My frugal List: Week of July 23, 2018


It was youngest daughter's 17th birthday this week. I don't know how that happened but she is growing up so fast. She is going to be a senior in high school this September. We have been narrowing down her college choices and she has been applying for lots of scholarships. She is also preparing for her road test. She has been driving me around to stores and when she needs to go somewhere. 

All of YD presents were wrapped in gift bags or boxes that I already had. They are all put back in the tub for the next birthday. No garbage from unwrapping presents. Her cards were homemade. 

Last weekend we went to see OD in Baltimore. We had a great time. While we were down there we checked out Towson College. It was beautiful. It is still on YD's list. While we were driving home on Tuesday we went to Rutgers University in NJ. She found it to be way to big for her. It was a nice school but it is HUGE. So it is now off of the list. We have 3 more schools to look at and then she will apply. 2 visits are scheduled for August and the last is early September. We had started with 11 schools and we are down to 6 so we are doing good.


It has been raining almost everyday this week so I haven't had to water the garden. Thank you Mother Nature. It also means that I haven't been weeding the garden much. And we all know how fast weeds can grow. The humidity has been crazy so the AC has been on much more then I like. 


The garden is doing great. I started picking cucumbers. I have dozens of little ones and so many flowers. I'm hoping to make dill pickles again this year.


The tomatoes look great but still no red ones in site. 


This may be my best year ever with peppers. Maybe because May was cooler. I'm not really sure but we are enjoying them. 


We have been cooking up a storm. We cooked at OD  while we were away. We have a lot of large payments coming up in August and I am carefully watching every penny. Eating out is an easy category to cut. YD requested chocolate chip waffles for breakfast for her birthday and tacos for dinner. We also had omelettes, BBQ chicken, salads, tilapia, mac n cheese, hot dogs, HB eggs, egg salad, quesadillas and steel cut oats. 


We did eat dinner at my sisters's house on Saturday. Our friend's son is visiting and we got together at her house. She ordered Chinese food and had enough for double the amount of people that were there. She was going away the next day, so she sent us home with it all. We are happy to eat leftovers. My son took some to work for lunch. She also sent us home with veggies, cheese and fruit. We will be watching Lip all week. YD is very happy about that because she hasn't had any time with him recently. I got the best fortune in my cookie. When did Dave Ramsey start writing fortunes? 


I hung most of our laundry inside lately. If it looked like it wasn't going to rain for a while I put it outside. All loads of laundry were full loads and I do them on the cold, short cycle. 

We went to See Jurassic World 2 on YD's birthday. She picked the movie. We all liked it. I used my employee movie passes and got my free popcorn. We brought our reusable water bottles and snacks too. 

Hubby and I paid bills online saving us the costs of stamps.

I renewed library books online saving myself a trip to the library.

Hubby and I have been watching Netflix. We are paying for it so might as well use it. 

I only worked 2 days because we were away for a few. I don't get paid for days I don't work. Hubby does get paid vacation time.

We sold 5 items on eBay and Craigslist this week. 


I got a few freebies this week.

Hubby has been great about stopping and getting the black beans with the coupon at BJs. We have 8-8 packs so far. I have been using Ibotta to make them even cheaper.

I cashed out my Ibotta account. I put $52.14 back into my grocery budget. I also transferred money from my PayPal account into our bank account from eBay sales. 


I got an email about it being National Lipstick Day on Sunday. MAC was giving a free lipstick with no purchase. So YD and I went. They gave out bracelets because they only had so many lipsticks to give out.  We waited online for about an hour but we got to talk so it was worth it to me. We also got free lotion samples. The lipsticks sell for $18 each. Way more then I would pay. YD was very happy. 


We then went to Sephora for YD's free birthday gift. They were having a special too. Free face mask for everyone with a loyalty card. We both have one so we got 2 of those free too. I gave her mine.  She also got a sample of an item that she has been wanting to try. She did buy a 2 items but she had a gift card from her birthday. 


Then she wanted Starbucks. She has several gift cards from Christmas and her birthday. She treated me to a drink. I got the smaller one because I do not need a large. She is such a sweetie. 


What did you do to save yourself some money this week? How is your garden doing? 




Comments

  1. Hi Mcoia and you did so well during the week and I am glad your YD had a wonderful birthday and is slowly sorting out which colleges she would most like to go to. Your gardens look lovely and productive.

    God blessed us with another 3mm of rain overnight too even though we have been drought declared in our area so we are thankful we have more water in our rain water tanks to work with and they are near to full.

    Our savings added up to $2740.56 last week :).

    Here is what we accomplished and how we saved -

    Earnings -
    - Sold in my internet store 350 saved garden capsicum seeds, 100 g of dried thyme and 25 g of dried rosemary with herbs picked and dried from the gardens making $27.92 I banked into our budget.

