Five Tiny Frugal Things
by Katy on November 8, 2024 · 28 comments
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I stopped into Trader Joe’s yesterday to pick up eggs, bananas and cabbage. I walked past the flowers, pastries, chips, desserts, candy cane Joe-Joes, cheeses, booze and by-the-register treats. (I stand by my belief that Trader Joe’s is 90% impulse items!) Here’s what I bought:
• A dozen eggs for $2.99.
• Six 23¢ bananas.
• A four-pound head of cabbage for $1.99.
Yes, I weighed the cabbage for this blog post, although I’d already estimated it to be four pounds. My skills as a labor and delivery nurse include precise weight estimation of an item up to eleven pounds. Seriously, I was usually able to hold a newborn and guess the weight down to the ounce. Who knew this party trick would translate outside the delivery room?
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I visited with my mother and step father yesterday and was able to weasel their HBO login information out of them. (Worry not, I double checked the terms and conditions and we’re not violating anything with their schmancy ad-free plan!) My husband and I then added it to our Roku last night and watched The Martian.
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I watched a couple of Ardent Michelle’s “How to live on $1 a day” YouTube videos and reinvigorated myself to cook inexpensive tasty meals. There’s not much frugality content out in the world that’s new to me, but Michelle sometimes breaks through that barrier. I think she’d be proud that I shuffled through all the cabbages to find the biggest one.
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• Yesterday was a rare sunny day here in Portland, so I jumped at the invitation to go for a walk with my friend Lise.
• My husband has been sick and tested himself twice for Covid. Luckily it was negative and that we had a couple boxes of free tests from the government.
• Today is also a precious sunny November day, so I’m washing bedding and hanging it on the backyard laundry line. The next week is forecast for daily rain.
• I’m fully aware that Trader Joe’s corporate is guilty of union busting activity, so I try to limit the amount of money that I spend in their stores.
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I didn’t buy a vulgar gold plated apartment in the sky.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
1. I used up an entire bottle of body spray that I’ve had for at least 7 years. I’m trying to use up a bunch of old but still usable toiletries. My kids also finished off their tube of toothpaste, so I cut it open to get every last bit out. I was able to stretch it another 4-5 days for them.
2. Received a $24.xx Visa gift card for a class action law suit. I will put it towards Christmas gifts.
3. I’ve had about $14 languishing in my checkout51 account for ages. I just don’t buy any of the things they offer cash back on, but I can’t cash out until I hit $20. I decided to try one of their cash back offers on gas and got $1.69 back. Hopefully these offers will get me up to the $20 soon!
4. Made 4 small sales on Ebay for a total profit of $67. I used recycled envelopes, boxes and packing materials for all of them.
5. Every year I make photo calendars for family through Shutterfly using free codes, but they jack up the shipping to close to $20 every time. This year I decided to try my luck with CVS photo and got all 4 calendars shipped to me for a total of $63. They arrived a few days later and they’re very good quality. I also ordered prints of my sons’ school photos for much cheaper than I would’ve paid through Shutterfly.
So smart to use CVS instead of Shutterfly, great that there’s always another way to save money.
Hooray for any and all eBay sales!
When I had body spray I did not like then I used it for air freshener.
Both my children were over 11 pounds at birth so you may not have been accurate. One friend of ours, on being informed our baby had been born, said, “Wow, that’s an oven-stuffer roaster all right!”
One of my nieces is extremely petite but managed to produce a 10 pound baby (her first). When she shared the news another niece said “She just had a baby as big as she is!”
That’s always amazing to see!
Are they tall now?
My daughter is 5′ 11″ (11 pounds, 10 ounces, 23″ long) and my son is 6′ 5″ (11 pounds, 4 ounces, 22″. He was the first.)
After my daughter was born, they whisked her off to the nursery, this being a very old fashioned Catholic hospital. Eventually I thought I’d like to go see her, but then I was struck with a thought: suppose I went and I didn’t recognize my own daughter? That would be terrible!
I shouldn’t have worried, as my daughter was twice the size of the other newborns with bright orange hair.
1. Dogsitting a loved one’s beloved pup. Fun and exhausting for me and saves them $. Happy to do it and drive/pick the up from the airport.
2. I purchased 3 lbs of bargain shelf bananas for $1.30 to freeze. I love having them in there. Medicinal homemade banana bread is a thing.
3. I returned some ill-fitting jeans and bought some socks that were on sale. I still got some $$ back.
4. Resisting the urge to get takeout.
5. Bought some baking ingredients on sale but so far, nothing is a great price yet. Looking forward to stocking up for the year.
“Yes doctor, I’ve been taking my medicine faithfully.” — while munching on banana bread.
I’ve beeen keeping an eye out for sale priced butter, flour, sugar for my semi-annual stock up as well. I’ll do the same thing in the lead up to Easter.
My granddaughter born this summer was 4 pounds and it was like holding a puff of air. Your skill is amazing!
