Saving Families Money Since 2007
I stopped by the health food store while I was out today. The deals were pretty sparse, but I did get Organic Valley cheese marked down to $0.99, Pirate’s Booty Veggie Crisps marked down to $0.99, a double bag of grapes marked down to $0.99 (I’m planning to freeze these for smoothies) and some Organic Wallaby yogurt marked down to $1.99.
My total was $5.32.
Infarrantly Creative shares how she turned a vintage TV that she found on the roadside (above) into this gorgeous console table (below).
I’m trying not to covet such amazing craft and creative skills!
I loved this idea from Jody who blogs at Because I’m Me:
For a long time, I’ve been on my kids to turn the lights off, unplug things we’re not using, close the doors, take shorter showers, etc. They were tired of hearing it and weren’t listening.
One day a light bulb went on in the brain and I presented my children with the following offer: Each month the electric bill was below $190 they’d get the dollar amount the bill was below $190 (i.e.: if the bill were $180 they’d get $10). That money would go towards a party, be it candy, ice cream, cake, pizza, chips, whatever they could buy with that money. I never buy food like that, so it would be a real treat for them.
The first month the bill was still up there around $200, an encouraging improvement but not what they needed.
By the second month, the bill was only $162. Yup, almost $65 less than usual! Not too shabby. And it gave them $28 to blow on junk food. I never expected them to get it as low as that!
In addition to a lower electric bill, my children were able to learn valuable lessons. For example, how to budget that $28 to get the best bang for their buck while pleasing all six kids.
They opted to purchase store brand soda, inexpensive ice cream, lots of buy one, get one free items, use coupons, and to pass on some items that were just too expensive. When all was said and done they managed to have enough junk food for one fine party and many days of treats afterward, and they contributed $10 to a dinner of Chinese take-out!
Last week one of my sons said he wished we’d get an electric bill every day so he could keep track of the amount of the bill throughout the month. I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity for a “teachable moment”, so out came the electric bill, an explanation of how to read the meter and a brief “field trip” to the side of the house where the meter is. Now he can check every day, do the multiplication and addition and see if we’re staying on track.
We are now four months into this deal and the interest has not waned!
Jody Sanders is a single Mom of 6 kids in south Florida. She home schools four of her kids, runs a home daycare and loves to sew. She can be found at Because I’m Me.
I’ve stooped to new lows, folks. I shot this right after working out, so I’m still in my workout clothes with “workout hair” and no makeup.
I planned to keep these videos really real so that you could feel like you were just coming into my home and we were chatting over coffee at my kitchen table. But I usually do try to change out of my workout clothes and put on make up before someone comes over. But oh well! 🙂
Websites referenced in this video: AllRecipes.com and SuperCook.com
(Seasoned Baked Potato Wedges ready to go into the oven.)
Breakfasts:
Orange Cream Smoothies, English Muffins
Homemade Granola Parfaits
Raisin Toast, Scrambled Eggs, Fruit
Cold Cereal, Juice x 2
Overnight French Toast Casserole, Fruit
Bread Machine Cinnamon Rolls, Scrambled Eggs, JuiceLunches:
Leftovers x 3
Macaroni & Cheese, carrots
Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, fruit
SmartOnes meals, frozen veggies
Cheese Quesadillas, frozen veggies
Dinners:
Chili Burgers, Seasoned Baked Potato Wedges, Frozen Vegetables
Brown Bag Burritos (from the freezer), Green Rice Casserole (from the freezer), Fruit
Lasagna Casserole, Broccoli, Bread Machine Buttery Rolls
Whole Grain Chicken Soup With Rice,* Olive Garden Breadsticks,* Apple Slices
Homemade Chicken Salsa Pizza, Tossed Salad, Double Chocolate Brownies
Dinner Out
Dinner at Extended Family’s House
JessieLeigh from Parenting the Tiniest Miracles shows you how to make five meals from five chicken breasts.
Today’s Target trip was similar to yesterday’s, only I paid a lot less out of pocket since I rolled the gift cards I had earned yesterday!
