Fourth and Final Frugal Week of February

I was able to work everyday last week, so I am grateful for that, unfortunately on Friday I came down with a cold.  I've not done as much this weekend as I normally would do, due to a lack of energy. I'm not working today and to be honest, I'm glad because I'm just going to rest up today. 

Last Wednesday I went to IGA after work and found 1/2 gallons of milk marked down to 50¢, so I picked up two of those. It's been a long time since I bought milk for $1.00 per gallon .

Here are our dinners from last week:

Monday: Baked Chicken, Chicken Flavored Rice, Brussel Sprouts

Tuesday: Spaghetti, Broccoli, Garlic Bread

Wednesday: Baked Potatoes with Sour Cream, Broccoli

Thursday: Homemade Pizza

Friday: Fish, Rice, and Brussel Sprouts

Saturday: Leftover Baked Potatoes fried in skillet, green beans

Sunday: Chicken, Sugar Snap Peas, Teriyaki Rice

I did go to Walgreens on Saturday to let my daughter pick up some of the 49¢ candy bars that were on sale. We had coupons and ended up paying 16¢ each for them. 

How was your week?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Third Frugal Week of February

Monday and Tuesday were Winter Break from school, so we had those days free this week. I was able to work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so I am grateful for that.

Sunday afternoon I had a radiator hose in my car to start leaking on me. My Dad fixed it for me, but said I needed to get a new hose to replace the worn out one. I was able to get that fixed on Tuesday as well as have the oil changed in my car. $171 plus change for the car repair. 

On Saturday I went shopping to pick up a few deals.

First stop was Publix where the Keebler Club crackers were on sale for buy one get one free. This was a great time to cash in some of my Kellogg's Family Rewards points. I was able to use my points to print off four coupons for $1.50 off one box. I ended up paying 40¢ for each box. It really pays to enter these codes into the website for money saving coupons. 

Next, I combined a manufacturer coupon with a Publix store coupon and scored two loaves of bread for 50¢ each. 

Next, I was able to get 4 containers of Tropicana Orange Juice for free. It was a buy one get one free sale and I had two coupons for buy one get one free, which I printed online. 

My daughter did a deal on Sundown vitamins and ended up earning money that went towards our other purchases. 

Other items at Publix included 4 boxes of Krave cereal for $1.00 each and 2 boxes of the new Mueller's Hidden Veggie spaghetti for 24¢ each after a buy one get one free sale and a manufacture coupon, 6 cans of Progresso soup for 25¢ after sale and coupon, one free Snickers candy bar with a free coupon won on Facebook, and free alcohol, baby cereal (donating to a friend), cocoa butter, and hand sanitizer.

The Iams canned cat food you see in the photo came from Target. There are $2.00 off 3 cans coupons online and I printed two of them. The cat food was 57¢, so the overage went towards my other purchases. 

I went to Target to pick up a deal on Grands biscuits. They were on sale for $1.25 each, and there were manufacturers coupons for $1.00 off a purchase of three. Target also has a coupon online for $2.00 off three, so I combined those and paid 25¢ each for 6 cans. 

My daughter went to the Dollar Tree with makeup coupons. She came out with these two items and only had to pay 10¢ each for the sales tax. 

I went to Food Lion because they have the 4 roll packages of Angel Soft and I had a buy one 12 pack, get a free 4 pack coupon. The 12 pack was $5.99 and I had a $2.00 off coupon for that, which they let us combine. (We asked beforehand). So, I paid $3.99 plus tax for 16 rolls, which is 25¢ a roll. These were for double rolls too. 

I went to Bi-Lo to pick up English muffins. They were on sale buy one get one free and I had 55¢ coupons that doubled, so I paid 98¢ each for 4 packs of English muffins. While I was there I stumbled across a display for Scotch brand scissors. They were $1.69 and there were $1.00 off coupons located beside them, so I picked up a pair for 69¢ plus tax. 

