Marching Forward with Frugality & with Savings 2015 frugal chatter

[coupon girl]

anne Dougherty mentioned about carters 2.99 deals -she is a mod
-I love the carters deals -a few weeks back i got "ashlyn" a cute dress for 2.99 real fancy blue/gold stripes -sleeveless reg 26.00 for easter
plus had put away from last year a sleeper i paid 2.99 for-cant beat those prices

[Granger]

Okay Ladies...stop tempting me with the $2.99 deals!!!

I have not entered Target...I will not enter Carter's. REPEAT in head!!!

One of my goals is saying no. I need to stay out of stores to do so, lol.

[Angela273]

I've got some meals planned. I bought a 5+lb chunk of pork at NF for $1.77/lb on Thursday.
Tonight will be bbq marinated pork and pineapple kabobs. Tinfoil roasted onion with potato. I think cucumber salad to go with it.
About 1/3 of the piece of meat will be made into pulled pork with onion in the oven. We will probably eat it with buns from the freezer for supper tomorrow night before our meeting. If there is enough leftovers I will freeze it for a future meal.
The rest of the piece of meat will be roasted up in the oven in another pan with onion, carrot, etc.
I also trimmed and froze some small cubes for a future meal, possibly stirfry or sweet and sour.

The food was yummy, even our 2yr old son ate a fair bit of everything. There are two kabobs and some potatoes with onion for leftovers.

edit: The roast and the pulled pork are both currently in the oven. I am teaching Tuesday-Friday this week, so I try to be more organized when I know in advance.
Monday - 7:30pm meeting that we all attend
Tuesday - Bridal Shower for a teacher shortly after teaching that day. I have taught for this teacher 4 days this month. I bought her a card and am giving her $20 cash towards whatever she needs. She has been requesting gift cards to be able to repaint the inside of her fiance's house.
Wednesday - 5:45 LO's gymnastics.
Thursday - nothing special
Friday - 7:30 Estevan Masonic Lodge Friendship Night - free event

[avoncallingu]

I've put away the "snowman" theme on our sideboard and put out the Easter stuff. I'm not sure we'll even have any kidlets around here at Easter. But I wanted things to look more "Spring-ish." Going to get back to watching our favourite Sunday night TV shows.

[saundyl]

Angela: thanks for checking in, I was wondering where you had been.
Saundyl: even if they were your bio kids being the only female in a house of men is tough. Good for you to speak out, saying nothing only makes it worse.

Here are my best money saving tips & lots of the things are already noted.

• PMing-as you all know I was a chicken and never did this. Not I am pretty comfortable with it.
  
• I buy 90% of my groceries at RCCS and only use my PC MC. Last year I received $940.00 in free groceries.
  
• Likes others have said the library is your friend. We don’t buy books unless second hand or sometimes for a gift. But then only for the boys as they will re-read and everything the older son loved the younger was has loved as well. We are lucky in that we have two boys the love to read.
  
• I stopped buying coffee every day and now it’s a treat just a few times a week.
  
• I use every points program out there and track all my savings so in any year I can tell you how much we saved with them.
  
• We went to basic cable that was only to keep our internet cheaper. Before we watch something on Netflix’s we see if the library has it so we can avoid the extra streaming.
  
• Pay attention to the stockpile and make sure stuff is used in time. I also don’t buy stuff beyond what we can use and never bother with coupons for products we don’t use. I bought 5 boxes of vector when it was on a Check-51 offer and with the FPC I have turned that into 18 boxes, but since this is the only cereal DH uses it makes sense. Whereas I bought the special k also with a coupon, but redeemed all of the FPCs for strawberries since I have more than enough cereal that I eat & the kids loves strawberries.
  
• The one I am really trying to address this year is to not overbuy fresh food, I find this is easy to lose sight of can be such a waste
  
• I now also use a budget and that has been a huge eye opening for us.
  

Thank you lilo.
The the house full of males makes me feel for my dad when I was growing up he was the only male...with 4 daughters and my mom.

[saundyl]

Hi guys. I haven't been posting on SC much, but I'm still reading and liking posts. Monday is a no school day here, so I've been trying harder to work on potty training with LO while I have the 3 days home with him. I am teaching for the same teacher from Tue-Fri this week. That means that I will be paid as a sub for the first 3 days and then get paid at my class (temporary raise) for the 4th day.

I'm still using coupons, checking fliers, apps, points deals, etc. I haven't completed any trades on SC in a few months. I want to trade for some different good coupons again, but also for some $3 off Whiskas dry cat food coupons too. My wish list is up to date, but there aren't too many coupons on my trade list at the moment. The weekend that the $3 Whiskas coupon came in the fliers was a weekend that we didn't receive ANY of our fliers. The person just took the weekend off without a replacement, or something.

