Frugal Friday

Nick & I finished four more college applications (and, paid the application fees for four more colleges) , so trying hard to keep the rest of the spending under control. We are making great progress clearing out the freezer, so that's always a win. 

Saving on things we buy

• I go through our credit card reward offers (e.g. earn 10% back at CVS by opting into the offer & saving it on your card) & select any that we might use. There's no harm in savings them, as they are free & just expire if you don't use them before the deadline. I occasionally save money on offers I've forgotten about, and it's always a pleasant surprise. I earned a few bucks back on gas by doing this. I tend to save all of the gas offers, as you never know. We typically get our gas at Costco, but in Moab & traveling back & forth to Corvallis, we stopped at other places & one of them qualified for a small cash back offer. 
• I used a few grocery store coupons to save a bit (free avocado, free bananas, and $1.50 of of my total). I also uploaded my receipt to Fetch & iBotta, saving another $3 between the two. I rarely see produce coupons, so was happy to find a few to save money on things we would already be buying. 

Earning money

• Listed a few things on FB Marketplace, as I clean out Sam's room. 
• Moved Sam's desk into Nick's room, and sold Nick's desk. When the boys move into college apartments, we will definitely buy local items vs trying to move things from here. Made $90. 
• Sold three card games, for another $25. 
• Earned $460 in dividends, and moved those over to cover some expenses. We reinvest all dividends in our primary investment accounts, but we are trying hard not to draw down our savings right now, during this very expensive life phase, so opted to pull this out. This is not from our primary investment account, but a stock account that we are trying to sell off (to diversify our investments), & are just waiting on timing given tax implications. 
• Earned $107 on my blog (the only amount I've earned in 13 or so years, so my hourly rate is fantastic. ;-)) I've been experimenting with the ads & changed them to hopefully be less irritating. Fingers crossed. 

Avoiding spending

• Really limited grocery shopping this week, as we were out of town here & there, we no longer have DS18 eating at home, as well as we aren't also feeding his GF for most meals. That makes a big difference on how much food we need! I need to adjust our shopping & menu plans. DH loves to shop at Costco, but there are things we just no longer need that quantity of, and it will be an adjustment for the two of us to align on what we should buy there vs at the store in smaller quantities. ;-) 

Eating what we have

• I've done a good job of eating up leftovers for various meals
• Finished off the fantastic mango a friend left at our house while she was dropping off meals for Nick when we were gone. I'm usually kind of meh on mangoes, but this was incredible. 
• Had a few delicious salads, with garden lettuce & tomatoes. 
• Made Nick a smoothie using up strawberries a friend gave me, as well as some orange juice that is about to expire. It was a good post soccer game snack. 
• Made muffins out of overly ripe bananas out on the counter, plus six bananas from the freezer. I left out one container of muffins for M this week, and the rest went into the freezer. No bananas currently in the freezer, which I always like to see. We've made a real dent in the freezer the last few weeks, which is always nice. 
• I try to have salad with leftover protein for lunches, but had a day when I didn't have any leftovers. I dug into the freezer & found some buffalo chicken meatballs that no one seemed to like, and heated up a few of those to go on the salad. It was an unexpected combination, but was pretty good. 
• Defrosted two chunks of French bread (we cut up Costco bread, wrap it & freeze it, as we can't use it all before it goes bad) to make cheesy bread for Nick. 
• Found a container of white bean rosemary soup in the freezer, and had that for lunch with some cheese and an apple. It wasn't my favorite recipe, but that was the last of it. 

For others

• Passed on a few job options to a friend who is looking for work. 
• Did another volunteer call with a student I'm mentoring. 

What about you? Any wins to share?