Tag: frugal things we do

These are the frugal things we did recently:

• Purchased a ham on sale for $ 1.49 a lb. at Tops
• Purchased a rib eye roast for $ 9.99 a lb. which is one of the cheapest prices I have seen in a long time. Aldi’s had tenderloins on sale for $7.99 a lb. but they did not have any. The cashier told me that they were gone right after the doors opened this morning. They only had a few. I did not feel like making another trip this week to see if they get them in. The rib eye will be for the holidays and the ham we will be used over the winter. Both pieces of meat will get stretched as far as I can stretch them after the holiday making soups and casseroles from leftovers.
• Purchased bra hooks and eye replacements to mend 3 bras. The bras are otherwise in good shape. I did not want to spend $40. each to replace them. The hooks and eyes only cost me $ 6.70+ tax because I used $ 6.00 in gift cards to help pay for them.
• Hubby told me he needed underpants. Instead of going out to buy them at outrageous prices at J.C.Penney’s, I grabbed a package that I had put in our stash of underwear for him that I purchased there before the prices started to go up. I paid $19.99 for 6 pair. The same pack right now costs $34.00. It always pays to buy ahead especially with inflation.
• Mended a sweater.
• Hemmed two pairs of jeans.
• We have made easy dinner meals: soup and an English Muffin with butter, Parmesan coated chicken with macaroni and cheese( 2 meals), cheeseburgers and French fries and a pizza.
• We did treat ourselves to take out lunch from Panera Bread on a day that I was running a slew of errands. We each got a Pick Two and I paid with one of the gift cards that I purchased 4 years ago. I now have only $ 8.96 left on those cards. So I decided to purchase 1 $ 50. Panera gift card at Top’s with a Christmas bonus point that gave me $ 10. off of it. That will probably last us a year or more. I mainly use it for the bagel deal on Tuesdays when Hubby has a craving for them.
• My son and grandson came for breakfast and we played rummy for a couple of hours afterward which is cheap entertain. I love rummy!
• I ended up buying one more Christmas gift which I got on sale for 37% off.
• I am changing over to Mint Mobile for our cellphone. I got a deal for $15. per month for the next three months and then 3 months free. Then I will revert to the $15. a month plan for the future. I was paying my son $ 596. a year for our phone on this account so this will save us a lot of money. We really only use the cellphone for emergencies and calling or texting family.
• Hubby and I have both used our dental plan recently which pays for our cleanings and X rays. We also brought home a big bag of dental goodies. It is always nice to get these items free.
• I uploaded my receipts to Fetch which gave me 1500 points for a Rite Aid receipt plus other points from grocery trips.
• I am working on our 2024 budget which I will be sharing with you in future posts.
• I made and baked a cherry pie. Those cherries from the tree in our yard that we froze taste so good in autumn and winter.
• I have only done 1 load of wash this week using homemade detergent in cold water and hanging it to dry.
• The Medicare hospital bill that they denied has been taken care of. The woman there told me they made a mistake and the correction had been made. She sent me copies of all of the paperwork. That saved me thousands of dollars.
• I delivered 3 Christmas cards to my neighbors after the mail came today. I usually mail them but most of them haven’t since we lived here. They just put it in the mailbox. So this year I decided to save the $ 1.98 and just put them in their mailboxes.. BTW, get your stamps soon because they are going up to $ .68 each from $ .66 each on January 21, 2024. I will be getting a roll of 100. We seem to be able to make them last for 2 years or more.
• My son and DIL are not going to have their usual Christmas fondue on Christmas Day. They are going to have it the weekend after New Year’s. So they will be coming out the weekend before Christmas so that we can all exchange gifts. So I picked up a whole bunch of meats, cheeses, and beef jerky to make a charcuterie board for us all to munch on. I will add black olives, stuffed olives, and nuts along with some pork rinds for crunch. The meats and cheeses are on sale this week at Aldi’s for great prices.
• We continue to keep our heat at 64 at night and 71 during the day. When there is a sunny day, I open the shades and blinds when the sun is on them and close them when it is not.

That is it for now. As I stated I will be posting about our 2024 budget by the end of the week. It is going to be very tight because we are saving money for something that is very important to us in 2024. One post will then turn into many.

