Frugal Friday

 This is a recap for a few weeks.

Travel savings: - adding these on weeks I have something to report, which is not every week. Paid $44 for $2200 of Christmas flights (flying to Portland to visit the family). I used American miles for three of the tickets, and those miles were earned exclusively through work travel. I didn't have quite enough for the fourth flight, so I booked that one using Sam's Alaska miles. He's the one most likely to have a disruption in his travel schedule due to work, so this worked out well to be on a separate reservation. It was a huge value to use miles, given the cost of flights right now. It felt especially good to save so much from work travel, because those miles feel especially hard earned. 

Saving on things we buy

• Uploaded all receipts to Fetch & iBotta. iBotta pretty consistently has a $.10 off any receipt, so I try to get those loaded & save myself "a ton" of money that way. ;-) Big bucks!
• I made a change to  our auto insurance, and saved $184, which I immediately transferred to our savings account. I'm trying to be more diligent about moving any saved/earned funds over right away, so it's more visible the progress we are (or, are  not) making. 
• I received a $140 evoucher to use on British Airways for a future flight, for the entertainment system not working for 10 hours. Not sure that's a tradeoff I would take, but here we are. I don't fly British Airways (with the exception of work, when I'm not paying), but it looks like I can book a partner flight & use the voucher as well through their site, which I will do in the future. They are partnered with American Airlines & Alaska Airlines, so I will go that route. 

Earning money

• Sold one of M's old watches for $130 on eBay. 

Avoiding spending

• It's been a week, and was craving a sandwich, so I conned Sam into picking one up for me while I worked by also ordering one for him. I used a BOGO offer, and we got two foot long Subway sandwiches for $11 + tip. I had a gift card, so it was no money out of pocket. 

Eating what we have

• Came home from my work trip & couldn't find anything to eat, so I made popcorn as a meal before I went to the store. 
• Defrosted soup 2x for lunches. Those are on my "use it up" list, so nice to have them out of the freezer.
• Also defrosted two bags of rotisserie chicken + chicken broth & made a chicken/rice dish. This also used up yogurt (in place of sour cream) in the recipe, which was another bonus. 

For others

• Can't really think of anything. 

What about you? How was your week? Any wins to share?