Market Pantry Pasta — $1.02
Buy 2 and use $1/2 Target coupon
$0.52 each after couponMarket Pantry Salsa — $1.34
Buy 2 and use $1/2 Target coupon
$0.84 each after couponMarket Pantry Cheese — $1.94
Buy 2 and use $1/2 Target coupon
$1.44 each after couponBUY 7 FROZEN ITEMS, GET $5 TARGET GIFT CARD PROMOTION ITEMS:
BirdsEye Vegetables — $1.02 each
Bought 6, used 2 $1/3 Birds-Eye or Steamfresh Varieties (IE) Printable (FF)
Free after coupon and gift card
Market Pantry Vegetables — $1.02 each
Bought 8, used 2 $1/4 coupons
$0.06 each after coupons and gift cardOld Orchard Juice — $1.19 each
Bought 3, $0.48 each after gift cardWeight Watchers SmartOnes — $1.80 each
Bought 10, used $5/10 Target coupon (no longer available) stacked with $4/10 manufacturer’s coupon
$0.19 each after coupons and gift cardGreen Giant Frozen Vegetables — $1.27 each
Bought 2, used 2 $0.50/1 Green Giant coupons
$0.06 each after coupons and gift card
For some reason, I ended up having to buy 29 items to get the $20 in gift cards. When the cashier scanned the last item, it didn’t prompt her to give me the final $5 gift card, so I had her scan another juice and then it prompted it. Not sure what all went on there, but I’m not going to complain that I ended up having to buy an extra item!
I used the $25 in gift cards that I earned yesterday to pay for my total, so I only ended up having to spend $6.25 out of pocket and then I got back $20 in Target gift cards.
Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.
A testimony from A. Ellis
My husband and I wanted to purchase a new LED television to replace a very old, very tiny 19” television in our bedroom, but decided it was definitely a “luxury” expense that would wait until we had saved up to pay in cash. In the meantime, we window-shopped the electronics stores and settled on the approximate type we hoped to purchase.
My high-school daughter also needed a laptop (we homeschool) so I needed enough to cover that (first priority) and the television (second).
I started shopping eBay and Craigslist for gift cards to the large electronics store where we planned to purchase the television. At the time, Bing was giving an extra 8% rebate for eBay purchases. Each time I found a gift card that would net me at least 15% off face value including all rebates, plus fees and postage, etc., I would purchase it using eBay rebate points (2%), Mr. Rebates (3%) and the Bing cashback program (8%). Example: I bought a $500 gift card for $475 ($25 off) + rebates (another $61.75 off) = $388.25 for a $500 gift card.
Once I had enough for the laptop, I waited a couple weeks for a sale on an appropriate model, and bought the loss-leader on the front page of the ad. Cost: Less than $250 (before tax) for a $589 laptop computer.
It took about eight months of being in the “right place at the right time”, but I finally accumulated about $2000 total in gift card value (for which I paid a total of less than $1485 after all rebates were factored in). We then waited until we received a coupon for a “free $50 gift card with purchase over $500” and started shopping for the TV.
Two weeks later, almost every LED TV in the store was featured in some type of “package deal” in which extra merchandise was included in the sale price of the TV. We settled on a LG 47” 1080i HD 120Hz LED television which was packaged with a LG Home Theater system including blu-ray player and five speakers, and an internet connection thumb drive, all for $1399 (regular price of TV alone $1699).
The gift cards I had saved up and purchased over time at a discount covered the price plus tax, and we had enough left over to buy my son a video game he had been wanting with a “10% off one full-price item” coupon (they wouldn’t allow use of this coupon on already sale-priced item, I tried!) and we also received the extra $50 gift card for a future purchase.
Total cost (with 8.1% tax): $1128 for a complete home theater system with a sale price of $1512.32 including tax (and original retail of well over $2000)
A. Ellis, B.S., M.Ed. is a mom of 5, one married, two high school, two 3rd grade and lives in Arizona.
Have you saved up and paid cash for something — large or small? Submit your story for possible publication here.
In the past year, I’ve received numerous emails from women begging me for my “secrets” to time management. They ask me to please share how I manage to seemingly “do it all”.
Every time I get an email like that, I wish I could invite the woman to my home. Because seriously, I think it’s easy to make bloggers out to be someone they are not when you’re basing all your conclusions of them upon the little sliver of their life that they share on their blog.
