Frugal Five: #85

-

 The Frugal Five: #85


With inflation on the rise and salaries not increasing, our ability to make ends meet keeps going down.    Therefore, we must be more careful with our money.   The Frugal Five is a series where we celebrate the daily or weekly activities that help us live a frugal life.    


This week I am exploring how to keep costs down during busy weeks.    Keeping dinner on the table instead of eating out is one of my strategies to get the job done.    Here are some of my tips and trips.   


1- Spring Garden 

Our garden group is meeting and planting a lot of our gardens for the spring.    My peas, radishes, carrots, and spinach are coming up.    In addition, I was able to plant cabbage and peppers.    I am hoping for a great harvest again this year and planning on how to preserve our bounty for the winter. 


2- Free Tickets to the Red’s Game

My husband’s work purchases season tickets to the Red Games each year.   This year we were able to use the tickets to see the Reds vs the Mets.   It was a great game and we enjoyed the outing as a family.     In addition to the free tickets, we received a parking pass that saved us a lot of money.    As a Bonus, it was a bobblehead game, so our family received 3 bobbleheads.    I was able to give 2 of them to friends who appreciated them.   


3- Packing Lunch

We pack our lunch every day, so we will not be tempted to eat out.     We eat leftovers, sandwiches, or other items we pack from the refrigerator such as hardboiled eggs or yogurt.   Our lunches are simple and not expensive, but they fill us up so we can get through the day. 


4- DIY Starbucks Coffee

We pick up delicious coffee from our local grocery store when it goes on sale.   Then we take to-go cups in the morning.     Since spring is warming up, we are making iced coffee in the morning.   If we were to get a mocha iced coffee at Starbucks it would cost us at least $6.00, but by making it at home this treat is within our budget.         


5- Getting Free Strawberry Plants


My gardening group was thinning out their strawberry patch and offered me 10 plants to start one in my backyard.   I wasn’t sure what to place in the garden bed I created last year, so I’m testing the strawberry plants there.     Hopefully, the bunnies will leave them alone. 


What Free-bees have you been able to pick up this year?    My entire year is attached below.    


Here is my list:

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.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Frugal Five: #64

-
Image
  The Frugal Five: #64 With inflation on the rise and salaries being unable 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 the daily or weekly activities that help us live a frugal life.     1- Free Wood Pick-Up My son practiced his driving by going with my husband to pick up free wood this week.   We cut the wood up into different size pieces for use in the fireplace this winter.  Since we kept and process the wood from our fallen trees and were able to pick up this wood, I expect that we will not need to purchase wood for a few years.     2- Gourmet Lunches This is my first week back to work and I need to be prepared.    The alarm is set and I am putting into place several new nightly routines to make my life a little easier in the morning.    One of these routines is to prepare lunches for the week.     This week eggs and block cheese were on sale for a great price, so I took advantage of th
Read more

Frugal Five: 33

-
Image
  The Frugal Five: #33 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- Took advantage of Free-bees this week  Wow!  I was able to pick up a 3 lb Butterball boneless breast meat turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Brown Gravy, Jiffy Corn Mix and Bob Evans Breakfast Sausage for FREE.    In addition, I was able to pick up free tissues from Meijers.        All in all, a pretty good week for freebies.  2- Homemade Deli Lunchmeat I was able to pick up a Large Thanksgiving Turkey for $0.45 lb. and I earned a free 3 lb Butterball boneless turkey breast from IBOTTA.  Last week we spent over $14.00 on deli
Read more

The Humble Egg

-
Image
  The Humble Egg Historically eggs are the cheapest type of protein.  However, due to bird flu, the price of eggs can get rather expensive and that is not when we eat a lot of them.     This has happened in the last year in my area, but now eggs have returned to a reasonable price and we can start consuming them on a regular basis again.    ** All egg recipes are linked to the pictures.  Replacing meat with eggs or stretching a meal with eggs, will decrease the overall cost of your meal.  Breakfast Sandwich Our family is always pressed to leave the house in the morning, so having a portable breakfast sandwich available to us is essential to getting a good start to the morning.   That is along with our to-go cup of coffee.   Omelet Making an egg omelet with whatever cheese and vegetables are available for fillings makes a great breakfast or lunch.   We typically will make a three-egg omelet with vegetables (mushrooms, peppers, onions) and cheese (feta, cheddar, American).    My husband
Read more