We went to CVS today hoping to get coupons from the coupon printer for $1 off (which =s free) NYC nail polish. We didn’t get the coupons but we did stumble across a 90% off sale on some items. I got the items below, some of which will be Christmas presents, for a total of $2.57 and I used the $2.50 I had in ECBS (CVS bucks) to get all of them for .07 cents. I saved $25.00. Not too bad.
Coffee should basically be considered a food group in our house. Although we don’t frequent Starbucks we do make coffee at home every day. This week we ran out of coffee filters just before going on vacation. Instead of running out to the closest convenient yet expensive store to buy some (and probably some other things we didn’t need) we waited couple days until we actually needed to go to the store. Did you know that you can use paper towels instead of coffee filters? It worked fine and we didn’t have to go without coffee (I’m sure the people around us are grateful).
I am so excited that P&G has decided to offer this deal again! I did it last year and I still use the items I received in my kitchen every day! They were high quality items that really lasted.
How it works-
In summary, you have to buy $25 worth of P&G products in one transaction and you can mail away for a free pink Kitchenware Set.
Why it’s such a good deal-
The $25 total is before coupons and last year I only spent about $3 after coupons and still received my free set!
Click HERE for the official form.
My Set From Last Year-
The deal I did at Publix today to get the set-
I only spent $2.18 after coupons. Click HERE to see what I bought and find out how you can do this deal too.
EDIT: I have now received the new set in the mail. Click HERE to see it.
(This picture was taken at the WW2 Memorial in front of our home state)
This Thursday night 7 of us departed from Florida for a 14 hour road trip to visit our family who live by Washington, D.C.! We were very excited because several of our group had never seen D.C. before. We had an absolutely amazing time and our main regret is that we wish we could have stayed longer!
Why did we drive instead of flying? With 7 people going we decided that it would be cheaper to drive. Had we been able to find round trip plane tickets for $200 per person it would have cost us over $1400 to fly and that is a low estimate. Instead we spent $100 each, $700 total to cover the cost of renting a van, rental insurance, and gas. This was a savings of 50%. It also worked out well that we had a vehicle to drive while we were there because there were so many of us. The downside was the long drive, but we all slept for a huge portion of the trip and brought a small TV to which we attached our Xbox (which is also a DVD player) and that helped to pass the time.
For those of you who have never been to D.C. you may not know that many of the coolest things to do in Washington, DC are free! All of the monuments in DC are free and so are all of the Smithsonian museums. We visited the Washington monument, Lincoln’s memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, the WW2 Memorial, what would have been the reflection pond had it not been under construction, The National Gallery of Art, The Air and Space Museum, The Natural History Museum, The National Sculpture Garden, and I’m sure I’m forgetting several others but none of which did we have to pay for. The Washington D.C. Zoo is also free but during this short trip we were unable to make it.
Among the highlights of our trip were going to the Andy Warhol exhibit, seeing a giant dead squid, the mammals exhibit, seeing all of the Artwork at the National Art Museum, riding on the Metro (D.C.’s subway) and spending time with our family. Below are some pictures we took during the trip.
( The Washington Monument from inside the WW2 Memorial )
( Outside the Lincoln Monument )
( The Vietnam War Memorial )
( Picasso inside the National Gallery of Art )
( Inside the Lincoln Monument )
( The Natural History Museum )
We also saved money by-
– choosing a slightly smaller but fuel efficient rental van
– packing as lightly as possible to fit in the van
– staying with family
– eating at our relative’s houses instead of going out to eat
– bringing our own drinks and snacks along the road trip and with us during day trips to DC
– having family who gave us tons of “souvenirs” to take back with us for our households
– driving whenever we could instead of taking public transportation
– taking pictures instead of buying tons of souvenirs
Overall, for all of you frugal people out there, Washington, D.C. has a lot of fun things you can do without spending a dime. Your main costs when considering a vacation there are going to be transportation, food, and a place to stay. We were able to keep those to a minimum. We probably also spent about another $250 for food while we were there but none of us ended up spending very much. None of this would have been possible without the generosity of our family who welcomed us with open arms, provided amazing food for our small army and gave us a place to stay that was hundreds of times better than a hotel. We had an amazing time and we all want to visit again soon.
Get a FREE Being Girl Survival Kit by liking them on Facebook. I have received this package before and in addition to containing a lot of samples, it usually includes a coupon for an entire pack of free feminine care products. Click HERE to sign up.
One grocery item that we go through like water and constantly run out of is coffee creamer. It is so much cheaper to make coffee at home than to buy it, even with the cost of coffee creamer, but I wondered- could I make it myself for even cheaper?
Using the recipe of-
-1 can of sweetened condensed milk ($3 for two)
– 1 ½ cups of nonfat milk (~$.50)
– 1 tablespoon of vanilla ($1.5 for about 2 tablespoons)
Mix everything together and shake
I doubled the recipe and it made the amount in the water jug in the picture above. So for about $5 I made just a little bit more creamer than what a $3 coffee creamer generally holds from the store. This coffee creamer was MORE expensive than the coffee creamers from the store plus the time and energy required to buy everything and make it. The taste was good but not quite as good as store bought coffee creamers. Overall, this project didn’t save money but it was fun to try. I may try other recipes in the future to see if they will be more cost effective. If you already have the ingredients on hand (I didn’t but you might!) then this would be much cheaper and it is easy to make.
