Advice on being thrifty, please

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coralewisjr

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Happy Tuesday! My family is doing its best to save money and buy only what we need. Do you have any advice on being thrifty, besides clipping coupons weekly and shopping at thrift stores instead of department stores? God bless you!

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
 
This might sound terrible but when my children were younger we frequently visited my parents or in-laws. Dinner and entertainment was simple - we appreciated each other.

Always live within or below your means.

Shop the food advertisements each week and stock up on super sale items.

Be sure that the food you buy is strictly for nutrition - no empty calories.

Never buy bottled soda or sweetened drinks. Never
 
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Binney:
This might sound terrible but when my children were younger we frequently visited my parents or in-laws. Dinner and entertainment was simple - we appreciated each other.

Always live within or below your means.

Shop the food advertisements each week and stock up on super sale items.

Be sure that the food you buy is strictly for nutrition - no empty calories.

Never buy bottled soda or sweetened drinks. Never
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Thank you. My parents live 3.5 hours away and my in-laws are two plane rides away so that’s not an option for us. I’m trying to wean DH off of pop; I don’t drink it so we only buy it as a treat for him.
 
Borrow books and videos from the public library
Cable tv is expensive & full of junk - IMO

Learn to love camping. (vacations don’t come any cheaper!)

Buy quality clothes on sale at the end of the season for next year.
(I think cheap clothes shrink & fall apart & can’t be passed down)

Don’t have more pets then you can reasonably afford (just got this years shots for my dog $125 yikes! - not to mention dog food)
 
carol marie:
Borrow books and videos from the public library
Cable tv is expensive & full of junk - IMO

Learn to love camping. (vacations don’t come any cheaper!)

Buy quality clothes on sale at the end of the season for next year.
(I think cheap clothes shrink & fall apart & can’t be passed down)

Don’t have more pets then you can reasonably afford (just got this years shots for my dog $125 yikes! - not to mention dog food)
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I totally agree with you about TV! DH and I don’t even have a TV and we don’t want one, so that isn’t an issue. At the moment, we have no pets; the only pet we’ve had so far was a fish and it died. I’ll try to remember what you said about clothes, as that’s a great idea too. I’ve bought Christmas cards after Christmas before for cheap so clothes must be that way, too.
 
Do a search on this forum; I know there are several threads from way back on the topic with some good ideas.
 
For myself, I shop at the “nicer” discounters (Target, etc.) and at the stores at the mall but only look at the clearance racks. I just bought a $16 t-shirt for $2.99, and two sweaters that would total $90 for $30. I just keep abreast of what colors and styles are in fashion and look for alternates at the clearence price. Most everything clothes-wise goes on sale at some point, a lot of times within the same season. That’s my two cents on clothes b/c I can be kind of a clothes horse. If you do buy second-hand, look for the upscale resale places or go the the Goodwill, etc. in the “ritzy” neighborhoods.
As for the kids, I’ll buy at Wal-Mart (where I’ve bought really cute outfits, shirt and pants for $7), etc. but still usually only on sale. I do look too at Gymboree and Gap Kids - Gymboree esp. has a sale rack in the back, and every so often have mega-clearance which is great b/c then the prices are comparable to new discount or second-hand and the clothes wash well and last so you can hand them down quite a bit. Old Navy also has a sale section in the back.

As for food - plan your menus around the weekly circular, use coupons and the club cards. The front and back of the circular are usually the “loss leaders” the prices get you into the store, so plan meals around those items. Here’s a website that will allow you to find recipes based on what ingredients you have on hand:
allrecipes.com/

Good luck! BTW - I find it fun to try to get the lowest price possible hence scouring the sale racks at retail stores. It’s a challenge!!! 👍
 
Sometimes the best food buys I get are buying bulk staples like peanut butter, flour, rice, beans, coffee, sugar, tea, meats, spices - all at stores like Sam’s or Costco - then I take portions of each and lay them in freezer bags and keep them in storage for future meals.

Buying fresh vegetables for the week on a saturday and keeping them in the crisper bin of the refrigerator helps keep down the everyday gas mileage to get to the store and back. If you have a yard suitable for growing a garden, you can cut some corners buy growing what you may want to eat on your own.

