you no longer read, 25 toys your kids ignore. Have a box for items to donations, a box for items to sell and throw the rest away! At the end of the challenge, have a yard sale and add the earnings to your fund!
The prizes
At the end of each month, I will pick FOUR winners who will each receive $25 to add to their fund. Look for the winners to be announced on the 3rd of each month.
How to enter
Leave a comment with the title of the challenges it is for. You can participate in one, two, three or even all four challenges. There will be one winner per challenge, and winners can win multiple times! It’s all done by using Random.org, so if your number comes up and you are eligible, you win! In order to be eligible to win, you must actively participate in the challenge for at least FIVE calendar days.
Click below for even more details on each challenge…
No Dining
- Take a look at your current dining out budget. How much did you spend last month going out to eat? That is money that could have gone into your fund instead! Try cutting your out to eat costs this month and adding the difference to your fund.
- Set a weekly dining out budget, if you resist going out to eat, add that amount to your fund instead.
- If you were seriously about to go out to eat (like had your coat on and was going out the door or pulled into the drive thru and then pulled back out), add the amount you would have spent to your fund.
- Going out to eat and using a coupon or paying with a gift card? You could add that amount to your fund too. For example… if you had a $25 gift card to Cracker Barrel and you used it, you could take $25 cash out of your budget and add it to the fund. Or if you used a $10 coupon, you could take $10 cash out of the budget and add it to the fund.
- You must challenge yourself. Try to spend less than you spend now. If you don’t go out to eat at all, challenge yourself to try new meals this month. As long as you are challenging yourself when it comes to your family’s eating habits, you can participate!
- You are allowed 1 freebie meal that you don’t have to count or report back to us about. Please report on everything else though so we can encourage and support one another!
- Free meals do not count against you. This is a challenge to spend less money going out to eat than you usually spend. If someone else is paying for the meal or you have a coupon to make it free, great!
- At the end of the month, you will need to comment on the very last post to be entered to win. I will choose the winner from that post and verify that you have commented on at least 5 days worth of posts. The comments must of occurred on 5 DIFFERENT days. Meaning if on the 30th, you commented on that post and then went back and commented on 4 days worth of posts, you would be disqualified. You must comment on 5 different posts on 5 different days.
Minniemizing for the Mouse
- I need to get fit for the mouse. My feet hurt so bad from all that walking and for once I’d love to experience Disney without being in pain. We are going in November, so I am hoping to make a big lifestyle change between now and then. I can’t do it alone and so I need the help from all of you!
- Check in each day and report on your progress. The goal is to exercise for at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. For those of us going to Disney, walking for those 20 minutes is a great way to not only get in shape, but prepare our feet.
- It really doesn’t matter what you do as long as you are moving!
- At the end of the month, you will need to comment on the very last post to be entered to win. I will choose the winner from that post and verify that you have commented on at least 5 days worth of posts. The comments must of occurred on 5 DIFFERENT days. Meaning if on the 30th, you commented on that post and then went back and commented on 4 days worth of posts, you would be disqualified. You must comment on 5 different posts on 5 different days.
Budget Challenge
- Everyone needs a budget. Budgets will help you to be in control of your money without your money being in control of you. You dictate where your money goes and how it is spent.
- Don’t have a budget? I’ve written a few articles that should help you set one… How to Set a Budget and How to Set a Grocery Budget. You’ll find even more helpful advice under Getting Started Couponing and Your Fund.
- Each day, check in and let us know how much you spent the day before and if you stayed under budget or not. We aren’t here to critique your budget (unless you ask!), but we are here to support you in staying on track!
- Also feel free to include bargain brags. Did you find a great deal or do something creative to save money, be sure to share it with all of us!
- At the end of the month, you will need to comment on the very last post to be entered to win. I will choose the winner from that post and verify that you have commented on at least 5 days worth of posts. The comments must of occurred on 5 DIFFERENT days. Meaning if on the 30th, you commented on that post and then went back and commented on 4 days worth of posts, you would be disqualified. You must comment on 5 different posts on 5 different days.
Decluttering Challenge
- It doesn’t take long for the stuff to start taking over your home. The kids rooms start overflowing with broken, neglected and just plain weird no idea where they came from toys. Your stockpile starts to spread from the kitchen, to the hall, to your bathtub. You start finding that the home for more and more items is the middle of your living room floor. Etc!
