While our #yearofno (make that two years of no) was effective at helping us pay off a chunk of debt, it wasn’t pretty. I may have inadvertently made it seem easier than it was.
We’ll be spending this year catching up on things that fell to the side for the past couple of years. This includes those non-essential things around our home that we didn’t replace or repair.
So what made our #yearofno different than a no spend month? Priorities. We’ve learned that we can live with imperfect things. We know what is most important. And we have the patience to wait to buy new when we have the cash to do it.
A no spend month wouldn’t have taught us any of those things. Anyone can tread water for a month only to go on a spending spree on the first day of a new month.
The 5 Ways We Saved Money This Week
This Friday series gives you new ideas for saving money week after week. If you love to save money, click back through the entire series of tips here.
Or get the easy to read book of over 500 Ways to Save Money here.
Let’s jump into a new week of money saving tips!
Oil Change
My Google search for oil change coupons failed me, so I decided to just pull in to the service station and see what happened. When they finally got to our turn, I was told that the standard oil change price was $42. For a conventional oil change! I told her that seemed extremely high, and she immediately knocked $15 off the price.
Then they proceeded to add another $5 to the final cost for “extra oil”. Needless to say, I’ll be exploring other options for my next oil change. (Maybe I’ll look for a secret shop!)
One on One Time
Finding special quality time with kids is a challenge in a large family. But we are committed to getting it done!
This week, I was able to sneak away with our 10 year old. We redeemed a free coupon he had earned from school for a local fast food meal. Then we headed to a frozen yogurt shop using a gift card he got for Christmas.
When you don’t need one more gadget around your house, tell anyone who asks for gift ideas that your child would love a gift card for an activity or special treat.
Pizza
I had a long, busy day this week. The kind that makes you too tired to cook. I searched the freezer, but couldn’t find anything easy to throw in the oven.
So I texted Hubby and told him I was going to order pizza.
Then I took a walk outside. And I pondered on the idea of dropping over $20 for enough pizza for our crew. And I decided that’s just not how I wanted to spend a $20 brick of money.
When I got back inside, I pulled out some yeast and got started on my easy homemade pizza crust. And we had pizza for a fraction of the price of delivery.
Getting back into bad habits that sunk us into debt is just not on the menu. (See what I did there?)
Chair
My computer chair gets a lot of wear and tear. I am a blogger, after all.
So when my brother sent out a text saying they were getting rid of a nice computer chair, I jumped at the chance to grab it! Now I’m happily rolling in my new chair that was definitely #yearofno approved. (He wins favorite brother status this week!)
First Pitch
We’re huge baseball fans in this house, so I dubbed this weekend’s event the Ceremonial First Pitch. This Instagram post says it all:
Was using a broken laundry basket to haul heavy laundry up and down the stairs fun? Uh, no. Neither was staring at an ugly shampoo holder in the shower.
Check out 40 other crazy things we did while getting out of debt!
So when I got to throw out both of those things this weekend, it was an event.
I don’t know the last time I got so much joy out of spending $15. When you sleep on a purchase for 2 years, let me tell you…that feeling is worth 1,000 impulse buys!
Those are the 5 ways we saved money this week!
I’m looking forward to the slow, steady method of replacing things in our home this year. Paying cash feels amazing!
You know what doesn’t feel so amazing? Thinking you’re almost out of debt…and suddenly discovering you owe money you’d forgotten about. Don’t let that happen to you!
Follow the same steps I took to learn how to find out all my debts.
How did you save money this week?
I'm Jamie, and I want to help you afford a beautiful life with your family. 
That’s pretty much how our shower organizer looks — maybe not QUITE that bad :). My problem is I don’t know what to replace it with. Both the stainless and vinyl coated ones have rusted on us, and the plastic one broke. Does a good one really exist?
Congrats on the replacement and on the great deal on the office chair (free is always good). And good job on avoiding the lure of take out pizza. I think we have finally broken our habit or ordering pizza. We keep a frozen pizza handy instead for those days when cooking just can’t happen.
I’m impressed at the state of Jamie’s old shower caddy. Well done living with it so long! My husband wouldn’t be able to stand it like that.
I think we’ve been through about 4 shower caddies in the last 6 years. The vinyl ones split then start rusting (and staining the tiles!), and even the ‘stainless’ ones start rusting within a few months.
Tired of the same old cycle we have struck gold this time around – a $10 shower caddy from IKEA. It can hang with a hook on the shower head, OR, as we have done this time around, it can hang over the shower frame. This keeps it out of direct water too. It still gets wet, but not as much. And not a speck of rust anywhere! It IS actually stainless.
Also, well done Jamie – making the pizza from scratch! When you have one of those really hard days/weeks and there’s nothing you’d love more than a ready made pizza, it takes discipline to make one yourself. Two pizzas at our local costs $35, which makes the decision easy.
Hey, thanks for the tip on the shower caddy! I’ll have to check that out the next time we’re near Ikea. Hopefully the one I bought will last a few years before it needs replacing, but it’s good to have this information in case it fails me like JD’s did.
Thank you again for sharing with us! There are so many things I would love to upgrade in our household, but you have given me the motivation to use that to lower that monster bill down. Really in the grand scheme of it all, a couple years of patience will reap huge rewards.