Sunday

 

Stopped by my neighbor's yesterday to take some more free produce he had on his lawn. 

Hopster is offing a coupon right now for $1.00 off a gallon of milk.  
Here is the link: Hopster

Dinner tonight is going to be pizza and salad.

The "salad" is under all the fruit and vegetables. :) 

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Mail Order Prescriptons

My daughter's Insurance company decided in January 2016 that maintenance medications would have to be filled by mail order rather than through a retail store pharmacy. 
The problem with this was we were not informed about these changes. Therefore our limited number of uses for a retail pharmacy have been used up already. 
My daughter also has a secondary insurance that will pick up the balance. There has been a lot of red tape involved in figuring out not only how to get her medicine in a timely manner, but also how to go about getting the medicine paid for by her second insurance. 
The primary insurance company wants me to pay for the balance of her prescriptions out of pocket. My cost would be $474.69. This would be a huge blow to my budget, which is why I need the secondary insurance to pick up the balance. 
As it stands right now I have asked the primary insurance company to let us use a retail pharmacy since they are refusing to coordinate benefits with our secondary insurance.
As of right now we are awaiting a response from them. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Carefully Consider Your Purchases

Back during the 1990s people thought Beanie Babies would be very collectible and worth a lot of money eventually.

My sister had quite a collection, but she was smart and sold them while they were still being sought after. Turns out she made the right decision. Today you can find Beanie Babies for a dime a dozen at yard sales.

During that same time Longaberger Baskets were also very valuable and sought after from collectors. Turns out those items too are now sold at yard sales for a fraction of what they originally cost.

I myself bought a Longaberger Picnic Basket for $2.00 at a yard sale that originally sold for over $100.00 from Longaberger. Although I did sell it this summer for $5.00 at the flea market.  

People used to think these types of collections could bring them a lot of money down the road, but that turned out not to be true.  Nowadays these items can be found at yard sales for a fraction of their original cost, leaving many people out of a great deal of money.

Look at the price that some people pay for new movies, new books, and TV shows on DVD. Since these items are mass produced and there are so many copies out there, they quickly lose their value. Of course a frugal person will use this to their advantage and wait to buy these items when the prices goes down.  

After working at the flea market this past summer I have come to the conclusion that many items do not hold their value.

I had one item marked at $4.00 for a couple of weeks, but finally lowered that to $2.00 just to try and move it only to have someone ask me to take even less for it.

I watched as item after item sold for much less than I thought it would go for and my prices were very reasonable. I priced my items so I could move them and not have to bring them home at the end of the day.

I even had one lady,  a repeat customer, tell me I didn’t have anything she needed that day, but she always checked out what I had because my prices were low. I wasn’t in this to gouge people, but rather to make money, so I kept my prices very reasonable.   

The flea market experience seriously made me question almost everything I purchase now.  I don’t know if I will ever buy something that is not useful or an absolute must have purchase without giving it some very deep thought.
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Money Saving Hobbies

One of my favorite hobbies is to read books and blogs about being frugal. I enjoy reading how other people learn to spend less and save more money. I'm hopeful that I will read something or learn something new that I've not heard about before.  

Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette, made a hobby out of being frugal. She also wrote about money saving hobbies in her book. 

One of the things she wrote about hobbies was that if people choose hobbies that saved money verses hobbies that cost money, then they would be ahead financially in the long run. 

She also made the comment that having a money saving hobby will help a person to permanently reduce his cost of living. Instead of needing $30,000 to make a living, his money saving hobbies, like hair cutting and gardening, might allow him to get by on only $25,000 a year. 

She also mentioned that money saving hobbies might give a person more job options. And how many people do you know that have turned a hobby into a small business? My own father, after a car accident took his livelihood, took his hobby of knife collecting and turned it into a thriving knife business that he still makes a living from. 

The point of this is to say that it would be to our advantage to have hobbies that are productive. Learning to do something that will either save you money or allow you to earn extra money are good goals to reach for. 

You could learn to bake bread for your family, or to sell for extra money. When I worked at the hospital there was a lady who made cinnamon rolls and sold them for extra money. I also knew of a lady who made sausage rolls and sold them for extra money. The possibilities are endless. 

Money saving hobbies include such things as as gardening, sewing, bee keeping, woodworking, soap making, learning how to cook or how to produce food, learning to hunt, or even learning to build or repair items. 

The ability to build or repair an item will go a long way towards improving your standard of living. You could even teach these skills to other people as a hobby. It could also provide you with skills for barter.

You could also let frugality be your hobby as you continually learn new ways to save more money, so you will learn to live on less money. 

Hobbies that allow us to earn extra money for our families or help us to lower our cost of living are some of the best hobbies for those with a frugal mindset. 

Belinda ~ Living within my means ~

IGA Meat Deals

IGA has the country style pork ribs on sale this week for 99¢ a pound, which is the lowest price we see them for here. We like to make them in the crock pot with barbecue sauce.  Time to stock up on them. 
I dropped off the garbage this morning and went to get some and ended up buying four packages. I have one of them going in the crockpot now and put the other three packages in the freezer. 
I also found two packages of meat on markdown. One was one pound of ground beef with a $3.00 off coupon, which I bought for $2.03. I'm going to make taco salad with it for lunch today. 
The other was a package of pork cut up like beef stew, which was $2.00. I was standing there wondering what to do with it, but I bought it. I can make a pork fried rice or something with it sometime. It was too good of a price to pass up today. I also put it in the freezer as well. 
So, for dinner tonight I will serve the ribs with mashed potatoes and green beans with onions and olive oil for seasoning. I've also already made a gallon of sweet iced tea for dinner. 
What's for dinner at your house today?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~