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Frugal Five: #43

 The Frugal Five: #43


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.    


With the New Year upon us, it is time to set goals for how we will be spending our money.    This can look like shopping carefully, DIY projects, wasting less or just doing without.     Let’s see how we can save our pennies this year.   


1- Haircut Savings

Since haircuts are $30 per cut plus tip, each time my husband asks me to cut his hair, I am happy to.    This is a huge savings!   He gets his hair cut every other week, so on average we save $60 per month on just his hair cuts.   


2- Packing lunch everyday

My colleagues were eating out twice this week.  Once for a birthday and once for a professional development day.    For the birthday celebration, I choose to pack my lunch, but celebrate with my colleague and wish her a happy birthday.   For the second, I also packed my lunch and utilized my time to get caught up on my huge pile of paperwork.    I feel much better regarding my work load and getting prepared for next week's workload.    


3- Swim Meet on a Budget

Our son’s championship meet was this past week and our family traveled to see him compete.   We traveled by car the day of the meet, packed food, drinks and chairs.     It was a great event and we limited our cost the the price of gas to get to the meet. 


4- Side Hustle

Recently I had the opportunity to tutor a wonderful young man in reading.   At first, I was hesitant to pick up another responsibility, but I chose to try it.  I use the materials that I create for my 9-5 job and my local library.    Both of these things are at no extra cost, so the money that I get from tutoring is all based on my hourly teaching rate.    It is a great experience and it gives me a little pocket money.         


5-  Taking Advantage of Opportunities

Our orthodontist mailed my son’s retainers and there was an error in the mailing, so we didn’t receive them.    Upon calling them and working through the issue, the orthodontist reordered them at their expense and we went to pick them up this weekend.    However, the post office mailed back the original retainers, so the orthodontist gave us both sets.    WOW!   That is a $650 savings.   Feeling so blessed.  


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.


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