This morning, I woke up early even though it’s my day off. It’s hard to sleep in now that I have to get up at 6:30am every day for work. I was shocked at the cold weather when I ran outside in my PJs to get my Sunday newspapers. For those of you who don’t know I live in Florida and this is the first cold day of the year. I grabbed my boyfriend’s winter coat from the back closet and tiptoed into our backyard to take a picture of our Water Well for another post (see HERE).
I was so excited to see that our three orange / tangerine trees haves started to grow fruit. As a Florida child I grew up with orange and tangerine trees in the back yard. I have great memories of being a child and going out to pick oranges in the cold air. We usually had so many that we couldn’t even give them all away and that was only from one or two trees at a time.
I can’t wait to have baskets of fresh FREE fruit to eat or give away. In my experience Orange and Tangerine trees are really easy to take care of (plant them and that’s it!) and yield tons of fruit year after year. I think having a fruit tree is a great frugal venture. I may try to make homemade jam this year. Or we may simply be able to give baskets of oranges to friends and family as early Christmas presents.
Before we moved into our new house my boyfriend and I spent way too much money eating out, take out and fast food. We decided that after we moved we would eat at home and cook more often. So far, we are doing really well. This month we decided to take it a step further and limit ourselves to a budget of $200 for groceries and household items, like toilet paper. The people that I have mentioned this to that don’t coupon think that this number is extremely low. The people that do coupon may think it’s too high. I think it’s a start.
One thing that we are doing with this budget is putting the $200 cash into a jar and when we spend any of it we are putting the receipts in the jar with the rest of the money. I am very curious to see how many of certain items we purchase in a month. For example- We have well water that is fine for daily activities but we don’t use it as drinking water (see my post about it). I want to know how many gallons of water we buy in one month. I want to know how many gallons of milk we buy in one month.
Finding out this information will be beneficial because I hope that it will allow me to make purchases of food and household items in bulk that will last for one month’s time.
The Results-
Our first month of our $200 Grocery Challenge ended yesterday with good results. We spent $197.68 total, almost exactly our budget of $200.
I now know that in one month we use-
– 19.5 gallons of water
– 3 Gallons of Milk
– 4 Coffee creamers (this would have been more but we ran out of money and used sugar and milk instead)
– 4 12 Packs of Toilet Paper
– 2 Loaves of bread
And those are just a few things I picked out.
Some of the strategies we used –
– Shopping at ALDI a discount grocery store – Click HERE to read about ALDI
– Using CVS and Walgreens store dollars to our advantage
– Using what we already had in our pantry and freezer
– Not wasting food
– Buying what was on sale
– And we stopped buying when we ran out of money
What we won’t do again-
– A couple of times we went to the closest store instead of the cheapest store and this really made a dent in our budget. One of my big shopping trips this month was at WinnDixie after a really long day at work when I didn’t have the energy to make the longer drive to ALDI. I was able to take advantage of their B1G1 meat department but almost everything else that I bought cost a lot more.
– The couponing trips that I was able to make this month saved a lot of money, especially at Publix who probably has the best couponing deals in the area I live in. It is not always easy for me to find the time to do large couponing/grocery shopping trips but it really is worth it. (See shopping trip HERE)
– We bought a large quantity of Ibuprofen that we were out of and it will last a long time, but it was more money than we probably should have spent on one item and we didn’t get that great of a deal on it.
– Next month I won’t forget my shopping list at the last shopping trip of the month and forget to buy any drinks including water. This is very important because we can’t drink the water from the well.
Overall-
Overall, I think that limiting ourselves to a $200 budget was a good for us because it did help restrict what we bought this month. I wanted to buy B1G1 Tilipia Filets towards the end of the month but it didn’t fit in the budget and we ended up having more meat than we used this month anyway. I have found that it is much harder to stock up on larger quantities of food that we will not use in that specific month because we have budgeted for exactly one month.
I also made the mistake of forgetting to buy drinking water and any other drinks on my last shopping trip of the month and we ran out of everything to drink in the house on the 29th besides milk and even that was running low (see Two Gallons of Milk for the Price of one Forever). It was the 29th and we ended up making a trip to CVS with the $7 ECBs (CVS dollars) that I had left over. We used those to buy water, milk, and a 2 liter of soda which got us through the last two days of the month.
This really does highlight how running to the closest store for a couple things you need can make a huge impact on your budget. It also shows me how much money I save shopping at ALDI for basic grocery items and then hitting sales only at more expensive stores. We are planning on using the $200 budget again next month and now that I have learned a few things from this month I’m excited to see how it will turn out.
I am not afraid to admit that I am a clean freak. I used to clean using latex disposable gloves but I hated spending money on something that I knew was bad for the environment. Then I decided to try using plastic bags and they work great. My hands are protected from the harsh chemicals in cleaning products and I don’t feel bad when I throw them away because they didn’t cost anything.
Savings- $3 to $5 for each box of gloves
Click HERE to see the rest of our series USE THIS NOT THAT.
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