Blog Business

 

Listed to the right of my blog are three side bars labeled,  Blogs I Read, which are blogs I read regularly.  I know that some of you follow these blogs I read, so I wanted to mention a couple of things about them. 

If you are interested in the article listed, be sure to click on the title of the post, which is listed directly under the title of the blog. 

However, if you want to read the latest blog article, I would be sure to click on the title of the blog. For some reason, Blogger does not allow some blogs to show up as current on these sidebars. 

For example, My Frugal Home, is a great blog right here in Tennessee and it is updated regularly, but if you look at it on my side bar, it shows that it has not been updated in a long time, which is not true. The same thing can be said for Debt Free, Cashed Up & Laughing. 

Some of them have truly not been updated in a long time such as Low Cost Living and Down the Frugal Lane. I plan on keeping both blogs here simply because they both contain such good frugal information. 

Anyway, I just wanted to mention this in case anyone was wondering why that was happening. There is a slew of great information out there and the blogs I have listed here are some of my favorite ones. I hope you enjoy them as well.

    Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Frugal Friday ~ 3~23~2018

On Monday I missed a call to sub by just a few seconds. Arrgg! So instead of working, I stayed home and made potato soup for dinner. 
And you know what happened? Bad storms came our way and schools let out at 1 o'clock as a result. After Monday I was able to work the entire week and now we are on Spring Break. 
Being on Spring Break will give me the chance to stay home, which is what I did this past weekend. We're going to eat what we have on hand, make do with what's here and save on gas. I plan on working on some sewing projects. There is joy in ordinary days like this. 
The weekend weather was warm, but we managed to keep the a/c off and used fans and opened windows to create a cross breeze and cool the house. It's always good to air out the house as well.    Towards the end of the week temperatures plummeted. It was 27 degrees on Thursday morning and I actually turned on some heat in the bathroom when I was getting ready for work. 
Payday fell this week and I paid all of our monthly expenses online saving the cost of postage. It's always a good feeling and gives me peace of mind to have the bills paid. I know I say that regularly, but it's true. There is nothing like being able to sleep at night without worry. 
All meals were made at home this week and all lunches packed and taken to school/work. My daughter has been wanting to stop at Cookout for their large iced tea, which cost $2.18, so I've been extra vigilant about making her tea at home. 
Four of the items that I listed on Ebay last week sold over the weekend. After all the fees I made $36.54 this week from those sales. That is more than enough to fill my gas tank without having to dip into my gas budget for the month.
One item that I use regularly here is my CPAP machine and I needed a new strap for it, which sells for $24.99 on Amazon. I also had, in my possession, one brand new strap that was too small for me.
What I did was list the smaller strap on eBay and sold it this week for $19.99, so some of the money from that sale went to pay for my new strap. I love being able to buy something I need with proceeds from selling something I already had, but could not use.  

We stopped at the bakery thrift store in Chattanooga the other day and bought our favorite Nature's Own bread for 79¢ per loaf. We also found Dave's Killer Bread for $2.00 a loaf, which is a great price considering it sells for over $5.00 at the grocery store.

What frugal things did you save on this week?

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Frugal Week of March 12, 2018

I worked two days this week and brought lunch & drinks both days. 
My daughter is doing so well with her reselling that she has asked me to join her. So, on Saturday I started helping her because business has been doing so well. 
On Ebay I listed several more items for sale over the weekend. One of them sold on Thursday for $19.99. 
We were able to get in on an Angel Soft toilet paper deal at Dollar General this week. We used a $5 off $25 deal, plus a $5 off $15 Angel Soft deal, and $1.00 off coupons for each package.  We bought 5 packages of 12 rolls each and paid 91¢ for each 12 pack, which was a 92% savings.
I downloaded several free health videos and sewing tutorials to my computer to watch at a later time. 
On Thursday I had the day off, so we took the opportunity to drop off my daughter's car at her uncle's auto shop to get the oil changed. He also rotated her tires for her and only charged her $20 for supplies. 
While we were waiting on her car we went to the thrift store and picked out several items to resell. 
On Friday night I made a large taco salad for dinner on Friday and Saturday. I like making enough of one dish to have for the next day too. 
How was your frugal week?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Free Items @ Provident Thrift Store

My daughter had an errand to run yesterday and one of the ways we save money here is to combine errands, which we did yesterday. 
One of the places we went to was one of our favorite thrift stores. I'm so glad we went because they were giving away produce inside and outside the store. 
There was a limit per family of two items inside the store, but you could take all you wanted of what was outside the store. 
Inside the store they had boxes and boxes of these Power Greens, so we took two boxes of those.  

Most of what was on the outside of the store was already picked over, but I did manage to get a few things like these cucumbers, tomatoes, and a few strawberries. 

Needless to say, I was very grateful for the free produce.  
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

100 Words on the Small Stuff

Many of the small daily things we do each day save a very small amount of money that we might not think are worth the effort.  If we look at the big picture though, look at those savings over an entire year, then they add up to a considerable sum and become eye opening. 

To live our best frugal life, we need to make the effort to do the little things every day even if we don’t think it will make a difference. The little things WILL make a difference, and soon they will become like second nature to us.  

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~