This is a series in the style of The Frugal Girl’s Five Frugal Things, where I post 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!
It’s been a couple intense weeks of sickness around here (some horrific stomach bug has been going around the entire state, it seems), but *knock on wood*, I think we’re maybe starting to pull out of it a bit. (At any rate, I myself am feeling better, which makes it easier to handle everyone else’s sickness.)
Here are some of the frugal wins from the last week or two:
Note: There may be affiliate links to products, books, or services mentioned in this post.
Matt started a new job for the winter
Our biggest piece of news this week is that Matt finally started his new winter job! He’s working as a running coach for a new speed and agility program that my friend recently started. While increasing income isn’t technically counted as “frugality” (just wise financial sense), we ARE doing a few additional things that do make the new job “frugal,” too.
Since the job is located two hours north of us, Matt is staying with his parents during the week (who live only about three minutes away from his new workplace) and eating with them. The job also has the double benefit of helping Matt to exercise more and take better care of his own health, which is a huge long-term frugal win for sure.
As of now, he’s planning on doing the job until March, which should provide a nice buffer for us during these winter months when the farm is hardly bringing in anything.
I signed up for a free flower farming webinar
I am all about constantly looking for ways to increase my own knowledge and education in whatever I’m pursuing, and while that does sometimes look like paying for courses or other materials, it just as often includes taking advantage of the massive amount of free webinars, courses, YouTube videos, etc. that already exist.
This latest webinar talked about some big picture pieces to get into place when planning a successful farm business, as well as some important mindset shifts. Being a business owner has been a fascinating exercise for me — you wear a lot of hats and confront a lot of limiting beliefs you’re not even aware that you have, and so it’s been a constant uphill climb of self-growth for me, for sure.
I limited Christmas gifts
Part of this was financial, but even more than that, we decided to simplify gifts this year just because now that we’re *almost* to the point where we’ve minimized the bulk of our possessions, we really, really don’t want to just clutter up our house with a bunch of stuff again.
It can be SO HARD to limit gifts at Christmas just because we know how fun it is to watch our kids open up their surprises (and because there’s always that sinking feeling when you read your kid’s list for Santa that you didn’t know about and it has something on there you hadn’t even heard about/considered). But we sat down and tried really hard this year to mostly stick with the something you want/something you need/something to wear/something to read paradigm of Christmas gifts. While our kids technically got two things they wanted (one from Santa, one from us), it’s still a far cry less than we used to be.
We’re also soooo much more selective in what we choose for our kids now. Having decluttered easily over half of the gifts we’d bought them in the past, we can now clearly see what kinds of things have “sticking power” (like magnetic tiles and duplos) and what things don’t (figurines, toys that just serve one main function instead of being open-ended, yet more stuffed animals, etc.).
I got an early bird discount by registering for a 2025 event now
Each winter since it’s been offered, we’ve attended the Utah Flower Conference, which is basically a large symposium where you get to hear the latest trends/techniques/bits of wisdom about the flower industry currently in Utah. It’s been highly valuable every time I’ve attended, so for me, it was a no-brainer to sign up for next year’s event (and save ourselves nearly $200 by doing so early!).
While I can’t take advantage of every educational opportunity I’d like to, we do try to make it a priority to set aside some money every year for just that purpose. Every dollar we’ve spent investing into ourselves has been highly worth it, and all the better if we can do so at a discount.
We saved seeds from some of our favorite zinnias to give as Christmas gifts
The past two years, we’ve given out our homemade chicken broth to neighbors and friends as our Christmas gift, but this year, we thought we really should do something with flowers (duh), so we saved some seeds from our very favorite zinnia varieties and we’ll be giving out a mix of those as our fun little Christmas gift to people.
We purchased these beautiful small seed envelopes on Amazon (which are meant as a wedding favor, but they’ll work perfectly for this), and we’ll just handwrite “zinnias 2024” on the front and put one of our farm’s stickers on the back. Should be fun!
Other Frugal Wins
- I used a promo code plus Rakuten to get 15% additional cash back when purchasing prints from Snapfish for Christmas gifts
- P. S. Rakuten is still running a deal where if you sign up now, you get $30 cash back in your account if you spend $30 at any of the retailers they partner with! Rakuten doesn’t offer cash back for Amazon, but they do offer cash back for a good majority of other major online retailers. I have gotten literally hundreds of dollars in cash back over the years I’ve used their browser extension. You can sign up for an account and get your $30 cash back by clicking HERE.
- I used Kindle points on an already discounted ebook I wanted (Hard is Not the Same Thing As Bad) for a total of less than $5. (It’s still on sale, BTW!)
- I re-used some wrapping paper and bows from previous gifts/years plus I nixed putting bows on some gifts altogether (the kids and us really don’t care that much!)
What kinds of frugal things have you been up to lately? I know December sometimes just seems like it’s spend, spend, spend, but I bet if you think about it, you can think of some frugal wins, too! I’d love it if you commented below and shared with us 🙂
