This week I put together our goals check in for April, and I’ve gotta tell you…it’s way more fun to write goals when you aren’t giving all your money to credit card companies!
Of course we aren’t splurging on a bunch of “stuff” now that we’re debt free. (Ok, we did a little splurging on our trip last week!) Most of that debt money is now going to fill our savings account.
But watching money build in an account is a million times more fun than sending it off to pay for things you bought years ago. It seems so silly that we lived that way for so long! Setting those big goals was sooooo worth it!
Every Friday, we share the ways we saved money that week. It was great motivation to help us get out of debt! And we’ll continue to do it now, because we have a new goal to stack up a ton of cash to pay for a water main for our home.
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The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week
Honorable mention goes to not buying this gigantic rooster…even though I thought strongly about doing it! Because we all know darned well I’m not going to spend $200 on this. 😉
Blogging Book
A few months ago, I joined a mastermind type of group of amazing bloggers (which was one of the best moves I’ve made in a long time!). This week, they were talking about this great blogging book and encouraging everyone to grab a copy.
After hearing so many great things about this book, I was excited. It was free, except for shipping. But shipping on a book is more than a couple of dollars. So I got curious and checked the library to see if they had a copy.
Sure enough, they did! In fact, they had a digital copy, so I downloaded it to my Hubby’s Kindle so I could begin reading right away. (It is a good business book, by the way!)
Easter Leftovers
Every year I make the same Easter brunch menu for my family. We love it! Me, because I make all of it the day before and just pop it in the oven on Easter morning (so I don’t miss out on family time!). The kids, because it’s delicious food! You can see the menu here.
But it makes a ton of food! It’s even too much for our family of 7 (including a couple of teenage boys!). So I served the meal again on Monday night. No one complained, and I loved getting a free meal!
We were also sent home with leftovers from the big family meal, so we’ll get some frugal feasting in this week for sure.
Dress
You can read more about my dress excursion from this Facebook post here. The funny thing is that, when I took our son to the bathroom before Mass started, I realized that there was an extra tag still on this dress with the original price on it!
I got a good giggle out of pulling it off and saving it “for blogging purposes”. 😉
Fundraisers
I’m not a fan of selling “stuff” to people, which is what so many fundraisers are. But it doesn’t bother me as much to have the kids work a little to earn money to cover the cost of their activities. And with five kids, we have a lot of activities!
Our oldest son’s baseball team worked at a restaurant for tip money to cover the cost of his uniform. That was nice, since it didn’t add clutter to anyone’s home, and many of the people who donated were already planning to eat out anyway.
Clearance
I have a love/hate relationship with the clearance rack. It’s awesome when you find a bargain on something you needed! And it’s a great place to let yourself splurge a little when you find an amazing deal.
But I’ve been guilty in the past of sticking to my list throughout the store, only to blow a ton of money on clearance items I didn’t really need.
With the #yearofno in the books, I’m trying to handle the clearance rack responsibly. One thing I would like is more holiday decor. So I’m grabbing just a couple of small deals when I see them.
This egg was too cute to pass up this week! And I can’t be upset over a $1 splurge. 🙂
Those are the 5 ways we saved money this week!
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How did you save money this week?