- It can be overwhelming to take on the task of decluttering your home, but the end rewards are so worth the effort. To make the process easy, I challenge you to find just 25 items every day to find a new home for. Get a box labeled donations, one labeled to sell, and one for trash. Go through 25 items a day and either put it in one of the 3 boxes or find a new permanent place for it.
- At the end of 30 days, you will have an organized home and you can have a yard sale to add more money to your fund!
- Be sure to post every day that you have gone through your 25 items and found a new home for them. Don’t just put them back where they don’t belong.
- At the end of the month, you will need to comment on the very last post to be entered to win. I will choose the winner from that post and verify that you have commented on at least 5 days worth of posts. The comments must of occurred on 5 DIFFERENT days. Meaning if on the 30th, you commented on that post and then went back and commented on 4 days worth of posts, you would be disqualified. You must comment on 5 different posts on 5 different days.
Good luck!
Michele says
Minniemizing – Worked out for 30 minutes to 30 Day Shred (Level 3).
No eating out – Ran errands out of town all day long so did eat at BK. DD earned FREE hamburger and FREE soft drink at summer reading program so that did help.
Budget – WOW!! Did great at CVS, Walgreen’s and Wal-Mart. Got free Carefree liners, free band-aids, free Rayovac batteries (plus overage), Twizzlers for .50, FREE $10.00 gas card, FREE Pringles, .50 Arizona Tea (to drink while running errands). The BEST buy came when I had $13.00 in overage at Wal-Mart and used it to buy corn on the cob and steak. DH grilled out! Thanks to Couponing to Disney for allowing me to snag these deals!!! Thanks for all you do, Kristen!! Got FREE frozen coke refills with our cups and added $3.00 to Disney fund (we are adding $1.00 each time we fill our cups).
Amy says
Minimize: Played softball for an hour
No dining out: made dinner tonight!
Declutter: Found some old clothes that I can’t wear anymore for our upcoming yard sale – yeah!!
Sara says
No Dining:
Been doing awesome. We just had our baby girl last Tuesday, so we haven’t eaten out once. :) My mom did come visit and buy us Panda Express for dinner last night, though.
Budget:
Had to pull out of savings for a breast pump–turned out it was kind of vital. But I happened to get the one I wanted during a sale at Target, so I saved $25, so that stayed in the savings! And now breastfeeding is going much better so it was worth it.
Gina says
No dining-Well we did great over the weekend and didn’t go out to eat at all. We had leftovers and grilled out and made due.
Minniemize-Did my 30 day shred thurs. or Fri.-can’t remember and went on a walk with my son and he wanted to race so we did. We sprinted 5 times and it was awesome!!!!!!!!!! I use to be in track and got lots of ribbons because I was fast. Still remember how I beat all the kids in my 6th grade class-including the boys. My gym teacher told me starting in junior high that I should go out for track and so I did. Anyway haven’t run fast in ages and boy was that great-it just all came back to me.I have tried jogging and i HATE it. I guess I’ll always be a sprinter. Just wish they had races-you know the equivalent of marathons for adults. If you’re not going to be in the Olympics or anything I don’t think they have anything like that.
Elyse says
Dining Out – Went to IKEA for lunch for the free meal deal with my student ID. I had to return a small item, but kept putting it off and this was a good excuse to go. So, in a way, IKEA paid me $2.11 to come have a meal when I returned my small item :-)
Budget – Bought one small thing for my wedding at Michael’s with the 40% coupon.
Decluttering – Have a nice pile that should be gone to the donation bin by the end of this week.
Minnimize – 20 minute run on the treadmill and 10 minutes on the elliptical, plus some arm presses. Trying my best to stay wedding dress ready!
Tammy S says
Minniemize-took kiddos to the park yesterday and walked around for about one hour.
Wendy says
Minimize: Walked with DD tonight for an hour
No dining out: Leftovers for us tonight!
Budget: Blown already this week. My dog injured his tail tonight. Looks like we are going to the vet tomorrow.
Declutter: Finding some more odds and ends for our upcoming yard sale….I cannot believe how much is leaving my house- yay!!
Tiffany S says
Minniemize me – Managed to hit 5 miles on the elliptical today. Took my 60 minutes workout plus only 2 minutes of cool down. I was quite pleased. : )
dawn says
minniemize– today i had a very busy day…. worked out and chased my kids LOL
dining out– today was leftover day :)
declutter– donated 2 bags of clothes we no longer use
budget– i didn’t shop today therefore i couldn’t go over budget :)
Lisa says
No Dining Out
No dining out for us. I used the free school lunch program offered during summers on the military base for the boys and brought a salad for myself. We made seasoned meat, beans and guacamole for dinner.
