Years ago I regularly shared frugal feats, flops, and funnies posts to share with you some of the daily ins and outs of living the frugal life and hopefully to encourage you on your own financial journey.  But it has been a while since I shared one!

It’s a good exercise to think through our successes and failures to keep a good perspective. And I always appreciate a good laugh.

I would love to hear any of your own recent frugal feats, flops, and funnies in the comments!

Frugal Feats

When a long-arm quilting machine was offered for free to my quilt guild email list, I quickly showed it to my husband. I had been interested in one for a long time but it had never become a priority. I figured that he would point out the fact that we don’t have a good space for a big machine and frame like that, but instead he said, “Should we see if we can go look at it tonight?” He even made the phone call and arrangements for us to take a look.

We were the first to jump at this opportunity and came home with thousands of dollars worth of quilting machine and frame. But that wasn’t all. The couple had already moved cross country and had decided to sell their California house. They wanted to get rid of everything in the house so they could have it ready to sell by the end of the month. In addition to the quilting machine, they also gave us a brand new serger, regular sewing machine, iron, air purifier, magnetic ball and rod toy (like these), computer speakers, guitar, autoharp, some dolls for the toddler in our Ukrainian family, manual wheat grinder (which has already entertained our 6-year-old for hours), and all the food in their pantry.

Believe it or not, we turned down lots of great things too. We were also offered a large computer monitor, toaster oven, Instant Pot, towels and bedding, lots of furniture, and several lovely sets of china.

I didn’t think it could get better than a free long arm quilting machine and frame, but there was an entire van load by the time we left! And the family was so happy to see their things go to a good home so they could get closer to listing their beautiful home.

Sometimes free really is free, if you keep your eyes open.

Frugal Flops

My two older boys went on a snow campout with the boys from church. They had been looking forward to it for more than a year, as last year’s snow campout was cancelled due to lack of snow. I helped them gather all of their gear together, making sure to write our last name on everything. I can’t speak for all teenage boys, but mine have a bad habit of losing things. My freshman lost two jackets this year at school, each within a week of their purchase (that’s a frugal flop in itself!).

While the campout was a success, it turned out to be a flop in the finance department for us, for a few reasons. First, our oldest son had a sledding accident which ultimately landed him in the emergency room for a broken leg. The silver lining, I suppose, is that this being his third hospital visit in two months, he’s working his way through the individual maximum out of pocket amount from the health insurance company early in the year. That means future injuries or illness can be covered entirely by insurance. Maybe this should be a feat, but that would be weird.

Since our injured son left the campout early, some of the other boys gathered his things from his snow cave and put them into one of the cars. Unfortunately his sleeping bag and tarp are nowhere to be found. No one who went on the trip has seen them since they’ve been back. The only thing I can figure is that they blew out of the back of the truck on the drive down out of the mountains.

If it were any of our other sleeping bags, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, I sent our son with Mike’s sleeping bag. At 6’7″, normal sleeping bags don’t work for Mike, so he had a nice extra long and extra wide sleeping bag. We bought it years ago (when backpacking was literally our job) and really had to shop around to find the right one. The sleeping bag will cost $300-$400 to replace. The 8′ x 10′ heavy duty tarp, less than 24 hours old, cost $16.

Frugal Funny

The funny I’m going to share with you was not funny last week or for the last year! It was 100% a frugal frustration! But that all changed this week when Mike had time to work on one of our cars. Now that the issue is (hopefully) fixed, we can laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation.

Our 2007 Honda Odyssey has been quirksome and irksome since we bought it in 2019. Several years ago, one of the automatic sliding doors had some problems. Periodically a door would stop working, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Although we could always close the door manually, sometimes the latch did not pull it quite all the way shut, so the van thought the door was was still open. For a little while we would occasionally drive around with a loud, sustained beep because the car thought a door was open while we were driving. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The more aggravating part was that the latch, thinking the door was still open, would constantly pull electricity to try to close it, causing a drain that would make our battery die.

It was so frustrating! Since the door looked closed, we couldn’t tell when it was or was not draining the battery. We replaced the battery twice. We took the van in to two different mechanics. Of course, at this point we hadn’t discovered that the problem was the door latch, and they hadn’t either. They tried things that, on the surface, appeared to solve the problem, but then the latch would act up again and the battery would die again! We are both experts with jumper cables and can have a dead battery started before the kids even have their seat belts on.

When we got our last battery, we decided that we wanted it to last longer than a year, so we came up with a pretty ridiculous work-around. For the past 8 months or so, we would open the hood and unhook one of the connectors to the battery every time we got home. Then every time we leave, we pop the hood and rehook the connector onto the battery. Depending on the temperature and tightness of the connection, sometimes the car would start the first time, other times it would take several attempts, with jiggles and adjustments to the connection between each attempt. We kept toothpicks handy to wedge into the connector if we needed to tighten the connection.

Like I said, I wouldn’t have laughed about this situation a week ago, but over the last several months Mike did a lot of research and testing and is pretty confident that the door latch is the problem.  He ordered a new latch for $280 and on Saturday he replaced the old latch with the new one. No more connecting and disconnecting the battery! Though we did have to drive a screw in next to the battery contact to keep it tight, since so much on and off movement had shaved the soft terminal down a little. Hopefully the rest of the van behaves itself until we have saved up for a replacement!

Does anyone else deal with absurd car drama or is this taking frugality to the extreme?

