Brett's Newest Money Saving Idea

As many of you know Brett loves saving money.  He comes up with many various plots and schemes to maximize value in all different avenues of life.  In fact, when we were in Cedar City a couple months ago, we took a couple girls from our old primary class out to dinner (with coupons, of course).  For an after-dinner-activity, we went to the grocery store and Brett created a game for them.  Of course the game was based on prices and value.  He would tell them what they were looking for, for example the lowest priced bag of chips, and the first one to find it and bring it back would get a point.  He taught them the difference between price and value.  They had to learn how to find the cheese that was the best total value, not just the lowest priced.  Okay, now that my point is demonstrated I can tell the rest of the story. 

This all leads up to our newest money saving method.  We decided early on that when we travel, we won't buy lots of random souvenirs that will eventually just clutter our house (besides the occasional shirt, hat, or skirt that is), we would only buy a magnet from each place we went.  They are generally always under $5, don't take up a lot of space, and are still a fun memory of all the places we have been.  Some of our magnets we have collected from various locations are shown below. 

It all started when we were recently in St. Croix and didn't like any of the magnets in the gift shop at our resort.  We thought there would be a shop at the airport where we could find something better.  We arrived at the airport and quickly found that there was not a gift shop there.  We were sad, but just decided we would have to come back some day and get a magnet then.  A couple weeks later, I was scrapbooking our trip and Brett saw the hotel key card we had saved.  He realized they are about the same size as our magnets and the wheels started turning.  He got a marker out and made what turned out to be a cheaper, but really neat magnet for St. Croix (shown below).  It's now one of my favorite magnets.

He was so excited because he realized he doesn't even need to spend 3-5 dollars on a magnet anymore.  He can just make his own!  Don't worry too much though, if I see one I really like, it will still end up on our fridge.  But it sure is nice to know we don't have to stress about finding the perfect magnet anymore.  We will always have a backup plan.