Minniemizing
I started the final month of the Insanity program today. I had positive gains on my fitness test but didn’t do well on the new intense cardio video. But I didn’t give up, and I have a feeling that continual work this month will lead to great achievement.
Latasha says
Decluttering—-yesterday I cleaned out a closet and found several really great items to list on Ebay. I also listed my first item every on Ebay so wish me luck. : )
Dinning Out—we did not dine out yesterday we wanted to but we fought the urge. My husband and I had lunch today but we received a discount since I work for a public service employer.
Renea Pike says
We are doing great in all catergories :)!
Barbie says
I’m doing some catch up here:
No Dining Out: With the exception of 2 take and bake pizza’s on Friday (my husband blackened the first one so we had to get a second one that we could actually eat) we have not been out to eat in a week.
De-clutter: I did get a lot organizing done. My main floor is looking great. I need to finish organizing my kitchen, but not today and then on to the next floor.
Budget: Everything I have saved is now going to my medical expenses. I am sad that I won’t get my new living room furniture. Maybe for Christmas. Speaking of Christmas we are down to 180 days until Christmas. EEEK! So much shopping to do.
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
Wow! I can’t believe Christmas is only 180 days away!
Heather says
Budget
no spending yesterday!
No Dining
no dining out yesterday
Minniemize
walked the dog and ran on the treadmill for 30 mins
Charity L. says
Minniemize: I lost 1 lb last week. But, since I wasn’t feeling great, I didn’t go to Jazzercise as much and I wasn’t tracking, so not too bad considering.
Dining Out: We ate out Saturday but my grandmother treated us. We left the tip though.
Kristin says
No dining out: Made it all day yesterday even though I grumbled and moaned about how I didn’t want to cook dinner. I ended up making beef stroganoff, and I was glad we ended up eating at home. I will be interested to see what the hubby makes for dinner tonight!
Bethany M says
No dining out :) and no exercising :( yesterday.
Saturday I went to Once Upon A Child and made a little over $20 for some of my daughter’s clothes. I still have 4 boxes left tho that I put on Craigslist. Need to declutter!
Tracey says
No dining out – Tonight is Turkey burgers on the grill Squash out of the garden and Sweet tea
Budget – No money spent today – Got 5 squash out of the garden made 2 squash casseroles – froze one. 3 zuchinnies for zuchinnie bread – in the freezer – also was a good girl and brought a salade for lunch at work today :)
Declutter – 2 drawers in my dresser – found a 10.00 gift card to Wal Mart (no expiration date) – will use when we go on Vacation
Angela N says
No dining out – mission accomplished
Budget – Got my credit score but, it was no surprise that it was about what I expected. Reviewed last week’s grocery expenses for the challenge and it was $56 which wasn’t too bad considering I have been stocking up on chicken breast. Went to CVS today and grocery store again and spent .53 at CVS and $15.39 for food.
Declutter – continues to be a work in progress.
Julie says
No Dining Out: We had leftovers for lunch and dinner yesterday (different ones, of course).
De-cluttering: I have been sorting, cleaning, going through so much stuff. I have a big pile of stuff to take to the resale shop on Thursday as well as several bags for Goodwill. Hoping to add lots more to both piles by the end of the day today.
Minnie-mize: I have been a little off-track lately, but ran around with the kids a bunch over the weekend and back into my workout today, thankfully.
Donna B says
Decluttering Challenge—-cleaning my 7 year old daughters room today—-because she has failed to do it for the past week—throwing away a lot of trash & getting a big box of stuff to set aside for a yard sale!!
Donna B says
Budget Challenge—no grocery money spent yet today—–will hopefully get to do some grocery shopping this afternoon—–starting out with $55 for the week
Donna B says
Minniemizing for the Mouse—-no set workout for today——working VBS at church tonight so I’ll sweat off a few pounds running around doing crafts for the 3’s, 4’s & K kids!!!
Donna B says
No Dining Out—no dinning out for us today—-have VBS at church tonight so spending time at home cleaning today—–& we are getting ready to go on a comping trip this weekend!!!
MM says
NDO- no dining out yesterday, had london broil marinated in italian dressing
MtM- weeded the green beans as too much rain has left us very weedy around here. spent about 2 hours weeding green beans, my back is killing me!