Now it’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures this month?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies: Goodbye Sleeping Bag, Hello Long Arm appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Several years ago I had a series on Six Figures Under where I would share our weekly frugal adventures.  My daughter was reading through some of those posts recently and told me I should share more fun stories, not just boring budget updates and grocery hauls!

While the 13-year-old crowd isn’t my target audience, I think she has a good point.  So here we go!

I’m not committing to do it weekly, but I’ll periodically share more light-hearted, personal frugal life posts.  I would love to hear your frugal adventures in the comments!

If you’re a newer reader and you want to see the posts I’m talking about, you can find them here.

Frugal Feats

We found a few new ways to eat kale.

That might not sound like a frugal feat to you, so let me explain why that’s wonderful and frugal.  We have lots of beautiful kale growing in our winter garden right now, which pretty much means free food (free super food even)!  But, if I don’t figure out a way to get my people (let’s be honest, and myself) to eat it, it will just go to waste.  And wasting food isn’t frugal.

I found a great recipe for buttery garlic rice and kale.

I also made a sweet potato, sausage and kale bake (I looked up a few recipes, then made my own version).  That gets double credit because it also uses sweet potatoes from our fall garden that are currently hanging out in the garage.

We even found that kale was good mixed into our potato soup.  It takes just a little bit of steam to make kale wilt and soften into a much milder flavor, and the steam from hot potato soup was just enough to do the trick.

Do you have a favorite way to eat kale?  Bonus points if the kids like it too!

Frugal Flops

This one was a literal flop.  While making lunch, I was dancing around the kitchen with my energetic one-year-old.  We can hardly handle his cuteness when he feels the rhythm of the music and starts dancing.  I was getting a little wild and started jumping around.

Well, my phone was in my robe pocket (yep, I was still wearing my robe at lunchtime), when I jumped up high to make my little dance partner laugh.  My phone jumped too… right out of my robe and onto the kitchen floor.  I’ve dropped my six-month-old phone lots of times with no negative consequences.

Not this time though.  The screen’s glass is majorly cracked this time. I must have some serious ups to make it fall hard enough for that.

Packing tape has worked so far to hold it together and keep glass shards out of my fingers. Maybe this flop also qualifies as a feat, then?  At least for the time being.

Lesson learned: wait until you’re dressed to jump around in the kitchen.

Frugal Funnies

My kids often have entrepreneurial ideas.  I love that they like to think big.  After cleaning the seeds out of some pumpkins (which are also hanging out in our garage after the fall harvest), they had the idea to sell pumpkins or pumpkin seedlings.

Our ambitious 5-year-old calculated “if we sell a million, we will earn a million dollars!”

“But,” I interjected, “That will take up a lot of space at our house!”

“That’s okay,” she assured me.  “I have LOTS of room in my piggy bank!”

It’s Your Turn!

Do you have any Frugal Feats, Flops, or Funnies to share from your home?

The post Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies: Kids and Kale Edition appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Usually I’m pretty good at getting prepared and packed for (and sometimes over-packed for) a road trip, but this time was slightly different.  It seems like I always have a hundred loose ends to tie up before heading out of town, but this time there must have been a hundred and one.

Or maybe it was that we had visitors coming to sleep in our beds while we were out of town.  I spent packing time trying to make the basement look presentable (or at least less scary).

Whatever it was, we had a few more flops than normal.  Usually we have this frugal road trip thing down to a science, but this one had its fair share of flops.  In fact we’ll start out with the flops this time.

Frugal Flops

Laptop Cord

We headed down to Arizona to visit family for the week of Thanksgiving.  About an hour into our trip, I reached for my laptop so I could work on some things (because you know I didn’t get all one hundred and one done before we left).  I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten to bring the cord to charge it.

I had saved lots of writing and tasks that can be done offline for the thirteen hour drive and now I couldn’t do any of it.  Ugh!

Not knowing where I could buy the right cord in person, I turned to Amazon.  Because of the last incident, the right cord wasn’t too far back on my order history.  With the promise of two-day shipping to my grandma’s house, I placed my order.

I’m not sure what happened, but the estimated delivery time after I placed the order was no longer two days.  The cord was scheduled to arrive in a week and two days.  Thankfully I was able to cancel the order before it shipped, or it would have been a double flop.

Since I wanted to save the battery life for when I absolutely needed it, I avoided turning on my laptop at all until Wednesday, when I would be somewhere with internet.  Well, by that time, the juice had slowly drained out of the battery and it was dead.

If it’s seemed quiet around here, you can know it was because of my forgetful frugal flop.

The downside is that I didn’t get ahead (or even caught up) like I had hoped.  The upside is that I got be be unplugged for over a week and just spend time with family.

On second thought, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

ER Visit

Scrabble is a pretty competitive game in my family, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time that a game has been interrupted because a player needed to go to the Emergency Room.  I kid you not!

While playing a four generation Scrabble game, our 8-year-old daughter was swinging her legs under her chair and somehow (we still can’t figure it out) managed to get a sliver of wood embedded under her toenail all the way down past the cuticle.  It was a pretty freak thing.

We made some respectable DIY attempts like icing her foot in a bucket of ice water until it was numb and then trying to pull the wood sliver out with tweezers and pliers, but the wood kept breaking off.  My husband made a bunch of calls to try to figure out where we could take her that would take both our insurance and our injury.

Of course this happened at 8 pm, just as walk-in facilities are closing.  After calling the urgent care and instant care places that were still open, we learned that none of them would take injuries involving toes/toenails in children.  How odd!