I changed all the light bulbs in my house to the lowest wattage/ highest lumens allowed for each socket, and keep the air conditioner/heater on a constant 70 degrees. (In Texas, it helps tremendously with the power bills)

Do showers instead of baths. Wash all laundry on Saturday, combining as many loads as your washer allows - using the coldest water setting, and the least-heat for the dryer (or string up the washing like I tend to do outside when the weather is nice)

Learn to sew! You’ll be able to help keep clothing in good use by repairing when need be, and you can also stitch up pillow cases, sheets, blankets - the works.

Find garage sales in the area to go to on the early weekends, you can grab cheap dishes, cheap books, cheap everyhting if they are smart sellers. Keep an eye in your local paper for advertisments of certain items you’re in need ot, like a new table or a bed - everything goes with a garage sale!

Start a “household” money jar. Get a large jar (I use a large washed out 2 gallon pickle jar) and start saving any and all change that passes your hands. Pennies and nickels add up! My parents bought their entire brand new bedroom suite in the 70’s (500$) all with the loose change they saved up for two years.

If you’re buying bottled water at all, switch to buying a filtration system (20-100$) and cleaning out the tap water.

If you both drive, try to plan trips together. Carpool when possible.

If either of you smoke or drink alcohol, give it up for a tremendous increase in savings. Helped me out big time.

I am so longwinded. 🙂 I hope some of this helps!
 
Remember–your freezer is your friend.

Buy hamburger when it is on sale, and brown all of it. Then put it in 1 lb. portions in the freezer. It will give you a jump start on meals later on! I’ve done as much as 30 lbs. at a time. I also freeze meatloaf and meatballs.

Buy chicken breast on sale, boil it, bone it, and put it in 1 lb. portions. You can then whip up a chicken pot pie, or mex. casserole in no time. Save the broth too, and (you guessed it) put it in the freezer.

When you have these things available to you in the freezer, you are less tempted to run to the fast food place. Consider this–a meal at McDonalds will cost my family at least $15, but at home I can make three meals for that, maybe four!

Here’s my favorite tip. Make pizza crusts ahead of time. Bake crusts with no sauce, no toppings for about 5 minutes, let them cool, and freeze them. (Two gallon freezer bags are the perfect size). I make 12 crusts at a time. It is a big job, but how I enjoy pulling out those crusts and making pizza on a Friday night. And to think that I used to spend $20 on take out pizza!!

I could go on, but I’m beginning to scare myself with my freezer obsession!!
 
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msh:
Sometimes the best food buys I get are buying bulk staples like peanut butter, flour, rice, beans, coffee, sugar, tea, meats, spices - all at stores like Sam’s or Costco - then I take portions of each and lay them in freezer bags and keep them in storage for future meals.

Buying fresh vegetables for the week on a saturday and keeping them in the crisper bin of the refrigerator helps keep down the everyday gas mileage to get to the store and back. If you have a yard suitable for growing a garden, you can cut some corners buy growing what you may want to eat on your own.

I changed all the light bulbs in my house to the lowest wattage/ highest lumens allowed for each socket, and keep the air conditioner/heater on a constant 70 degrees. (In Texas, it helps tremendously with the power bills)

Do showers instead of baths. Wash all laundry on Saturday, combining as many loads as your washer allows - using the coldest water setting, and the least-heat for the dryer (or string up the washing like I tend to do outside when the weather is nice)

Learn to sew! You’ll be able to help keep clothing in good use by repairing when need be, and you can also stitch up pillow cases, sheets, blankets - the works.

Find garage sales in the area to go to on the early weekends, you can grab cheap dishes, cheap books, cheap everyhting if they are smart sellers. Keep an eye in your local paper for advertisments of certain items you’re in need ot, like a new table or a bed - everything goes with a garage sale!

Start a “household” money jar. Get a large jar (I use a large washed out 2 gallon pickle jar) and start saving any and all change that passes your hands. Pennies and nickels add up! My parents bought their entire brand new bedroom suite in the 70’s (500$) all with the loose change they saved up for two years.

If you’re buying bottled water at all, switch to buying a filtration system (20-100$) and cleaning out the tap water.

If you both drive, try to plan trips together. Carpool when possible.

If either of you smoke or drink alcohol, give it up for a tremendous increase in savings. Helped me out big time.

