I am Vicki Stanley Brown aka The Sweepster

Hi, my name is Vicki

Here are a few things about me;

Yes, my name is really Vicki. Many people think it is short for Victoria but it isn’t. My mom wanted to name me after my grandmother whose middle name was Victoria, but thought everyone would shorten it to Vicki therefore; she just named me Vicki to avoid all of that. Funny thing is, people call me Victoria. I just answer to it because it is easier than telling them it isn’t my name.

I am a native Floridian. Yep, I was born in West Palm Beach and still reside locally. Do you know where we vacation? Get this. We travel north where the snow is to vacation. That is really funny when you think about it. People from up north travel to the sunshine and I travel to the snow. For the past three or so years we have visited New Hampshire to ski. I am not an avid skier and it takes me a long time to make it down the mountain. I see my son pass by twice before I get to the bottom.

Another interesting fact about me is I love saving and making money. Saving money is really making money because if I don’t spend then I am accumulating it. I am a member of several reward programs that pay me to buy stuff. That is a crazy thought isn’t it. Here is a true story about how I saved hundreds of dollars when buying a swingset. First of all, have you noticed that swingsets are not cheap. When I was a kid we had the metal ones. Do you remember those? It would be boiling hot and you wanted to play outside. Steam was waving off the slide but it was so inviting. I remember leaning back to make sure I would not have my leg touch the slide as I slid down. I didn’t want to get burned but the thought of how fun the slide was outweighed the possibility of me getting burned. I never though to get a towel and use it to slide on.

Well, metal swingsets are a thing of the past. Now they are made of hard plastic or wood. I found a plastic one with powered coated metal legs to keep it from rusting. I finally narrowed the search down to one swingset I wanted to buy. It was over $1500.00. Yes, you read that correct. How did a swingset soar to such a high price? This is nothing special either. It had a slide that was attached to a platform for the kids to stand on. I guess it resembles a treestand. There were also one swing and a tire swing on it. That is it. Just a basic swing set.

I searched the internet for the swing set I wanted and found a few stores carried it. Guess where I found it? Overstock. I found it there by accident. I didn’t even know that overstock sold swing sets. Overstock was listed on a reward site I use and they offered me, I believe, 5% back for buying it. Not too bad since I planned on getting it anyway. I also had a credit card that offered 5% if I shopped at a store listed on the reward page. Well, this is looking even better now. This was almost too good to be true. Almost. Oh my gosh, I almost forgot the best part to tell you. Overstock was giving me the swing set with free shipping. Yes, this was the only store offering it for free shipping. This was a $149 savings. This swing set that started at $1500 was starting to look very good to me. The final savings I got was Overstock has a club, for $19.99 a year I could get 10% off all purchases. The savings on this swing set was worth more than the $19.99 the club cost me so I joined. I saved several hundred dollars buying this swing set for the kids.