Frugal Five: #91

 The Frugal Five: #91

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- Coffee Drinks 

I pack my hot coffee every morning for my husband and myself. This saves us approximately $4.00 x 2 = $8.00 daily. In addition, I use the leftover coffee to create cold coffee beverages, which would otherwise cost between $5.00 and $8.00 each. Since there are a lot of dupes on Pinterest, the creation of these drinks is easy.        

2- Friday Night “Take Out”

By Friday Night, I am spent and usually do not feel up to cooking.   Therefore, it is easy to order out of Fridays.    There are no specials, and typically, you have to wait longer for your food.     I take this opportunity to use convenience foods.    I store frozen pizzas purchased when on sale or picked up for free.   I may stop by the store and pick up all of the fixings for the family to make their sandwiches.     Finally, I use frozen meal kits such as baked shrimp or taco kits.        

3- Create Your Own Convenience

You can create your own convenience for a fraction of the price. At work a can of soda will cost $2.00.   However, this week a case of 12 cost $4.99 or $0.42 per can.   If you order out lunches they will run you between $10 and $20.00.   Compare this to packing an equivalent lunch, for between $2.00 and $5.00.   

4- Garden Harvest and Seed Saving 

The garden harvests are coming to an end, but it is still producing.     I am able to pick copious amounts of green beans, tomatoes, peppers (jalapeno, chili, and banana), and basil.     This week I harvested a huge bag of green beans, a few tomatoes, bunches of basil, and many peppers.     In addition, I harvested several flower seed pods (zineia and miniature sunflowers), and left several peppers and beans to fully dry on the plant.   

5- Bargain Plants

Our local Home Depot, had plants on sale to get rid of them.    Since our front yard plants died this year in the drought, so we picked up a few hostas to replace them at rock-bottom prices.   The plants were originally $10.00 each, but we picked up 4 plants for $10.00 this week.   That is a 75% saving.   In addition, he saved a very unique plant to add to our collection.    

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.