I am so longwinded. 🙂 I hope some of this helps!
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We live in an apartment, so it’ll be a few years before I can develop a green thumb in a house. Neither of us smoke or drink alcoholic beverages, thank God. (we’re underage anyway and we’re not planning on drinking…plus I’m pregnant so it’s one more reason to not do either) I only drink bottled water when I go on walks or when I’m not home for a while. We have a pitcher-style water filter that I use a lot. I stopped taking baths around the time when I got too tall to comfortably take a bath, so the only person in this household who will be bathing is our preborn child. We don’t have a washer or dryer in our apartment building so we drive to the laundromat at least once every two weeks (I wish it was more often). We save our change for the laundromat. Changing the light bulbs to the lowest wattage is a great idea. I already did that for the bathroom and I might use lower wattage next time the main room’s bulbs burn out. (there’s a window here in the main room so on sunny days I don’t need to turn the light on until the sun goes down!) Learning to sew sounds really hard but I might do that anyway.

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
 
My few thoughts:
  1. Know your prices!
  2. Shop the ads.
  3. Don’t be afraid of store brands…I do a ton of shopping at a grocery store named Aldi. They mostly carry their own brand and the quality is top rate. They are not a “mega” supermarket, so you don’t pay for the frills. www.usa.aldi.com
  4. Thrift stores! I buy most of my clothes at the thrift stores. Sometimes, I even find items with the original price tags still attached.
  5. In addition to clothing, so many of my small appliances are from the thrift store. I believe in “use and re-use” rather than buying new plastic items that last a year and are then chucked into a land fill.
  6. When in a store, be able to walk away from an item. Often, items are impulse purchases, and I have found that if I tell myself “I’ll give this some thought” and then walk away, 9 times out of 10, I never return to purchase the item. Didn’t need it anyway.
  7. Only use credit cards to charge what can be paid in full each month. My credit card company must hate me, as I pay the card off monthly.
Joe
 
All these tips are wonderful, but I have one simple tip for when you go grocery shopping. Eat Lunch first! If you shop on an empty stomach, you are more likely to buy spur of the moment food and thus, cost yourself more money.
 
Yes, all of these tips are wonderful! DH and I don’t have enough money for a credit card yet and I don’t like the idea of floating money. We have one car so carpooling isn’t necessary. We usually go to WalMart after supper, and we’ve started to buy Great Value (not always the best value but it’s cheap), the WalMart brand. I already like to shop at a Catholic thrift store in town; I found a pair of maternity jeans there for fifty cents!! 🙂 Thanks for the tips; please keep them coming.
 
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chuffle:
I do a ton of shopping at a grocery store named Aldi. They mostly carry their own brand and the quality is top rate.
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Aldi’s is great. My only regret is that they’re not an American owned company.
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chuffle:
They are not a “mega” supermarket, so you don’t pay for the frills.
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But you do pay for your grocery bags ($0.05 each for paper and $0.10 each for thick, reusable plastic), so if you’re going to Aldi’s bring your own! And bring a quarter if you plan on using a shopping cart. You’ll get it back when you’re done, but you need the quarter to get the cart!
 
Every single day, account for every single penny you and every single member of your family has spent that day. “Frittering” is a killer. Believe me, nickels add up. In the late 1980s, when I had $10 left at the end of my paycheck each week, I was able in only 5 years to save enough money to buy an $1800 computer just by putting unspent bus fares, medical reimbursements, and other loose change into an envelope . . . I’ts like losing weight: you have to be compulsive – and it pays off!
 
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Timidity:
Aldi’s is great. My only regret is that they’re not an American owned company.

But you do pay for your grocery bags ($0.05 each for paper and $0.10 each for thick, reusable plastic), so if you’re going to Aldi’s bring your own!
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Yes, I know that the store isn’t US owned, but…

I’m too stingy to even buy bags at Aldi…I either take my own plastic bags from other stores or use the canvas totes that I have been given through the years. (In fact, I keep a handfull of plastic grocery bags from other stores in my car so that I am always ready, should I see an Aldi in my travels and pop in.)

I just have this thing for recycling and the environment.

Joe
 
Find and participate in your local chapter of freecycle.com. One of the best things on the internet - people giving away useful things they don’t need.
 
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coralewisjr:
Happy Tuesday! My family is doing its best to save money and buy only what we need. Do you have any advice on being thrifty, besides clipping coupons weekly and shopping at thrift stores instead of department stores? God bless you!