So we were stuck with going to the ER, even though it wasn’t a big emergency.  Amazingly enough there was exactly zero wait.  In fact, we had to stay after to finish up the paperwork that you normally do in the waiting room.

Here’s a picture (because I know you’re dying to see) of the sliver after it was removed.  I set it on top of her toenail the way it was embedded.

Is that not the weirdest thing to happen?

We never did finish our 4 generation scrabble game, but instead we got to experience a wait-free emergency room.  That might be more rare.  Maybe it was worth the $50 to experience it.  Nah.  Next time we’ll stick to our regularly scheduled free entertainment.

Frugal Feats

First Aid Kit Additions

Back to the ER for a second.  When they were taking care of our daughter, the opened a bottle of iodine and a package of gauze pads.  I knew that they couldn’t use the gauze pads from that package on anyone else, so I said, “If you’re just going to throw all of those away, can I add them to our first aid kit?”

The nurse was thrilled that I asked.  She said it does feel so wasteful to throw away perfectly good supplies, even though the reasoning makes sense.  In fact she said they would be throwing away the bottle of iodine too, so I should take that too!

Plastic Ponchos

On our way home, we were going to spend a day at Knott’s Berry Farm.  Our kids have never been to an amusement park before.  Heck, we’re going on a dozen years of marriage and we’ve never been to one together either.   I contacted Knott’s well in advance and was able to get media passes that worked for most of us.

Our little guide making plans (before the rain hit, obviously)

I looked ahead at the weather and saw that there was a 90% chance of rain for eight hours of the day.  On our way out of Phoenix, while the rest of the world was Black Friday shopping, I went on a hunt for cheap ponchos.

I was really hoping to avoid  going into Walmart.  I didn’t want to get trampled, for one, but I was also secretly afraid I would be lured in by a $5 crock pot or something I don’t need even at a crazy low price.

Thankfully there was a Dollar Tree next door.  I had no idea if the dollar store carried ponchos, especially a dollar store in the desert!), but it was my lucky day.  They had exactly six ponchos and I bought them all (along with two umbrellas).  And yes, they were all full price, even on Black Friday (but no waiting in line)!

When torrential rain hit at 2:00 the next day, we were glad to have those $1 ponchos and not have to shell out the big bucks in the park for them.  In fact, when the downpour hit, some vendors ran out of ponchos for a bit and people were flashing big bills to get their hands on some of that attractive thin plastic.

So the big wins here?

• I looked ahead and was prepared for the weather so we wouldn’t have to shell out big bucks to stay dry (or leave the park early).
• I entirely avoided Black Friday mayhem and temptations.

Impromptu swing set

Entertaining kids at an eighty-year-old’s house could be a challenge, but my kids did their thing and went exploring my grandma’s property.  They collected a bunch of plastic twine that was laying around from bales of hay, along with random other “treasures.”

Daddy joined the kids outside and before long he was involved in a project.  I’m not sure who had the original idea, but by the time I went out it was already under way.  Using the twine along with various sticks and scraps he created a swing set with four different swings.  It was a hit the whole time we were there.  He took it down before we left so no one would get hurt.

Frugal Funny

On our last road trip, for some odd reason, our kids really wanted to sleep in the van.  I have no idea why they were so bent on the idea, but they were.  Fortunately (or unfortunately if you’re my kids), that wasn’t necessary on that trip.

With the way things worked out this time though, our kids got their wish.  We stayed at Knott’s Berry Farm until the park closed at 10 pm on Saturday.  After taking off everyone’s wet shoes and changing the kids into jammies, we headed out.

On the way down to Arizona we stayed at a friend’s house (a money-saving win in itself), and we could have returned there for Saturday night.  Instead, we figured that late at night would be the best time to get past the Los Angeles traffic, so we planned to start our trek home.  We knew that after twelve hours of amusement park with four kiddos in the rain that we wouldn’t make the whole eight hours of driving at once.  We did have a goal to get back before church on Sunday afternoon though.

As anticipated, the kids fell asleep almost immediately.  My husband and I enjoyed a lovely three hour drive in the dark.  When we got tired, we stopped and found a place to park and sleep.  We felt kind of bad that the kids were already asleep and “missing out” on this spectacular experience of sleeping in the van that they had so been looking forward to.

I had no sooner reclined my seat than our 19-month-old little lady woke up.  So in order to preserve everyone else’s sleep, I unbuckled her and snuggled her in with me for the night.

In the morning, my husband woke up well-rested, but I was exhausted.  Tossing and turning to get comfortable in a car is one thing.  Having a squirmy baby on top of you trying to do the same, is another.

We made it home with over an hour to get showered and ready for church!

And just so the kids could have evidence that this “fun” night really happened, I have this evidence:

There were quite a few other frugal feats and flops sprinkled throughout the trip, but that gives you a good taste of our adventure last week.

It’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post Frugal Feats Flops & Funnies– Road Trip Edition appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Have you ever looked over your week and made an assessment of your frugal successes and failures?  Sometimes a thing or two might stand out without having to ponder too hard.  Other times you really have to think to come up with your frugal wins and flops.

This week’s frugal line-up includes thrifty but thoughtful Christmas gifts, cheap wrapping paper, bulk meat, and primitive tools!  Share yours frugal feats, flops, and funnies in the comments.

Here goes!

Frugal Feats of the week

Thrift store Christmas scores

I had the unusual experience of going to the thrift store without my three older kids this week.  I took advantage of the time to scout out some Christmas gifts.  I realize for some, shopping at the thrift store for gifts is totally taboo.

Would you give a gift from the thrift store?

