Tips For Carla
By Dana Cook
Dear Grampa Terry,
Last week was a hectic one for me, so I was unable to read and post to Carla's email. If I can I would still like too!!
Things we did to save money!!
Groceries:
Clip coupons, and swap with another person or people and you’ll end up getting more than one coupon for something, because we all don’t use the same products.
Use your coupons at double coupon stores, combined with sales or ad matches at walmart.
Cook from scratch as much as possible, its better for you, cheaper in the long run
Definitely add match at walmart or do the double coupon sales
Garden if you are able and can or freeze the surplus, always start your seeds because this is soooo much cheaper than buying plants. I buy most of my seeds at the dollar store for 10 for a 1.00 and then start them in Styrofoam egg cartons. This way you can get 50 or more plants from a .10 pack of seeds. You can always freeze the seeds you don’t plant in a moisture proof container, they will last!!
I garden in containers on our back deck, because our yard is not big enough for a garden. This year I grew tomatoes, cucumbers with tomato cages, cayenne peppers, green bell peppers, strawberries, I also grew my own herbs, basil, thyme, chives, oregano, dill, sage, and lavender. I used my dehydrator to dry out the herbs, Get the Ball home canning and dehydration book, its great!! Nest year I am planning to grow everything I grew this year but I am going to grow potatoes in the 5 gallon buckets that I save from the laundry detergent I buy at Costco, I also want to grow peas, onions, collards and spinach. I can or freeze everything I get my hands on.
Gardening can be hard work, but it is very satisfying when you look in your pantry/ freezer and see all your hard work and its even better when you use your bounty to make a meal and you think about how good that spaghetti sauce tastes from the .10 pack of seeds, lol Ragu, Prego costs close to 2.00 and you paid .10 for a hundred tomatoe seeds. lol
Plan a menu and stick to it
Plan multi use meals, for instance, I bake a chicken and either make roast chicken sandwiches of dh lunch, or pick off chicken to make chicken and dumplins, or chicken and broccoli casserole or chicken pot pie, chicken and noodle soup or chicken and rice soup, save your chicken carcass to boil off for great broth. Strain and freeze. There are lots you can do with multi use meals, with chicken, beef, pork etc. And there are lots of recipes out there.
I don’t buy soda, I make tea, koolaid or juice. It is so much cheaper to cut out soda, as a matter of fact I gave up soda for a 2 weeks and lost 5 lbs. Yeah me!!
I save plastic baggies to wash and reuse them for dh lunch and I pack his lunch everyday.
I make snack cakes for dh lunch instead of buying them, I use my coupons and either buy a mix or make from scratch. I make him, cookies, cupcakes, brownies etc. for his lunch. I save a bundle doing this. He also takes leftovers for lunch, nothing goes to waste.
When I make my menus I always plan in 1-2 extra days worth of meals, and I do this every time I go to the store, then I bring the extra meals home and put them in the pantry/ freezer and forget about it, then when money is super tight and I really don’t have the money to go grocery shopping I can fall back on the forgotten meals that are in the pantry and freezer.
When I was pregnant I worked full time, I knew when the baby was born that I was going to be staying home, every week I added 1-2 more meals in addition to my extra meals that I already bought and stocked them away. I also got as much stuff as I could to can during that summer. I canned 60 qts of green beans, 60 qts of tomatoes, I froze 100 ears of corn, peas, collards, I made and froze 120 stuffed peppers ( peppers that my mom and dad grew. ,I also made lasagnas, meat loaves, chili, Beef Veg, soup and froze it and with all of this and the 3-4 extra meals I bought when our baby was born in Oct. I did not have to buy groceries until almost the second week in January. Winters here are bad so I try to continue to stock up as much as I can so that when the snow is blowing I don’t have to be out in it!
Bills:
Electric bill:
We slowly changed all of the light bulbs in our house to the energy saving ones, it saved me 20.00 on the first bill.
Turn off the lights and open the blinds, I don’t use lights during the day
Hang up your clothes instead of using the dryer, we live in the city and have no yard and we aren’t even allowed to have a clothes line so I hang my clothes on hangers and use clothes pins and hang them in the bathroom over the shower curtain, on the backs of chairs etc. This also helps in the winter as the more moisture that is in the air the warmer it is in your house.
Water Bill:
Take shorter showers
Turn off water when you shave or brush your teeth.
Cable/ Satellite Bill
Evaluate if you really need all those extra channels or not, we have basic cable and after looking through the tv guide ( the free one that comes in the Sunday paper) all of the movies on hbo and cinemax were old and we had seen most of them so it was silly in our view to pay extra for these chanels.
Essentially do this with all your bills decide what is a must have and what isn’t
Entertainment:
This was a area that was hard for us because we like to eat out, rent movies and such, so
Since I get a free tv guide in the Sunday paper I look through it on Sunday and decide what movies are playing on basic cable that we would like to see, then I set the vcr to record those movies on the appropriate day, then when the weekend comes, I have free movies to watch!! I also pop my own popcorn unless the microwave stuff is on sale and I have a coupon. I try to replicate the favorite foods we were spending so much on to eat out. We also take advantage of the free/almost free things to do here in our town. I set up play dates with my son and his little friends at the park so he is getting his interaction and I pack a lunch for us both. I also pack snacks whenever we go on trips so that we aren’t stopping at mc donalds. When we do eat out we usually always use a coupon and I am not ashamed to ask for doggie bag, remember leftovers for lunch.
Gifts/ Holidays
Make a price budget and try hard to stick to it
Shop sales all year long, and stash gifts
Make your gifts, its easier than you might think, this year I have made a king size granny blanket for our bed, I made curtains for my sons room, I made homemade bath salts for some homemade gift baskets that I am making for the women in our family. I made some recipe cards for my mom and sil, now all I need to do is make/ buy a recipe card box. Last year I made 2 cross stitched pictures and framed them myself. A wedding sampler and a welcome friends sampler.
Save the comics from the Sunday paper to wrap birthday gifts
You can make gift bags by getting brown paper bags and stamping Christmas designs on them, then when you get ready to wrap the gift in the bag, fold over the top of the bag punch two holes in it and string through some curling ribbon, tie in a bow and curl the ribbon, I got this idea from Bath and Body works at the mall, they were having a killer sale and my sil and I went in to get some things for bridal party gifts and that is how they wrapped them up, we went to Jo Ann fabrics and Michaels and bought the stamps on sale and the paint on sale went to a local store and they gave us the plain brown paper bags for free. Everyone commented on how nice our County Gift Bags were.
You could also make jams or jellies and homemade bread for a gift basket, gift in a jar recipes etc, use your imagination.
For very close friends or family you could make a date basket with a coupon for a free movie rental, a free pizza , a couple bottles of soda a pack of micro pop corn and some candy.
Also for close friends and family make a gift certificate for meals or baby sitting or whatever suits the person.
You could also make your own wrapping paper with a roll of white paper and the stamps. We have done this with our kids foot prints and hand prints and then they make gifts for the grandparents and we wrap in the homemade paper.
These are just somethings we do to save money, it has worked well for us, I wish you all the luck in the world, its easy to give up but it feels better when you don’t and you conquer the obsticle.
Check out all of the frugal books and websites, I bought THE COMPLETE TIGHTWAD GAZETTE and I love it!! I also use the budget stretcher, mommysavers, miserly moms ect. Let me know how it goes, I love hearing success stories!!
Miserly moms has about 200 really cheap meal recipes, its worth checking out!!
Dana Cook is a Subscriber to The Budget Stretcher Newsletter that was willing to take substantial time to submit these great tips.
Thanks Dana
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