Month: August 2021

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Every Day

I Have To Add Some New Resources For Buying Groceries and Household Products

With prices rising rapidly in my area, I had to find some other resources to buy my groceries and household products. I still buy loss leader food at Top’s and Aldi especially on meat and produce. But I refuse to pay full price for other items. So today, I signed up for Big Lots. By signing up, I got a 15% off Welcome coupon. I had been hearing from other people that their prices are good especially on household products. I had an account when we lived in Arizona but deleted it shortly after we moved.

So today, I ventured to my store and looked over the grocery aisles very carefully. These items were ones that are in short supply in our home and that were cheaper than any other place that I shop. The 15% off coupon brought the total down even further.

My total for all of these items was $58.43 including $ 2.73 in sales tax.

I was extremely happy to find all of the Lysol Toilet cleaner and the refill for my squirt bottle. They have been hard to find in my area and they are expensive to buy at Amazon if they even have them.

We were getting very low on dish liquid so these Palmolive 90 ounce bottles were a great buy.

I have been looking for the Cheetos Mac and Cheese for West to try for lunch when he stays with us Labor Day weekend.

Hubby likes SF wafer cookies. I buy a different brand for him but they have gone up to $ 3.99. These were $ .85 after the coupon. I only got 2 so he could try them. But if he likes them, they will stay on my Big Lot’s list. His cashews were only $10.19 for this big can.

I love Ice drinks but only buy them once in a while for a treat. I usually drink water, coffee, or tea. These after coupon were $ .67 each. They are a $1.00 in my other stores.

The Hefty 200 ft. plastic wraps were only $ 1.70 each after coupon.

I was very happy with this trip. My understanding of their rewards program is that after a few purchases they send you a 20% coupon. I think I will take full advantage of this program especially on the household products.

We have been on the hunt for an Amish bulk foods store. I found one that is less than an hour from us. I believe that one Fall day Hubby and I will make a trip there to see what they have.

I will continually look for other resources to buy our food cheaper. Have you found other cheaper resources for your food?

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Every Day

Frugal Things The Past Couple of Weeks

These are the things that we have been doing to save a little bit of money these past couple of weeks:

  • We have picked 5 tomatoes so far from our container garden. Unfortunately, we had to throw out a lot more that developed tomato rot. In all the years that I have planted tomatoes, I have never had this before. I had to research to find out what it was. Seems in this heat we need to water them a little more often. We were thinking they were getting plenty of water by soaking them once a day until the water ran out the bottom of the pots. Evidently we need to do this twice a day. Also the soil needed calcium. So instead of going to the garden center to buy it, I found out that I could water the soil with some milk. So I got out my stored dry milk and mixed it up and did that this morning. Hopefully this will solve the problem.
  • A few nights this week, I made chicken BLT’s using cooked sliced chicken, bacon and lettuce that I had purchased on sale, and our tomatoes. They were so delicious and so easy. In the summer, I love easy!
  • I sewed a button back on one of my favorite blouses, right after it came off in the washer, before I lost it.
  • I went to the bank and deposited some checks that had been sitting here into our high interest account until I can decide what we want to invest it in. When checks sit in the office, they make no money at all. I know I have been very busy the past couple of weeks but that is no excuse.
  • I read the current 2 free magazines that I get. Hubby read his Handyman magazine that is gifted to him every Christmas.
  • I contacted my cable company to get credited for an outage of our cable TV, internet, and telephone.
  • I hard boiled a dozen eggs in my pressure cooker. We use them for breakfasts, egg salad, and for snacks.
  • I cooked up a pound of bacon for breakfasts this week.
  • My wedding ring is getting loose again on my ring finger. The ring guard no longer worked. So instead of going to a jeweler to get one, I ordered one online that will suffice until I am sure that I won’t lose any more weight. At that time I will have the ring resized.
  • I traded some fiction books with a neighbor for some books that she had that I hadn’t read.
  • We had quit B.J.’s, which is a warehouse club, very early this year. We decided to rejoin because they sent us a coupon to sign up for a year for $25. I was hoping that their shelves would be better stocked than when I quit. They were. That day I shopped for items that we needed that were a lot cheaper than my grocery stores. I only spent a little over $71.
  • My son switched all of our cellphones to a new carrier. Because of that we got a new G5 phone for free. I researched prices online and got a great price on a protective case and a screen protector. This cellphone is bigger than our last one so we couldn’t use the old case.
  • We are working on using up a huge box of free dental supplies that we have collected over the past couple of years from our dentist. We have way too much toothpaste and floss.

We have also been doing the usual to save on our utility and water bills. What have you been doing the past couple of weeks to save a little money?

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Every Day

My Aldi’s Shop, etc.

I am sure that we have all spent a lot more money on groceries the past year and 1/2. I know we have. However, there comes a time when you feel you don’t need to spend as much as before. We are in “saving mode” right now because we have other priorities for our money the next few months. So my grocery trips are getting smaller and they are farther apart.

