This is a new series in the style of The Frugal Girl’s Five Frugal Things, where I’ll be posting weekly(ish) about what I’ve done lately to save money and make things stretch in order to further our financial goals, which currently include us paying off a decent hunk of debt. I encourage you to play along and post your own weekly frugal wins in the comments section below!
Note: There are affiliate links to the books, products, and services mentioned in this post.
I used Amazon’s BOGO 50% off sale to purchase some Easter gifts for the kids
In case you didn’t know, Amazon almost always runs some kind of sale on popular kids books, games, movies, etc. soon before a holiday. Often the sale will be a buy two, get one free sale, but this time around, it’s currently a buy one, get one half off deal. Since we have both Easter and my oldest child’s birthday coming up, I went ahead and ordered books for Easter baskets as well as some books and a board game for my daughter’s birthday.
If you’re interested in checking out what all is included in the sale, you can click HERE. (UPDATE: It looks like the sale has ended, but if you start checking 10-14 days before most major gift-giving holidays, you’ll find that they almost always run one.)
I bought one of the kids’ Easter books pre-owned from Biblio
My youngest loves a certain kind of book by Usborne (which isn’t traditionally sold through online retailers like Amazon), and after doing several Internet searches, the best way to get him another one was by ordering it pre-owned through Biblio, which is my favorite source for used books. With shipping included, it only cost me $4.98 instead of the $20+ I was seeing it listed for new.
I used Costco’s non-member option to buy some gluten-free flour in bulk
Here’s something I didn’t know about until the last year or so–you can actually order things off of Costco.com without needing to be a member (but you do have to pay an extra 5% on your order). Since we only buy gluten-free flour in bulk from Costco, it’s actually worth it for us just to absorb the extra 5% rather than pay for a year’s membership that we won’t really use, especially as the flour will often go on sale about once a quarter and even the regular price is way cheaper than I can find it elsewhere.
(For the record, THIS is the flour that we order through there. It’s by far the best 1:1 gluten free flour that I’ve found thus far.)
We split the cost of a semi truck of compost with friends to get the best bulk price
We knew we needed to order compost for our flower farm this year, and I knew the company that would be my top choice. But there was a problem — they’re located about an hour and a half away, and we don’t have a truck or trailer to pick up the compost ourselves. Since we’ve been burned (literally) way too many times by bad compost, I knew I was willing to pay up for a product I knew was the best of the best, but it did require that we pay a pretty hefty delivery fee.
Since we were going to have to pay the delivery fee anyway, we decided it might make more sense if we actually upped our order to a semi truck load so that we’d have enough for the next few years rather than just for this season (thus eliminating the need to pay the $550 freight charge annually). We couldn’t afford the whole truck load ourselves, but we had some friends who were willing to split the cost, which meant we both got the best deal possible per bag on the compost and then each paid half of the delivery charge.
While this was a huge expense to take on this season, it will save us hundreds and hundreds of dollars over the next few years (or however long we can make the compost last).
I took advantage of a case lot sale to stock up on pantry items we were low on
Twice a year, stores in Utah offer case lot sales on canned goods, shelf-stable boxed foods, etc. It’s a great time to bulk up your pantry for a decent price, and since we’ve been heavily using our short-term food storage for the past six months or so to try and combat the high inflation, we were starting to get low on several items.
This time around we got black beans, canned fruit (pears and peaches), and canned corn. The store we bought them from didn’t have everything we needed, so we’re waiting to see if a different store also does a case lot sale so we can get the remaining items we’re looking for (crushed tomatoes, cans of beef broth, and small cans of tomato sauce).
Other Frugal Wins
- I went through Rakuten to get cash back from some of my regular online monthly grocery orders
- I used Kindle rewards points to get several dollars off a book I’d been wanting
- For every Kindle book you buy, you usually get so many points to go into your account, which can then be cashed out on future Kindle book purchases. You do need to usually use the points within a 90-day span, though.
- I used Ibotta to get cash back from submitting a grocery receipt
- I gave Matt a haircut, and he gave our boys haircuts
- We’ve been putting this home haircutting kit to good use ever since we bought it last year, and it’s paid for itself many times over. To learn how to cut men’s hair, I just watched several YouTube tutorials and then went for it. I just want to put it on the record that yesterday at work, my husband’s coworker noticed he’d gotten a haircut and said he’d had very bad luck himself finding a good local haircutting place and was wondering where my husband had gone (because, as he put it, his haircut looked “very nice”). I’ve never felt like crowing with pride so much in my life 🙂
What are your frugal wins this week? (And if you’re from Utah, let me know if you know of any stores other than Smith’s that are offering case lot sales right now!)