In our family we are fine with it.  Thrift stores are just another normal shopping venue where inexpensive treasures sometimes hide. Of course there are a few things that I don’t buy used, but there are lots of other options that are great.

That said, there are plenty of gifts I buy brand new, both for my immediate family and others.  I usually conform to social norms of giving new when the gift is outside of our family.  We know that the price of a gift is no indication of the thought and heart behind it, but not everyone gets that.

At the thrift store, I picked up quite a few kids books and a game.  Books and games are great second-hand options.  Often books have only been read a time or two and are in excellent condition.  I always check games to make sure they have all of their pieces.  I even found a brand new Settlers of Catan game for seventy-five cents once.

There is a lot of value in buying books used, especially if your little book worm is likely to read the book just a few times.  It’s also a great way to go green: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Wrapping paper

In addition to some gifts for the kiddos, I stocked up on wrapping paper.  Seriously, if you need wrapping paper, now is the time to hit up your thrift store!  I got six rolls of wrapping paper for $2.25 total.  They’ve got lot of paper on them too, certainly more than the cheap rolls at the retail store.

Before Christmas last year, I spent $10 for four rolls of wrapping paper at Target which just about killed me.  I normally buy wrapping paper in the post-Christmas 75-90% off sales, so to have to buy it at full price before Christmas was painful.

Stocking up on meat

I made an exciting discovery this week and my deep freeze can hardly wait.  I placed my first order with Zaycon Fresh!  Zaycon is a company that takes the middleman (grocery store) out of meat-buying by letting customers order in bulk online and pick up their order from a refrigerated truck in a local parking lot.

I’m all about saving money by buying in bulk, so this is right up my alley, and the prices are much better than what I can get at the store.  The only downside is that you have to order pretty far in advance.  No craving a roast tonight and picking it up tomorrow.

For example, my order won’t be delivered until February!  Actually it’s perfect.   That gives me a couple of month to jam all of the blackberries that overwhelm me every time I open the freezer.  Once I’ve canned blackberry jam and razzleberry jam, I’ll have enough space in the freezer for 40 lbs of boneless, skineless chicken breasts.

What am I going to do with 40 lbs of chicken, you ask?  Well, I’m going to flash freeze some of it (freeze individually first, then package together, that way they won’t freeze in one big mass), cook and shred some of it, and make lots of yummy freezer meals with the rest of it!

If your family eats meat and your food budget and storage capacity allows you to buy in bulk, you’ll definitely want to check out Zaycon Fresh!

Frugal Flop of the Week

We are leaving this weekend to go to Arizona for Thanksgiving.  All week long I’ve had a huge to-do list hanging over my head.  Between getting our basement abode presentable for the out-of-town family who will be coming for Thanksgiving while we’re gone, packing the van for a 14 hour road trip, planning outfits for family pictures while we’re there, getting posts scheduled for Six Figures Under, and getting some upcoming projects squared away, I should not have had much down time.

Well, this past week we saw a house that I didn’t think we would be overly interested in, but after walking through, we found ourselves actually considering it.  It doesn’t fit all of our criteria, but we could both still see ourselves being perfectly happy there.

Not wanting to jump into anything without checking out the other options on our list, I started pouring over the list.  I created a detailed spreadsheet to easily compare the dozen houses on our radar.  I spent lots of time reviewing listings, recording details, digging up the history of every property, and mentally moving into each one.

Because my husband was super busy at both of his jobs (compounded by the fact that he’ll be taking a week off for Thanksgiving), we didn’t have time to visit any of the houses.  My house-hunting efforts were not time well-spent at this point, especially since I had a huge list of pressing things to do.  Honestly, I knew that there was no way we could do all the looking and actually make any offer before our trip.

So if you consider “frugal” to mean “not wasteful,” then my use of time this week was definitely a frugal fail.

Frugal Funny of the Week

I’ve been blessed with kids who are incredibly content (even thrilled) by entertainment that costs absolutely nothing.  When you live in the sticks and choose not to have a TV, you spend a lot of time playing outside.  And amazingly, it never gets boring.

My seven-year-old is our resident project man.  He is the most determined and persistent little boy you ever met.  He doesn’t give up until the project is finished.  He wakes up each day with an itch to create something.  And it’s never something simple.

His most recent project was a stone axe.  He didn’t use any modern tools to do it (he loves watching Primitive Technology on YouTube for inspiration).  In addition to sharpening his stone by grinding it against another stone for hours, he was super patient in softly blowing on a coal pressed against the handle of the axe to burn out a hole for the stone to sit in.  I am constantly in awe of his focus and determination.

So this week’s frugal funny isn’t as much “Ha-ha” funny as it is “Wow-that’s-funny-that-a-seven-year-old-can-be-entertained-and-engaged-in-such-a-random-free-project” kind of funny.

Now it’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures?
• Any funny frugal moments?

This post contains affiliate links.  That means if you make a purchase after clicking a link, I may earn a small commission while the price remains the same for you.  Don’t worry though, I only share awesome stuff!

The post Frugal Feats, Flops & Funnies– Secondhand gifts edition appeared first on Six Figures Under.

It’s time to take a look at the week to see what frugal plans worked and which ones failed.  Ever since I started to share my frugal feats, flops, and funnies each week, it has made me even more aware of my attempts to be frugal.

Being frugal isn’t just for people who are trying to get out of debt (though I definitely recommend it if that’s what you’re working on).  Frugality helps you make the most of your money at any income level.  Learning to be frugal early on, before you start making the big bucks, will help prevent lifestyle inflation that often creeps in when you start making more money.