Today I went to Aldi’s to pick up some Wednesday sale meat. I was there a couple of minutes after my store opened. As I was parking, I saw a man unloading a very overloaded cart into his trunk. I recognized him as a local restaurant owner. He had about 1/2 cart of chicken thighs and the rest was assorted beef. I ran into the store hoping that they had at least one package of the boneless thighs left. I only wanted one since they were on sale for $ 1.69 a lb. I got it.

I also went to get the grass fed organic ground beef for $ 17.96. That amount gets you 3 packages totaling 4 lbs.which cost $ 4.49 a lb. I picked up 2 packages of 3 each. So all I spent today was $ 41.13.

The beef will give us 8 meals and the chicken will give us 3 plus some meat leftover for a brunch salad. So the 12 meals will cost us about $3.42 for the two of just for the meat. That is not too bad.

As I was driving by my Super Walmart, I decided to run in just to look at how well stocked it was. There were so many shelves empty that I was amazed. Deli and meat selection was poor also. I had been hearing about how Walmarts’ all over the country have low stock but I didn’t really think anything of it until I saw mine this morning. I left the store without buying anything.

So many people are asking this question: “Why is Walmart so under-stocked when our local supermarkets have plenty of food?” I don’t know. But the only thing that makes sense to me is that a lot of the food in Walmart comes from China. So they may be having a supply chain issue.

Does anyone know why? Do any of you work for Walmart and know the answer? Please let me know if you do.

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Every Day

Frugal Things We Have Done Recently

After two funerals in the past week in our extended family, I need some normalcy in my life. So it was time to get back to posting.

These are the things that we have done recently to save money in our household:

  • After a funeral service in a city about two hours away from our home yesterday, we took the scenic route on our way home. It took no longer than taking the Thruway and saved us $ 4.34 in tolls. I am always amazed at how beautiful New York state is.
  • We did not stay for the luncheon afterwards because Hubby’s back was not good yesterday. So we left right after the service. Our plan was to pick up some fast food to eat in the car on the way home. We had not eaten breakfast and when we left the church it was going on 1PM. However, we ended up driving straight home and just ate some leftovers about 3:30pm. We planned to go to Subway later to get wraps for a late dinner but neither of us was hungry.
  • But this morning, we were ravenous. So I ran to Panera and got bagels. It was Tuesday discount day so they only cost $ 6.99 for a dozen. I still have 3 gift cards that I purchased on a discount almost 4 years ago. So I paid with one of those. BTW, for those of you who followed me when I was on the Keto diet for 2 years, I got very bored with it. I needed a new plan. So I count calories every day and try to stay under 1400. The bagels are pictured above after Hubby ate one and I had a half of one. Hubby wanted cinnamon cream cheese but I can’t find it anywhere since Covid started. So I purchased a container of cream cheese and he made his own again for about the fourth time. He says it is better than store bought.
  • While I was out, I stopped at Top’s for a few things since it was 6% off your total bill Senior Discount Day. We got a lot of produce, Kosher salt to make pickles, and milk that was needed.
  • I also filled our car up with gas since we used almost all of it yesterday. The price at the pump was $ 3.09.9. But after Top’s points I was able to get $.50 off a gallon which brought the price down to $2.59.9 per gallon.
  • Hubby ordered what he thought was the replacement filters for our air cleaner in the master bedroom. When he got them, it was the generic that you have to cut to fit. He just traced the old one and he was able to get 4 filters out of one pad. We had purchased two so we got 8 filters instead of just 2. Nothing like stumbling on a bargain to make us happy.
  • Hubby asked our landscape company to do some lawn work. They already do all of our weeding and gardens and fertilize the lawn. But we have some areas on the side of the house where crap grass had taken over. Also the town reseeded the area of our lawn that they dug up to fix the water pipe. They used cheap rye grass and it was full of weeds. Our grass is a mix of blue grasses. So we wanted those areas redone. The landscape company sent us an $1100. estimate. I told Hubby to go for it. But Hubby said no. He is going to do the work himself in the Fall. He felt their estimate was too high for the work he wanted done. I guess that will save us most of the $1100. since we already have plenty of blue grass seed.
  • We got our July natural gas and electric bill and it was for the exact same number of days as last July. Since that time we have had a rate increase. We used a lot more electric than last year but the same amount of natural gas. However the bill was about $ 10. less than last year’s. I was very happy about that!
  • Lastly, we had enough points to get a $100. cashback reward that will show on our next credit card bill.

Hubby and I were looking at our net worth yesterday and realized that we are almost to another new milestone. So we are saving like crazy to reach it. So you will see a lot of money saving posts the rest of the summer right up to the end of winter so that we can reach that goal.

Feel free to leave a comment and share with us what you have been doing to be frugal and let your savings add up!