January 2014 Frugals.........

[early morning]

DD and i have the flu. Which you would think would keep us from spending money and thus frugal, but no.... between my trip to Dr. and Pharmacy..$65. And that's with good insurance. DD will probably get better at about the same rate, without spending for Dr. and Tamiflu. (Now if she'd just have made a selection of insurance plans earlier.... lol) Then DH went into "helper" mode - which is really sweet, but has resulted in multiple (and not really needed) trips out for bananas, soups, tissues, cough syrups, etc. Most of which we had, but not apparently in sufficient quantities for "Dr. DH". Oh well, it is all stuff we will use. Since I have nothing to contribute frugally I will just second what TeacherTerry said about cloth diapers. Saves money, better for the environment, not hard as long as you have a washer and dryer. Both my kids were cloth diapered, and I seldom used the dryer even, so I'd say if you have a washer and a good place to put a drying rack, you're still good to go! And no, I was not a stay-at-home mom.

[Gardenarian]

DH has been doing a good job selling stuff on Craigslist. We decided not to have a garage sale but have been getting good response to ads - even to things like toys. And he finally decided to get rid of his 500+ airplane model collection (all unassembled :-/

So, making space and making money! Most of the stuff was in the back of our large and ugly laundry room. I'm going to use the freed up space as my office, as it is the quietest room in the house, and it has a door. This will give me space to work on my book, which maybe someday will make a few pennies...and gives me a lot of pleasure.

Right now, less is definitely more!

[bke]

I've been doing really well with the coupons lately. I got 8 really nice ink pens for work for a total of 24 cents tax.

Two of my employees also work at the local gas station. They've been saving the coupons from any Sunday papers that don't sell and giving them to me. I got 2 sets last week and 6 sets this week! I think I'll put together a little goodie bag of freebies for each of them to say thank you. By the way, the papers are just going into the trash at the end of the night so it isn't any big deal for them to save them for me.

I just realized today that I qualified for a reward with my Rite Aid card that I had never claimed. I chose a $25 gift certificate to a local restaurant that I think we would all enjoy trying. We have to spend $37.50 to use it but if necessary, we'll bring home lots of leftovers. Anyway you look at it, $12.50 is pretty cheap for dinner out.

I continue to shop at several stores each week, working on getting the best deals possible, and stockpiling things I know we'll use. Last week it was things like graham crackers, gold fish crackers, and peanuts. I also got 4 tubes of tooth paste for 24 cents tax and 16 rolls of bath tissue for 86 cents.

We had a ton of jalapeno peppers left over from the dinner we did Sunday evening. They were simply too spicy for the group we had and didn't get used. I picked up 5 lbs of tomatoes this morning and dh canned 24 pints of sauce. Not a drop of it will be wasted. We've been eating the leftover rice, chips and salsa and bread pudding.

I was SOOOO tempted to buy a hot cup of coffee while out running errands this morning but decided to wait and enjoy two free cups of coffee at home.

[cdttmm]

early morning: hope you and your DD are feeling better!

bke: nice job with the coupons, as always!

Got a bill from my dentist in the mail for a whopping $7 (so bummed I no longer have that insurance plan -- it was really good!) and called to pay it by phone rather than mail them a check. Saved the price of a stamp!

Had breakfast and lunch provided at work yesterday. It's the start of the semester so we've been having a week-long open house in our office with bagels and juice for breakfast. The juice (which is cheap, nasty stuff IMO) always get polished off, but there are always extra bagels (also far from gourmet, but at least edible) so breakfast for me! Lunch was offered at an open house for one of our student organizations so I was able to bring the lunch I packed home and will eat it today. There was a lot of leftover food from lunch, too, so at the end of the day I took home a huge container of tortilla chips because nobody else wanted them. We'll eat them with corn chowder from the freezer or make a pile of nachos with them. Not the most healthful of foods, but we are generally pretty health conscious when it comes to eating so I don't get too worried about it.

Very pleased to have finally finished off the apple butter we had in the freezer. Been eating a lot of toast (from homemade breads, of course) with peanut butter and apple butter. So now I'll move on to the strawberry jam we received from our neighbors. Slowly but surely the pantry and freezer will get eaten down!!!

Still feeling under the weather so no early morning gym visit for me yesterday or today. Saves on gas, but I'd rather spend the money on gas and feel great than save the money and have a cold.

[bke]

I went to the dollar store on the way to pick ds up from school and used some of those coupons I love so much-haha. This time I bought six eight-load containers of laundry soap. Out of pocket cost: 36 cents!

I also spent $2.00 on a couple of small gift bags for the girls I mentioned yesterday. I filled them each with several useful full things that I've gotten for free. I hope they appreciate my strange thank you gift.

[early morning]

We are feeling better, thanks, cdttmm. I went back to work today even! With, of course, my lunch, water, tea, coffee, and medication from home, lol. And I have a actual frugal - in the form of clean laundry, hanging about the house...

bke - great job - you are an inspiration!

[TMC]

Did my end of the month tally and spent soooooo much on food. $800. for our family of 4, but we have multiple freezers full of food. I went through the receipts and it did include $150 at Sams for things like nuts, laundry detergent and bottled water, we have well water we can't drink.

Also to give credit we usually spend way more than that. My goal is to get it lower next month and keep eating out of the freezers. We did great with not eating out, going to dinner once with a gift card so my OOP was $12.00 and I took the kids to lunch on a cold day off school, $30.00.

There also has been very little to no extra spending. Was able to sock a lot into emergency savings this month. Hoping to do the same or better next month.

Just an aside: I used disposable diapers for my first until I discovered cloth, just didn't occur to me to use them. Than finished that kid on cloth and the second used cloth. Second potty trained really fast. I also bought some disposables to have around for babysitters or overnight trips. Saved a fortune and was not really a big hassle in my opinion. I would highly recommend.

[bke]

Thanks early morning!

We did our big shopping trip of the week last night. We had dinner out-eating early enough to get lunch prices and drinking free hot tea instead of paying for soda. I'm not sure how much we saved but we only spent $23 with tip for the 3 of us.

I picked up a ream of computer paper at Staples while we were out. After the rebate, it will cost me 29 cents.

We are re-doing the menu for work at the moment. I print it up on my computer saving us a ton of money vs. a professional printer.

We're putting a nice selection of salads on the menu for this summer and needed some dishes to create a nice presentation. We got very lucky and found 12 plates for $15 something at Target last night. Dh said it would have cost around $100 to order something similar through our normal supplier. Dh plated up a sample this morning and the plates are the perfect size.

The plates were marked 2 different prices, a difference of 50 cents. I pointed it out to the cashier and he gave them all to me for the lower price. I saved about $4.00 this way.

Dh and I have finally decided on the dollar amount we want to have saved before we list the restaurant with a realtor. Its going to take a few years to reach our goal I'm sure. I love the fact that I have something to shoot for-it keeps me all the more frugal. We are currently about 1/5 of the way to our goal. I don't have a wall chart but I have always kept a ledger with debt reductions. Now its time for a ledger with increasing dollar amounts and interest paid to us instead of to someone else.

Are there any great, new inspiring blogs out there that pertain to reaching financial goals?