Here are my frugal feats, flops, and funnies.  Be sure to share yours in the comments!

Frugal Feats of the Week

A New (to us) Van

Our prayers were answered when we found a new van to call our own!  After the problems with our other van (and since it’s not going to pass smog when it’s due in the spring), we were ready to invest in a new one.  This is our first van above the $2K range.

In our pre-house goals, we had set a goal of $10K to be used to vehicle replacement, but we ended up only using about $5,400.  The van is a 2005 (eight years newer) and only had 72K miles on it.  It’s a definite upgrade.  Replacing my husband’s car will need to happen at some point, but right now it’s still going strong.

We got a pre-purchase inspection, like we have every time we’ve bought a used vehicle and everything looked good.  We’re hoping to have her for a long time.  We’ll be starting off with a road trip over Thanksgiving break!

Other Frugal Feats this week:

–> Remember the cell phone drama I talked about last week where we accidentally closed the account of my husband’s missing phone with the $200 of account credit on it?  Thankfully we were able to work things out.  They let me use the credit to purchase a new phone, then applied the rest of the credits to my account.  I liked Republic Wireless before, but I like them even more after such a quick and efficient experience with their customer service.

–> I discovered that if you’re new to the Amazon mobile app, you can get $5 off your first purchase from the app! That was a nice find just in time for holiday shopping.  I was able to share it with my husband who has never used the Amazon app.  You can get a $5 credit too.  Just click on this link from your phone or tablet to get the Amazon app and then sign in to get your $5 credit! How’s that for easy?!

–> I finally did make some more homemade laundry detergent!  After I admitted to you last week that all the ingredients have been staring me in the face and I used up all of the cloth diaper detergent, I stopped being lazy and just made it!

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Frugal Flops of the Week

Now on to the frugal flops!  I made a couple of rookie frugal shopping mistakes this week as I was Christmas shopping.

Pillows Prices

My kids don’t have regular pillows right now.  When they were in toddler beds, they used the smaller size pillows (I think they’re considered travel size).  I made them cute pillow cases that coordinated with some other things I had sewn for them.  Then a couple of years ago during the Pillow Pet craze, I designed and crafted custom pillow pets for them (with robes and pjs to match).

Both my husband and I independently thought that pillows should be on the Christmas gift list for the kids this year.  I started searching Amazon this week and found a couple of options.  The one that was the best price for the highest quality was this set of two Serta pillows for less than $12.  They had great ratings and the price couldn’t be beat.

That’s where I made my mistake.  I saved them to the Amazon list where I was keeping my Christmas gift ideas, instead of buying them.  A couple days later I was ordering some multiplication flash cards for my daughter to use on our upcoming road trip, but since they were an “add-on” item I figured it was a good time to buy some of the saved items from my Christmas list.

When I went to grab the pillows, the price had more than doubled for the pair of pillows!  I was so bummed that I didn’t take advantage of the great deal.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that it comes back!

Price fluctuations aside, can I just say that Amazon is so wonderful for people like me who live and hour from Target and who always shop with their kids?  Sneaking three or four pillows into the cart with four little helpers just wouldn’t work.

Elusive Gift Card

I had another smaller online shopping flop this week though.  I was looking for some things for my husband (I won’t say what, since he will surely be reading this;) ) and found some stellar clearance deals that were even more awesome stacked with a 40% off coupon code.

I knew I had a Land’s End gift card somewhere from when I returned something that I had used a gift card (in part) to buy.  They refunded the majority of the amount to my credit card, but since the return exceeded the amount that I originally charged, they returned the remainder on a gift card that they mailed to me.

I looked around all of the places that I thought I would have put it, but to no avail.  I couldn’t find the gift card anywhere.  I remember that it wasn’t a ton of money, but it’s a bummer that I couldn’t find it when I actually could have used it.  Just goes to show you that it pays to be organized.

On the upside, I did go through Ebates, so I got 6% cashback on my purchase.  If you’re planning to do online shopping, then you should definitely go set up an account.  You’ll get a $10 gift card when you make your first $25 purchase.  Score!

Frugal Funnies of the Week

Hot Lunch Hopes

We are hardcore lunch-packers (see my tips here, even though I can really get burnt out on packing lunches daily.  Buying a school lunch for $2.75 for three kids would add up really fast.  That would be $8.25 per day, $41.25 per week or $165 per month.  Wowza!

The hard thing is that we live in an area where something like 60% of kids get free or reduced lunch, so my kids are definitely in the minority with their cold lunches.  In the past they have questioned why they never get to have hot lunch and we’ve talked about how we would rather spend our money on other things like paying for daddy’s law school and saving up for a house.

A few month’s ago, we decided to use hot lunch as a reward for keeping their room clean for a month.  It worked like a charm.  The kids kept their room clean and we awarded them by applying money to the school lunch account.  They were thrilled and could hardly wait.

Even though they were eager to get hot lunch, they didn’t want to squander their opportunity.  They poured over the menu for weeks trying to decide which day would be the best.  My two older kids chose a day this past week.

When I picked them up from school that day, the first thing out of their mouths was “Hot lunch was terrible!”  and “I never want to get hot lunch again!”  Apparently the cheese pizza had “way too much cheese” and the peaches were “hard and disgusting.”  The only redeeming thing was the chocolate milk (you can’t ever go wrong with chocolate)!

I’ve had my share of complaints and whines about the lunches I make, so partly out of curiosity and partly hoping to feed my mama ego, I said, “Well was it at least better than bringing your lunch from home?”  The answer was a resounding “No way!”

