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It’s Friday!  Ready to get your 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week fix?

Confession time…we’ve had a rather expensive week.  Our 10 year old son had a terrible migraine that required 2 hospital trips and an additional stint in the emergency department.  That’s not going to be cheap.  I also wound up spending money on food and drinks since I didn’t have time to plan ahead (we wanted to get there and relieve his migraine ASAP).

This week all 4 boys have been sick, so it’s been challenging to do some of my usual money saving tricks.

But the good news is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.  So when everyone recovers, we can dive back in!

I did still manage to save some money even in the chaos.

Flexible Spending Account.  We do have several medical bills coming in, so I am glad that we already have an FSA set up.  This is money that is drawn from my hubby’s paycheck before taxes.  So not only do we save tax money, but we have money available to us when we need it for medical expenses without having to dig into our regular budget.

An FSA is different from an HSA.  You can open an FSA to work with any type of insurance you have.  It can be used for copays on doctor visits, lab work, prescription copays, and more.

If you don’t already have an FSA set up, it’s worth asking about it at work.  (You can also use an FSA account to pay for childcare.)

Used a coupon.  JC Penney often sends me coupons in the mail.  I get some $10 off of a $25 purchase, but my favorite one is the $10 off $10.  It’s like they’re mailing you a $10 bill!  You can use this to shop for needed clothing items for family members.  I can nearly always find something that totals right around $10, so I don’t pay much out of pocket.

Plus, ever since I started reading Jen’s Frugal Fashionista posts, I have been making more of an effort to find clothes that look good.  I’m tired of being a frumpy housewife!  So I used my coupons to help me purchase clothing in my colors.  (I have a “cool” skin tone, which I guess is a little odd for a redhead?)

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Discounts at work.  We recently discovered that my hubby can get us a supply of allergy medicine for a quarter of the cost that we had been paying!  This is due to a discount he receives at work.  Nearly all of us have seasonal allergies, and fall is one of our worst seasons.  So this is going to save us quite a bit of money.

I think many jobs offer discounts that are not well advertised or known.  Sometimes it’s worth asking around!

Put off my procrastination.  I was able to tackle a pile of bills and paperwork that I had set aside for later.  By addressing very not fun things like medical bills (who wants to juggle calling the doctor’s office, then calling the insurance company, only to be sent back and forth like a ping pong ball??) I avoided late fees and penalties.

Declutter.  It’s been chilly and wet here this week, which means my outside chores have turned to inside chores.  So I have been decluttering as much as I can.  Getting rid of things brings a lot of stress relief!  It also means less things to clean (less use of cleaning products), and no need to buy cutesy products to organize things we didn’t really need in the first place.

Hope you have a wonderful, frugal weekend!

Play along at home!  Leave a note telling us how you saved money this week.