I know, because I’ve been guilty of it myself. I’ll read a woman’s blog, see the pictures and ideas she shares and begin to wonder if really and truly she might be superwoman’s clone. And I feel badly because I don’t measure up in any stretch of the imagination to this blogger. When in reality, I know good and well that every single woman has their strengths and weaknesses and no one has it all together.
–from the first chapter of Time Management 101
Thanks to the help of the wonderful Money Saving Mom® team, I’m excited to bring you a brand-new downloadable ebook, Time Management 101.
This 66-page ebook is a revised and edited compilation of my Time Management 101 series.
I hope it will be an encouragement to many of you! And if you know of someone you think it might be a blessing to, feel free to share the link or print out a copy and give it to them.
It’s in an easy-to-read, downloadable format. Just fill out the form below and you’ll get a copy in your email soon!
MSN posted an interesting article recently on how to get groceries for free by gleaning:
A truck pulls up, two people jump out, and, within minutes, they’ve loaded up a few cases of dented cans, a box of ripe pears and a few dozen loaves of day-old bread. Jumping back in the cab, they pull out of the grocery store parking lot and head for the next store on their list.
Some call it food rescue or grocery recovery, or even an old biblical term: gleaning.
But no matter what you call it, the practice of rescuing food before it hits the garbage bin is becoming increasingly popular as a way of reducing waste, feeding people who’ve fallen on hard times and even helping average families save hundreds of dollars a year on groceries.
Thanks to Ashley for passing along this article!
This soup has been a family favorite for years. It’s simple, easy and foolproof. And it would be scrumptious with some honey cornbread.
Cook onion until tender in oil. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 30 minutes to an hour. If desired: garnish with shredded cheese, green onions and sour cream. Makes approximately six servings.
Lecia from Kindly Deeds emailed in the following testimonial which I thought many of you would enjoy reading:
Due to two consecutive layoffs, my husband has been employed for only seven out of the last 24 months. That means we’ve had two holiday seasons in a row with very little money to spare on gifts. Each year we draw names with both sides of our family, which gives us an extra 14 people to shop for, in addition to our own family of seven!
Both this year and last year, I relied heavily on my email updates from MoneySavingMom.com to help me provide Christmas for all those people. If you haven’t signed up yet for the Money Saving Mom® email list, you definitely should. Reading and using those emails has saved my family hundreds of dollars over the past two years.
As a direct result of the emails, I got:
- Two cute little change purses from Target for my daughters. They love these and keep their dollar store Silly Bandz in them!
- About $40 in gift cards to Amazon.com by using Swagbucks for several months. Plus, I signed up for the Amazon Mom program and got free shipping throughout the holiday season.
- A free Duplo-style car that I just had to sign up for. That was perfect for my little nephew.
- Three $10 credits from Kellogg’s after buying three boxes of cereal per credit (and I got the cereal three for $7, and then saved more by using coupons)! These credits were good for any toy or electronic product at stores like Wal-Mart.
- About $20 in PayPal cash from taking surveys on sites recommended by MoneySavingMom.com.
- A free photo collage from Walgreens. I used my son’s Homecoming photos to make a collage for him that he treasures.
- Free or nearly free photo books from various sites that made perfect gifts for grandparents.
We also scrambled together a few more dollars by trading in books and video games at our local used bookstore, and transferring some prescriptions at a time when K-Mart was offering $25 gift cards for each transferred prescription. Since three of my five kids take daily medications for asthma, we were able to get $100 in gift cards this way.
Once I got through the Christmas season and took a minute to breathe, I realized how blessed we had been, and I was so full of joy and gratitude for the wonderful and frugal Christmas we were able to have.
Lecia Crider lives in Mesa, AZ with her husband, Jay, and their five children. She blogs about service opportunities at Kindly Deeds, and she’d love for you to take a peek at her husband’s resume on LinkedIn!
I finished sharing our story of paying cash for a house two weeks ago and but I promised I’d follow it up with a few thoughts on mortgages and paying cash. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about writing this post last Wednesday, so I’m finally getting it done this week. Thanks for your patience!
While being debt-free is a wonderful thing, I want to stress very clearly that it’s not the be all, end all. Paying cash for a house doesn’t make you a better person than someone who is barely struggling to make ends meet and doing good to pay the utility bill and grocery bill.
