Breakfast was eggs and ham that I froze from our Christmas ham. It was a nice change from bacon.
After taking care of some bills, I ran some errands. I picked up a prescription and a Dr. Scholl’s for Hubby. Then I filled up the SUV with gasoline since we only had 68 miles of gas left. I do not like to keep the tank that low in winter. I paid $ 3.35 per gallon since I had no gas points due to not grocery shopping much this month.
My last stop was at Top’s to pick up some sale items. I purchased celery for $2.00, 2 packages of strawberries on B1G1F or $ 5.99 for both, and a top round roast on sale for $4.99 a lb. costing $ 20.36. My total for all was $ 28.35.
Hubby goes through a lot of celery for snacks. He dips it in dill dip. We both love strawberries with SF whipped topping as a dessert. The roast was a great price for my area. I will roast it for dinner one night and the rest will be sliced on the meat slicer for cold cuts. I can’t buy roast beef cold cuts here for less than $13.99 a lb. I much prefer to save money by roasting my own.
When I got home, Hubby said he felt well enough to cut my hair today. He did a really nice job. I was very pleased! He even cleaned up all the hair that was everywhere on the rug in front of the sink in the kitchen. I will be coloring my hair at home this week. I have not been coloring my hair and it has grown in about 2-3 inches and is white. I don’t like it because it washes me out. I look way too pale. Not going to the salon will save us a fortune every year. Hubby is still going to the barber every 7 weeks. The barber cuts it very short each time. The barber with tip is only $16.00.
I had to do a load of clothes this afternoon because Hubby was running out of clothes. He doesn’t have too many that fit him right now and he doesn’t want to buy much until he is down to his goal weight. So I washed them on the eco cycle in cold water and hung some of them to dry. A few were permanent press so I dried them in the dryer on a medium heat using my wool laundry balls. They only took 25 minutes to dry.
Before I made dinner, Hubby and I watched 2 of the 3 FBI’s that were on last night. We may watch the other one after dinner.
We are having taco salads using ground turkey instead of ground beef for dinner. The ground turkey is much cheaper to buy than the ground beef that I buy and tastes delicious with hot and spicy taco seasoning. We put it on romaine lettuce, chopped fresh tomatoes, sliced red onion, diced black olives, and then top the meat with Mexican shredded cheese and sour cream.
What did you do today to save money?
6 replies on “Wednesday’s Frugal Things”
Hi Precious. Good frugal day. I still cut hubby’s hair. Had never thought of having him cut mine. I never got in the habit of coloring my hair. It is more salt and pepper now than it used to be before I had chemo 7 years ago. I guess I am older too, so that might be another reason. LOL!
I went to Kroger to do my regular grocery shopping today. I spent 79.67 and saved 36.80. I kept to my list and bought mostly things that were on sale in the ad this week. I went to aisle 46, which has the clearance area, and only bought 1 box of cheez-it’s, which hubby loves, for 1.99. I thought he could have it for a treat when he takes his lunches for work. They had a whole bunch of boxes of them, but I had gotten some other clearance snacks recently, so wasn’t tempted to get more.
Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet day. I went to my class at the Y and we ate leftovers for supper. We had gone out to eat at a local restaurant last night for “Restaurant Week” in our town, and brought enough food home to eat tonight too. It was soul type food and was delicious. We will definitely go back to this place. I wish you were close by so we could go together. We didn’t get the amount of snow the weather people were predicting, but I think you got it. Stay warm.
Hi Chris,
I bet he could do it for you. Hubby cut mine when the children were at home. He always cut my two boys every week. Since they were in private school which was military, they needed a cut every week or they would get demerits. Hubby hadn’t done mine in years now so I think he was a little nervous but he did a fantastic job!
That is a great savings on your grocery shop especially in this day and age. Two meals for the price of one is my kind of eating. YUM! I wish I was closer to you too! It would be fun! Yes, we got 8 inches so far. It is not snowing now but I haven’t seen the forecast so I don’t know if we will get more.
Hello fellow frugal friend,
The home haircuts have saved my family a lot of money. My husband is the family barber/stylist. I take a seat every other month to get my hair trimmed and my two teen boys get their haircuts about every three weeks. He took over the task of giving my boys their haircuts when they were quite young, so he has gotten a lot of practice, doing well over 100 haircuts on each. He does a great job and I have had other parents and my boys’ teachers ask where I take them because they are that good. Between the costs of haircuts, tips, and transportation costs, it saves well over a thousand dollars a year. He also gives haircuts to my mom and my best friend on a regular basis. It took a while before my mom felt comfortable with having him cut her hair, as she wasn’t happy with him cutting mine, but after a bad haircut at her salon that she paid too much for, she reconsidered. She was at the house watching hubby give my boys their haircuts and she commented that he always does a great job, but it looked like too much work. He replied that if you are going to cut hair, you need to put the time and effort into doing it right. Well he was finishing up my younger son’s haircut and was taking the cape off when my mom mentioned that she needed her hair trimmed. I told her she was next, take a seat and she did! He caped her and asked how much she wanted cut off. He held his hand and asked how many fingers worth. She told him the width of his thumb, and that he was not going to use the clippers on her hair. He assured her that he would only use his good hair shears. So he did the full sectioning, pinning up her hair, then letting it down in increments to trim each layer. When he finished, she went to the bathroom to inspect the results. She was pleased, and she then mentioned that it was a great money saver. She doesn’t make much money at her job, so I was glad we could help her save money. My best friend regularly has him trim her hair, and when the salons were closed in 2020, a couple friends of mine asked me if he could cut their hair. I told them I was fine with it, and he did. One friend had an overgrown pixie that was a mullet thing on her neck. Her husband had offered to cut her hair, but she was afraid she would end up shaved bald. She wanted to know if he could cut short hair, as it more difficult than trimming long hair. I pointed out that he gives my two boys their haircuts and she asked him to cut her hair short, like my older son. He did as she asked, she was happy with the results and her husband that likes short hair really loved it. I was glad I could help a friend.