    Finances -
    - Banked more money into our saving for our home deposit bank account bringing us to 27.03% of the way there.
    - Listed 20 items on eBay using a free listing promotion saving $33 in normal listing fees.

    Purchases -
    - Purchased 24 pairs of leather gardening gloves on eBay (12 pairs for DH and 12 pairs for myself) for under half the price we can get them in our local hardware store saving $109.20. We only use thick leather gloves here to give us some protection from brown snake and Redback spider bites in bushland whilst cutting firewood.
    - As both of our chainsaws needed replacing and I couldn't justify a $2649 price tag on a named brand we got prices on I bought 2 chainsaws in a Chinese brand knockoff of Stihl called MTM on eBay taking advantage of a 5% discount voucher saving $2289.90. Both chainsaws had equal specifications and power as our Stihl ones did anyway and we have other equipment here in the same brand that have proven to be reliable and long lasting. I also spent a little more buying a spare chainsaw chain for each too.

    Firewood -
    - Cut 1 cubic metre of ironbark hardwood firewood from a friends farm for free as he had pushed over trees 18 months ago saving $200 over buying it locally. A challenge considering both our chainsaws were not co-operating but we got there in the end through determination.

    In the gardens -
    - Picked another huge amount of thyme from the gardens we are currently drying for sale on the internet.
    - While harvesting the thyme I separated off 4 more plants with good root systems on them into bare areas where the others didn't take saving $18 over buying mature plants in the local plant nurseries.
    - Picked 647g of cherry tomatoes & 13 bunches of silver beet from the gardens some we used fresh for meals and the rest we froze or blanched and froze in meal sized portions for the freezer for food storage.

    Other frugal things we did -
    - Saved shower warm up water and dish rinsing water to water the fruit tree pot plants on the back veranda and newly planted vegetable seedlings and used saved grey water from our showers and washing machine to hand water the house paddock lawns with.
    - Cooked all meals and bread from scratch.
    - Only turned on the electric hot water system when the water needed heating and boiled water in our camp kettle for our morning hot chocolates on the slow combustion stove rather than using the electric kettle.

    Hope everyone has had a good week also.

    Sewingcreations15.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have been very busy. I love seeing your house savings go up and up. It seems to me that when you live frugally day in and day out you don't even think of the little things anymore. They are just a habit. Habits can be good or bad. One of my habits is to dump water cups into potted plants at the end of the day while lots of people I know have a Starbucks habit. I only have 1 in person frugal friend so I love that I get to talk to all of you and have frugal friends all over the world. Have a wonderful week.

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    2. Wonderful week, and your daughters all sound delightful. :) My son just turned 16 and we'll be starting some college visits this year. He's going to do the first two years at the community college near us, but after that, who knows?

      Your garden looks great! I was relieved to see that your tomatoes are still all green as well. We have about a zillion tomato plants, but we've only harvested a few red cherry tomatoes. I'm going to be drowning in tomatoes soon! No complaints about that. :)

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    3. I can't wait until I'm elbows deep in canning tomatoes. Good luck with the college search. She is our youngest so we have learned some things along the way.

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  2. I've been canning and freezing and making pickles like crazy. We have had a heat wave, so the garden is exploding. This week, the heat will abate a bit, so the garden will slow down as well.

    I've been cooking a lot, as well. Your meals look really good. I've been on a very reduced grocery budget for the past 2 weeks, and plan to continue it for several more. I'm still stocking up while buying only what is necessary for daily use. This is possible because of the amount of free food I'm getting from the garden, plus the things my sister gave me--peaches, a cabbage, jalapeƱos and blackberries, and the large amount of food in my freezer and cupboards. Pictures of the canning are here: https://beckyathome.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/thriving-in-my-thrifty-week-july-29-2018/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are using what you have which is great. This is why we have food storage, to get us through. I have been praying Rob finds a full time job soon. I love looking at all of your pictures, especially of your kids and nieces and nephew. Have a wonderful week.

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  3. Hi Mcoia and I so agree that it helps having a network of frugal friends from all over the world. I too only have one close friend who lives similarly to us to talk to about day to day things. We compare notes on specials and advise one another where to get cheap items that each other need.

    By networking we all learn so much and of course become friends in the process and mostly you will find that fellow frugal people will all uplift and support each other.

    Sewingcreations15.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most of my friends think I am crazy when I tell them about a great deal I get or an item I garbage picked. My one friend is the only one that gets it. So I stopped telling the others. When we see a great deal or freebie we always let the other know about it. At least I will have one friend to do stuff with in retirement. I think most of the people I know are going to have to work until they are 90.

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  4. Just a thought...it is possible to fix garden cart tire flats with "Fix a Flat" in a can or expanding foam, permanently! Best, LDC

    ReplyDelete

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