The Frugal Five: #95
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.
I am exploring how to keep costs down during busy weeks. One strategy is to keep dinner on the table instead of eating out. Here are some of my tips and trips.
1- Pantry Cooking Once a Week
I noticed that my family tends to eat out when I work late. So we need to eat dinner at home again. One strategy to reduce our grocery bill, I am committing to putting a pantry-cooking meal on the menu each week. My boys went to an out-of-town swim meet last Saturday, so I used up some goat cheese and tortillas to make quesadillas. I paired it with a salad to round out the meal and it was delicious. Later this week, I will use multiple cans from the pantry to make vegetarian chili with cornbread for dinner.
2- Hair Care Discount
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 haircuts. My hair salon has new owners, so I don’t know if they will be doing the traditional gift card sale, but I will be watching and asking each time I go to get my hair done.
3- Freezer Clean Out
I have been using various items from my freezer this month, but have more to go. It is time to clean out and organize my freezers to see what I have and create a plan to use the older items. Since I shop the sales, the freezer acts like a bank to keep our costs at their lowest possible, but with a growing teen athlete, our bills are still higher than others.
4- Working on the Brush Pile
Our area had a big storm in October and we are still cleaning up from the event. I had 5 big trees come down in our tree grove and it would have been at least $1000.00 to get a company to take care of them. Instead, my husband has worked several hours each weekend, cutting the branches off and cutting up the trunk into smaller logs. We are slowly bringing the wood and branches up the hill to cut up/discard or stack to season for next winter. This is a slow process, but it is worth it.
5- Decorating the House
It is time to start decorating the house for the winter. Instead of going out and buying a lot of decorations, I am using what I already own and adding elements from our grove to make our home beautiful. I will start with basic pumpkins and fall decor and move towards more Christmas items around Thanksgiving. In addition, I have candles that smell incredible which I started burning last year, but they have a long way to go before I need to replace them. I can do this because I purchase high-end candles when they are at their rock bottom price and save them.
NOTE: IBOTTA’s bonus event starts today. The slow and steady accumulation of the best deals over the month will help you reach whichever goal you’ve selected.
What Free-bees have you been able to pick up this year? September’s Free-bees are listed 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.
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