July Frugals

Stella, your overall frugality makes important things like visiting your aunt possible. It can be hard though to switch from black-belt-frugality mode to still-careful-but-enjoying-the-fruits-of-my-frugality mode.

For the reunion, if you can grill in the park, you might be able to cook the meat as part of the activities of the day. Often hanging around the grill allows people to interact who might not easily otherwise. A favorite when we do this for large groups is chicken marinated in italian salad dressing and then grilled.

Found a new produce place that I'm absolutely thrilled about!! We Made out very well.

2 qts of raspberries
2 qt of blueberries
6 red peppers
5 lbs of potatoes
2 heads of broccoli
1 spaghetti squash
2 large heads of romaine lettuce
5 cloves of garlic
8 bananas
2 huge tomatoes

total = $14.00 :cool:

So stoked!! and everything looked soooo much better than at the grocery store.
We also spent the time slicing all the peppers for easy access snacks for the kids.
My little one also loves to make smoothies with the fruit so she was thrilled to have some raspberries...we almost never buy them because they're so expensive!

Potential big savings - We're thinking about a refi. I know we just moved but rates have dropped even more in the time since we've moved! Almost an entire point! So basically with our ENTIRE mortgage still sitting there unpaid, we could save quite a bit of money over the next number of years. We'll see what our mortgage person says about it. I am not sure about fees and such. 15 year mortgages are in the high 2%. Unbelievable. Too bad I don't think we have the income to go for a 15 year at this time. But 30s are like 3.25%. We have 4.125% right now, so it's not the full point that conventional wisdom says makes a refi worth it. But we're so early into this mortgage that over time we'd more than make up the $$.

decemberluv-that is an impressive deal on produce!

Kelli- sometimes you can actually get a mortgage for somewhere in between the 15 and thirty years. Might be worth checking out.

Ds and I went out and ran errands today. Library, bank, etc. I bought 5 bottles of dish soap, 2 tooth brushes, 12 pks of gum for my guys, some lanacane for bug bites for less than $7. We were low or out of everything but the dish soap so this was good timing on the sales.

I bought ds Subway for lunch as a treat. I've been promising to do so all summer. I passed and came home and made a bacon egg and cheese sandwich instead. My treat today is a cup of free coffee with free hazelnut creamer. YUM!!! I am drinking very little coffee these days so it seems very decadent.

In the mail today I recieved more free coffee from Green Mountain, a sample of cereal, and a 30 supply of vitamins.

I won a bottle of Sobe last night playing sweepstakes and am about to see what I can win today.

My no drive days of last week due to my car in the shop equated to new brakes and rotors, not frugal. Oh well, just keeping trudging along!

We stayed home on Saturday other than a trip to the batting cages with the boys. My DH finished fixing our back deck steps, the wood was under $15 for all 4 steps.

Sunday we drove out to Port Huron for the day, biked from the downtown area to the bridge and went to a few museums. I ended up buying the family pass, I'll take the kids back out in the fall and spring again. It payed for itself yesterday, so everything else will be bonus. We did eat lunch out, but I was expecting it. Coffee house/sandwich shop, tasty soup and sandwiches. I prepped dinner before I left so I just needed to cook the meat when we got home.

Today I took my oldest to the Apple store nearby for a free movie making class that they offer for kids. He got a shirt today and tomorrow will get a bracelet flash drive took bring his movie home after editing. On Saturday they will host a viewing in the morning for all the kids who want to see it at the store. After tomorrow's visit we are going over to Auntie Annie's pretzels. The boys got coupons for free pretzels for our town library reading programs.

We ran to the library today for returns and of course pick ups. We each checked out a pass to visit the Lansing Historical Museum. There are 10 other museums and then additional historical sites (along with State Parks) that you can visit with the passes. I'm hoping to go on Thursday, with a trip to the Potter Park zoo in Lansing in the morning (I bought a family zoo membership in Kalamazoo earlier in the year, so the visit there would be free to). My plan is to picnic in between the zoo and museum.

Printed out the boys reading sheets for Barnes and Noble, we are going on Friday to redeem for their free books for summer reading.

If you have an account at Bank of America you can get free admission to some museums the 1st weekend of each month!! Here's the link.

Amaranth, I like the idea of grilling! I bet that would work.

I agree, stuff like the trip to see my aunt is possible because we are frugal most of the time. I'm in kind of a zone lately because we are so close to seeing the light at the end of the debt tunnel. All we have for debt is my one student loan and a few minor hospital bills from having babies. If we keep our heads screwed on straight and things progress roughly as planned we will be totally debt free, including mortgage, by Zach's 31st birthday. That is just using regular, expected income, and we have gotten quite a bit lately in extra money. If that continued we could speed it up further and that is making me obsess a little bit about money.


I need to have patience with myself. I am really excited (maybe a bit overzealous, actually) because we're about to turn that corner where all of the hard work starts to pay off fast. I am kind of craving that sense of accomplishment. Until now a lot of our sacrifices have been for things that really haven't added much to the old net worth for the short-term, but will likely make a big difference down the road. For example, putting Zach through school without student loans while supporting our relatively large family. Now he's done and has a good job that he really loves and no student loans, which is great. His income dropped a bit, though, when he changed careers because he's starting at the bottom of the totem pole again. He has regularly scheduled pay increases for the next 5 years and will end up making good money, so in about a year and a half to two years we'll reach that sweet spot where we will be totally debt free with income that is going up substantially.

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Today I took my oldest to the Apple store nearby for a free movie making class that they offer for kids. He got a shirt today and tomorrow will get a bracelet flash drive took bring his movie home after editing.

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Cool! I will have to look into that.

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Originally Posted by decemberlov

If you have an account at Bank of America you can get free admission to some museums the 1st weekend of each month!! Here's the link.

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Thanks Decemberlov, we do have a BOA account and in the past have used them.

The museum we are going to is only free on Sundays or with this pass as it does not fall under the BOA pass or the Target Arts free days. When possible I prefer to not go to museums on weekends. Too many people.

Thank you for the suggestion though :) .

Here is the link for the Apple Camp. Stella, I don't know which store you go to but I would look today. It looks like this is the last week for it, with classes on Wednesday/Thursday and then on Saturday.
http://www.apple.com/retail/learn/youth/

Apprently our local magic store offers free classes at noon on Saturdays, we might check those out!