All breakfasts, lunches, and dinners came from home this week as usual. 

Our Dinners this week were: 

Monday: Baked Potatoes, Steamed Broccoli
Tuesday: Baked Spaghetti, Broccoli
Wednesday:Salisbury Steak, Pan Fried Baked Potatoes, Peas & Carrots
Thursday: Fish, Oven Fried Potatoes, Brussel Sprouts
Friday: Meatballs & Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli 
Saturday: Grilled Chicken Salads
Sunday: Baked Chicken, Broccoli, Teriyaki Rice, Cole Slaw

We rented Bad Grandpa from Redbox using a free rental code. There were a couple of funny parts, but I would not recommend the movie to anyone. How can they take such a cute idea and make it dirty? Just like the movie Step Brothers. They had a good idea, but they have to make it dirty, which just ruins the film for me and my family felt the same way. 

How has your week been? Frugal or not, we would love to read about it in the comment section. :)

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Affordable Hair Cuts

I currently have in my possession, three five dollar gift cards from Great Clips. They were given to me when I took my Mom, daughter and myself to get haircuts a couple of months ago. They were having a grand opening sale and haircuts were priced at $4.99. I paid for three haircuts and received three gift cards, therefore it was like receiving those haircuts for free. 

I also have a postcard they sent in the mail for a haircut for $6.99. The postcard expired on January 26th, but with all the bad weather I just haven't been able to get out for a haircut. 

Today my daughter and I went and finally got our overdue haircuts and used a couple of these rewards.

I asked the cashier if we could still use the postcard and she said yes. Yay! She also let us use one of the $5.00 gift cards.

Haircuts at Great Clips have went up to $12.oo each now. 

Haircut #1 was $12.00 minus the $5.00 card, $7.00. 

Haircut #2 was $6.99.

Total for both haircuts was $13.99 plus tip. 

Make sure to sign up for the mailing list on the Great Clips website and like them on Facebook to get in on these good deals. Right now they are selling future haircuts for $9.00 each. They usually do this every February. You can buy as many haircuts as you want and they put them all on a card and you keep the card all year long and use as needed. 

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Second Frugal Week of February

What a week we had here! School was called off for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday due to the winter mix of weather here. We were/are on Winter Break Friday, Monday and Tuesday, so no school here for over a week. I missed out on several days of working as a result. 

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were no spending any money days.

Thursday was bill paying day and all bills were paid online to save on postage. 

Friday was spent in town doing our big monthly stock up at the grocery stores. I spent a total of $202.77, used 82 coupons, which saved me $116.40 and does not even include the $50.00 savings at Food Lion for the sale on Powerades.  

Here is a breakdown of items we bought:

Family Dollar

Suave Shampoo - Same deal as last week. I had a $1.00 of coupon, so I only had to pay the 10¢ sales tax. 

Cooke's

Cheese, frozen dinners, cat treats, and 40 pounds of potatoes ($7.98 or 20¢ a pound). I found 14 bags of cat treats in the Crash & Burn cart for 90¢ each, and I had coupons for them, so I paid 40¢ each for them. 

Save a Lot

Eggs are/were on sale this week for 99¢ a dozen, so we stocked up and bought 8 cartons. We also used a $1.00 off coupon to score a free bag of salad. 

Aldi

5 bags of onions

Food Lion

I went on Friday to score the deal on Powerades. And then on Saturday I found some coupons to use, so after my daughter's volunteer hours were done, we went back to get more. In the end I bought 75 Powerades for my pantry for 20¢ each. This definitely beats her wanting to stop at the gas station on the way to school in the morning for a drink for $1.89. There are only 68 school days left this year, so she is all set. 

I also scored 16 FREE cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. As I mentioned in this post the kiosk was printing out coupons for $1.00 off 2 Campbell's soup and they had them on sale for 50¢ each. Customers are only allowed to print one coupon sheet per day, but people tend to abandon these coupon sheets in their cart, so we picked up several that way. We also bought cereal, soup, diced tomatoes, and honey mustard here. 

