Saving on things we buy:
- Found a discounted snack (granola bars) & two bags of coleslaw that were $1 at the store, when I went to pick up milk.
- Found $.02 in the yard while sweeping. I think this fell out of an Easter egg, but I will put it back into the "found change" fund
- Continued to list items on eBay, and made a few more sales
Avoiding spending
- Put together a nice Easter afternoon with minimal money. Used a couple of bags of Easter treats purchased earlier in March, recycled Easter bags & plastic eggs, and filled them with the candy & change.
- I had leftover heavy cream, so I made a crockpot chicken tikka masala, after I discovered I happened to have everything necessary to make the recipe, and it would use up most of the heavy cream. It was delicious, and Keto friendly. It will be going into the recipe rotation.
- We are generally only spending on repairs (more on that) & food. For repairs, our oven element caught on fire, so we've ordered the part & M will be repairing it this weekend. Additionally, we've needed to replace a few items on the kids bikes, as they are getting serious workouts during the quarantine, as biking is an acceptable activity for them... one of the few.
- We normally would have spent $300-500 when my parents were in town over spring break. We typically give them money so they can take the boys to lunch, do fun activities outside of the house, and they buy groceries & prep meals. So, while we would have much preferred to have them with us, we are saving the money.
- The boys won't be doing school track this spring, so we've saved $200 on the fee for that.
- Our gas budget is incredibly low right now.
What about you? Any frugal wins for the week?
I would love the recipe for the crockpot tiki masala.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to spend money when I am going nowhere and ordering nothing.
I have not even purchased a single item at the grocery store in over 2 weeks. I imagine the next couple of days will find me grocery shopping but I really need very little other than produce and possibly a loaf of bread.
Yay for having all the ingredients for a meal that turned out great. We too are spending on repairs/mandatory things only but that included moving our sprinkler heads after our patio was installed - $275 as there were only a few that needed moving. We are not on full lockdown (state of emergency, voluntary stay at home type thing with some businesses businesses open if it is safe like landscaping). We also changed the tires on our car to the summer ones...yes they were open too and there is almost zero contact between us and these people so super safe. I did manage to go to Costco, the lineups had been horrendous but I decided to drive by at 630 and the line was short so I went. I had made a list in advance of everything we normally buy there so I didn't forget anything as don't want to do this more than once a month now. It is so close to our house we normally were there about 1 every week for something, even small before. I got one extra of every otc we use - plus sugar which I was low on and couldn't get at our regular online order store. Social distancing was good inside, glad their warehouses are so bloody big. But I spent way more than I intended but in the long run it will save money as I don't have to spend money on OTCs at the super expensive small pharmacies near my house. I found free books at a little free library (exchanged them for ones I'd read) and a small clay pot on a free pile on the side of the road - all thoroughly disinfected. It was payday on our first reduced salary cheque but we are trying to keep our savings where they are in case it drags into next year. We are good to the end of the year at the current salary, hubby calls me a squirrel as I constantly am squirrelling money away and had been super careful with company money after a challenging last year.
ReplyDeleteWow, great deal on the coleslaw! We ended up spending $400 this week for a new pressure tank so we could have water. A necessary expense, but we will make due.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad at some of your savings, but what to do? A friend posted that they looked at their calendar for April, and all the milestone events (they have a senior) that were cancelled.
ReplyDeleteWe put together an Easter dinner with ingredients on hand to make up for losing Easter with my family. We didn't do baskets since we don't actually celebrate Easter, but JB did find their old basket from earlier year so that's been brightening up the room.
ReplyDeleteWe're mostly looking at spending right now: food and groceries, stamps, tutoring.