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
Click to expand...
Good Morning 🙂

Go to the library and get a book called 'Tightwad Gazette" its by Amy Dzcysian…not so sure of the spelling of Amys name but the book is really good…full of advice from those who live a frugal lifestyle…
 
This is my plan when we move into our new place (next month…sooo excited)!!!
  • As soon as I move in I’m changing every lightbulb in the house to those compact flourescent guys, initially more expensive but they conserve energy, lowering your bill and they last longer.
  • I currently live in a subdivision area which means LOTS of garage sales. Check out the closest suburban area in may, everyone has their garage sales around this time and in suburban areas, sometimes its a community thing and everyone has one on the same weekend…
  • no matter what my heating system is in the new house (I think it’s base-board) I’m turning the heat down when we go to bed and just piling on more blankets. I also plan on turning the heat to low or off when no one is home. I don’t plan on using air conditioning…just a strategically placed fan when it gets too hot
  • DH is a plumber so when we move in he’s going to test every tap. If there is something wrong, he’s gonna fix them right away, especially leaky ones, that way our water bill won’t be as high
  • another DH plumbing trick…turn down the water heater. Saves money on heating the water, plus, no one gets the scalding hot water in the shower
  • Dry clothes using a clothes line instead of a dryer
  • We’re using power bars for all our appliances (except kitchen) that way no extra money is zapped by keeping something on that should be off
  • Change your phone plan to the cheapest plan possible. Inform family/friends that you may not call as often as before. Use email/MSN to talk to long distancec friends. Never use the phone during the day (when rates are more expensive)
  • If using highspeed, downgrade your speed to save moeny
  • Place all bills in one spot so when you need to pay them, they are all right there. No losing the bills, no stress. Pay bills online (if possible) to save money on stamps. I’m personally going to try to get my due dates to the same week of the month, that way I have the other 3 months to save and guage how much money we have
  • Go to the library for books/video/magazines…most of the time, it’s free
  • save lose change in one spot and roll them when necessary, put the $ in a savings account
  • Keep reciepts for everything (still hard to do). You can guage how much you spend and what is not necessary to help budget for the next month. DH and I were shocked when our food budget totalled a whopping $500 for 2 1/2 weeks and we didn’t save all the receipts…
  • Turn off lights at night and use candles (depending on what you are doing)
  • take quicker showers. Save the water from your shower in the tub to shave your legs instead of leaving the water running. Use 1/2 of what you would normally use for everything (laundry soap, toothpaste etc.) Drink water and more water
  • Do all your errands once a week on the same day ie. groceries, laundry, banking, post office etc. that way you don’t waste more gas running unnessacery errands during the week
That 's all I can think of right now…hope this helped

Sarc
 
I stopped shaving my legs a few years ago but thanks anyway for that tip. (hopefully I’m not the only woman who doesn’t shave!! LOL)

DH and I don’t live near an Aldi’s so we don’t need to worry about paying money for bags. We save plastic bags and when we visit my parents, we give a bunch of bags to my old babysitter so she can dispose of diapers in them. (Our bag collection will come in handy when Baby is born!)

I sweat easily so sometimes we run the A/C when it’s over 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside (especially since I’m pregnant…people have told me that I’ll be hotter than usual this summer). We don’t have a fan and if we get enough money or somebody buys one for us or we find one cheap, we might use that instead of the cool function on our heater.

DH and I are nerds so we rely on cable Internet.

Turning the water heater down is a great idea. We turn it to “Vacation” when we’re gone for more than a day. DH has a high heat tolerance, so what I think feels good is cold to him, so we can’t turn it down too low for his sake. I want to get into the habit of cleaning our sinks and shower weekly - that should cut down on leaky faucets! (BTW, flylady.net helps me clean)

We don’t have a yard to hang a clothes line in, and some days it’s way too windy to hang anything on our deck. When we don’t get everything dry at the laundromat, I hang up the damp laundry when we get home.

We don’t have landline or cell phones, which saves a lot of money! DH set up his computer so that we can call over the Internet (VoIP) and that’s cheap.

DH already insists that we keep all receipts; sometimes I forget so hopefully I’ll get better about that.

What is a power bar? Is that a power strip (with six outlets that plugs into one outlet)? We have at least one strip and we plug our computers and modem and one or two other things into a UPS so if the power goes out our computers will be okay.

I already try to take quicker showers. Hopefully DH will learn how to do that, too.

Paying all bills on time is one of the best ideas I’ve heard, and it’s so obvious…I’ve had to pay a late fee at least once because I lost the bill in a pile that I hadn’t cleaned for a while. I’ll think about checking that book out from the library.

my Mother my Confidence,
Corinne
 
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