Frugal Five- #14

 The Frugal Five

With inflation on the rise and our salaries not being able to keep up, it seems like we have taken a pay cut and must be more careful with our money.   The Frugal Five is a series where we celebrate our daily or weekly activities that help us to live a frugal life.    

1- Dinner at Home

We have been eating out a lot lately, but this week we made an effort to eat at home.    One of the best meals this week was a quick chicken stir fry.    We used the Instant Pot and experimented with making rice.  In addition, we cleaned out the refrigerator of the fresh vegetables that were getting old.    The Chicken Stir Fry was the best Stir Fry we have ever made!   I call this a win, win, win!    

2- Packed Dinner and Lunches for the Swim Meet

We had a swim meet all weekend and it was over meal times, so we packed our food and drinks.    Given how expensive eating out is, we saved quite a bit of money by doing this.     

3- Free Training and CEU Credits

This week the PaTTAN office was offering a virtual Literacy Symposium which was free, so I signed up for all three days.   This symposium featured some of the leading practitioners and researchers in my field and it was incredible to attend such an event.    Since there were so many sessions, I didn’t get to participate in all of them.    However, later the PaTTAN office will place the recording on their website and I can go back and view the other sessions.    As a bonus, I also am receiving CEU Credit for all three days.      

4- Transplanted Plants from Columbus

While we were packing to move to our new home, we took the opportunity to transplant some of our naturally seeded plants from the back garden.   We were able to successfully transplant 3 hardy tomato plants and brought 6 tomatoes and 3 peppers that were grown from seeds.   All of the plants' were transported without damage and were planted this week. 

5- Shopped my Pantry and the Sales

We have been spending a large amount of money the last two weeks on either eating out or restocking our kitchen because we hadn’t unpacked our food storage yet.   This week, I have found our kitchen hardware (pots, pans, knives, etc.) and key food boxes from our Columbus home.    Therefore, we are going back to our regular grocery shopping process.   

Please leave a comment below with your ways of saving money this week.