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Are you ready to save some money?

Friday is the day that I reflect on the frugal choices we’ve made in the past week.  I like to share these ways on the blog so that you can find new money saving methods that fit into your own family life.

Since I do this every Friday (for 24 weeks now!), I’ve grown quite the collection of tips.  If you’d like to read the archives, you can find the entire series right here.

Let’s get this show on the road.

Here are the 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week.

A series that follows one family as they recount the creative ways they've saved money week after week.

Just keep driving.

I live a distance away from our closest Ikea, so it’s not a store I get to shop in very often.  This week we had a doctor’s appointment in that area.

Can I just tell you how tempting it was to stop in?  I was sure that there were some serious deals to be had in there!

But when I really thought about it, there is nothing that we need from Ikea right now.  Oh, you can bet your boots I would have found something to buy had I gone into the store.  But my best bet was to never step foot into it.

And that’s what I did!  I just kept driving.  (You should be thinking Dory from Finding Nemo while you read that…)

Frugal Fun

We had a (very rare) free Saturday this past weekend.  Our baseball season is about to begin, and when you are chasing 4 different ball teams, life become crazy!  So I wanted us to spend some family time together while we still had the chance.

We chose to go to a museum with free admission.  The kids enjoyed the trip, we got to hang out together, and with the price of gas so low right now it wound up being a fun, frugal day.

Patience paid off!

In last week’s 5 Ways post, I mentioned that we had been patient in shopping around for a sink for our bathroom.  Well, that patience has paid off!

We shopped the big hardware stores.  We shopped smaller stores.  We looked on Craigslist.

On our way home from our museum trip, we stopped at another store that is a distance from our house.  There I happened to find a vanity and sink that was on the back of a shelf and not marked in any way.

I asked a worker about the cost of it, and he searched around for 15 minutes looking for the price.  He finally said that it had been discontinued and was $65.  This was a fraction of the cost of vanities we had found, and better quality than those ones, too!  I was so excited about this find!

Discovered a truth of grocery shopping

I often have lived under the assumption that the fewer times you go to the store, the better.

Now, I definitely still believe in that idea.  However, I have learned that there is a happy medium to be had.  You want to find the sweet spot between not grocery shopping because you have enough food, but not waiting until the cupboards are bare either.

The great thing about getting ahead on your grocery shopping is that you can really stock up on deals.  If I grocery shop before we are out of everything, that means I can spend the money I would have been spending on cheese, for instance, on an item that is at its rock bottom price.

So when pasta went on sale for 49 cents (my stock up price!), I had the wiggle room to buy 3 months worth of it.

Bonus…the next time I go to the store I can use my pasta money to stock up on a different rock bottom priced item!

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Discount produce

We have a store in our area that sells discounted produce.  I love this store!  Sometimes you’ll go in and find everything at the same price as your local Kroger.

Other times you’ll find organic pears for 59 cents.  (That was exciting!)

Those are my 5 Ways I’ve Saved Money This Week!

Like to keep up with more money saving tips like these?  Be sure to sign up for my newsletter and have them delivered right to your inbox each week!

Let us know what frugal things you accomplished this week!  Feel free to leave a link if you blogged about it.