1. I keep forgetting our big one-we completed the wellness tasks for our insurance (took us each about 1/2 hour) and we received $800 for it!!! I usually use this money towards Thanksgiving and Christmas.
2. It’s frosty overnight and still 70 in the day so I open the doors to warm the house and haven’t used any heat.
3. My husband’s bookcase shortening job (see the story in my comment yesterday) was successful and now it’s over to me to paint. Saved us a LOT over buying new bookshelves.
4. I have laundry drying on the line. I gives me a ridiculous amount of joy to see washing blowing on the line.
5. Mailing out an ebay sale, and supposed to meet someone later for a FB sale. Small, but they add up both in the space they took in my house and the money I got for them, but it all adds up.
I love a big sale, but am happy with any level of sale. Free money, people!
I just asked my husband if he has wellness tasks for our health insurance and he doesn’t think he does. I think I need to dig a bit deeper.
When my husband and I were on the same policy, I didn’t realize for quite a while that we each had a log-on, (the place to look at statements and such), and thus, we each had a place to get rewards points. I would prefer lowered premiums or some rewards like that, but the companies seem to think these gimmicks work better.
Heidi Louise,
The wellness program where I work has changed things so many times, I can’t keep up. We used to get a break on our insurance premiums if you jumped through all the hoops. One year, I jumped through all but one hoop, and jumped through another hoop twice by accident (two different activities in the sake category). They wouldn’t give me the $, so I refused
to participate from then on. Nowadays, they give you a gift card that requires you to open (or already have?) an HSA, and the gift card can only be used on things like OTC medications, etc. Which is fine, BUT friends at work have told me the gift card doesn’t actually *work* like a gift card when you’re buying the appropriate items. Way too much aggravation for me, the $ is not worth it.
*same* category
I just went on our health insurance website and then called my “healthcare advocate” to learn that we don NOT have any wellness incentives available to us. Actually kind of a relief to learn that I hadn’t left money on the table.
1. Had some steady rain showers which eliminated the need to water new landscaping.
2. Pureed the pumpkin from my Halloween pumpkin (only 99 cents), yielding 3 cups for future pumpkin scones.
3. Spending a minimum of 30 minutes per day doing free workouts via YouTube.
4. So far this year we’ve earned $800 in credit card reward points, which I’ve elected to receive as statement credits.
5. Brought in books to Half-Price Books for cash, so I came into some money!
Yum, I love pumpkin scones, they’re so tasty and not dry! Score on the credit card reward points, very celever!
Successfully rooted Rosemary, Thai Basil, and Sage from my herb bed. Hope to overwinter them on my sunny windowsill in the laundry room.
My thermostat has become unreliable. I have been pricing them out online and rather than order one and have it delivered I am buying one locally for the same price.
I have invited several friends to come over for lunch. I’ve taken the opportunity to flex my frugal muscle while still enjoying the pleasure of entertaining at home. A recent lunch with a friend was close to $40.00 with tax and tip. I challenged myself to do lunch for eight of us for the same amount. I even included a white sangria, appetizers, entree with a side of salad and a dessert and still came in a little under $40.00.
I continue to use my Silver Sneakers gym membership, thanks to my supplemental insurance plan. If you are on Medicare and have a supplemental insurance it may be covered under your plan, too.
My electric company greatly discounts, (almost free) the digital programmable “Nest” thermostats. It might be wirth it to see if your electric company does.
Okay, you win “Secretly Cheap Lunch” award of the year! What a lovely thing to do for your friends.
I play a similar weight game at the airport. I try to guess how heavy my suitcase it. I can lift (barely) 50 lb. If I can’t lift it I know > 50 lb.
1. I didn’t get my Ikea birthday offer last year. I called Ikea to get this straightened out. I want to buy one bar stool & I can eat at the cafe. They used to give you a 10$ coupon for your birthday. Here’s hoping for that coupon.
2. Pulled frozen soup out of the freezer to eat. If we get tired of a food item into the freezer it goes.
3. Used my 25% teacher discount to move our wireless service to AT&T. Husband needed a new phone. His was toast. I kept my old refurbished phone bought on ebay.
4. The previous poster reminded me I need to make my appointment for a house call visit from the insurance co. I will get a 75$ GC. I’m a nurse but I’ll listen to the NP’s spiel for 75$.
5. Spent my 40$ OTC credit from my Medicare Advantage. They have added some items besides OTC meds. I was able to get a 32 oz. bottle of Jergen’s lotion & a few other needed items.
FTFT, The Comforts of Home Edition:
(1) I haven’t really been in the mood this week to go out and spend any money that isn’t absolutely necessary, so I’ve saved a few dinero that way.
(2) However, I did swing by CountryMax this morning for sales on two types of birdseed I use. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch season has begun, and I want to get my first FeederWatch count done this weekend.