Please feel free to leave a comment and share with all of us what you have been doing to be frugal.

• I cooked a pound of bacon in the microwave three times this week instead of using my gas stove top.
• For a breakfast I toasted an English muffin in the toaster oven. I used some of the above bacon on it. Then I cooked my egg(45 seconds) and melted my slice of cheese in the microwave. No gas stove top was needed to make this.
• I washed 3 full loads of wash using cold water and the ECO cycle. I had a lot of sheets and all the bedding from the dogs sleeping with my son. I was really busy after my son left yesterday vacuuming all the furniture, carpeting, and the hardwood and tile floors. Those dogs shed like crazy. But I love my son and the dogs coming to see us.
• Showers this week were short 3 minute ones.
• We made tacos from scratch for Sunday night’s dinner. Lots of toppings: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, black olives, cheese, and sour cream.
• We ate all of our leftovers or froze them.
• Stocked some of the Thanksgiving deals while the prices were rock bottom.
• Received a $17.24 rebate in the mail
• Hubby made fried rice from leftover chicken, celery, carrots, rice, an egg, sesame oil, and soy sauce to go with pot stickers for a fabulous Chinese meal while my son was here. We ate the leftovers last night and froze some fried rice that was left. We will start on the turkey leftovers tonight.
• Hubby made a huge pot of party mix for the holidays. This has been a family tradition for all of our marriage and for Hubby when he was a kid. The cereals and pretzel sticks were all purchased on sale at Top’s. The nuts were purchased at the warehouse club using an e-coupon. We brought some to my grandson on Thanksgiving. My son and DIL are Keto so they won’t eat it. My other son received some to snack on if he got hungry on the ride home.
• I returned an expensive item I ordered from Walmart to the store for a refund. It wasn’t what I expected I was getting and it was dirty like it had been a return.
• All of my Christmas gifts are purchased and wrapped. I purchased a gift card for one gift using a reward point from Top’s. I paid $ 40. for a $50. one.
• I plan on using the 2 fresh yams that we brought home from our son’s for a sheet pan meal next week.
• I baked two loaves of pumpkin bread in the toaster oven, one for breakfasts this coming week and one is in the freezer for Christmas.
• We will be eating leftovers and from our freezer this coming week.
• I spent some time making a menu plan for 2024. Yes, I am planning out the entire year.

That’s it for the week. What did you do frugally?

These are the things we did to save a little money this week.

I finally uploaded a pile of receipts to Fetch. I usually use the rebates for Walmart or Amazon gift cards.

Philips who makes Hubby’s C Pap machine had a recall a while ago. They replaced Hubby’s current machine with a brand new one. However, we had a second back up machine which they said they would send later. It finally arrived last week. Hubby took the old machine to Fed Ex to send back to them. It was postage paid. Philips really stepped up on this recall. We always keep a back up in case one machine breaks.

Hubby replaced the bad outlet in the kitchen.

I did one load of wash in cold water and hung most of it to dry.

I ordered a $100. cash back rebate using reward points from our credit card. They will apply it to next month’s bill.

At a doctor’s appointment, he gave me a new medicine to try. He gave me enough samples to get me through a month. If it works well for me, he will then give me a prescription to fill. I always ask for samples when I go. They usually have a ton of them in this office.

I made a meal using homemade chicken broth this week. When I don’t have broth, I use bouillon cubes and water. Meals this week were homemade chicken soup for brunch. Bacon macaroni goulash was made for dinner for 2 meals( only used 1/2 lb. of diced bacon) and turkey tenderloin for 2 meals. Leftovers were used from the freezer for others: used up frozen homemade lasagna and some French Fries.

Hubby took bottles back to Fast Cash and got $5.90 in deposits returned to us. He had to leave 2 bags of bottles here at the house because he had no more room in the car. I will take those back tomorrow when I run errands.

I placed a Walmart delivery order this weekend and used a $10. gift card earned from Fetch to help defray the cost of a handheld calculator. Mine bit the dust!

Hubby gave me the best haircut he has ever given me this week. I just love it! I love saving all that salon money I used to spend even more.

