Piles, piles everywhere! School hasn’t even started yet, and I already feel behind. The house is full of piles of half finished projects, school supplies, things that are usually in our minivan, and (of course) laundry mountain.
It’s been another super busy week, but we’ve managed to save throughout the week, too! Our credit card debt is dropping, and every week gets us that much closer to the freedom that comes with escaping credit card debt.
Every Friday I review the ways we managed to save money. Since this is week 88, you can read through hundreds of money saving ways by clicking here.
The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week
Van
I’m not sure this qualifies as saving money since we picked up car payments. Yikes! We paid off our old van over a year ago, and I sure loved being without any payments. Unfortunately, the old van didn’t love me back. We were forced to part ways (I’ll write more on this next week!), which means I had to go car shopping.

So long, paid off green van! (sniff, sniff)
We had to have a vehicle that was safe enough to drive the kids in without breaking the bank. Fortunately, we’d been doing some lazy searching for vans for a few months. We knew our old rust bucket wasn’t going to last forever, and that at some point it would leave us with no choice but to upgrade.
We saved money by:
- buying used (always saves a ton!)
- choosing a minivan (over pricey SUVs that come with extra gas budgets)
- knowing our price
We negotiated with the dealership for hours. Owning this van… or another one in a week or two, was fine by me. Sometimes dealers are convinced that you can spend more than you tell them, but I assured them that I wasn’t playing games.
It wasn’t comfortable spending hours at a dealership while other people were watching our kids for us, but in the end we saved enough money to make it worth the effort. This van should last us a very long time!
School Supplies
It’s astonishing how many supplies come home at the end of the school year, unusued or barely used. In the past, I’ve let the kids play with that paper and the crayons and markers. But when it comes time to shop again, I can’t find them (or they’ve been used up).
So this year, I boxed up everything as I pulled it out of the backpacks. It sat in the corner until this week.
After sorting through the piles of things I already had on hand, I only needed to buy half (or less!) of what was on each child’s supply list.
Using this and other methods for saving on school supplies saved us hundreds of dollars this year alone. (Imagine how much money has added up over the 9 years we’ve been doing this!)
Get more money saving tips here:
Free Haircut
Opening day at our county fair is always free to attend, so we went and saw the parade. Someone handed out coupons for a free haircut. The catch was that you had to use it pretty quickly before it expired.
So Hubby got over there and took advantage of it. He did leave a tip, of course, but the cost was still half what he usually pays.
Cha-ching!
Bubbles!
This bubble recipe is amazing! My kids were occupied for hours after I made it. It was a lot of fun to see the giant bubbles they created.
Free Fair Tickets
Our kids usually show farm animals at the fair, but we decided to take the year off. While it saved us a lot of money and gave us some much needed downtime this summer, the kids did miss the experience.
Luckily we found some free tickets and I was able to take our older two boys over for a while. We saw some friends and got a taste of the fair experience. They enjoyed it, and I loved saving all of that money!
Those are the 5 ways we saved this week!
Now I’m off to tackle some of these half finished projects. It seems never ending!
Are your kids interested in joining the band? Here’s how we keep instrument costs low!
How have you saved money?
I, too, am amazed by how many unused or barely-used items come home at the end of the school year. My plan today is to spend the morning assessing the inventory, perusing his new school supply list, and figuring out what we actually need to buy vs. what we can just take from our giant bin of old school stuff.
Enjoy your new van! It sounds like you got a great deal!
That’s exactly what I did a few days ago. It’s a relief to have it done! And thanks, hopefully we enjoy the van for years to come. 🙂
I wish I had saved some money this week. If you listen carefully, You Can Hear Me Still Crying. I had to take the puppy to the vet. 150.00 . I am already over budget as we are getting slammed by our water co, while they try to fix their problems. 20.00 water Cost Me 101.00 This Month.. All I Can Say Is That It Is A Good Thing My Freezer And Pantry Are Packed. I Will Sit And Just BE More Poor This Month. It Is So Good To Have choices. I Will BE buying COollege Bound Son A Used CAr this Month. So Hope It Doesnt TUrn OUt TO be a hassle
Oh no!! I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time right now. 🙁 Hopefully you’ll have an easy time with the car.
This was a pretty good week for freebies for me since my birthday was last Friday. I spent most of the week hitting up spots that gave me coupons with a week to use them. It was pretty cool.
Awesome! Mine is next month, so I’ll be excited to see those coupons hit my inbox.
I tracked my expenses this week so I really saw where my money was going and I definitely spent less than I would have if I hadn’t tracked, does that count? Lol.
You’re darned right it counts! I think that can have a powerful impact on your money for a long time. And it’s a great idea.
Good for you for sticking to your guns and negotiating for hours on that minivan (especially when hours at a dealership feel like weeks). Saving on the big-ticket items is huge.
As for the smaller ticket items, I always wait for a coupon before getting my hair cut, but a free haircut’s even better. And like Mel, I just had a birthday so I used some free deals at various places.