Frugal Friday

 For whatever reason, I have plenty to report this week! 

Saving on things we buy

• Uploaded a receipt to iBotta to earn $.10 off of any receipt
• My grocery store had $50 Uber gift cards generating $10 in grocery rewards. I often need to take Uber to the airport for work (we try to avoid it for personal travel, but also occasionally for this). I bought $200 worth, generating $40 in store rewards, which you convert to cash off your next purchase. Their rewards program is pretty simple, and we will definitely use $40 in grocery money. I'll have at least one if not two trips to the airport for my upcoming work trip, and $60 is about average for going to San Francisco from our house. These will definitely get spent. 
• Bought a couple of protein bars I like at Trader Joes, & applied two iBotta offers, saving $3 across both.
• Noticed that installing the New Zealand evisa app saved $3 over the cost of filling out the application online, so I did that. Once approved, I will remove the app. M did the same, saving us a whopping $6. 
• Used a $2 CVS coupon & combined with my $10 monthly credit to buy the last few straggler travel sized items we need for the trip. 
• Used a $20 Trader Joes gift card (won at a game at Christmas) to offset the cost of breakfast items for home + snacks/breakfast I'll pack for London. While I can technically eat breakfast for free at the office, I'm usually much better off calorie wise if I eat a protein bar in the morning & grab the free fruit cup. Not ideal, but trying to make it work while traveling. 
• Ordered delivery pizza for Nick and his friend on his last night before he went back home, and used a $5 credit.
• Used a Subway coupon as well for $2 off of a sandwich for Sam. 

Earning money

• Listed a few things on eBay & one of M's watches sold pretty quickly, and after fees I made just over $100. I'm starting a new savings challenges for 2026, where I'm working to save enough in a short-term account to reduce what we need to pull from our longer term savings to cover Nick's college. We're still using his 529, but I want to be prepared when that runs out (likely spring of next year). 
• Found $50 worth of gift cards when I was cleaning up & organizing our "incoming" mail area, which clearly doesn't get dealt with enough. ;-) 
• On the similar clean up, I cashed in a bunch of change for a Southwest gift card. The fees to exchange for cash on CoinStar are absolutely bonkers! Turned that into $33 that we will use for a trip in the future. 

Avoiding spending

• I was going to buy a travel size lip cream (this is not a vanity item, as it keeps me from needing to use a steroid on my lips thanks to my secondary autoimmune disease) to save some weight over the the full size cream. It felt very silly to consider, but we are at the point of packing where every ounce counts when you will be hiking for four days carrying your packs! I scoured my toiletries & came up empty, but went through them again, as I was reasonably confident I had a travel version that came as part of a purchase. Sure enough, found a new travel sized tube! Avoids waste, postage & $14 or so. And, I saved an ounce or so from my backpack weight. ;-) 
• M has spent a ton of time on appliance repairs lately. And, when it rains it pours. He's done two dishwasher repairs (our dishwasher is about 5 years old & he's probably repaired it 6 times), as well as replacing a problematic ice maker in our fridge, and a leak in our washing machine. He also replaced a part in the dryer over Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful he's handy & able to extend the life of our appliances. The washer & dryer are quite old & due to be replaced soon, but we will keep them out of the landfill as long as we can. 
• On the flip side of the gift cards, used one to buy myself + Sam lunch on a day when we both had a packed day. He picked up Subway for us (one of his favorites) using the gift card. I had enough for a second lunch. 

Eating what we have

• Nick & his friends left a few items in the fridge after their dinner party, and I've been steadily using up what was left over. There was heavy cream (most of a large container), as well as parmesan & parsley, so I took 1/2 of the meat from a rotisserie chicken & turned that into chicken Alfredo. Sam and his GF loved it, and each had 3 servings! 
• I also found cilantro tucked back into the fridge, so I have diced that up & put it on M's salad.
• For the other half of the $4.99 Costco rotisserie chicken, I first made broth, then took the broth + the rest of the chicken meat & made chicken noodle soup. I used part of a bag of noodles that were hanging out in the pantry. The broth & soup both used some very old carrots, so those are now gone. The $4.99 chicken is so incredibly cheap for a huge amount of chicken + the ability to make your own broth. 
• I have another set of chicken bones in the freezer, but need to wait to clear out more freezer space, so I can make more broth. Freezer space is currently in high demand at our house. We bought a few things for the teens to eat while we were gone, and they didn't seem to go through most of it. Getting the freezer into a more manageable state is a top priority. 
• Defrosted hamburger buns & hoagie buns for various buffalo chicken sandwiches for Sam. Bonus points that the coleslaw I made to accompany the buffalo chicken used up more of that heavy cream I'm trying to wrap up. Sam had the buffalo chicken on the buns on Saturday night after work, and I made him a quick lunch with the hoagie buns on Tuesday between classes. 
• Left Sam a plate for dinner another night, using up the rest of the fettuccine Alfredo. He has a much more intense class schedule + labs + work this quarter. 

For others:

• I picked ten bags of lemons from our tree to share with neighbors. There were so many interested folks! Love sharing & avoiding waste. 
• My sister & I share management of my special need's aunts admin tasks, as my parents get older. She largely handles health related issues & I handle finances & bill paying. I noticed her savings account did not pay interest (of any kind!?!!) & moved it over to a 6 month CD paying the best rate. She doesn't have much money, so it's even more important to optimize what she has. 
• My parents wanted to visit Nick in Boulder, so we used our Southwest points to buy their flights.]
• Gave away a bunch of clothes from M on Buy Nothing. 

What about you? Any wins to share?