A Year of Living Frugally--Update

So how goes your frugality!? Finding any good deals? Learning new ways to save money??

My next major post on frugality will be on how to use social networking to help save you some dimes, but I wanted to check in and share this week's major savings!

Walgreens has Coffee Mate buy 1 get 1 free (liquids 2.49 value). I used this coupon and you can find more here. So I snagged 2 Coffee Mate liquid creamers (french vanilla was all they had, but hey!) for .49c!! Can you beat that?????

I also snagged up the Reynold's Aluminum Foil for .89...the ad was for 20 sq feet but they didn't have any, just the 25 sq feet, so I snagged up 3 of them for .89c each! :) That goes in my extra stock pile in the garage along with other non perishable items!!

I'm enjoying the challenge of saving money and hope you are finding some good deals too!

~~Amy


Pssst, don't forget to enter my giveaway to win a badge reel or ponytails!! Hurry before Thanksgiving, because once the Saints/Cowboys game is over, the giveaway is over!

A Y ear of Living Frugally--Be Entertained....

Ahh, we continue the year of living frugally. I've been diligently cutting coupons, scouring the net for deals and tricks. I have to say I think it's going fairly well. I am now stockpiled with enough meats to get through our family dinners for several weeks or more!


So carrying on with my little experiment....how shall we entertain ourselves on the cheap?

Entertainment
This is one area where we don’t need much help because we rarely do anything! We are the family that has no problem using a TV we got for free until it literally falls apart, we rarely go to the movies, we take walks, play games, read books....we're rather low key.

Here’s what we’ve done so far that helps:

MUSIC:
Pandora.com: This is a free music service you can use on your PC (and I’m guessing it has other mobile apps, but that’s obviously something I don’t waste money on). You create custom radio stations based on your fave artists, songs, music genres and viola---free music! I believe you are only allowed 30 free hours a month, so use it wisely. It took some time but I have trained myself: I pause the music or turn it off when I’ll be out of the room for any length of time. It automatically stops the music for you in some time if you are not ‘active’ on the site for some time. It has nifty features like song lyrics, the ability to buy a song, and social networking connections. You have to listen to a few ads every so often, but who cares? I buy CD’s only for the artists I REALLLLLLLY love.

Movies/DVD’s: Okay seriously, we RARELY buy or even go see movies. We don’t even belong to anything like Netflix. But if we did, it would probably be Netflix where you can stream videos on your computer or with your Wii! We just aren’t huge movie people. We buy the ones we REALLY love that we want to keep forever, and the few that the kids want (and we do so on sale or with discounts!). With as much is on television these days, we don’t have time or need for buying/watching movies.




Redbox is also a great way to get movies. There are tons located around the country and for 1.00 you can check out a movie. Return it the next day and you have spent 1.00 and tax (and a little gas) for a movie! You can use Redbox.com to pay, hold movies and if you sign up for the emails, they usually send freebie coupons every so often!

Television: We currently use Dish Network. It was cheaper than DirectTV and WAY cheaper than our local cable company.  We have the 2nd cheapest plan meaning, for us, we get the channels we want for the most part and a DVR for under 50 a month. Your plan will vary for your families needs. For us, the DVR is priceless, because instead of buying my kids movies, I simply record their fave tv shows and viola…30 minutes of peace. Dish Network also regularly previews other channels not included in your package so if you see a show you like on that preview channel…just DVR a whole mess of them. That is how I have my stash of Golden Girls episodes. Don’t be hatin…you know you love the girls.
Dish even showed a marathon of all the "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" episodes that were off air when Dish and Fox had their little spat over money and airing their Fox shows. I find their customer service to be superb over DirecTV.

Hulu.com is also a great resource for FREE television. You can also watch many of your fave shows on the website for their network, for example, you can watch ABC Primetime shows on www.abc.com.

Books: Seriously, do I even NEED to spout the benefits of going to the library???? REALLY? Books for free. DUH. Videos too! If you simply MUST purchase books and you do it on a regularly basis try your local bookstore chains rewards program. Some cost, some don’t. But if you buy books enough, the cost of the program should be far less than the savings you’ll receive. If you do NOT save more than you spend on the program, um, duh, drop it. Amazon and Ebay are great places to get good priced books as well. There are also various swap websites and trading websites for books, but I don't have experience with them. For that you shall google.

