-
Not a whole lot of frugals happening over here, but I'll share the few that I have! Ate up the last of the soup that was leftover from Thanksgiving. And ate up the salad greens that were rapidly approaching the end of their edible life. Took home a huge bowl of leftover tortilla chops from an event at work last week. We ate them with corn chowder from the freezer. Lots of food related frugals!
My brothers and I agreed that we would not exchange Christmas gifts this year. We used to set a dollar limit, but now I'll save myself another $50 by not having to buy anything at all. The three of us will buy a joint gift for our mom and that will likely be it.
Coordinated my workout at the gym with my drive home from work so saved about 25 extra miles of driving today.
It's the little things, people!
-
Thanks, Kelli!
A couple more frugals:
- DW's SiL returned home from a week's stay with family south of town; we inherited the sweet potatoes and kale she did not use up. The sweet potatoes will be used for dinner tonight and the kale will become kale-chip snacks.
- I'm finally getting around to the detailing I "promised" my car when I hit 100,000 miles. Instead of a full-blown detail, however, I'm settling for a "Gold" wash and an interior cleaning at a staffed car wash I've used before -- and since it's my birthday week, the wash is free ($21.99 value, they say). So instead of spending $100 even with a Groupon, I'll spend around $20 and get 80% of what I wanted.
- A semi-frugal: DD and a niece-by-marriage and I all celebrate December birthdays. A local casino offers a free bingo session during the birthday month, so we went down this weekend and had fun, though we didn't win a dime (the couple niece had invited, however, won $350 on their very first bingo visit :0! ). Niece's dad even picked up the tab for dinner, so all we were out was a couple gallons of fuel to get there and back (and a few gray hairs from driving on these roads...)
-
Sounds like it was a fun bday celebration.
And I bet I know which car wash you are going to :) And if I do, I betcha you'll be happy with the results. :)
DH and I had a bit of a wild frugal lately, though I just burned it all up in gifts for him for Xmas. We bought some awful sweaters and the most horrible Xmas kitsch we could find at a thrift shop in my hometown, the one with the best prices, and we decorated the heck out of those puppies and have been selling them on eBay. We've made all our money back and then some - $10, $20, $30 or even $40 per sweater. They are pretty awful! That's why people wanted them, I guess!!
Nonfrugal: a lunch out today.
-
Kelli, that is hysterical. But way to think outside the box on money making! lol
-
I fished some nice Christmas cards out of my card cache, and made others by sandwiching miniature quilt blocks (that I made) into picture-frame cards I got at the Dollar Store. Total outlay: $1.
-
We stocked up on some food, household goods and Christmas presents at Sam's Club during their open house weekend so we didn't have to pay a membership fee to shop there.
So far I am at $360 for the month on sign up bonuses.
I used a grocery store coupon for $10 in free groceries from Fresh and Easy.
We signed up for the ACA. Our portion of the premiums will go down over $2,100 a month over the policy we have now for for better coverage and lower out of pocket and lower annual maximum costs.
We have been getting better at stockpiling food on sale. The new little freezer and convection oven help. The convection oven cooks any meat from frozen without defrosting. We roasted Cornish hens the other week that were frozen solid without defrosting and they turned out quite tasty.
-
Hi all,
- Big discount package of chicken in the crock pot, turned into shredded BBQ chicken. That will be nice evening meals.
- Did a presentation today and made $100 for it.
- Need to do meal planning tonight. I skipped last week thinking "we have plenty of stuff," and we do, but the main benefit we're getting is to be prepared. When we are tired, it is ready to go and we don't have to think too hard about it. That was the problem last week - we had enough food, but hadn't planned ahead for making it (defrosting, etc.). Lesson learned.
How 'bout everyone?
-
Hey Kelli: I'm glad someone is doing something frugal, because I certainly haven't done much lately. I feel like this has been a real spendy month for me, even though I'm not much of a Christmas person. Right now, it appears that our end of the month reckoning will be a negative number, so I'm challenging myself to get that number down (or up?) as much as possible if not eliminate it completely. We did have some medical expenses and other unavoidable items, but we also did some extravagant stuff like buy crazy-expensive theater tickets (Book of Mormon in April!)
I'm doing a bit of year-end reflection on accomplishments and where we fell short, and what our targets will be for next year. I think we would do well to make some of our numbers and milestones more concrete, rather than just save as much as we can and make our large expenditures when we decide they can be postponed no longer. Replacing my 1995 Saturn SL1 will be the big goal for 2014.
I did get an e-mail from Best Western saying that I had almost 10,000 points in their program that could be redeemed for gift cards or other awards. That was from stays at a hotel we like which used to belong to the BW chain, but no longer does, so I was able to get a $25 Amazon card and make a charitable donation with the balance of the points, which was kind of a neat surprise.
-
Book of Mormon! Jealous!! Hang in there rosa, there are bound to be those months. :(
Your Best Western experience reminds me that I have been wanting to switch one of our rewards cards (airline miles) into a reward that we will use more often (cash :) ). Advice? I think I will start a new thread as well.
-
This is turning out to be a bad month for frugals... Christmahanukwanzakah for various family and friends, and four birthdays (including mine). But...
- In shipping off some Christmas presents, I was able to fit the goodies into a slightly larger box, which saved money over buying a second flat-rate box.
- I did the week's grocery shopping down the street rather than drive to the coop. It was a light week; time to get the freezer emptier. One purchase was salad-in-a-box which had already started to spoil two days after I bought it and two days before its use-by date. Back it went. The cost was too much to ignore.
- I filled out the paperwork for health-care reimbursement; that'll be several hundred dollars to us when it comes back.
- I found out the used iPhone I bought on ebay is actually unlocked. Phones labeled "unlocked" on ebay typically sell for $75 more than I paid, so ... bonus! Maybe more lucky than frugal... Our $80 monthly phone bill is going to go down to under $30 a month, without giving up anything. I also found a long-lost gift card for iTunes that I can use to buy iPhone software if I can't find something free that I can use.
