Frugal Friday

It was a pretty quiet week, as I was recovering from being sick for part of the time. M & the boys helped me out with some of these. 

Saving on things we buy

• M had a great grocery store stop (copious instructions were provided!) It was double points day, as well as Freebie Friday. The freebie was my favorite (expensive) protein bar. I also had two coupons for free items (avocado & a dozen eggs) if you spent $10 in a transaction. I needed oat milk for my coffee, and I've been going through it more regularly, as Nick now likes it in smoothies. We also picked up two packages of Tillamook cheese, which were on sale. He used a gift card for the remaining out of pocket, & I uploaded the receipt to Fetch when he got home.

Earning money

• Continued to list a few things on eBay, and sold a jacket & a makeup product.
• Not for me, but Nick has finally paid off his very expensive mountain bike! We made a deal last summer, that if he left his bike at my parents (where he does the majority of his biking), he would need to earn enough to pay for a bike here at our house. It's taken just under a year, but he's done it. He's earned the money through a few side jobs (reffing in the fall & spring + helping his tennis coach out), as well as applying all of his birthday & Christmas money to it. It's nice to have him understand the value of hard work. And, now I can erase the long tracker, showing him how much he still owes me. ;-) 

Avoiding spending

• Serendipitously, a neighbor posted free, new teen shorts on Buy Nothing. I'd just bought some of the same kind for Sam, so I was able to return those, and instead the free ones fit him perfectly. What a lovely gift from a neighbor!
• Additionally, I've been looking for a solution for Nick's closet organization, and a neighbor offered up furniture that was pretty much an exact match to our existing furniture. We haven't figured out how to reshuffle the furniture across the boys room, but really excited to have some additional pieces to leverage. 

Eating what we have

• Used garden strawberries & an overripe banana in a smoothie 
• Ate leftover Chinese takeout for several lunches & a dinner. I added some leftover rice to egg drop soup, to give it some more heft, and it was delicious. The soup was the gift that kept giving, as it sounded good, even when nothing else did. 
• Continued to use up lots of garden items: cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, lemons, etc.
• Used the rest of the lettuce (from lettuce wraps, as part of the Chinese takeout) in a salad
• I'd made tomato sauce out of a giant bag of tomatoes picked up for $1 at the produce stand, & stuck it in the freezer. Took that out for an easy dinner this week, and added meatballs & pasta/soy pasta.
• Ate a chicken curry dish (leftover from a dinner one night, that I then froze) for lunch one day. 
• Made tacos for dinner last night, using up taco meat from the freezer 

For others

• Finished my leadership course! Having COVID was no fun, but it did actually force me to rest & be in bed/on the sofa, which gave me a lot of free time to finish my class. I can now 1) apply for reimbursement for the course, and 2) start serving as an advisor for the university
• Gave away a bunch on Buy Nothing

What about you? Any wins to share for the week?