And get your behind to the aforementioned library.

Black Friday and this time of year is the time to stock up on family board games also! One Black Friday (when my oldest was a newborn and I was up before dawn ANYWAYS) I stocked up on several of the traditional kids games (Candy Land, etc) for 5.00 each a game!

Memberships for Local Activities: These things will vary based on your area. Generally speaking, if you are even a small family and you visit your local museum, zoo, aquarium, etc more than a few times a year....joining the membership is worth it. For us, we also go more since we are members. We may still only go to the zoo 6x a year or so...but if we even go 3x we have paid for our membership. We are blessed to have access to the Audubon Institute were we can go to the zoo, aquarium and get discounts at the IMAX and the Insectarium. Keep an eye out and scope around for deals on local activity memberships on the cheap!

I hope these were helpful tips and saves you some moola! Do you have any tips you can share with us!!??
~~~Amy

Living Frugally Weekly Confessional

So I'm actively attempting to save money and thought I'd share this week's adventures! :)

I checked out the ads in the free paper they throw around my neighborhood and it has the weekly ads in it. I knew Toy Story 3 was coming out, and that I had to get my son's blood work done on Tuesday, when the movie came out (nifty coincidence so that could be his reward!)

So I saw the CVS ad and noticed if you bought 25.00 worth of certain items you got the movie for 3.99. Usually I disregard those type of ads because they are lures and it's not really worth the savings. The movie itself is 15 bucks at Walmart or Target usually, so spending to save doesn't make sense to me usually!

But this time I did the math. I looked at the items on sale that qualified for the deal. I looked through my coupons. Lo and behold I had a coupon for every single item I would have normally bought in that deal! So that's how I ended up with:

20 count Charmin Toilet Paper for 9.97
8 rolls of Bounty Paper Towels for 6.97
10pk Duracell batteries (x2) for 5.97 eac
Crest Pro Health Toothpaste (x2) for 2.75 each
Dawn dishwashing soap for .97c
Puffs Tissues for .97.

So that meant I got the movie for 3.99.

So in the end I spent 39 and got all that stuff plus the movie. I could have not gotten for example, the batteries, but everything I bought was stuff we use on a normal basis. Everything I got was on sale and had a coupon, not too shabby considering the movie itself (with its fancy useless to me blue ray disc) is 30 something alone in some stores.

And I have plenty of toilet paper...can't complain about that....


~amy/mama

A Year of Living Frugally--Introduction

So I've been dabbling in this world of saving money..(what? People DO that?) and I'm rather enjoying it. November 1st starts my true Year of Living Frugally. I hope to chronicle how it goes, share the tips and tricks, and STICK WITH IT! A little backstory:

We are a one income family and have been for nearly 4 years. We could absolutely benefit from me working full time, but at this point it's not a viable option. After I paid for daycare and other work costs, the profit would not be much and having a child with Autism at home, it's an even less a viable option. You don't just put your child with special needs in just any daycare. Both boys will be in full time school within 2-3 years so we can certainly reexamine the situation then (or if a sudden opportunity comes up before then).

Right now we are blessed with me being able to stay home with Eli. However that doesn't mean we don't need to pinch pennies! It seems everywhere I turn in my life, friends are suffering from illness, job loss, and needing to save money or just weather the storm. (I'll refrain from discussing the political angle of this for now) I can't help but wonder, how long before I'm next?

So I've been experimenting for some time now with saving money. Thus far, here are some things that have worked for me in the area of running your day to day household chores.


*Making my own laundry soap. The materials are fairly inexpensive, and the costs vary. I purchase cold process soap from CosmicCleanBody and the rest of the materials from local stores. Just google "How to make laundry detergent" and you'll find a ton of resources!

*Line Drying Clothes: This is a less oft used solution for me because living in the deep south leads to great humidity which apparently does not do great for line dried clothes. But as we are FINALLY getting cooler I plan to start drying on the line again .When I do tumble dry clothes, I do several loads at once so once the dryer has heated up once, it doesn't have to work so hard at drying the next few loads.

