Waking up to Cold Florida Air and Oranges

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on October 2, 2011 No comment

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.

$200 Grocery Challenge

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on October 2, 2011 No comment

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 29^th besides milk and even that was running low (see Two Gallons of Milk for the Price of one Forever). It was the 29^th 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.

Having a Water Well- Does it really save you money?

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on October 2, 2011 3 comments

When my boyfriend and I moved into our new house we were very excited to have a water well and NO WATER OR SEWER BILL. While wells no longer come with a bucket and a rope that you have to haul up every morning (see the above picture of our well), having a well has been more interesting than we expected.

Our very sweet landlords had lived in our house and drank the well water for thirty years. They assured us it was good to drink and that they have had it recently tested. In addition, we don’t have to add salt to the well and it doesn’t turn our clothes or anything else yellow, like most wells, because it’s a spring fed well.

Once we moved into the house though, we noticed that there were small particles in the water. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t like amebas with my water. That’s a joke, but we did stop drinking the water right away. We are still able to use it for everything else besides consumption. As renters, we didn’t want to make a long term investment in a water filtration system because we don’t know how long we will be living here.

I kept track this month and we used 18 to 20 gallons of water for drinking, which cost us about $15 dollars. In my former apartment, our water and sewer bill cost us around $35 a month and I know that is a lot cheaper than most houses. My sister’s water bill is around $60 a month at her house. We really are saving a decent amount of money but I will comment that it is much less convenient to be constantly having to buy gallons of water. I may look into other options such as filters or water coolers in the future but for now we are sticking to the simplest solution- buying water jugs. When I am hauling them into the house I remind myself that it’s one less bill to pay every month and that alone makes it worthwhile.

Edit- Since I published this post we have been able to go back to drinking the well water. I think they might have been due to pipes sitting for too long before we moved in. We make sure to flush the well regularly and we have never had a problem with particles in the water since and I’m very picky. We use a Brita pitcher and we have both been very healthy. I actually had the chance to speak with a local man who does water testing and he assured me that we have spring fed wells and that the water is good quality.

Use This Not That- Plastic Bags vs. Latex Gloves

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 27, 2011 No comment

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.

9-25-11 Couponing Trip

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 26, 2011 No comment

Sunday I was excited when I woke up and found that attached to my two copies of the newspaper were six mini boxes of cereal!

I then went couponing at CVS.

$7 ECB WYB Bausch & Lomb Re-Nu Sensitive Solution, 12 oz, $8.99 Limit 1
-$2 off Bausch + Lomb renu fresh or sensitive solution, (sign up) printable
– cost FREE

Ajax Dish Liquid, 16 oz, 88¢
-$1/2 Dynamo, Ajax, Fab, or Niagara Ajax, Fab, or Niagara products, SS 8/14
– cost 38¢ each

Peanut Butter stuffed pretzels $1.50
– No deal I just couldn’t resist

At Walgreens this is what I bought-

-$4.99 RR WYB Remington King of Shaves Azor 5 Blade Razor System at $4.99
– cost FREE

– $2 RR WYB Walgreens Overnight or Regular Maxi pads, 14-24 ct., at $2
– cost FREE

– $ 1.59 RR WYB Balance Bar, 1.76 oz, at $1.50
-$.55 off Balance bar, singles, SS 9/11
– cost FREE + profit

– Yardley Bar Soap, 4.25 oz, 69¢ w/ in-ad coupon Limit 3
-.25/1 Yardley London product, September All You Magazine
– cost 44¢

– 2 Real Soft 12 Packs Toilet Paper $5
– $1 off in ad coupon – limit 2
– cost $4 each

– 3 Pieces of candy as filler items- .33 cents each

I used the Register Rewards to buy the toilet paper and soap. I needed the candy because Walgreens only allows one manufacturer coupon per item and Register Rewards are manufacturer coupons.

These deals are good until Saturday.

Free Spyware and Antivirus Protection for your PC

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 25, 2011 1 comment

As a big fan of shopaholicsavers, I was asked by the web master for a contribution to show how you can save on antivirus and antispyware software for your personal computer. I have found the combination of two excellent, highly rated and best of all, free software packages to be the best defense from personal computer malware. Those are AVG Free Antivirus 2012 and Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware Free. The links above are safe and will take you directly to the download sites for both products. I trust these products as they not only have protected my PC’s but the PC’s of my three children as well.