I received a $5.00 liquor rebate in the mail.

I have been needing to go to B.J.’s to get some bulk items that are cheaper right now than other stores. It is in another town so I waited until I had other errands and appointments to run there. In the meantime, their sale flyer came. They had a deal that if you spend $150. on certain days you can redeem a coupon for a free Butterball turkey valued at $25. or under. My bulk items came to $ 178. so I will be getting a free turkey. Free turkeys are rare these days! I also clipped a number of e-coupons to my B.J.’s card and saved $ 12.50.

Hubby has finished all of the yard work finally for the year. He cut down all of the irises yesterday. We still had a few heavier things that needed to be put away. My son helped with that when he and West came to visit on Sunday. I made a nice breakfast of French toast and sausage for Hubby and West. My son had scrambled eggs and sausage. Since I am not a huge fan of sausage, I ate some eggs and Fage yogurt. My grandson is taller than Hubby now. He is only 14 and I suspect he is going to be well over 6 ft.

We watched The Kansas City vs. Miami Dolphins football game on Sunday with a Free Trial on Fubo. Then we watched the Buffalo Bills vs. Cincinnati Bengals game in the evening on local TV. Those games were our entertainment this weekend.

Not a frugal thing but our snowplow guy came yesterday to collect our check for the winter and mark our driveway so that he knows where things are. He went up in price this year by $100. but he is still cheaper than most. He does a great job and is very reliable. We are very grateful to have him.

I made my grocery list for this coming week, butter at $ 2.49(limit 6) and organic 80/20 ground beef for $4.99 at Aldi’s. B1G1F shrimp and Tim Horton’s coffee are on sale at Top’s. They have the decaf on again so I will get some for Hubby. And I think that will be all this week.

I called my baby sister last Monday night and will call her again tonight. It is so nice to have free long distance calling. I remember the days when we paid for that.

Hubby and I have made a decision to switch our cellphone service to Mint Mobile. They are going to be offering a Black Friday deal so we will probably switch with that. We have one cellphone but will need another. So it will be two lines instead of the one we have but it will be about $ 26. a month cheaper than we pay now and on the same network.

I have a # of errands to run today. So dinner will be coconut shrimp that is frozen. We are trying to eat down the freezer to be able to fit more turkeys in it. If I can find decent romaine lettuce, we will have a salad with it. Lettuce has been a real issue here. It is already going bad no matter what store I try to get it in. I could find none worth spending the money on last week so fingers crossed for this week.

What did you do to save some money this past week?

These are the things we have done frugally this past week:

• Made a return to Walmart of a dented can from a grocery delivery
• We had a small hole in the basement wall where the new A/C unit stuff comes in from outside. The A/C guys filled it on the outside but I could see daylight from the hole on the inside. Hubby went down to the basement and filled it with plumbers putty. I don’t want that freezing cold air this winter coming into my house.
• The winter fertilizer has been put on the lawn so the lawn should winter the weather well.
• When Hubby put the new motor in the furnace he noticed that one of the screw holes was stripped. He has been researching how to fix that and he will be doing it tomorrow.
• We have a magnetic closer on our mailbox and the postman knocks if off once in a while. Hubby repaired it again.
• We had a freeze here so Hubby and I trimmed bushes that need to be trimmed in the Fall and threw out most of our annual flowers. We put our hanging baskets in the garage to store them.
• We ate every meal at home this week. With the prices today that saves a boatload of money. I made beef stew, shrimp fra diavolo, a night of odds and ends from the refrigerator, and Chef’s salad. I even had some beef stew leftover to freeze for another meal.
• We invested in another large CD.
• All our patio furniture has been put away in the shed.
• I waited until our gasoline tank on the car was almost empty. I filled it using $.80 off a gallon from Tops Rewards.
• We took the screen door off of our back door and put the storm door on.
• Hubby went up to our tire place to get the regular tires changed over to the snow tires so that the car is ready for the snow we are supposed to get next week. However, there is now a manufacturer’s rule( because of liability issues) that the tire places can’t put snows or even regular tires back on the car if they are over 10 years old. So he had to purchase 4 brand new snow tires which cost us $ 750. Since we will have to purchase 4 new regular tires when the snows come off in the spring, Hubby left all 8 tires with them. So that was an expense that we weren’t thinking about. Fortunately, we save for major expenses. FYI, our SUV was 10 years old last April and had all the original tires. We only have 46,000 miles on the SUV. The man who we always deal with said he was sorry about that. Then he joked with Hubby and said no one keeps their car 10 years. Hubby says I have always kept my cars for a long long time. We have always taken very good care of our cars doing the maintenance when it needs to be done and keeping them very clean. This 2013 car we have now has never had to be repaired. It has had minor body work done when a lady hit it in a parking lot at the aquarium. Otherwise it has just gone into the dealer for recalls.
• Talking about recalls, Hyundai sent us one yesterday to have the entire underside seal coated. They are doing them because they are rusting out. Since they want to do that free for this 10 year old car, Hubby got an appointment to have it done.
• I have been taking 3 minute showers this week.
• We have not used lights in the daytime
• We have had a warm spell so we saved on heating for about 3 days.
• I found a bunch of printed grocery lists that are over 20 years. I will be using them up for my lists the next few weeks.
• I picked up some Halloween cookies that my friend, Jessica, made custom for me at her bakery. I will be giving them to the 4 little kids that live on either side of me for Halloween. I will take them over this weekend for their parents to give them on Halloween. We are not doing Halloween trick or treating because of our age. The schools out here have Covid again. We just can’t take the chance of getting it from someone we answer the door to.
• I did one load of wash using cold water and hung most of it to dry. The dishwasher was run twice this week.