Next time they want to just use chocolate milk as a reward instead of getting a hot lunch.  My budget and my heart were happy about that.

It’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post New Van and Dashed Hopes– Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Sometimes being frugal is hard.  Sometimes it’s easy, but either way, the feeling of accomplishment is there.  Whether it’s scoring a great deal at the store, avoiding a tempting purchase, or finding a creative hack to save big bucks, it’s fun to celebrate.

Not everyone “gets” this frugality thing.  Sometimes celebrating a frugal feat or admitting to a frugal disaster begs a special audience, people who get it.  Well, friends this is it.  On Fridays I’m open with our real life, real time frugality.  It’s kind of a fun semi-structured way to open up.

I love reading your frugal adventures too, so keep them coming in the comments.  I love reading them and definitely read them all, even though I’m sometimes slow to respond.

With Halloween, Monday felt like a weekend, so Friday really snuck up on me!   It dawned on me Thursday night as I was reading the kids a bedtime story (definitely their choice, not mine), that I needed to mentally collect and write up this week’s frugal feats, flops, and funnies.  Here goes!

Frugal Feats

Did you know that I love to sew!?  I love to create new things, whether it’s sewing from a pattern or from my imagination, with fabric I purchase or fabric I creatively get for free.

Sometimes sewing saves money and sometimes it doesn’t.  But that’s okay.  My main reason for doing it is to be creative and make unique one-of-a-kind creations for my family.

For someone who love to sew, I have quite a pile of clothes that need mending.  While I enjoy sewing, I hate mending.  How un-frugal is that?

Just ask my mom.  Whenever she comes to visit and asks if there is anything she can do, I direct her to my mending pile.  My mom is an excellent seamstress who doesn’t hate mending like I do.  In fact, she kind of likes it because you get lots of quick wins.

Unfortunately my mom lives 2,000 miles away, so sometimes I have to face my own mending pile. Serious stuff, I know.  That’s what we call “adulting”.

When it comes to the kids’ clothes in my mending pile, they’re usually out-grown before I get around to mending them.  I guess they don’t miss them enough to complain about them.

My husband’s clothes are a different story.  He doesn’t change sizes, he does miss his clothes when they’re out of commission, and his work clothes are expensive.  Still I avoid mending like the plague.

I think my husband must keep more than the recommended allowance of things in his pockets (wallet, phone, keys, pens, etc.) because several of his suit pants are tearing at the side seam just at the bottom of the pocket.  It only happens in his suit pants because the fabric is so much more delicate.

This week he asked me if I would mend his suit pants as an early Christmas present.  He was really afraid that if they weren’t mended soon, they would tear beyond the point of repair.  Well, suit pants aren’t cheap (and my husband is sweet and very un-demanding), so my frugal-self sat down and mended suit pants.  And didn’t even complain.

That, my friends, is a frugal feat!

Other frugal feats this week include:

• Finding Chex at the store on sale for $2.50 with $1 off coupons stuck to them.  Plus there is $.25 cash back coupon on Ibotta for any brand of cereal.  I was super excited to make some “puppy chow” or “muddy buddies” (or whatever you call the snack mix you make with chocolate, peanut butter, powdered sugar and Chex cereal.

• Resisting the urge to go to the store the day after Halloween to buy clearance candy.  It’s time like this that it is good to be far away from any stores, because when it comes to me and chocolate, the struggle is real!

• (See Frugal Funny)

Frugal Flop

If you read my monthly budget reports in their entirety (kudos to you, those puppies are long), you would have noticed that in October I bought all of the ingredients to make homemade laundry detergent.  It’s not hard to do, but I just haven’t done it yet.

But if you’ve got kids, you know that the laundry does not wait, slow down, or ever stop.  Not even when you don’t have time (ahem… are too lazy) to mix up a batch of laundry detergent.

Well since I didn’t want to surrender to the ever-growing laundry pile, I started using the laundry detergent I use for the cloth diapers.  It’s name brand and much more expensive than my homemade formula.  Well, the laundry kept coming, and I kept on using it.  And yesterday I polished it off.

Yep.  The whole thing.  “Well, we’re potty training anyway,” I told myself.

On the bright side, I resisted the urge to just buy laundry detergent when I was in town today, knowing that I had all the ingredients waiting for me at home.

Now that I am completely out of laundry detergent of any kind of laundry detergent, it looks like I’ll be whipping some up tomorrow.

Because, well, we’re potty training, if you know what I mean.

Frugal Funny

I get pretty fanatical about Halloween costumes.  I like to sew and be creative, remember?  I love, love, love making family-themed costumes.  But this year I let go and did not make a single new costume.  Not one.  I got the costumes out and let the kids choose.

My seven-year-old thought it would be an excellent idea to wear the penguin costume that I made for my 5-year-old back when he was 2.  He didn’t care that the bottom of the penguin belly hit his waist instead of his ankles.  He was determined to wear it, so I let him wear it to school.

When I picked him up from school, he was so over the penguin costume.  I held my tongue and didn’t say “I told you so” at all.

After school we had about an hour before we went to a Halloween party and trick-or-treating to throw together a costume.  He pulled together a pirate costume that he was happy with.

Sadly I didn’t get any pictures of the penguin.  Trust me though, it was pretty funny.  Here it is on my two-year-old three years ago though, so you can use your imagination for what it would look like on a second-grader!

It’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post Mending, Laundry, and Penguins: Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies appeared first on Six Figures Under.

