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Welcome to another frugal Friday! I always like to celebrate this lovely day by contemplating 5 ways we’ve saved money this week. If you’d like to read back through the series, you can find it here.
Of course, we save money in many more than 5 ways each week! But since I’m trying to track unique ideas that I haven’t necessarily talked about on previous Fridays, it makes this a bit of a challenge.
I would like to encourage you to join in with 5 ways of your own. The challenge really does make you consider your spending throughout the week. And we all could probably use help with that.
The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week
Filled a craving at home
I really, really wanted some chicken enchiladas from a great local restaurant one recent night. Luckily, I had plenty of leftover chicken on hand. I didn’t have all of the ingredients I needed for the recipe, but I had enough to make it work. And I just got creative in filling out the rest of the ingredients. It still tasted yummy!
Which means I saved the cost of the restaurant plus the cost of an extra grocery tip. Woohoo!
Got through the weekend
I wrote a bit about our unique water situation this week. We have to have water trucked to our home every couple of weeks or so.
Lately we have started to run low on water on Fridays. Since I don’t want to run out over the weekend, I’ve been trying to use whatever water I can on Friday, and then we just eat the cost of the water that we couldn’t fit into our tanks.
This past Friday I decided that enough was enough. I carefully saved water on Friday and all through the weekend. Sunday night got a little tight, but we made it through to Monday.
Now, when we can make it a bit more than 2 weeks, it shouldn’t be a problem to bump it to the next weekday.
#yearofno-ed Rabbits
My kids love showing their animals at the fair. We keep considering adding rabbits to our show animals to give them an extra day of showing.
While that would be fun and rather low key, it is added expense that we don’t need right now. Plus our schedule is so busy that I just don’t think I can add another thing to do (low key though it may be!).
So no bunnies at our home. For now.
Amazon Subscribe & Save
One thing I don’t skimp on is diapers. Our youngest is pretty rough on them. Whenever I try the cheap brands that worked great on our other kids, they just don’t hold up for long at all on him! But since I can skip the extra laundry and extra diaper use I’d have with the cheapos , that helps to cover the increased costs of the pricey brands.
I have to get more creative in my shopping for the expensive diapers. Whenever I can’t find a great deal on nearly free diapers at my CVS, I pop on Amazon. We get our diapers using the Amazon Family program. That means that on top of clipping the coupons they often offer, we can get an additional 20% off, plus free 2 day shipping.
If you’d like to give it a try, Amazon offers a free 30 day trial. Join Amazon Family 30-Day Free Trial
And if you are already an Amazon Prime member, all you need to do is sign up for Amazon Family as part of your membership. Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Saving the best for last!
I’m so excited that we were able to make our final van payment this week! Aside from the obvious savings of not having a loan payment due monthly, we are also going to be saving even more interest on our credit card debt.
This should help us to gain ground on our BHAG and get our debt paid off this year. I’m so excited about this!
Those are the ways we’ve saved money this week!
As always, I love to hear what you are up to. Leave a comment or link and let us know how you’ve saved this week!
Congratulations on the final van payment! That is so exciting!
We’ve been so busy that we haven’t had time to celebrate. But I think a serious high five is in the works tonight. haha!
I remember making the last payment on my car and how great that felt. I think I even took my wife out to dinner afterwords (it was a $275 payment). Congrats on all the work you did to save this week.
Congratulations on the last van payment – that is so exciting! I have to start keeping track of ways I intentionally choose to save, versus just stay on budget. One thing I did was cut my son’s bangs so it saved us money at the barber!
That’s a big money saver! I always cut my boys’ hair. I’m not great at it, but it definitely saves us a ton.
One of these days I want to join Amazon prime with subscribe and save
Paying of the van is HUGE! and you are doing the smart thing putting the money straight into paying down the credit card debt. That should fall so much more quickly now. Thanks for sharing on #FridayFrivolity. We’d love to have you share with us again.
I just paid off a loan myself this past month and then got hit with two very large medical bills from my hospital stays last summer…Ack! Well I decided I would NOT go back into debt to pay off those bills. I have excellent credit. I would much rather be a slow pay than pay out on a loan so, after praying, I realized I could do the biggest bill in 10% increments until it’s small enough to pay off entirely, while I continue to pay from our medical funds (a sub account) for the smaller bill. It’s going to take patience, but I can do this…and postpone that ‘next loan’ a little longer.
Good for you! I don’t know why the medical system is so slow sometimes. We’ve had bills that we’d forgotten about come back to haunt us later, too.
I love these posts of yours that help us learn how to save money. Thanks for linking to the Homestead Blog Hop!