Dashing December Savings (frugal chatter 2014)

[lizzie bargain]

CL-sorry you are still having pain-could the swollen tongue be an allergic reaction? Maybe talk to your Dr/pharmacist in case you accidentally got the wrong drug or dosage.

[thriftygranny]

Oh TG-so glad your high BP was caught and you are on the mend and all the best to your son with his surgery. You 3 have certainly had way more than your fair share of health issues this year! Take it easy please! Otherwise I may have to pop up the road to Red Deer and do your Xmas baking and shopping for you!

Oh that would be fun!!I am lucky , my shopping was done and I have three wonderful daughters that are coming on hte weekend to bake. Maybe a coffee in Calgary when I go for my two month Check !

[thriftygranny]

Thanks so much for the kind words everyone. When I look back the signs were there, I was so tired this summer but powered through because I think that is what women do. Even the night before we left for Calgary I was making up freezer food for the family in case I was gone for a while!

[lizzie bargain]

Okay TG-coffee it is in the New Year!


By the way for any of you Westerners watch your inbox to see if you get this email. My DH received an email yesterday saying if he did 4, $40 shops at Safeway by Dec 27( should not be too hard) he would get 570 bonus airmiles-so basically $60 in airmiles cash( for free gas or groceries) for spending $160. Perhaps it is just targeted to infrequent airmiles users because I did not get the email. Needless to say( and thanks to the reminder from Angela that it was 10% Tuesday) I trotted down to Safeway with DH and his airmiles card in tow.

I only spent $43 and got 157 airmiles( with more to come after 3 more shops), 5 cents a litre off my gas fill and a $10 coupon off a Safeway shop next week of $75. I was very pleased with this and I think at least for one month they have won me back from No Frills. I will stock DH and DD up with a grocery shop on Sunday before I go away for a week as my DH would never keep all these deals straight in his head! He is of course perfectly capable of getting groceries but not with all these mulitple airmile and discount coupon offers going on simultaneously. Even he was impressed that my small shop this a.m. netted me about 50% back in airmiles cash plus saved money on filling our tank.

Was supposed to watch the 4 boys but the Mum said she had a rough night and is currently resting while Grandma watches the boys-so I may go later or tomorrow so she and Gradma can get out to do some Xmas shopping.

[lilo0003]

Macw-we just did the same with our deductible and it is close to a 200.00 yearly savings.
TG: Wow, what a fright and while Christmas may be low key this year I imagine you have even more cause to celebrate.
CouponGirl: thanks for the PM. Yes that was few years ago we met up. That was a lot of fun. I did do another redemption but just the 105.00 one but it worked out as they had a PS4 game that Logan had asked for. So I boughta few groceries and stocking stuffers and came in at 105.48 before tax. I was pretty impressed as I am never that close. So then I used the budgeted Christmas money to buy another game at Target for our friends kids. Our boys both agreed with the stretching the holiday spending to our friends and SDM was a huge asset in this regard as I was able to buy three of the games my own kids wanted and new alarm clocks for both of them all on points. Plus a lot of the stocking stuffers were done on points as well.

Thanks for the well wishes for my friend and her family. Her DH is pretty damaged but there is no brain injury so for that we are grateful.

[MrsSunshine]

good grief, high BP (found by dentists?)
swollen tongues??

ima gonna stick you all in bubbles..

working hard to get life in order here. i've caught the 'selling' bug if its not tied down im selling it.
have a few things on my plate to do. as long as i stay off here i should get her all done.

y is it the second you hit Dec 1 somebody always hits fast forward!?

[Frugalbigmama]

Hope 2015 is better for everyone with health issues.

[Frugalbigmama]

Well last night I made the kids homemade burger and fries (adults had pasta with homemade sauce pulled from the freezer) Leftover pasta for youngest for tonights dinner and burger for the oldest and whatever else I make that he will like. Will be a simple dinner night eating leftovers to clean out the fridge. Will pull something out of the freezer for the crockpot tomorrow. Thinking chicken. Will cut up carrots to cook and either make potatoes or rice (I'm thinking rice!).

[r0c0upons]

thriftygranny!!!! sending you prayers, health for your family, and wishes for a speedy recovery. 2014 was a tough year, but I believe 2015 will be a ray of sunshine

I was hooked up to BP machine at the dentist for tooth extraction once, but it was because I had requested nitrous oxide. man, what an interesting experience that was!

[Frugalbigmama]

Didn't get as much as I wanted done last night but at least we had a nice dinner. And while it was cooking I cleaned 2 bathrooms and my room. Totally organized all the empty boxes I had piling up to use for wrapping gifts. Also finally went through the 2 boxes of odd socks. Now everyone had overflowing sock drawers and I have a box of matched socks ready to be used when needed. So no sock purchases for the next year at least! Had a $3 sale and a $15 sale today. I have a new jar collecting the money and will be over $55 tonight. Think I am going to keep saving it till the new year and then decide what it will be for.