In the two weeks since I last reported frugal feats, flops, and funnies, we’ve had our share of frugal feats and flops.  Sometimes they’re funny, too, because it’s always nicer to laugh than cry!

As always, please chime in with your own frugal feats, flops, and funnies so we can encourage one another in our money-saving endeavors!

This Week’s Frugal Feats

As you might have guessed from the title, we scored some free stuff this week.

Free Groceries

While I was on a school field trip with my daughter, I got a call from a neighbor.  She said that she was cleaning out her pantry and food storage and she had some food that she would “never get through” before it expired.  Since I have “all those kids” she wondered if I could use it.

I figured she would have a collection of canned veggies and some pasta, but it was a much more thorough pantry decluttering than I had expected.  I left with 9 paper grocery bags full of food!   We got lots of canned fruits, canned veggies, pasta sauce, cake mixes and frosting galore, pudding, hot chocolate, flour, peanut butter, jelly, powdered milk, and more.

She said that she had been storing food in three different places and kept buying more of the same, without realizing that they still had plenty.  They are retired and don’t go through food very fast.

Tip: To avoid over-buying on groceries, plan your meals around the food in your pantry and be sure to make a shopping list at home as you are looking at your pantry and meal plan.

Free Beds

Last weekend, we took a day trip to visit my uncle and aunt who will be moving out of state soon.  We always have a fun time visiting them.  As they were packing their things for the big move, they ran across some things to offer me, including family heirlooms like my grandmother’s wedding dress and the first quilt that my grandma made as a child.  There was also an assortment of decorative dinner plates and other dishes.  Honestly, I haven’t even gone through the box.  I figure I’ll wait until we move to go through it since there isn’t much I can do with it here in the basement.

My aunt asked if we were interested in the two twin beds they had in one of their guest rooms.  It’s actually a pretty interesting set-up.  It’s a twin bed with a twin trundle (two twin frames and mattresses, with one sliding underneath the other for storage, then sliding out alongside it for sleeping).

They also offered us some other appliances/furniture, but not knowing where we’ll be and what we’ll need, we declined those offers.  We are really happy about the beds though.  Right now our three older kids are in one room on a custom triple bunk bed that my husband made the kids for Christmas in 2014 and the baby is in a pack-n-play in our room.  When we get our own house, we will have a girls’ room and a boys’ room, so we’ll need other beds.  In fact, depending on what the space is like in our new place, the triple bunk might not even work.

Tip: How to get free stuff without asking

One of the keys to getting free stuff is being an outwardly frugal person.  By this, I mean that you talk about the great deals you get or the awesome new way you found to save money.  Don’t be wasteful and make the most of what you have.  People notice stuff like that, and when they have something they want to give away, they will think of you.

Another keys to getting people to offer you free stuff is to be gracious when it’s offered.  When someone knows you won’t be insulted by the offer of free stuff, but will be grateful for the thoughtful gesture (even if you don’t take the stuff), they are likely to offer you other stuff in the future.

Frugal Flops of the Week

Cutting the cord

I don’t know if I ever mentioned the death of our desktop computer.  While I was at FinCon, my husband decided to clean out the desktop computer, as in physically open it up and clean out the dust (it’s mighty dusty when you live in a basement in the boonies).  Even though he told our younger son (who just turned five) not to touch anything, curiosity got the best of him and he stuck his finger right into the computer’s fan, which broke and sent pieces flying which broke other computer-y things.  Ugh.  Not the welcome home I was hoping for.

We decided to wait to replace the desktop computer until after we get a house (and a van, but that’s a story for another day), so I’ve been working exclusively on my laptop.  I leave it plugged in most of the time and usually use it from the couch.

On Saturday, I asked my husband to read through my weekly newsletter before I sent it out.  He sat down in the computer chair and picked up my laptop.  He turned the chair toward the kitchen to ask me something and -snap- the power cord was cut!

We’re not sure how it happened, but that curious 5-year-old also has the habit of spinning in that chair (all. the. time.).  We’re guessing that the cord must have gotten wrapped around the chair base in his last spinning session, which set my husband up for disaster.

We ordered a new cord on Amazon immediately so it could start it’s journey toward us (not everything gets delivered in two days when you’re in the boonies).  In the meantime, my handy husband used a wire nut and electrical tape to resurrect the cord for temporary use.  It may look bad, but it works (and he promises me it’s not a fire hazard).

Lost phone and lost money

When we first switched out cell phones to Republic Wireless, there was a referral program for inviting new customers to give Republic Wireless a try (the referral program has since been canceled, though they do have an affiliate program).  I can’t remember the exact details, but it offered something like a $20 discount to the new customer and a $20 service credit for the referrer.

That was great for us, because we already loved Republic Wireless (it saves us sooo much money) and we were already telling everyone about it.  I love helping being find a great service that saves people so much money!

Side note: Seriously, if you feel like you’re paying too much for your phone, then you probably are and should most definitely check them out.

There was a maximum of $600 referral credit per account.  My husband and I had our phone on separate accounts and we each accrued $600 in referral credits that year.  Back then we were on the $10/month plan, so that credit lasted a long time.

Well, my husband’s phone turned into a work phone for his 9 to 5 job so that he could work remotely once a week.  Somehow on the way back from San Diego, or shortly thereafter, that phone disappeared.  We were pretty sure that it would turn up somewhere, but after a month, we still haven’t found it.