Budget- spent 32.00 at the grocery store (drugstore runs was 1.00 or under oop).
Declutter- my mother’s basement got wet and we have stuff in there, so we’ve been emptying that out and getting rid of stuff we haven’t needed since we put it in the basement 3 years ago. also, i have 8 totes of baby/infant/toddler clothes from my little one which i thought was a little outrageous. i was determined to get rid of some of them. i got the totes down to 6 and gave the other two totes of clothes to a young family just starting out and about to have their next little one.
Amanda Red says
Weekend Updates:
No Dining Out- NONE
Declutter- not so much
Minniemize- went swimming and chased my 2 yr old!
Budget- went over.. but stocked up for next month :)
Meagan says
No Dining Out: We stayed in all weekend so no spending money on going out to lunch or dinner!
Minniemize Me: I am working on doing yoga in the morning until I am done my medication which has been a great way to start my morning.
Declutter: Did some cleaning and worked on organizing more of my materials for business.
Budget: I finished last week under budget so it may be small but still a little more to go in our disney fund!
Krista says
declutter – in the kitchen again. what can i say? it’s a clutter zone. at least we are starting the week with {mostly} clean countertops
minimize – 2 hour hike with the family!
Hope L says
No dining out: No eating out all weekend – birthday parties at home and lots of leftovers!
Minniemize: Lots of cleaning for the parties but no official exercise
Budget: All bills for June are paid. 4 Unexpected car repairs are taken care of also with NO ADDED credit card debt :)
DeClutter: Cleaned out kitchen from top to bottom. Made 3 more garage sale boxes and 2 bags of trash.
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
You’re doing great on the budget!
Renee says
budget…staying under budget on all our planned expenses, but several things have come up in the last week that we are having to take care of.
no dining out…eating at home for quite a while.
decluttering…have decluttered a lot of my daughter’s toys. She is very emotionally attached to ALL of them, so I have to be sneaky about it.
minniemizing…went to the river for a 2 hour swim yesterday. Diet stinks, however :(
tawna says
No dining: Had to leave at 3:00 a.m. to take hubby to airport yesterday (1 1/2 hrs each way :) We were good and brought coffee with us but I had to drive back alone so had to stop and get more coffee ($2.50) and breakfast (only $2 at McDs) so not bad. Kids and I had a leftover pizza picnic for lunch and went to grandmas’s for dinner.
Minnemize: Nothing :( too tired! Also had homemade french fries at above mentioned grandma’s so…
Budget: Good! No stores were open at 5:00 a.m. (for me to go to without kids)
Declutter: Did the dining room table yesterday. Doing laundry today. (and going through kids clothes)
Kathie M says
DINING – Evening church was canceled last night and we didn’t know it, to make a very sad 2 yr old happy we got her Taco Bell (well, we all ate there) $6.33.
DECLUTTERING – No cleaning out but I did get the rest of the room primed so at least somthing constructive got done this weekend!
CJ says
No dining Out
No eating out last night, grilled brats and made pasta salad. Didn’t want to heat up the house to much. Today we are ating leftovers for lunch. Fo dinner to night a chicken in the crockpot with lots of veggies.
Minniemize
I cleaned and worked on the yard all weekend. Today in the 102 degree weather I will walk on my lunch.
Declutter
Yard sale didn’t go so well. We are going to try again in 2 weeks.
Vickie Jones says
Declutter
Since I taught Summer Fine arts Scrapping last week, I didn’t have much time to do any decluttiering, but I’ve now put all the supplies back and that caused another purge of stuff, way more than 25 items yesterday!
Vickie Jones says
Budget is sort of out this week, we are going to Phx for 2 days for our staycation and then doing a few things in town when we get back. But it’s cheaper than our orginal trip to Lubbock, plus we have free movie tickets to check out Cars 2, and I’m going to get the Groupon for Cinabons for before the movie, plus we will get discount wet and wild tickets on base.
Bonus, my husband shaved his head to support a student of his with Leukima (she is doing well) and says he’ll keep it like that till her hair grows so weill be saving $16 a month for at least another 2 months
heather h says
No dining out for us!
Amy says
MM….On the exercise bike as I leave this comment!
Jennifer says
No dining out: Did not eat out at all Saturday or Sunday :)
Minniemize: I went for a long trail ride on my horse yesterday,, but i think I sabotaged my diet with the pizza and brownies at my parents last night.
