Hi y'all, it's time for another episode of "Is Penny actually frugal or is she all talk? Does she live what she preaches? Prove it!"
In other words, here is a list of the money saving things I have done recently, as in the last 2 weeks or so that I'm excited to share with you.
- I gave my daughter a butterfly haircut which turned out amazing.
- I bleached the end of both of my daughters' hair on my own. They love how it came out, and I ordered hair dye from Amazon and I'm waiting for it to arrive so we can give them a colorful dye job before school starts.
Frugal Fun
- I took my daughters on a trip to a museum and got half price because of their disability card, and I got to come along free, so that was awesome.
- My kids' cousins were going to the pool and invited my daughters along, and because my daughters get a free escort because of their disability, it worked out that they came free because their cousins were anyhow paying to go.
- I took my daughters to the local splash pad to cool off.
Frugal Shopping
- My son needed new shoes and wanted more expensive ones than I'd usually buy, but we paid for a big chunk of that using a gift card he was given from his school that he remembered was in his wallet.
- When clothing shopping with him for some desperately needed new clothes (these kids grow so fast!) we first went to a discount store to see what we could find there, before supplementing at another more expensive but still decently priced clothes to fill in what was missing.
- I needed to buy things from Amazon and you can get free international shipping if you spend over $49... but if we spend more than $75, we need to pay import tax. So I got made sure to only get things that are with free shipping, and divided it up into two separate shops so that each one was over $49 but under $75 to get the most bang for my buck.
- I needed to buy fish and saw that if you spent more than $20, you could get fish on sale for $1.29 per pound instead of the usual $3.75, but only up to 6.6 lbs... so I bought exactly 6.6 lbs.
Free Things
- I was planning on writing about the frugal option of getting my daughter's phone fixed when the screen fell off of it, but at the cell phone fix-it place, they refused to take any money for gluing it back on, so that was awesome.
- A bunch of spicy guacamole was being given away for free, so I got some and have been using it up slowly (and I froze a bunch so it would last longer).
- A friend was given a few boxes of frozen chicken frames, which she didn't have a use for, so she passed them on to me, and I divided them up into smaller sections so I could defrost and use as needed to make chicken soup (and then debone and use it for chicken pot pie).
Frugal Food
Revamped Leftovers
- I turned leftover chicken into chicken pot pie... many times. Lots of chicken pot pie.
- I used leftover rice and turned it one time into rice pudding, and another time into tomato rice soup.
- I had leftover chicken drippings from when I made chicken fajitas, and I used that and some mushy tomatoes as a base for a delicious taco style soup.
Made From Scratch
- I canned a bunch of pineapple.
- I ground 6 lbs of short grain rice into flour.
- I made Korean rice cakes from scratch. (Ok, I had a class and taught them how to make it, but it still counts, in my opinion.)
- I made homemade wonton wrappers (Ok, also in that class).
- I made homemade paneer cheese. (Ok, you got me too. But this was a different class.)
- I made lots and lots and lots of my homemade sports drink.
Foraging
- I foraged (yes... in that class) wood sorrel, amaranth, pink peppercorns, lambsquarters, olive leaves, fleabane, and purslane.
Other
- You may or may not consider this a frugal "thing"... but I got behind on keeping to my budget and tracking all my expenses with my preparations for sending my son abroad for the summer... but July 31 I made sure to catch up on all my budgeting and made sure all the balances were squared so I could start the month of August knowing exactly how much I have to spend in each category, and gave every dollar a name in my YNAB app.
What frugal things have you been up to lately? Any you're particularly proud of?