What is this? Christmas budget 2008

The Christmas project for this year was to get our gifts from "the dollar store."

I got out of debt earlier this year and have been putting money in savings accounts and sinking funds. In the past few months, I've learned to better do free after rebate and deep discounts on coupon stuff.

So when this proposed, I thought, "I'm too cheap for the dollar store."

So below, you will find what I bought, the deals I got, and the total amount paid.

Of course, the total amount paid doesn't include sales tax. But then, my eyes are glazing over with the amount I've put in previous posts. I have received or will receive $79 in rebates (I've already requested them online).

I'm going to figure that I paid $9 in sales tax. I purchased around 30 items for our white elephant gift exchange. The extra in sales tax is because I got charged sales tax after the sale item price, but before coupons.

I also made some mistakes along the way, where I could have gotten a better deal. But for the first year of doing this, not bad for $3.13.