(3) I roasted a chicken (Reduced for Quick Sale at Tops) yesterday, since I needed some comfort food. This chicken was definitely overendowed in the breast department, so I’ve made a chicken salad with some of the breast meat and shared that with my next-door neighbor (NDN). I’ll use the rest over the weekend in sandwiches and a soup.
(4) I noticed yesterday that the laces in NDN’s beloved Clarks Wallabees were fraying, so I rummaged through my stock of shoelaces (DH used to be pretty hard on shoelaces, so I kept a stash of them) and found a new pair that fit the Wallabees.
(5) And today would have been my beloved mother’s 103rd birthday, so I’ve been (a) exchanging memories with my far-flung siblings and (b) playing some of her favorite hymns on YouTube in her honor.
I’m a retired Trauma ICU nurse. We got good at guessing a patient’s height, since they were usually sedated and intubated on admission. The ICU beds had built in scales and were capable of getting a weight.
1. I was given a mystery shop that gives me a free turkey. I never buy the brand they want me to purchase because it is always the highest price per pound. Guess I’ll see if the turkey is worth it.
2. When no one else requested the shop, the company offered me a second free turkey shop at a different store. I said yes because the food bank needs 3300 turkeys by the day before Thanksgiving. I will get a tax write off from the food bank.
3. We have a large hairy black cat we put out for Halloween. Some little hooligan snapped off one of the legs. Husband wired it back together, so I won’t be tempted to replace him. (the cat, not the husband) The cat was close to $20 when I got him about a decade ago, so who knows how much it would cost to buy another one now.
4. It is cold, husband and I are depressed over the political climate, we were tired. We tried to talk ourselves into getting a fat food meal, but did not succeed. Instead, I made a favorite around here, hamburger gravy. We had thawed burger, so he and I produced a meal in less than half an hour. Saved about $20 we figure by cooking our own.
5. Sold a fountain pen I bought in Vienna 40 years ago for $230, which is a loss of about $100. However, I used it and got joy from it for decades so it was worth it. Using it was like writing with a piece of art.
Frugal fail: I decided to put the wet laundry on racks to dry. Came back to find that Clobber Paws had pulled it all to the ground, rucked it up, and was lying on top of it. He broke the rack, so husband repaired it while I rewashed the clothes.
Frugal fail 2: Not that long ago I bought the keyboard of my dreams. It clacks, so sounds like a typewriter, and it is backlit with different colors. It is already starting to kill itself, beginning with the letter n and now s and g have joined in. I have to buy a new one, and this time it will be nothing fancy. But how I loved my clacking keyboard.
1) passed on some 500 and 300 piece jigsaw puzzles to a friend who is a caregiver for an elderly relative. The smaller number of pieces puzzles are less common but more enjoyable for people who need less challenge.
2) spent hours communicating with xfinity about recurring service outages and applied for some outage credits too.
3) used up some cosmetics and personal cafe products that were not my fave – always a pleasure to throw away something empty.
4) planted some additional tulip bulbs that were “end of season” 70% off.
5) wrapped a white elephant gift using two wrapping paper remnants I have been holding on to for a couple years.
1. I returned two books to the library without reading them: Mary Trump’s book Who Could Ever Love You after realizing no matter what anyone says about him it didn’t matter after all on November 5th and The Termination, a book about one woman’s abortion experience because it seems the right to an abortion and women’s healthcare is on the chopping block. I just couldn’t bear to read either book.
2. I saw an ad for .49 lb. frozen turkeys next week so I will pick one up for Thanksgiving. It’s at times like this I wish I had a chest freezer.
3. DH found a beat up dime in the road while walking.
4. He also found 5 golf balls in the road while walking past a golf course.
5. I’m glad Harris and Biden called our new (aarrgghh) president elect to congratulate him because I like that they are still taking the high road.
1. I complain – a lot – about the resellers in my Buy Nothing Group but the rules in our group are FCFS. I’m rarely the first person to “claim” something but today I was the first to claim a Lego set of Carl and Ellie’s house from “Up”. It isn’t new but most of the pieces appear to be there, plus the instructions. Its already wrapped in Santa paper for my son.
2. I sold a Disney tee shirt on Poshmark and earned a whopping $16.
3. I raided my DD28 recycling barrel the night before trash pick up and gleaned 12 beer bottles and 24 seltzer cans = $1.80
4. Still haven’t needed to turn on my heat here in Greater Boston. The last time we had the heat on was early April.
5. Washing most clothes on Tap Cold and Speed Wash and use racks and hangers to dry.
Massive frugal fail – the top speakers in my iPhone died and the Apple tech said it would cost more to repair the phone than I would get in a trade-in. I was so anxious and overwhelmed that my mind went blank, I caved and bought a new phone. I need a cell phone for work so going without wasn’t an option, I decided. My husband was with me but he’s a 77 year old flake about technology. In hindsight, I should have kept my pristine little iPhone and had it repaired. I’m still beating myself up about it. 🙁 I have to stop that.