Glad to see you!

[saundyl]

So much going on in the world of canucks! I will try to go back on this post so I can catch up. Saundyl...sounds like you have your hands full. I raised 2 boys and a girl on my own. It was difficult. All of us have a pretty twisted sense of humour....but my boys seem to find things funny that my daughter and me find more hurtful. Very frustrating to say the least. All have been out of the house at one time or another but they are back...all are students. My 26 year old is only here for a couple of months. When he is with his younger brother I would swear I have 12 year olds living with me.
Biggest money mistake
Supporting my grown children when my income does not grant it. I have gone heavily into debt since they moved back in. It feels mean but I have informed them that I am moving when my lease is up in October. They do help with groceries but with the extra expenses and the mess its hardly compensation.
Frugal snacks
I love my sunflower seeds in the shell
popcorn of course
raw potatoes with salt
Activities
like others the library has so many resources
any park or beach
when my kids were young the drive in was free for them so we went with $5 pizza and our own pop and there were also free sprint car races in our area, as well as the children's festival etc

I love shellless sunflower seeds but rarely buy them. Our oldest has a habit of making jokes about hurting people which I do not find funny at all. My sense of humor is different from their moms...but I think we are slowly learning. I can tell today I feel better after saying something and he felt bad for behavior as he was rather cuddly again. Which he hasn't been since before Christmas.

[Natalka]

Okay Ladies...stop tempting me with the $2.99 deals!!!

I have not entered Target...I will not enter Carter's. REPEAT in head!!!

One of my goals is saying no. I need to stay out of stores to do so, lol.

I stay out of the stores as well, best money-saving ever!

Good morning, everyone!

[Andit]

Good morning, everyone.

Lily dog is a bit more perky than she's been all weekend. Here's hoping it's a sign things are improving (guessing that the cranberry juice, chicken broth & gallons of water to flush out the infection helped). Going to place a call to the vet later this morning to see what they have to say.

Better get going, I had already planned a lot for today. Now, I have even more things to cram into today. Will likely have to skip all naps.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day.

[jasperandchar]

@terry2144 not mean at all, I saw a show on tv not Gail Van oxlade but Suzie Orman (spelling?) who used to be on Oprah all the time and the discussion was about supporting or saving for children to attend university/college, the parents were encuring debt which they couldn't afford and she said "how awful will your grown children feel when you cannot retire"....geez it's simple facts so
don't worry about downsizing, we all need to realize what we can and can't do and it sounds like you have come to realize yours.

You should be proud and not embaraseed or ashamed!

[jasperandchar]

@Andit hope Lily is feeling better and glad your eye surgery was a success!

[jasperandchar]

@saundyl sorry to hear that the guys were not giving you the restpect you deserve.

Perhaps some button pushing and seeing how far they could go before you said something was in the cards.

Hopefully going forward everyone can be kind and sensitive to what they say, how they say it and learn to think twice before acting or saying things. hugs

PS we all need a good meltdown once in a while to reset the clocks & boundaries, i had one 2 weeks ago when I made pork carnitas and well things have changed in a good way

[jasperandchar]

Question for you smart folks, I used a personalized coupon on March 4th which was spend $25.00 get 20x the points, I have not gotten the points yet and I'm wondering normally how long it takes, the coupon was scanned and shows on my receipt (coupon) with the code but no points yet, AND I stupidly didn't write down when the points should be awarded by . I now have made a mental note to send myself a reply email to myself when I use these coupons going forward so i will know by when the points should be awarded.

[lizzie bargain]

I think it varies J and C but often the pts are awarded a month or so down the road-do you have the original email you can look back on or did you delete it?

[sweet sparrow]

I have lots of reading to catch up on with all your great tips and answers to the QOTD. This weekend, I was skimming the posts and saw lilo's about the library books. I forgot that I had some that needed to be renewed last Thursday so I now have lots more owing on my library account. I never had fines before LO and could make it out of the house for something other than groceries.

We went to a potluck this weekend and I finally broke out the food processor and used it for the first time ever. I made hummus and vegan gluten free brownies and they were wonderful! DH even said the brownies were really good so I'm quite pleased with them. Now I wish I bought more tins of those black beans when they had the points attached rather than just two. I'm glad I bought the bag of sesame seeds rather than buying the tub of tahini at the grocery store. As a bonus, LO seems to like hummus as well and is eating it on her pita slices. She's been getting finicky again lately and not finishing her meals. So far, she's rejecting ground beef.