I recommend you download both of these packages to your desktop or you’re My Documents folder. Before running the installation, uninstall your other antivirus and antispyware software which may not get along with the new software. When running the install of this software uncheck any extras they may offer such as AVG’s 30 day internet security trial, security toolbars or even resetting your search engine website to one of their choice rather than your current favorite. Both packages will also perform an immediate update to download the latest virus and spyware dictionaries to keep you up to date.

Both packages run in the background with minimal impact or nag messages while you use your PC in normal day to day stuff. I also schedule the software to perform full scans in the middle of the night, one at 2:00am and the other at 4:00am every night. It is a waste of electricity and your money to leave your PC up and running every night but if you leave it on overnight once or twice a week your PC will automatically perform the security scans and insure you are malware free. The software packages also want to download a new malware dictionary every day which can slow your PC down considerably for a short time but those downloads can be scheduled for a time when you are not very active on your PC as well.

If your software does detect malware let it fix the infected files and delete the malicious software. Sometimes it can only quarantine the malicious software but you can than later delete the malicious software from your quarantine and then immediately run another full scan. If pesky malicious software continues to evade AVG or Ad-Aware, reboot your PC in safe mode and then perform full scans with both packages. Safe mode does not allow third party software to run at startup so you have a pure and clean but minimal Microsoft operating system running. You can then scan your machine and rest assured that the malicious software is not hiding and running in the background replicating itself as quickly as you are detecting it.

To keep your PC malware free you should always do the following:

Scan your PC with your antivirus software at least weekly
Allow your antivirus software to update daily
Make sure your antivirus is actually running and has not been disabled
Empty your quarantine regularly
Avoid downloads from untrusted sources, if a software download is actually hiding malware, there is usually a blog or review somewhere that you can check before you download
Avoid websites that are too good to be true and not trustworthy, malicious software can be installed on your machine with a simple drive-by or visit to that web site

by The TechaholicSaver

Note- ShopaholicSavers uses both of these programs on their computers and has for years

Saturday 10¢ Thrift Shopping

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 25, 2011 3 comments

I have recently moved closer to my home town from a much larger city. I grew up visiting thrift shops with my mom and Saturday I was excited to continue our tradition by going thrifting. Ten cents seemed to be the theme of the day; we had a lot of fun and got some great deals. Here are some pictures of what we got.

One thrift shop was selling books for 10¢ each and I was excited to look through all of them. A very nice man offered to let me fill a box of books for $1. I filled 2 boxes and got all of these books (and a few more I already gave away) for ONLY $2! I probably bought around 45 books and 1 book on CD.

I am currently experimenting with alternative revenue sources. When I was younger I used to sell books on ebay and did well doing it. I know that the market is tougher for that now because of more sites that sell books like half.com but I’m going to see if there is still an opportunity to make some extra cash this way. I’ve already gotten back more in value than the $2 I spent by counting the books that I will keep or give away, so for a very little investment I’m going to see if I can make a profit.

I got all of these XBOX games for my boyfriend’s XBOX for 10¢ each! New XBOX games retail for $60 each.

These magazines and old art books were also only 10¢ each.

I needed a new purse and I found one for $1

I found this Brita faucet filter for my sister who needed one at her house for $4 in the package.

I also got this decorative ship which I paid $2 for. We still need more decorations for our new house.

There are a lot of things that I love about thrifting. It’s green, it saves money and the money you spend usually goes toward the nonprofit organization that runs the thrift shop. No one will ever know (except for everyone who reads this blog 😛 ) that most of the valuable items in my house were bought second hand.

Best October All You Magazine Coupons

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 25, 2011 No comment

In the October Issue of All You magazine, there were two coupons that really stood out to me. The coupon for entirely free Idahoa Potatoes and also the one for B1G1 free coffee creamer. Those are two grocery items that we will use in my household. I love that getting All You Magazine for free is helping me to get more free stuff.

All You also always has a list of all of the coupons in the front index (see below pic) that shows you what they are for and exactly the page you will find them on which makes it a lot easier to locate a coupon you want.

Click HERE to see how I got a free subscription to All You Magazine.

Doubling Milk

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 25, 2011 No comment

We decided to try the milk / water trick when we were half way through our gallon of milk.

Before

After

Click HERE to read how to do it. Now we just have to figure our how we will drink it all before it expires, but we eat a lot of cereal so I don’t think that this will be a problem.

Frugal Articles

Posted by Ney@ShopahoicSavers.com on September 23, 2011 No comment

I don’t know about you but I love reading articles about frugal living. Why? It gives me new ideas and reaffirms what I’m already doing, therefore providing inspiration!