Frugal Friday

I recently found a great way to cut grocery costs - have two of your children move out and go to college! lol

Seriously though, our expenses have been down with just three of us at home and the hardest thing I find is learning to make less of whatever meal we are having each night.  After years of making a big batch of whatever I'm having for dinner, it's a trial and error process.  I'm also trying to lose some weight and have been eating differently, so it makes it even more interesting.

As I work to cut expenses and make our dollars stretch, it does carry over into other areas of my life as well.  It doesn't necessarily benefit us financially, but it helps those ministries I'm involved in.  As I put together door prize gifts and speaker gifts for my retreat this past weekend, I was able to pull from my supply of leftovers from my shop, as well as use the pretty gift bags I had leftover.  So 10 door prizes and 6 speaker gifts cost the organization zero dollars.  That normally would have been money they had to spend to purchase those items.  I'm happy to be able to help out in this way because the money not spent is more money that can go towards our missionaries and other expenses.

Some ways that I've personally saved this week:

$ I bought a dress for a wedding that Dan is officiating at this Saturday.  There is a consignment shop in the local mall that has nothing but upscale, name brand dresses and suits.  I was able to find a dress that I liked for $29 that would have been $150 in the department store.

$ Made a wonderful cauliflower soup this week that required a head of roasted cauliflower, 4 cloves of roasted garlic and some chicken broth all blended together. Topped with homemade croutons from leftover bread.  It was delicious and filling and cost about $3.50 for a large pot of soup.

$ Another organizational savings - I had purchased s'more ingredients for campfires we were going to have at our retreat.  However, we ended up canceling the fires because it was raining.  I really wasn't sure if the store would take them back but I thought it didn't hurt to task.  Turns out they took them back and credited our debit card.  So if in doubt - ASK!

$ I cashed in some air mileage points I had for two magazine subscriptions.  They gave you a selection of magazines to choose from and while most of them I had no interest in, I was able to get a year's subscription to two of them - Food & Wine Magazine and Time Magazine.  They weren't necessarily ones that I would purchase, but since it was a free subscription, I took it.

$ Herb preservation.  I cut my sage and oregano and hung it to dry so I'd have some for the winter.  I'm also going to bring in my pot of parsley and rosemary and see if I can keep it going through the winter.  It has basil in the pot too but that looks like it's about had it.  I'll see if I can plant some more in there.

$ We paid off two higher interest bills we had this week with the money we received back from Stephen's tuition.  It didn't lower our debt since we took out the loan for his college bill, but it does get rid of the high interest debt and we can pay off the other faster.

That's about it for the week.  How are you doing in cutting those costs?