That was it for this week. Feel free to share with us what you did to save money this week in the comments.

These are the things we have done recently:

• All lights have been off during daylight hours
• All grocery lists have been based mostly on sale items
• My laptop is unplugged when not in use
• Made meatball casserole with a salad on the side; made 4 lunch and dinner meals
• Took 3 minute showers to see if they took less than navy showers
• Folded towels right away when dryer goes off; towels are one thing that I usually always use the dryer for
• Our heat had been on for a while; we are carefully keeping it a little lower than last year and down to 64 during the night
• I froze about a dozen eggs for future meals
• We received our gas and electric bill for the past month yesterday. We used 393 KWH of electric which was 3 more than same period last year. We used 23 ccf’s of gas. Last year we used 41 ccf’s. This year was much warmer. The average temperature was 60 degrees vs. 53 degrees last year. Our total bill was $ 114.27. Last year’s bill was $ 143.79. Besides it being warmer, I really tried to not use the stove top and oven which is gas. Small appliances were used 95% of the time. It would be nice to see all of our bills go down this year. However we are facing a rate increase starting with next month’s bill.
• I cleaned our refrigerator and made sure that nothing would spoil. I sliced up the fresh peppers that I purchased recently and froze them for winter stir fries. I found extra bags of cheese in my deli drawer even though I already had one open. I froze those also. They thaw overnight in the fridge when I need them. I consolidated the two open jars of wing sauce into one.
• We continue to eat down our chest freezer and can the meat that we can. I scanned the sales that are starting tomorrow. Ground beef will be $ 2.99 a lb. and chuck roasts will be $ 5.49 a lb. I will be canning some of those. Since it is getting colder here, I will put a chuck roast with some vegetables in the crock pot next week.
• My son and grandson took us out to breakfast to our favorite Greek restaurant to celebrate our birthdays which we recently had. It was delicious and a nice change from cooking breakfast.
• Hubby filled the cracks at the edge of the driveway with blacktop filler. Fortunately, we had 24 hours of dry weather after that. It has been raining ever since.

I want to thank so many of you who prayed for me for the lung CT scan that I had last Tuesday. I was diagnosed on a regular CT scan last year with Pulmonary Fibrosis. My mother died of this disease so I knew all too well what I was in for. It is terminal. My primary doctor recommended a lung doctor that he said he and his family would go to if any of them had an issue. I went to him immediately. He looked at the CT scan which the doctor at the hospital said showed some honeycombing in my right lung. He told me that he would follow me and send me for this specialized scan at one year. After a number of tests and 3 month appointments this past year, my doctor sent me for this scan which scans the lungs in segments so they can really look at them well. I found out the results late yesterday.

