How to Save Money » Frugal Living

What frugal things did you do today?

Did you do anything frugal today?

I’m sure you did – you might not even realize you are being frugal – you’re just doing what you normally do.

Here are 10 frugal things that I did today:

1. Stayed home

Staying home prevented me from going out and buying things. Of course, I must admit, the only reason I didn’t go out this morning was that the paperboy had not yet delivered my flyers and I need them to price match! So I will shop tomorrow instead.

2. Ran a full dishwasher in the evening

The worst time you can run your dishwasher is during the day. The best time of day to do so is from 7 pm to 9 am (off-peak energy hours).

3. Made dinner at home

Making dinner at home saves us tons of cash. I can’t imagine how much money we would spend every month if we went out to dinner every night.

4. Sent away for mail-in rebates

Mail-In rebates allow my family to use and enjoy products that we might not purchase if there wasn’t a rebate offered. Using these rebates saves us money on our grocery bills.

5. Kept the lights off during the day

This has been difficult because lately, it has been really dark outside and I’ve needed the lights to be on, but today it was as sunny as could be – so I opened all of the blinds and let the sunshine in and light up our house.

6. Kept the air conditioning and heat turned off

The weather has been pretty decent the last few days, so we have not needed to turn on the air conditioning or the heat.

7. No TV all-day

We have been trying to limit our TV time to 2 hours per day (at night). I can’t believe how much I get done around the house when the TV is not turned on.

8. Did some coupon trades

I can’t wait to receive all of the coupons I traded for. I will get many FREE or cheap things with them!

9. Made our menu plan for the week

Meal planning saves us so much money. If you don’t already use a weekly (or monthly) meal plan – please consider it. It will not only save you money but time as well.

10. Unplugged appliances that weren’t in use

I’m still working on remembering to turn off the power strip for the TV and the power strips for our computers, but I’m pretty good with everything else. Microwave, blender, toaster, kettle – they’re all unplugged and stay that way until we need to use them.

So, what frugal things did you do today?

Comments

  1. Raquel

    Stayed home,(except to cash pay cheque and pay my roofing crew).
    Used the banks envelopes instead of my own.
    Made 1/2pot of coffee instead of a full one for my daily pick-me-up.
    Clipped my coupons for ‘really cheap’ shopping tomorrow.
    Used wash-cloth on babies bottom instead of wipes(ran out and it didn’t hurt).
    Purchased an organic & very concentrated odour eliminator(saving $$$ by not purchasing Fabreze/others).

  2. Freckles

    1. Returned bottles and milk cartons for refundable deposit.

    2. Put my life in danger by buying and eating sushi from the grocery store which was marked down 50% because its ‘bestbefore’ date is tomorrow. J/K on the danger part — I eat marked down sushi all the time – it’s fine. Never had any problems.

    3. Found and picked up a CD rack for free thanks to ‘Freecycle’.

    4. Paid my annual house insurance in full, upfront rather than in monthly instalments to save the ‘convenience’ charge.

    5. Ran out of ketchup so instead of opening a new bottle I used the extra McDonald’s ketchup packets that were stored in my fridge after my last takeout from McD’s.

    6. Reserved “Tightwad Gazette” from the library. A lot of the tips won’t be relevant to my life but I still like to read them sometimes.

    7. Resisted the urge to take my car to one of those car detailing places because I hate vaccuuming it myself.

    7. Read “Mrs.January.com”. Ha ha. Not trying to suck up, but I’ve seriously saved some money since I started reading this blog. I got hooked after seeing the coupon for free potatoes this past spring.

    Okay … perhaps the McDonald’s ketchup packets make me CHEAP instead of frugal, but the end result is the same. But it’s not like I STOLE the ketchup packets … the drive-thru girl put extra ketchup in my bag without me even asking!!!!

  3. Ashley

    Things I Did Yesterday:
    1. Went to work – bought my lunch (once a week thing), I bring my own lunch every day but friday.

    2. Used recyclable bags when I get grocery shopping (had to buy 1 bag at Metro because I didn’t have an extra one, after I did my main grocery shop).

    3. Left the airconditioning off ALL day and night. It’s been nice enough to leave the windows open at night and there’s a cool breeze.

    4. Made dinner at home.

    5. Made my meal plan for 1 week. I totally agree about making meal plans. I love it and have been doing it for about 5 months now. It is soo nice to come home from work and not have to figure out what to have for dinner. It also means I always have all the ingredients I need ahead of time to try new recipes 🙂

    6. I also made a few trades for brandsaver and redplum inserts! But then when I got home found my local paper in front of my door with both inserts (I just finally figured out how to subscribe to our paper on thursday, since I live in a condo and they do door to door delivery. They said it would be 6-10 days before I’d start getting the paper delivered). So now I’ll have even more coupons!!

  4. Cassie Howard

    great stuff gals!

    raquel, i use a wash cloth on elliott’s butt alot, unless he goes #2. we save so much money on wipes by doing this!

    freckles, i ALWAYS save the ketchup packets! we never really have ketchup except for fries and we dont have fries often. so whenever we are at mcdonalds i ask for a few extra (at no cost) and then put them in my fridge until we need them. 😀 and im so glad you have learned alot from reading my site. that makes me feel so good! 🙂

    ashley, thats awesome about the coupons! that brandsaver insert was huge, huh? i need to do some trades for more of those $9 and $5 coupons (you know the ones!).those are some AWESOMEEEEEE coupons!

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