My Recent Frugal Accomplishments

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.

DIY

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

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?

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