I do not have pulmonary fibrosis. The area that the doctor a year ago said was pulmonary fibrosis was a small amount of scarring in the right lobe. It could have been caused by pneumonia, bronchitis or even an injury. I did have a skiing accident that broke a number of ribs many years ago. Who knows? But I was so relieved that it is not pulmonary fibrosis. Hubby and I celebrated with a drink last night. So again thanks so much for all of your prayers. God was listening.

Please feel free to add your frugal things in comments. Those comments lately have been so helpful to so many people including me!

These are the things we did to save a little money this week:

• Spectrum sent us a copy of a bill to show us that they credited us for the 11 days that we were without ESPN and some other channels because of the dispute. They gave us a credit of $6.00. Since they didn’t take our monthly payment out of our bank account until Sept. 17th, they wanted to let us know that the credit came off of that payment. That’s $ .54 a day. Could they spare it for leaving us without NFL football? Since our cable bill is $ 80.97 + taxes, fees, and other charges monthly, it doesn’t seem like much. However as I have said before the little amounts of money add up.
• I mailed in $ 15.00 worth of liquor rebates. I had stocked up for the winter.
• Big Lots sent me a $10.00 off coupon with no minimum purchase because I hadn’t shopped there in a while. I used it to buy needed dish towels to replace some old worn ones. I cut up the old ones for rags.
• The landscapers moved two rose of sharon bushes to our new garden. We had paid for this the last time they were here. They didn’t do it then because the bushes were still blooming.
• We ate all our meals cooked at home using the most efficient small appliances.
• Hubby exercised by walking and taking care of our gardens.
• I exercised on the recumbent bike and did a lot of errands just walking around some stores.
• We got our senior flu shots. These are paid for by Medicare that we paid into for years while we both worked.
• We got 4 free Covid tests from the government. If you haven’t signed up for the ones they just sent to USPS to deliver, you can sign up at www.covid.gov/tests .
• I did 2 loads of laundry this week on Eco setting in cold water. I dried one load in the dryer and hung one load.
• We turned our heat off a few days ago but then had to run the A/C for a day and a half because it was so hot. Now it is turning cold and winter will be here soon enough. We will see how long we can go without the heat this week.
• Hubby found about a hundred wasps trying to build a nest in our patio umbrella. He killed them with some wasp spray. I hate any kind of stinging insects. Thank God he didn’t get stung.
• We have turned off our water faucets that have the turn offs in the basement for the winter.
• We took out another large CD this week at the bank.

That is it for last week. Did you do any frugal things that saved some money last week? Please feel free to share with all of us.

These are the things that we have done to save some money this week.

Since so many dairy products are in very short supply or non-existent at our markets, I decided it was worth the money to buy these. We eat a lot of Mexican food so sour cream is a necessity. I also use heavy cream in my coffee. Then there is cream cheese which is used for so many things. They will also save us a bit of money over buying these foods. Prices keep going up!

The induction motor for our furnace came yesterday. It has the gasket and everything else we need to install it. We paid $ 214.+ tax and got free shipping. The heating company wanted $701. + tax. Hubby will be installing it tomorrow.

These are the leftovers from the lasagna that I made for Hubby’s birthday. We ate it the last two nights and it is now in the freezer in containers.They are Bento containers for the freezer so I can add a veggie and some garlic bread to each before I heat it all up. We will probably pull them out on our busy days over the next 6 weeks or so. I also made his carrot cake. He was delighted. Celebrating at home saved us so much money!

I had been planning on buying a new makeup bag. The one on the top is the old one that I keep in my vanity. However, it is permanently stained and the inside liner is falling apart. Since I don’t wear as much makeup as I used to, this smaller bag is perfect to contain it all. I was going to order a new one yesterday. But then I remembered that I had some bags in my makeup bin that holds extras. Those extras are contained in bags. So I pulled the bin out and found the new one. It was holding spare lipsticks. Swapping the lipsticks out to the old bag and the makeup to the new was perfect. I don’t know what makeup bags cost today but every little savings helps.

Hubby has been working in his gardens getting them ready for winter. His grass that he planted on the sides of the driveway is all coming up. He has been watering it everyday by hand since our sprinkler system has already had the lines blown out.

