Cutting Costs: Some Large & Some Small

These are the things I did yesterday to cut our costs.

You all know that my expensive hair salon has been something I have needed to take off my list for a long time. Hubby has always told me to keep going there because I like the hairdresser. However, her prices have gone up and I can no longer justify paying almost $150. every 4-6 weeks for haircuts, root touch ups, and highlights. So I cancelled my next appointment. I will be making an appointment at Supercuts for a haircut which I desperately need. I don’t know what they charge but I am sure it is way less for a haircut than I have been paying. I will also be looking for a coupon to defray that cost. I will be letting my gray or white hair grow in over the winter. I have no idea what color it is. At my age, I don’t care about getting it colored anymore. As long as it is clean, neat, and cut, that is all I will concern myself with. If for some reason my natural color turns out to be awful, I will color it myself. A box of hair color purchased with a coupon will be so much cheaper than what I am paying now.

I used the electric fry pan(cheaper than heating up the gas stove) to make Hubby some Keto blueberry pancakes for breakfast. I actually made a whole bunch to freeze for future meals when he is craving them.

The temperature outside has been in the 70’s and will be 69 today so the heat only seems to come on overnight when it is colder. That will save us some money. We just got our natural gas and electric bill for the month ending October 21. We only used 390 kwh instead of the 451 kwh we used same period last year. I have really been watching our usage and cutting back. We did use 1 therm more of natural gas than last year but it has been colder. Our bill last year was $ 115. This year’s bill was $ 144. so $ 29. more. It would have been so much higher if I hadn’t been cutting back on the electric.

I washed a very large load of wash with cold water and rinsed in cold water. About 1/2 of the load, I hung to dry. The rest was dried in the dryer using my dryer balls to save on how long it needed to run to dry. I used my homemade powered laundry detergent in the wash.

Hubby had been procrastinating on taking the 6 hour course for NYS online that saves us 10% off our car insurance. You take the course and you get 10% off each year for 3 years. The course saves us on average $119. per year. The course only costs us $ 25. So we end up saving $332. Today he is sitting at his computer and taking it. It needed to be taken by October 31st. So that is now done.

Since Hubby was taking the course and could reach me on our cellphone if he needed me, I took a quick trip to Top’s. I picked up 4 Two Good yogurts, a package of romaine lettuce, some all natural deli sliced turkey and roast beef to put on salads, 1 G Hughes salad dressing, 4 cream cheeses, 1 cheddar cheese block on sale and 1 pkg. of mozzarella sticks for a chicken recipe, a rotisserie chicken, 2 Skinny Pop, 2 on sale sour creams, 2 Rao’s spaghetti sauces and a pill splitter. The rotisserie chicken was on sale so it cost me less than buying the whole chicken and roasting it myself. I will put the skin and carcass in the freezer until I get a second carcass and then I will make bone broth. Total cost for all was $ 77.64. Just outrageous! But they were all things we needed.

Dinner was easy. I had already cooked Jalapeno Cheddar Sausages leftover from last night. They just needed to be reheated in the microwave. I served them with healthy homemade coleslaw that we had had the night before. I always try to cook for 2 meals at a time to save time and energy.

I have many, many, paper plates right now. So I have been using them when I can to save on running the dishwasher as often as I have been.

Our entertainment for the evening was Hubby watched Monday night football and I called and chatted with my sister for an hour.

Did you do anything to save money yesterday? Please share with us in the comments so we can learn from you.