He still had nearly $200 of credit on his account, so we decided he should just use the credit to get another phone and then pay for his monthly service like a normal person.  That would have worked just fine, except he made the mistake of cancelling the first phone line before ordering the new phone.  When he cancelled the first phone, the whole account closed automatically since it was the only phone on the account.

He opened a help ticket to explain that he had not intended to cancel the account, only to remove the one phone and replace it with a new one.  We’re still waiting for a resolution.

I guess losing the phone was the first flop, followed by losing nearly $200 of service credit.  We hope Republic Wireless restores the credits without any fuss and then we can downgrade this from a double flop to a single flop.

Frugal Funnies?

While I don’t have a separate story as a “frugal funny,” I will use this opportunity to point out the value in being able to laugh at yourself and not get too bent out of shape.  I’ve told you before that my husband and I don’t ever “fight” or get mad at each other.  That goes for times like this too.

Getting angry or yelling doesn’t accomplish anything productive.  Getting upset won’t find the phone or fix the power cord.  The only thing it “accomplishes” is putting strain on relationships.

Instead of getting angry, we laugh or joke.  There may be a period of mourning before we laugh, but our sadness is never  hurtful or pointed at someone.

Actually this makes me think of my cute friend Brittany from Pennies into Pearls.  Yesterday morning in her Instagram story (too bad those aren’t available for more than 24 hours) she shared how she had her dinner all prepped to make meal time a breeze.

In the evening she hopped back on Instagram and showed that the steak that had been marinating all day caught on fire in the grill and was completely blackened!  A frugal flop for sure (and one that deserves some mourning), but she was able to laugh about it and see the irony in what she shared that morning. (PS- Following her on Instagram will brighten your day!)

Not all flops will turn into funnies, but when they can it really helps to ease the stress of a bad situation.

It’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post Say Yes to Free and Don’t Cut the Cord– Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies appeared first on Six Figures Under.

I love cold cereal.  I could seriously eat it for any meal.

Back when we lived in town, I would combine coupons and sales to get cereal for great prices.  Now that we live in the boonies, I don’t use coupons anymore.  Shopping at a discount grocery store is the way I get cereal cheap.

I go into Grocery Outlet several times a month and look through the cereal aisle every time.  When I find a normal size box of cereal (~18 oz) for right around $1, I stock up.  If we are out of cereal and they have cereal for less than $2, I will buy a couple of boxes.

We have other options for quick, kid-friendly breakfasts, like homemade oatmeal packets, so we don’t have to eat cereal everyday.  We can save it for a special Sunday treat or just eat it sparingly.

Frugal Feat

Last week Grocery Outlet had a special 20% off sale on all of their cereal.  Among the good deals, I grabbed some bags of Malt-o-Meal frosted mini spooners for $2.99 ($2.39 after the discount).

I got a couple bags near the store entrance.  Then after thinking about the good deal it was, I grabbed a couple more from an end cap.  As we unloaded the groceries at home, my daughter noticed the packaging was different on the bags.  While both bags were the same price, one was 36 oz and one was 40 oz!

We had to be in town another day during the week, so I swung by the store for more bags, being sure to grab the 40 oz bags.  We’re set on cereal for a while, as long as no one gets tired of mini wheats.

Frugal Flop

While I was at the store, I also found Vanilla Pepita Go Lean Clusters cereal in the health food section for $.47 (or $.38 after the discount).

Personally, it looks a little too healthy/weird for me, which was why I figured it ended up at Grocery Outlet (there are lots of weird flavors and foods at Grocery Outlet because they turned out to be a flop).

I thought my kids would not be interested in it, so I just got a couple of boxes for my husband to try.

Honestly, when I saw the cheap price, especially after the discount, I was tempted to buy all the boxes they had.  I stopped myself by thinking that I would have to write about it as a frugal flop when I buy 40 boxes of cereal and my family hates it, so we end up feeding it the the chickens.

But now, it’s a flop for the opposite reason!

I gave some to my husband (easily the healthiest, best eater in our family) and he said it was fine.  He said shredded wheat gets old, so it’s nice to have something more interesting.

After hearing my disclaimer and my my husband’s approval, all the kids wanted to try it too.  I guess prefacing it with “you probably won’t like this” made my kids want to prove me wrong.

Now this flop that I thought I had prevented, turned into a flop because I didn’t stock up!

You win some.  You lose some!

Frugal Funny

While we’re on the subject of cereal (and since I can’t think of anything particularly funny regarding frugality during the past week), I’m going to throw it back to 2007-ish.  I learned about couponing  in the extreme-ish way.

My sister told me all about a deal on cereal where you could buy ten boxes that were on sale, use coupons on them, then the coupon machine at the register would print off another crazy awesome coupon for your next cereal purchase.  I can’t remember all the numbers now, nearly ten years later, but I do remember that it was a super fantastic deal.

It was such a good deal that we stocked up in a major way.  We lived in a tiny basement (we must have a thing for basements), so our storage space for cases of cereal was limited.

Don’t worry though, cereal was a priority so we made space.  We had our bed raised up on cinder blocks so we could fit cases of cereal (and other storage) underneath.  We also stacked about 4 cases up beside our bed, covered it with a table cloth and called it a nightstand.

It was pretty great, because we didn’t have a nightstand to go with our super tall bed.

When we moved across the country for law school several months later, you better believe we brought our cereal stash with us!  It came in handy when we were unloading the ABF truck that moved our stuff.  We handed out boxes of cereal to all of the neighborhood kids after they helped us unload the truck!

It’s your turn!

The post Stocking Up on Cereal– Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies appeared first on Six Figures Under.