How We Stay Frugal Even When There Isn’t An Emergency

Do you remember back to the 2007 – 2008 mortgage crisis? All of a sudden, everyone turned to frugality because they couldn’t pay their mortgages, were in debt up to their eyeballs, lost their jobs, and had no savings. People were doing things frugally that they never did before. I remember thinking to myself perhaps people will learn from this situation and keep their frugality going and save for emergencies. I am sure some did but I would bet that most didn’t. The people I saw who were caught up in it returned to their unfrugal ways. 

I realize that this crisis was not of anyone’s making but it is another emergency situation. No one could have foretold that this virus would happen. However, if people had saved money for an emergency, they would be in a  much better situation than they are right now. 

So let’s learn from this and be much more careful how we use and spend our money.

So today and in the future, I will share more ways on how we are frugal all of the time so that in times like this, we are easily able to survive.

One of the things we have been doing for a while that saves us a bit of money over time is how we use plastic bags for repackaging meat. As you know, I buy our meat in bulk. If chicken is on a good sale price, I will sometimes buy 20-40 lbs. of it so that I never have to pay full price for it. The same goes for any kind of meat.

These pictured food saver bags are expensive to use. I do use them but only if I plan on keeping the meat in my freezer longer than 3 months.

If I plan on us eating the meat within three months, I use these but they are also very expensive.

And I use these or the ones with the flap that you tuck in. Usually the flap bags are much cheaper than the resealable but they weren’t the day I purchased these.

I will package the meat up into meal size portions and put it in any cheap sandwich bag that I can find. Walmart has a great price on these but so does Dollar Tree and Aldi’s. But in my area, Walmart has the best price. Then I stack them flat in a one gallon freezer bag which I buy when they are on sale. I can get many meals worth in one of those bags. When I need that meat, I just open the gallon bag, take a sandwich bag out and reseal the bag. 

The reason I do it this way is so that I can reuse the expensive freezer bags over and over again by washing them out. Anytime you put meat in a plastic bag you can’t reuse them. So I throw out the small cheap bags or reuse them to organize non food items in our household(after washing them really well)  and can still use the freezer bag over and over again. I have used some of them for years.

I only pay about a penny for the sandwich bags so we save a lot of money in the long run over buying freezer bags and using those. 

Sometimes, in order to get the freezer bags at a great price, I have to buy them at a warehouse store packaged with quart freezer bags. But I am also now using the quart bags the same way. 

Another way we save is on coffee. Hubby loves his Keurig and his K Cups. So I buy his brand of decaf on subscribe and save on Amazon to get the best price. However, I am trying to get him to let me buy the same coffee in a bagso he can use the reusable cup. But I am not that fussy, so I use a reusable K cup and any kind of coffee that is on sale.

We like flavored coffee but we use SF Skinny Syrups or Keto Syrups to get that flavor. We only use one squirt and that is perfect for us. I buy our syrups in bulk directly from Jordan’s when they have a 40-50% off sale and sometimes they send me a coupon to use too. We will buy cases when it goes on sale. It keeps for a long time unopened. We never pay full price for it.

Do you guys remember when I purchased the 4 gallons of hand soap from Amazon for a great price? Well, when this emergency happened we had plenty of cheap hand soap. We have just been refilling our pump containers at the sinks with this. It is the most economical way to buy it. 

We also had a box full of bar soap which we will use when the liquid is gone. After I took this picture, we donated more than half of the soap to a food bank. Most of it was purchased cheaply back when coupons were worth something.  

Another way we save is to cook from scratch at home every meal. We rarely did take out or went out to eat in a restaurant before this crisis. Thinking back, we haven’t been to a restaurant here since last August. If you don’t know how to cook, learn while you have so much time at home. It is healthier and cheaper. Here was my breakfast: scrambled eggs with onion and chive cream cheese mixed in and bacon.


Well that is it for today. If you like this kind of post, let me know in the comments and we will do a lot more of them. Also if you have a great tip on how to save money, please share it. We all learn from each other.