Our school is doing Penny Wars this week. Have you ever done one? Each class brings in money of different denominations. Pennies and dollars count towards your class total. But silver coins take away from a class total. So if the class next to you has way more pennies than you, that’s ok. You can bomb them with silver coins and bring down their total!
It’s a fun way to raise money. But it really highlights the fact that small amounts of money add up quickly. That’s a lesson I hope the kids at the school remember for a long time!
Every Friday I like to reflect back on my week. I don’t write thank you notes like Jimmy Fallon, but I do think about…
The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week
Which is even better…right?! (By the way, you can catch the whole series here if you like lots of money saving ideas!)
Served Junk Food
If you’re a crunchy Mom, you probably won’t like this. But our dinners lately have been a lot of corn dogs and beanie weenies. I’ve been too busy to get the crock pot ready, and with our crazy schedule there just isn’t time for much supper.
In our old life we would solve that problem with some fast food burgers. But not in our new #yearofno life! Instead, this week #pressingon looked like eating food from an ’80s cafeteria. And that’s ok. (Some of us warmed up leftovers instead, but since that’s pretty #yearofno, it’s acceptable.)
Catching Water
If you’ve read about our water situation, you know that we are water savers by necessity. I always make sure I catch water that would otherwise go down the drain while I wait for the hot stuff to come through. Usually I catch it right in a Brita pitcher like this one.
Quit the Pull Ups
We’ve been relying on night time Pull Ups for a long time. My kids finally are all sleeping through the night without needing a Pull Up!
To highlight what this means, the cashier at CVS asked me if all of my kids are finally potty trained. We aren’t friends…I just have spent the past 9 years since we moved here buying diapers there!
Used Up Mushy Fruit
Our games got rained out one night and I was able to use some mushy fruit to make banana bread (which was a yummy treat!) and some spiced pear muffins for packing in lunches.
Ran Late
So the old shoes that I’ve been living with are really starting to give out. It’s to the point that I can’t wear them for long without them hurting my feet. That’s too frugal even for me! I’m mostly making do using other shoes, but I’m fond of wearing gym shoes most of the time.
I made a plan to do a little shoe shopping while my son was at the batting cages. As “luck” would have it, we ran late. By the time I got there, I had no time to shop.
That delayed my shoe buying by at least another week. But that’s ok. I can always wear my ugly pink shoes if I have to!
Those are the 5 ways we’ve saved money this week.
I’m curious if you’ve had a car like this? Maybe the comments are a good place to start getting ideas for your next car! 😉
How did you save last week?
Sharing at Thrifty Thursday!
I saved by waiting to push the button to buy our theme park tickets; found a better deal.
I love it when that happens!
Woo hoo! End of pull ups! I bet that is a relief!
I saved money this week by staying out the store and restaurants. I can’t do it every week, but I will welcome any lower expenses that I can get.
The saved money is a relief, but what I really love is no more realizing AT BEDTIME that we are out of pull ups and having to run to the store.
Avoiding restaurants and fast food has been a giant money saver for us!
I’ve struggled a bit with saving this week as my back has played up so I’ve been on damage limitation. I bought a (nice) ready meal for dinner last night rather than a takeaway. And I’ve been inspired to just walk, not as an alternative to driving or public transport, just to spend some time looking after me and it’s free too 🙂
Congrats on your family leaving the pull-up phase! I’m sure that will save a ton as well as avoid excess trips to buy them. Also, I just read about your water situation and I’m in awe of the ways your family conserves water. We’ve taken clean water for granted and even though we have public water, the price has been rising. I can definitely use some of your tips.
Great points! There are things we splurge on, but try to save as much as we can. We never buy new cars and drive ours until they aren’t worth fixing. We always hear people say, I have to trade it in because it needs some repairs. You can do A LOT of repairs for what you spend on car payment and added insurance. Our cars look good and run well as we are faithful to do good maintenance.
I saved money by spending a little. I realized I was having a hard time resisting the snack mix sold at the cafeteria at work. I finally stopped and bought some at the bulk store. I’ve been doling it out all week. I know I could just say NO, but I’ve been having a hard time with that. I think it’s stress eating. 😉 But, at least I found a cheaper way out.
Great ways you saved money this week! We dried laundry outside(in between rains!) for 3 weeks while we had no dryer…. sure would like to know how much it actually costs to dry a load of laundry! We would be more motivated to do it more often. 🙂
I know I’ve saved a pretty penny on my electric bill by line drying. I need to get back to that…if life ever slows down a bit!
Congrats on the no pull up era! I saved this week by not having any extra time to online shop because of volunteering! Stay super busy!