Frugal Workshop

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Saving on Groceries Series ~ April Grocery Shopping Post

On Monday I did the bulk of our grocery shopping for the month. I went to a total of seven stores in order to save the most money.
Now I enjoy grocery shopping, but I know that not everyone enjoys it and certainly wouldn't go to seven stores to save money, so they would need to find other strategies to save the most money on their grocery bills.
For me grocery shopping is enjoyable, so this is fun for me. I just make sure to go at times when the store is not as crowded because it's easier for me to concentrate.
Amounts I spent yesterday include:
Flowers Bakery $7.81 Food City $43.86 Cooke's $28.21 Publix $19.59 Food Lion $26.00 Fresh N Low $15.94 Fresh N Low $2.87 Walmart $49.72 Total: $194.00
I won't list all the items I bought yesterday, but did want to give some highlights. Also some highlights that we bought over the weekend. ---------------------------------------------------------- Food City had 32 ounce bags of cheddar cheese for $5.00 on Friday only with a limit of two, so we made sure to get this great deal. ---------------------------------------------------------- We bought some ground chuck on yellow mark down sticker.

We bought some sliced deli ham on markdown...

----------------------------------------------------------

Surprisingly, I found cream cheese at Food City for 75¢. This is a fabulous price, so I picked up ten of these.

They also had our favorite breakfast sausage, Swaggerty's, on sale for $2.49, so I picked up four of those for the freezer.
---------------------------------------------------------
Food Lion had two large pepperoni pizzas on yellow reduced sticker for $5.59 each. I picked up both of those and will serve them for dinner two nights this month.

Food Lion has Keebler Club Crackers on sale this week priced at 2 for $4.19. I used 850 of my Kellogg's Family Rewards points to print 2 - $1.00 off coupons, so I was able to get 2 boxes for $2.19 or $1.10 each, which is a fantastic price.
----------------------------------------------------------

One item I picked up at Cooke's included cottage cheese, which had been marked down to $1.99, but there were coupons attached for 50¢ off, so I picked up four of those for $1.49 each.

Also, there was a package of clementines on the reduced priced produce rack, but one of them was ready for the trash bin.

So, I took them to customer service and asked if they would reduce the price further. Guess what? The manager just let me have them for free. I thought that was pretty neat.

Those are the highlights from our grocery shopping this week. It's great to have our home stocked up for the time being.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Great Deal Alert ~ Reese's Puffs Cereal

We found a good deal on Reese's Puffs cereal over the weekend. This is one of my daughters favorite cereals. This was marked down since it was made for spring.

The price of the cereal was marked down to $2.00, but when we went to ring it up at the register, the price rang up for 91¢.

So, we decided to go back and buy more boxes. In all we bought 16 boxes for $14.56.

The date on these are stamped February 2019, so they are good for a long time.

These are the 22.9 ounce boxes and cost us 4¢ per ounce.

Amy Dacyczyn's rule on cereal was that she would pay no more than 7¢ per ounce and that was in 1992, which was 26 years ago. So, we know this is a great price for these.

Here they are stored in our pantry.

Plus, these have BoxTop for Education pieces on them, which I will sell on Ebay for $1.60, which lowers our price even more.

If you have a Walmart close by and like this cereal, it would definitely be worth your time to see if they have this on markdown in your area.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Saving on Groceries Series ~ Making Your Own Pickled Beets ~ Easy Recipe

I make my own pickled beets regularly using one can of beets. I boil the juice from the beets, add 1/4 cup vinegar, 3 cloves and 3 tablespoons of sugar.
These are very good and hard to distinguish from store bought pickled beets.

The price of store bought pickled beets is about $1.89 right now while a can of beets can easily be found for around 68¢.

So for every can of beets I pickled myself I save about $1.00. And beets are so healthy for you and I am always happy to add another vegetable to our dinner menu.

Another example of how we save money at the Frugal Workshop.

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Giveaway Winner Announced

Congratulations to Amy Walter who is the winner of the The Tightwad Gazette's first newsletter.
Amy, if you will, please send me your address to me at Bar2969@gmail.com, and I will send this to you in the mail. :)

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Yard Sale Saturday

Amy Dacyczyn wrote an article about power Yard-Saling one time. In it she wrote about how in order to find good deals it required going to a lot of yard sales because the items for sale were unpredictable.
My daughter and I utilize this strategy on a regular basis. She maps out a yard sale route on her phone and we follow the path.
Yesterday we ended up going to twenty-two yard sales. We love going to yard sales and consider it free entertainment, so our time is not wasted since we enjoy it so much.
Not every yard sale is a good one however, and we certainly found our share of duds yesterday.
When I post my yard sales finds, I only post mine. I don't post the ones my daughter selects for her reselling business.
Here are the items I picked up yesterday. In all I paid $12 for these items and had a lot of fun in the process.
Tupperware bag $3.00...

Fabric Box $2.00 - This held much more fabric, but I wanted to highlight the cute Halloween fabrics.

Ribbon Box $2.00 - Such a great find! These would cost me $2.00 each in the fabric store. And these are so cute, my daughter loves the sock monkey ribbon.