Frugal Five: #35

 The Frugal Five: #35

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 live a frugal life.    

Last week was a little hard to get anything accomplished, so I needed to give myself grace.   Although I did try to be as frugal as possible, I also needed to keep my life together.    

1-  Freezing Leftovers

We took a short trip this week, so we took a hard look at our perishables to see which ones we needed to eat up and which ones we could save in the freezer.    This will help to keep our future grocery bills down.     We froze Italian bread, mussels, macaroni and cheese, and greens.     Our fruit, such as clementines and apples,  milk and cheeses didn’t need to be frozen.      

2- Packed Snacks for the Road Trip 

As part of our refrigerator clean out, I cleaned and cut all of our vegetables (celery, peppers, and carrots) to eat in the car.   In addition, we packed soda, beef jerky and an open bag of pretzels.    It kept us out of the fast food places.  

3- Split a Meal

When we did need to eat out, we split meals and took advantage of 2 of XX menu options.   This was more than enough food for the two of us.    In addition, we choose to drink water instead of purchasing a beverage.   These tips brought our dining out bill down significantly.     

4- Complementary Breakfast

As part of our hotel accommodations, the hotel offered a free breakfast.   The breakfast consisted of hot entrees such as sausage or bacon, eggs, potatoes, oatmeal, waffles, pastries, fruit and yogurt.    In addition, there is coffee and tea service throughout the day.    Each morning we took advantage of this and saved at least 1 dining out expense.     In addition, they offered free fruit as a snack throughout the day.              

5- YMCA 

   

Our family has a YMCA membership where we live and they participate in the National Program which allows its members to go to any YMCA in the nation that participates in this program.    This was a great benefit because our son is a competitive swimmer and needed to find a lap pool to continue training while we were on vacation.   Water time can be very expensive if it is only for a few days, but with the YMCA National Program, we were able to use their pool free of charge.       

 

6- BONUS

My husband travels for work and is considered a Diamond Member at the Hilton Chains.    We were able to use our points accumulated throughout the year to decrease our out of pocket expense and upgraded to a suite to give the family a little more space.    

Do you want to see what we did last week?   

Just click on the picture for the link. 

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