This is a series in the style of The Frugal Girl’s Five Frugal Things, where I post weekly 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!
Yikes, how is it Tuesday again already?! I’m used to winter passing by glacially slow, but I’m kinda amazed at how I’m only six weeks out from the start of the busiest time of the year for our farm.
Some fun things this week:
- I saw the first tulips poking out of the ground!! Mid-February is suuuuuper early for this to be happening for us, so I don’t know if that bodes well for the future marketability of the crop (mostly because I worry about them blooming super short because of our weird winter), but I’m still really excited to see such tangible evidence of spring being on its way! (For the record, I saw the daffodils starting to poke through weeks ago.)
- I found a fabulous gluten-free dinner roll recipe (FINALLY!) that we’ve been making multiple times a week to make up for all the years when we weren’t eating dinner rolls at all.
- We’ve rediscovered the magic of the weekly library trip. We took a super long hiatus from doing it (basically since Naomi arrived last year), and the three older kids have been absolutely loving it. It’s also been a good way for us to actually get out of the house once in awhile 🙂
- Matt and I finally sat down together and made a master to-do list of everything that needs to happen in the next 6 weeks, before our season officially opens. It looks a little daunting, but I’m overall just really excited that spring is finally getting so close!
I feel like my frugal wins haven’t been super noteworthy lately, but I’ll see what I can come up with. Here we go:
Note: There may be affiliate links to products, books, or services mentioned below.
I took advantage of Amazon’s BOGO50% off sale
I had a little bit of Christmas money left over, so I used it to buy a book I’ve really been wanting for awhile. When I went to put it in my cart, I noticed it was part of a Buy One, Get One 50% off deal that Amazon was running on a bunch of different books, movies, and games (which is something they often do right before a holiday). I added something for the kids’ Valentine’s Day surprise and was still within budget.
I checked out a book from last year’s Summer Reading List from our library
I know you’ve heard me say plenty of times about how tiny our local library is, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw a title I’d seriously been considering purchasing actually on display the last time I went in. I made sure to snag it immediately, and I’m looking forward to reading it once I’m done with my latest Book of the Month read. Money saved? Around $15.
We went with the treat valentines for the kids’ classes, rather than the paper valentines + treats
In the past, we’ve always gotten both the valentine cards AND a treat to go along with them, but this year, we decided to just nix the card (since no one really looks at them anyway) and just get some of the treats with To/From written on them. With three kids in school, this saved us around $10, I’d guess.
We set up a preschool carpool for our younger son
Our youngest son goes to preschool twice a week, and it’s at just enough of a distance from our house that we just drive him there rather than walk. The other week, a friend of ours (whose son is also in the same class) asked if we’d be interested in doing a carpool, where we would take both boys to preschool each week, and she’d pick them up and bring them home. Can I just say that carpools are the best idea ever? I feel like I’ve gotten so much of my time back just by setting up carpools for two of my kids this year, which is a significant time savings considering that my three kids in school literally have three different schedules.
Sure, this definitely saves us money by not having to pay as much in gas, but it’s the TIME and CONVENIENCE savings that I’m even more stoked about for this one!
I scheduled a medical appointment at a closer facility rather than an earlier appointment further away
We need to take Naomi to an ENT specialist, and the particular group of doctors we were referred to has three different locations they go through. We could have gotten an earlier appointment only about a week away (but that was a 5-hour drive round trip), or we could wait a few weeks and schedule one for the nearer facility (about a 3-hour drive round trip). Since it wasn’t urgent, I decided to take the time and gas savings!
Other Frugal Wins
- I took my own 9-month pics of Naomi Jean
- I submitted some grocery receipts through Ibotta for cash back (and am super close to another cashout!)
- Speaking of cashout, my Big Fat Check from the last quarter of Rakuten is on its way to me right now, which is almost all cash back I’ve gotten from just going through it (using the browser extension) every time I do my online grocery shopping through Sam’s Club
Tell me — what signs of spring are in your corner of the world right now? (And share your weekly frugal wins, obvi!)