We all have different families, different backgrounds and different situations, so our financial stories are all going to look quite different. And that’s perfectly okay! I want to give you ideas, inspiration and encouragement here, but then I hope you’ll take it and go find how to best steward the resources God has given to you.
With that said, if you are considering the benefits of paying cash for a house versus getting a mortgage, here’s what I’d encourage you to think about:
Don’t just believe what everyone says about how much houses cost where you live. Go research it out yourself. All real estate is local. The prices in one area will be different from another, even if in the same city with comparable cost of living. For example, if you live in an area where most houses cost $400,000, you very well may be able to find a fixer-upper for $200,000 in a decent part of the other side of town.
Since we live in the Midwest, housing prices are really affordable, compared to many parts of the country. In fact, with some looking and patience, you can buy a very decent relatively new starter home for around $100,000 to $110,000. (Some of you who live in high cost of living areas just had to pick yourself up off the floor, I know!) The low housing prices is one reason we moved here and one of the big factors in our decision to save to pay cash for a house.
This is not meant as an exercise in frustration, but as a reality check. Look at your written budget and see if there are any areas you’d be willing to cut or downsize for a time period in order to free up more money to go to savings.
Our family decided to keep our grocery budget low, have a moratorium on spending, not have any monthly subscriptions, delay college and retirement savings and downsize in rental home in order to free up more money to put toward savings. We also were blessed with a good income from both of our businesses, so the fact that we kept our expenses as minimal as possible and didn’t have any debt allowed us to be able to save a sizable amount of our income each month towards a house.
Once you have a good understanding of how much you can expect to pay for a house and how much you can save each month, you’re ready to run numbers and calculations to determine what is the best plan of action for your family. Figure out how much you could potentially save over the course of the next ten years if you were to live on as little as you can, rent and save as much as you can.
Then, calculate how much you’d have in equity in a home in ten years if you were to instead save aggressively for a great down payment (at least 20% down, maybe even 40%+) on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage on a very modest home, buy the home and then throw everything you could at the mortgage payment to pay it off early.
Running these numbers can give you a very helpful gauge to decide what is the best course of action for your family.
Don’t Get Too Focused and Miss Out On Life
My husband and I are very focused, driven and stubborn people (well, it’s probably just mostly me who is stubborn!). These can be wonderful qualities when exercised in balance.
Unfortunately, we didn’t exercise a lot of balance while saving for a house. Since we’re both self-employed and our income is based a great deal on our productivity, we became work-a-holics with a single-minded focus of earning enough to make our monthly house savings goals.
Instead of pacing ourselves and allowing ourselves margin, we sprinted and ran ourselves ragged. We accomplished our goal, but not without it taking a major toll on our family, friendships and health.
I’m grateful that God was gracious, our friends and family were forgiving and we survived the grueling months of hard work. But neither my husband nor I would recommend that you follow in our footsteps.
Just in the last year, we’re finally feeling like we’re beginning to learn to know our limits, have our priorities in better order and have more margin in our life — and we are happier and healthier for it.
So please, go right ahead and set big goals and work hard, but pace yourself and give yourself grace and breathing room.
Today’s question is from Corrie:
I am thinking of purchasing a chest freezer. I have a family of six and the refrigerator in my apartment is so small. In fact, it is shorter than I am and I can only fit enough food in it for one week. I wish I could get a bigger one but the cabinets above it won’t allow anything larger.
My question is, is it worth it to buy a freezer so I can stock up on sale items? Am I going to pay the difference in electricity for a five-cubic-square-foot chest freezer?
Do you have a question you’d like to ask Money Saving Mom® readers? Read the submission guidelines and submit it here.
Sheeba from Desi Saving Mom emailed in the following tip:
I know a lot of moms out there are struggling to pay for milk with prices as high as $3.59. Indian stores here in NJ (Apna Bazaar Cash & Carry) has gallons of milk for only $2.89. It has gone up just $0.10 in price and is cheaper than most stores. -Sheeba
In our area, Aldi seems to consistently have the best milk prices. Though I hadn’t thought to check an Indian store for milk!
How about the rest of you? Where are you finding the best deals on milk right now?
