Frugal Friday

This is an expensive season for us. Sam is doing test prep, the boys are sharing some math tutoring sessions (they are both taking calculus), & Sam is required to have driving lessons ahead of his test. These are all short term costs, but add up, for sure. 

Saving on things we buy

• Used an iBotta offer on grapes & $.10 off any receipt offer, when I picked up a few things at the store. Uploaded receipts to Fetch.
• Not saving yet, but researching travel options for 2023, to take advantage of upgrades, miles & travel credits. 

Earning money

• Drove Nick to reffing games 
• Listed three items on eBay, after a long drought of not posting.
• Sold a vintage ski hat. 

Avoiding spending

• I wrote about this earlier in the week, but found $600 of travel gift cards. They should have never been lost, and I'm frustrated by that, but happy just the same to have found them. 
• Went through & made detailed notes all of our travel credits, points, gift cards, etc. I spent several hours tracking everything, & I now feel like I have everything. I'm going to hold a much higher bar for these things moving forward, although some of the credits date back to COVID, & I wasn't expecting a pandemic when I booked travel. 

Eating what we have

• Defrosted leftover chicken curry, and had that for dinner one night. The boys had leftover burgers, and the last two buns. I can't get them to eat burgers without the buns, whereas that's the preferred version for myself & M. 
• Made myself a breakfast burrito as brunch one day, when I was starving and "someone" had eaten my planned lunch. Food is really at risk in the fridge, at my house. ;-) 
• Brought home leftover brunch (treat from a friend), & Sam had that for part of a lunch.
• I used a few random fridge items for cranberry muffins - oat milk instead of cow's milk, as I have a bunch of oat milk to use up. Remembered that Nick has juice for his smoothies, so used that in place of buying & squeezing an orange. Skipped the brown sugar, as we didn't have it, and M prefers his muffins a little on the less sweet side. (It called for both white & brown sugar, so I didn't leave it out entirely.)
• Made another breakfast burrito as a lunch, using up a leftover slice of provolone. 
• We were out of cheese for shredding, so I diced up a few slices for our taco night. 
• Had leftover chicken fajitas for dinner.

For others

• I'm on an advisory board for a university, and had our first kick off call this week. It was really nice to meet a diverse group of people, who all work in very different industries than me. 
• Started a new mentoring program at work

What about you? Any wins to share?