Bi-Lo

Bi-Lo had their awesome cereal deal again this week. You buy 6 boxes of cereal and get a free gallon of orange juice. We had numerous coupons for the cereal and at least one of them was buy one get one free. We bought two of these deals and combined with the cereal deal at Food Lion, we ended up with 22 boxes of cereal. My family has gone through a lot of cereal this winter for some reason, so I was very glad to be able to purchase all of these.  

I also bought sugar, bagels, shampoo, and yogurt here. 

Publix

Some of my greatest deals came from Publix on this shopping trip. I used to shop at Walmart so much, but in the last two years I've realized that I can find better prices at the grocery stores and when I combine them with sales and the double coupons that Publix offers, I buy very little from Walmart now. 

Items here included cream cheese, oranges, fish, tea bags, Knorr rice packages, Kotex, Stayfree, ham, olives, beans, sour cream, salt, rice, butter, yogurt, tartar sauce, Alleve, peas and carrots, and chocolate milk (had coupons!).

I bought 18 bags of the Knorr rice for 14¢ each after sale and coupons.

Four boxes of Lipton tea bags were $1.12 each after sale and coupons. 

Four boxes of 40 count Alleve were 49¢ each after sale and coupons. 

Walmart sells my brand of Stayfree for $4.97, which I buy regularly. Publix sells the same package for $4.09, but with coupons I was able to get two bags for $4.09, which blows Walmart's price out of the water! 

It was a terrific shopping day and these are the things we got that were completely free: 

In the end I bought $369.17 worth of groceries for $202.77 and now the bulk of my grocery shopping is done for the month. All I will need to buy is milk and bread and some fresh produce. 

Other things we did this week to save money include:

Tuesday I entered My Coke Rewards points into my computer. A chore I dislike a great deal, but I do it for the free diet coke 12 packs for my Mother who is on a limited budget.

On Saturday we both had our hair cut and used a coupon for that as well. 

We rented a movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, with a free rental code from Redbox. CouponDad.net regularly has free rental codes on his blog. 

Breakfasts this week consisted of oatmeal, leftovers, scrambled eggs and toast, toast with butter and jelly, cream cheese with bagels, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.

Dinners were:

Monday: Baked Potatoes stuffed with Vegetable Chili
Tuesday: Hot Dogs & Tator Tots
Wednesday: Salisbury Steak, Beefy Mushroom Barley, Corn
Thursday: Macaroni & Cheese, Broccoli
Friday: Homemade Pizza
Saturday: Grilled Chicken, Mexican Rice, Steamed Carrots
Sunday: Pinto Beans, Collard Greens, Cornbread

That's our our week went, how was your week?

How did you save money in your home this week?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Good Deal Alert: Onions

Aldi has onions on sale this week in the 3 pound bag for 99¢. 

The last time I stocked up on this sale was back on October 22, 2013. 

You can read my post about it here. 

I have one onion left from that sale, so the timing for this sale is perfect for me. 

I bought 5 pounds this time hoping to make it to the next sale on onions. 

In my last post, reader Mama P asked me the following question,

"Does putting them in those pantyhose knots really extend the life of the onion? I'm so tired of my onions going bad so quickly."

At that time, I told her this was the first time I was trying this storage solution and that I would have to get back to her and let her know. 

Out of all 28 onions, I did have one with a bad spot inside of it, but I cut around it and used the onion anyway. 

I think having the onions exposed to the air around them helped to preserve each one until I was able to use it. In the past I've had an onion go bad and then the ones next to it go bad as well because they were right next to it. I did not experience that with this batch of onions, so I will definitely be storing my onions this way in the future. 

While I was shopping it seemed like everyone had onions in their shopping cart, lol. This is a great deal and hopefully you'll be able to get in on this one. :)

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”