We got ten flats planted with seeds; tomatoes, peppers and different varieties of herbs. We have a decent size garden with fruit trees, berry bushes, plus we plant in raised beds and directly in the ground for things like cabbage, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and melons. Potatoes go in plastic barrels he cut in half. It is easier to harvest them that way without damaging them. One day last summer, we picked two gallons worth of blueberries from the bushes. That was about $100 worth. Well worth the efforts. We canned peppers, onions, carrots and beets, as well as making tomato sauce. Hubby shot two very large deer on our farm, that were butchered and in the freezer. We all love venison, so we will be eating a lot of it.
We bought a wood burning stove and had a stainless steel sleeve put in our fireplace to use the existing chimney. Because of the tax credits, we will be getting $2000 back. We have a lot of trees on the property, including ash trees that are dying off from the emerald ash borers. So we will not have to buy wood. Given the high cost of heating oil, gas and electricity, we are doing our best to save where we can.
Hi cwa14n3,
I love that you get all those free haircuts. Your Hubby is such a good guy to do your families and friends haircuts. My Hubby cut the boys are from the time they were small right up through high school. They went to private military school for junior high and high school and had to have haircuts once a week. He saved us a fortune. BTW, I am loving my haircut that he gave me. I think it is the best hairstyle that I have ever had.
I love that you grow so many veggies. I am planning on doing more than just tomatoes this season but we can’t plant until the end of May. I love that you have blueberries. We used to plant them when we lived in NY before but here we have too many deer who would eat them. I am jealous of your venison.
You are doing a great job saving money with all the things you are doing.
We love the benefits of raising our own fruits, vegetables and herbs. We have an electric fence around the garden that keeps the deer out, plus some fenced in raised beds in front of the house. Today hubby made a batch of venison chili. He took a quart jar of onions & sweet peppers, a pint jar of the hot peppers, and a quart jar of tomatoes and blended them. He added garlic plus dried oregano, basil, parsley and sage, all from the garden, plus a couple cans of red kidney and black beans. Then he browned up a couple pounds of ground venison and added that to the mix with a few other spices, salt and red pepper flakes. What I do know was that the house smelled so good as it was slow cooking, and it tastes delicious. He made a venison stew last weekend, and I baked fresh rolls, and a blueberry/black currant pie.
When you get over 100 quarts of blueberries and 20 quarts of black currants each summer, you freeze a lot, make jam, syrup as well as share with family and friends. It is still cold up here in Northeast PA, so a hot bowl of chili with fresh baked cornbread hits the spot. Being DIY people on the farm is a lot of work, I won’t say it is easy, but I was raised in a home where we had a garden and did canning. My husband was raised on a small farm, and he worked at a local truck farm, doing greenhouse and field work. They canned fruits, vegetables and made tomato sauce each year. Plus they had a wood burning furnace, so he cut and split a lot of wood. His mother, his aunt and grandmother all gave haircuts to the family, plus had neighbors, that would visit to get haircuts. All three were known for being able to give a good haircut. So I guess it is in his family genes. Not so on my side, my mother did a horrible job cutting the bangs of my sister and I. I see the old photos and cringe, my mother thinks that they were cute, NOT! My cousin went to cosmetology school and after she graduated, I went to her salon, and she gave me a bad haircut. I think some people just have a knack for it. She was only there a short time and then worked at a fast food place, before she got a job as a cashier at a grocery store.
We had chores to do, we were not spoiled city kids. We learned to cook, bake, canning as well as keeping the garden. A couple of my coworkers tell me we were born 100 years too late. I laugh. We are Christians with a work ethic, we don’t spend foolishly, the mortgage on the farm is paid off, we don’t have any car loans and we are more impressed with a new farm tractor than someone buying a luxury car. We try to use our resources wisely, and that is why frugal people tend to be financially responsible, versus deep in debt and losing their home.
Hi cwa14n3,
Your stew that Hubby made sounds delicious. I have not had blueberry/black currant pie in years. That brings back memories. Thanks! I am seriously jealous of your blueberries. We used to grow the plumpest Maine blueberries in our yard when the boys were growing up. I miss them. Farming isn’t easy at all. Kudos for all of your hard work.
Your ancestors knew how to keep the household going and things frugal. I love that. My mom used to put the bowl on our head for haircuts. They were awful but we had no money for such things. My sister and I looked like twins for years. I am very grateful that Hubby gives such wonderful haircuts. I do not miss paying $140. every 5-6 weeks to get my hair done.
I was raised in the city but we always had chores to do too and so did my children when they were growing up even though we lived in the suburbs. I marvel at my son’s homes when I visit. They know how to clean and cook. We were lucky that my grandfather had a great friend who was a farmer. We had such delicious veggies from him.
Yeah for being debt free. Everyone should strive for that especially in these times.
Thanks for sharing.