[lizzie bargain]

In line with macw1960 I am thinking of a challenge for Jan-see how far I can get in the month with just spending free pts for groceries.

So far I currently have $20 in PC points, expect to have $60 in airmiles cash and i just ordered a $100 Costco gift card using Aeroplan miles I got for opening a bank account. Not that I am expecting to be broke in Jan, but it might be a fun challenge to see how far my small freexzer, pantry and $180 in freebies would get the 3 of us-of course this would be assuming I don't spend them in Dec! I know many of us have spent our SDM points etc to stock up for Dec but I have never saved them all for one month before to see how far I could get into the month without spending on groceries. Or maybe we should donate them to a family in need like in Sept when we donated some food and cash to a needy family.

By the way macw1960 we had considered reducing our house insurance deductible a few years ago too as we had never claimed anything on it. DH checked into it and in our case it would have only saved about $40 per year so he decided against it. 3 months later we were hit with a major hailstorm and had to make a claim and so were very thankful we had not swtiched up to the $1,000. It would have taken about 12 years of saving $40 per year to make up for the extra $500 we would have paid if we had swtiched. If you get a decent savings though it may be totally worth it like lilo.

Okay time to decorate the forlorn looking tree in our front window which has been erected and lit but not decorated yet!

[jasperandchar]

Making some new changes around our life for the new year.

I plan on implementing some changes to our budget starting January 1st so DH has a month to prepare himself. I printed out Gail Valoxide's budget sheet to start with and have been filling out a rough draft so far. I dropped $5.65 off our Bell bill and changed our deductible from $500.00 to $1000.00 on our house insurance yesterday but I won't know the savings until I get the paperwork. I also plan to keep posting on our local buy & sell.

I also dug through our indoor recycling container yesterday to submit 2 receipts to CO51 & Snap for a savings of $2.50 on items I got free.

We owe just over $2000.00 and I want to pay it off ASAP and they will be no more spending money on things we don't have the money for and DH has agreed to this (thank goodness as he can be an impulse buyer). He has also agreed to finish things around the house first that we have stuff for so less money spent that way.

We are also using up the food in the freezer first before I restock again...it can be surprising what you find in there as I haven't been keeping my freezer list up to date lately.

Hopefully, we can stick to it or pretty darn close. Does anybody else have any budgeting plans or tips for the new year?

glad to have you back!!! Sounds like you have a great plan, great job

[jasperandchar]

Andit your Christmas market will be a perfect location to celebrate your mum' s birthday, it's so cheery

[jasperandchar]

Good morning everyone.
Well life has thrown us another curve ball. I went to the dentist about six weeks ago to have a tooth extracted, and my dentist was sick so I got a new girl. before extracting my tooth she took my blood pressure, something I have never had done at the dentist before. She was shocked at how high my pressure was and advised I see my doctor, which was confusing because I had a physical the week prior and my pressure was fine, I even stopped at the drug store on the way home from the dentist and took it and it was normal so I shrugged it off as white coat syndrome. Fast forward two weeks and I was doing housework and starting feeling nauseous and had a very new to me type of headache, I then recalled the dentist had taken my pressure in my right arm because all the dental equipment was on my left side, so I dug out the portable monitor we have at home and took my pressure on my right and it was really really high..like 205 over 110 and normal on my left side.Off to the doctor I went and she immediately sent me for and ecg and it was not good, so an echo and stress test was scheduled for the following week. the cardiologist then sent me to Calgary on Thursday to have an angiogram and they found two blockages, one 90 % and one 70 % so I immediately had angioplasty done and two stents placed in the blocked artery. I am considering myself very lucky this was caught before I had a heart attack, I am home now and on the mend.If it wasn't for the dentist I wouldn't have picked up on this until it was too late, I fel very blessed. Needless to say Christmas will be a little more low key than usual but I am just happy to be home and healing.
I hope this is the last of the medical issues for us between my son's accident and my husband has his own heart issues it has been a bit of a tough year for us and my son has his last surgery on his ankle this Friday.I hope that is the end of it!!

My goodness you had angels on your shoulders my dear, very blessed for having just a new dentist to stand it that day. Wishing you and your family a speedy recovery.

[jasperandchar]

thriftygranny!!!! sending you prayers, health for your family, and wishes for a speedy recovery. 2014 was a tough year, but I believe 2015 will be a ray of sunshine

I was hooked up to BP machine at the dentist for tooth extraction once, but it was because I had requested nitrous oxide. man, what an interesting experience that was!

welcome to the thread