We need deli meat so I pulled a turkey tenderloin from the freezer to thaw. I will be roasting it for dinner tonight. Then tomorrow I will cut it up on my meat slicer to use for deli meat. I paid $ 5.99 for this tenderloin many months ago. It is 1 and 1/2 lbs. Buying that much deli meat would have cost about $14.50. Plus mine will taste so much better. We have a tomato and some already cooked bacon to use up. So BLT’s sounds good for dinners this weekend while we watch football.

I cooked a dozen eggs in the instant pot for easy breakfasts and snacks.

I did one load of sheets using the Eco cycle of my washing machine this week. I am trying to save as much energy as possible since our heat is now on. It’s getting very cold at night.

That’s about it! I hope you all have a great weekend! Feel free to share what you did to save money this week in the comments.

We had our sprinkler system lines blown out by the company we use. This saves us money by preventing frozen lines over the winter which can be very costly to repair. I am also happy that our water bills will go down because we won’t be watering the lawn now. Our last 3 month bill was about $200.

Hubby moved the sprinkler system lines under the new garden. They were in the way of two rose of sharon bushes that are going in there. Now the landscape company can dig there and we don’t have to worry about them cutting the lines. It would have cost us many dollars to have the sprinkler company do this.

The heating company we use came and informed us that the induction motor in our furnace is very noisy and is probably on it’s way out. They want $ 701.+ taxes to replace it. We don’t want it to die this winter but we also don’t want to pay that price for it. Hubby did some research and found he can purchase the motor for about $200.+ tax. My son has installed a few of them so we can get any advice on doing it from him. Plus Hubby is an engineer and he says he can install it in about 20-30 minutes.

The only money I spent on groceries was $35. on fresh produce and dairy at Walmart and the cost of the chicken that I wrote about earlier to can. I canned 24 jars of meat this week.

I repaired a curtain in one of the guest rooms. It was coming apart where it hangs on the rod. They don’t make things the way they used to.

I had Walmart deliver me 6 cases of canning jars. I will need them over the winter. I am glad that I did because I heard yesterday that they are going up in price.

I only did 2 loads of laundry this week. One of clothing and one of sheets and towels. I used the Eco wash and cold water. I used the wool balls in the dryer to cut down on the time necessary.

We ate all meals at home last week. Hubby’s birthday is this coming week. I asked him if he would like to go out to dinner. He told me he likes my food so much better than eating out. He wants ground meat and hot Italian sausage lasagna and I have all the ingredients already. I will make a roasting pan full. We will cut the leftovers into portions and freeze them. I will probably also make him a carrot cake which is his favorite.

I cooked a dozen eggs in the instant pot so that we had easy breakfasts. Using it once to eat them all week saves energy. We continue to cook bacon in the microwave container. So much less mess and the container goes right into the dishwasher for easy cleaning. But first I save that bacon grease to cook with.

We continue to caulk around our windows to get them ready for winter.

I cleaned the garbage disposal. I don’t buy any special product to do this. I put some baking soda down that side of the sink followed by a little vinegar. I just let it sit while it oozes up. Then I run the disposal with just a little water for a few seconds. It works great! I do it once a week. I hate odors.

Hubby planted grass on the sides of the driveway and he has faithfully hand watered it every day for a few minutes. He continues to maintain the gardens each week.

Spectrum is our cable company. They and Disney were in a dispute over money for the Disney owned channels. Disney pulled their channels from Spectrum for 11 days. They said they were not going to credit customer’s accounts. However, they had a change of heart and they have credited everyone who was missing those channels. I don’t know what the credit is yet because we have not seen our bill. But anything is better than nothing.

Hubby replaced the drum in our Brother printer. This is the second time that he has done it. It sure beats buying a new one.

For those of you who don’t know, Hubby had a heart attack last October. Since then he has a lost a lot of weight. Taking over weeding the gardens and maintaining the bushes and flowers has given him lots of exercise. He told me a couple of days ago that he hasn’t felt this good in years. So I will have to get him on the treadmill this winter for his exercise.

Well, that was it for last week. What did you do frugally?