*CrockPot Cooking: I have no data to back this up, but I highly suspect that crock pot cooking saves money. Not only do you generally make a meal that lasts for days, and gives you leftovers to freeze, you aren't running your stove/oven for hours. So I've got no actual cents on this one, but I think it saves money. It definitely saves time!!

*Planning your Menu  This seems like a no brainer to me but I am shocked to hear how many people do not plan their menu. Now this is not to say I stick to it religiously. There are plenty of days where I forget to thaw meat or something, so I shift to another days schedule..but because I have a menu and I purchased my groceries based on that, I have the items there to make the planned meals. I combine this with coupon clipping, looking at the grocery ads (that they throw in the free sample paper 1-2x a week), and basing the menu off whats already in the freezer/pantry. And while we're at it: Keep your freezer/fridge Full: This keeps the air circulating just so and your appliance doesn't have to work so hard to pump out cold air. Just don't pack it TOO full or it'll not be able to move the air freely.

*Cleaning: This is an area of our lives that people probably waste a lot of money in. Quite honestly there isn't much in this world that can't be cleaned with vinegar, baking soda and a lemon. But just assuming that's not your thing, here are some ways we save money cleaning. 

• Reusable Cloths: I do buy paper towels for some things but for cleaning, I try to keep with reusable cloths. Now, I sew, so I have in my possession, a wide variety of fabrics. I make my own cloth flannel wipes, reusable Swiffer Wet Jet Pads, grocery bag holders, laundry bags, etc. I so firmly believe in this lifestyle change that I run Micro Mops with my fellow penny pincher, Dee :) You can keep a stack of cloths in your drawer and just throw them in with your regular laundry. Don't sew? Check out my shop or head to Sam's or another big box store and buy a giant pack of terry cloth el-cheapo towels.
• Refilling Cleaning Solutions: Chances are you can use far less of the amount listed on cleaning solutions. Or you can refill them when you think you can't. Use a Swiffer WetJet? Well when the solution runs out, simply hold the bottle upside down so the top is submerged in very hot-boiling water for just a minute. This loosens the glue so you can remove the cap and refill with your fave cleaning solution. Continue this until the bottle is too grimy to use anymore! If you use liquid hand soap, look into buying in bulk, or the larger refill bags, you can reuse the same container and just refill with the liquid when it runs out. 
• Washing Items in Cold Water: You REALLY don't need to wash much in Hot water unless its really dirty (like soiled towels/sheets) or the care label specifically says to wash in hot. Save your money and energy and wash in cold, with homemade laundry soap and then line dry! Laundry on the cheap! 
•  Clean from the Top Down: Dust from the top down...wipe from the top down...pick up from the top down...you get the idea. It's just silly to clean something you already cleaned. Let your solutions do their work by spraying and letting them drip down mirrors, tubs, etc.
•  Stick to Cleaning Solutions You Trust: I do spend the extra bucks for some items. I personally love Mr Bubbles bathroom scrubbing bubbles cleaning sprays/solutions. I find they work extremely well, I spray, let sit for a few minutes and let it do it's magic...and viola, I can WIPE the tub/sinks/toilets/etc out without killing my back. It's beautiful.

Routines are my friend. I try to stick to routines and when I get off base from them I find myself easily distracted and things don't get done. Of course I am an easily distractable person, so routines are against my better nature, but if I don't force myself to stick to lists and routines, I'll put off EVERYTHING and then get stressed trying to do it all at once.

Of course I'm blessed that both my husband and I are realistic that we don't want or need to live in a Martha Stewart house. Children do not remember how clean the house was, how fine their things were, but they remember the time spent with them. So that is what I aim for every day, a healthy balance of kids, house, spouse, fun and time for me.

I'll be back soon to share more of my tips and tricks and some experiments. I'll conclude with an ongoing list of what I want to accomplish to save money/time.

*Cut down on paper usage: towels/napkins/paper plates
*Line dry 3-4x per week
*Cut more Coupons--while analyzing if they're really worthwhile!
*Plan menu based on the sale papers, not on what we want...perfect this plan
*Utilize the things we have memberships to: Audubon Zoo, Children's Museum, etc.
*Keep track of daily money going out that I alone spend. Strictly limit that
*NO fabric/supply purchases unless necessary for a pending order!

Do you have frugal tips? Feel free to share them!!

~~Mama Amy