Budget: Well, my laptop busted for the second time, so we decided to just bite the bullet and buy a new one. With my printable couples we should save that much back pretty quickly.
Shiraz says
No Dining Out: Pretty good all weekend.
Mnnimize: Doing well with not snacking and portion control if less well with actually working out.
Jennifer in GA says
Dining out: Today is my daughter’s birthday, she wanted to go to Olive Garden yesterday. Great thing was I had a gift card, and a coupon. So it cost less than $20 for 5 people to eat.
Minniemize: at the waterpark ALL day Saturday for my daughter’s birthday party. Walking up and down the hill to the slides was a huge workout…had a great time.
Budget: Did pretty good with the budget this weekend. I had planned for the party and most of the food was either from our stockpile or I got really cheap with B1G1 sales and coupons.
De-clutter: cleaned out both of our girl’s closets and shoes, donated two grocery bags full, and have another bag to sale in the fall consignment sale.
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
Happy Birthday to her!
Angela P says
De-cluttering… The kids and I went through the movies and got rid of an entire grocery bags worth! I also reorganized the game cabinet and hung a few photos. Feels good to let go of things!
Janelle says
Decluttering: I took all of my decluttering items and hag a garage sale this weekend and ended up making $400 to go into my disney fund! I am so happy about this. I already see more things we don’t use that I will put in a garage sale in the fall.
Budget challenge: I was doing really good with this until I saw how awful our garage looked and decided it needed patching and painting, that put us over the budget for the week.
No dining out: I only dined out once last week, which was HUGE for me. Luckily I also had a coupon from Groupon, so i had more money to add to the fund.
Minnimizing: I have been participating in a boot camp class and it has not been helping, so I am making it a goal this week to do cardio on days that I do not have boot camp, hopefully this helps with that darn baby weight that does not want to come off ;)
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
You did awesome on your garage sale! Congratulations! :)
Ellen says
Decluttering:
Need to get serious about this again…it’s going to be hot here this week, so it’ll feel good to be cleaning in my nice cool basement!
Trish T says
No Dining Out: Ate at home yesterday.
Minniemize: I’m discovering unworked muscles from carrying around my daughter. Wow are they screaming at me.
Declutter: Kids got their rooms re-organized and de-cluttered pending the arrival of their grandma and aunt and the troop which will be staying in one of the rooms…
Budget: I don’t even want to talk budget… After all the expense of taking my kiddo to the hospital we also had a flat tire yesterday that had to be repaired… We’ll try again next month.
Sarah says
Budget challenge:
Our home owner’s association fees went up this summer and we had not palnned on that. We went over, but mainly due to that. Still, we eneded up having to rransfer money from savings to checking to replenish our account for the last week of the month….
Decluttering:
I cleaned off the dining room table and my closet. Found a few things to sell on Craigslist!
Sarah says
No dining out:
We have stayed in line with our eatin out budget so far this month. We planned to eat out twice each week and have stuck to that. Yay!!
Katie R says
No dining out: My sister made us dinner- shrimp kebobs!
Minniemize: Walked
Budget: Doing great and planning my weekly Walgreens trip for under $5
DeClutter: Organizing coupon binder…will finish today for all the new coupons yesterday
Julie H says
No Dining Out – No eating out for us yesterday.
Budget – I’ve been really good about keeping track of my household budget this month. Since I’m under budget, I’m going to go out today and do some stock-up stuff.
Decluttering – I organized my coupons and put them all in my folder.
Tammie W says
Back from Hilton Head and an awesome vacation. I did workout almost everyday and made it fun. I went to the pool with my husband and girls for at least an hour every morning and did a lot of walking. Best advice for eating on vacation, eat salads instead of french fries. or salad as a meal. I am proud to say I stepped on the scale and didn’t gain anything
I got great advice from my sister in law too. they went to Disney and said they took a week and stayed every other day in the park . They took a day to rest and use the pool at the resort.
Kristin of Couponing to Disney says
I’m glad you had a good time on your vacation! :)
Tonya says
No dining out: Had grilled burgers w/ fixings and popcorn instead of chips.
Minniemize me: Played battmitton w/ 4 yr. old yesterday & helped hubby on a project. Drank green tea, water and stuck to portion control.
Work At Home Market says
Awesome challenge! Sometimes, throughout the year I de-clutter and list the items on Amazon or Ebay to make some extra change. It works when I don’t have enough stuff to host a yard sale!