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Have you ever been completely surprised by someone’s kindness? It happened to me this week.

Let me give you the background. You see, it’s much easier to stick with our budget when school is in session. We have a pretty structured routine for meal planning, normal expenditures and the like. When school is dismissed for the summer, I have a tendency to spend a lot more loosely. Maybe it’s because I am more relaxed. It could also be because we are in “vacation” mode so it somehow doesn’t seem to count (until it does on bills.) When my husband is home, too, we tend to treat ourselves to an out-to-eat meal more often. We travel more often, which is another major expense that we don’t have to factor in during the school year. We are also still chipping away at our debt snowball. So the whole point of this is to explain that we’ve been on a tighter budget for the past couple of weeks….as in the, spend absolutely no money kind of budget.

When I opened the mail on June 3, I noticed an unexpected box from shareasale.com. What could it be?  As you may remember from my previous post, I’m a big fan of this affiliate network so I thought maybe I signed up for something and had forgotten. I often share things like the cash bonus posts (email me if you want to know more about those) and referral bonus posts with other bloggers, so it seemed likely that they were sending me something in response to one of those shout-outs.

The top of the box was colorful and proclaimed that it was National Paper Clip Day. I remembered reading that on the ShareASale blog a few days ago. I hadn’t watched the giveaway announcement videos, though, because my computer always gives me an error message on YouTube.  Plus I figured I wouldn’t be the winner.   So maybe this was something they wanted me to review?  I just wasn’t sure.

The enclosed card congratulated me on being the winner of paper clips and…….cash! I looked again inside the box and found a wallet filled with $100!!!!! Tears instantly sprang to my eyes.

Not only was it unexpected, it was also perfect timing. My husband and I had celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary just a few days before, and my birthday was on June 4, the next day. I hadn’t budgeted for these events so they were each just another day. Thanks to Share A Sale, we were able to splurge this week. We took the kids out for snow cones and went out for dinner on my birthday. We made an extra grocery trip and had enough left over to make a donation to a charity. The best part, though, was the blessing of a fun surprise that ShareASale gave us. They reminded me that Forrest Gump was right. Life IS like a box of chocolates.  This time I got the caramel filled one.

If you are a blogger and you haven’t joined shareasale yet, what are you waiting for? It is, by far, the best affiliate program that I have found. They just proved it to me again. Thank you, ShareASale!

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9/1 bus
9/2 breakfast
9/3 lunchbox
9/4 calculator
9/5 pencils
9/6 notepads
9/7 scissors
9/8 glue
9/9 backpack
9/10 rulers
9/11 highlighter
9/12 erasers
9/13 sharpener
9/14 folders
9/15 binder