I really wanted a giant 3m square picnic rug. The one I want has a cute matching cooler bag and is $270 all in. But it’s also made of plastic … So I decided that I’ll go through our rug collection and will allocate some of the grungier rugs to being picnic rugs and when we wear them out, I’ll eventually get a fancy one. We have too many rugs already, they can be shuffled around.
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Things I plan to do to save money in the near-ish future:
- Be satisfied with TJ’s coffee until the website I order the really good stuff from has another sale. I’m sure they’ll have something for Black Friday.
- DO NOT buy any more tea until stash has been drunk!
- Eat down food stash, especially assuming that we do end up moving. We have a LOT of food right now and a scheduled Imperfect Foods delivery, which isn’t very big and is mostly meat for Boyfriend, coming tomorrow. Or at least I do, a good chunk of it is stuff Boyfriend won’t eat.
Really, we should be able to coast on our existing food until Thanksgiving, for which we do need a couple of items like whipped cream for pie, and mushrooms.
Rough meal plan for the week:
- Breakfasts: either fruit smoothie or oatmeal with homemade jam/leftover frozen blueberries. Today we had eggs and potatoes.
- 1 portion of leftover mushroom pasta that needs eaten soon-ish.
- i have 4 pint jars of white bean chili. Am going to freeze one and thaw it back out and see how it freezes; it has dairy in it so I am not sure if it’s going to have a weird texture thing. This test will inform how fast I have to finish this off; I don’t mind eating the same thing a few days in a row though.
- Leftover taco salad - I had a chunk of tofu in the freezer so I thawed that out and crumbled it and mushed it up with the spicy fake ground beef we made the other day, to stretch it. I think this will work. This also will use an avocado.
- Brown rice pasta with either ratatouille and goat cheese, or with pesto.
- TJ’s mushroom flatbread; this will be 2 meals for me on account of the high sodium content.
- Homemade pizza (well, sorta homemade, we have some plain flatbreads that will be the crust). I will put the last of the garden orange mini peppers on this and also the rest of the goat cheese.
- I found an unopened jar of tahini and I have dried chickpeas so I think I am going to attempt homemade hummus at some point.
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I’ve noticed that food waste happens for us because the fridge gets so overwhelming. I am going to put money into buying bins I like to save on wasted food and also the takeout that comes from all the overwhelm.
I also loathe plastic and all the waste that we produce some some sustainable packaging is also coming my way.
ETA: THERE INSTEAD OF POSTING ABOUT UT ONCE A MONTH, I FINALLY BOUGHT ONE CONTAINER
wheeeeee
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Oh I love it. I’ve saved 100% off a few things recently!
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I’m making the thoughtful decision to order coffee because the company I order from is a) having a good early Black Friday sale and b) throwing in a free bag of coffee with each order. Also because c) the TJ’s coffee I bought is weaker so I am using more of it when brewing, so, maybe not much of a savings after all?
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I want some pretty planner stickers! Shiny new things!
We’ll, I just realised I have a box of stickers from when I did scrapbooking that are being wasted by being unused. No, I’m not using them on fancy layouts and I spent lots of money on them, but I get no joy from them being in a box.
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Hi, frugal friends! It is too late for me to do anything with this info in a timely way, but I’d love your input so I can do things differently in the future.
I’m not a big tech upgrade person, so I tend to just buy a new phone whenever my current phone is broken beyond repair. This means that I’m without a phone for a bit, so I have to factor in convenience when buying a new phone, and that can make it a more expensive purchase.
I’m curious how my more frugal friends handle it? I guess the answer is, just accept you’ll be without a phone for a few weeks, and let annoying consequences be annoying?
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Perdue Farms is having another sale y’all. If you need to stock up on chicken now’s the time. One of the better deals is the four pack bundle of the chicken strips. Regular price is around $52 but is on sale for $30. I grabbed 4 of those so I can have 16 packs of strips already pre-cut for my convenience.
https://www.perduefarms.com/en-US/bulk-chicken-breast-strips/B-FCSTP4-B.html
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I’m intrigued - how long do your phones usually last? Do they usually die from a catastrophic event?
I’m also not a tech upgrade person, but I also tend not to be a phone dropper (and I always have a case). So my phones usually last 4+ years - I only upgrade when things start crashing, or updates are no longer being offered, calls are being dropped all the time, etc. So I usually have a bit of warning before it fails completely, so I have time to shop around and there’s no gap in phone ownership.
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OK, all good questions! They usually last 3-4 years. Of my last three phones, two met their ends when dropped in a heavy duty case (this is biphobic), and one slowed down and froze too much back when Apple was very noticeably slowing down older phones. I did have warnings for 2/3 of those phones, so I could think more strategically when I can tell a phone is approaching the end of its life. I could shift my thinking from “I’m buying a phone when I don’t absolutely need one, which is bad”* to “I’m looking into this now so I don’t have to pay a convenience fee later.”
*Obviously just for me, I have no opinions on the phone-buying habits of others
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I started looking for a new phone when my last one was beginning to have some major problems, dropping calls/battery drain…etc. this made it possible to find a good deal that saved us a few hundred dollars each by being super strategic in my purchase(my husband needed a new phone too).
Having been in the position where my phone randomly died during a work trip where I was driving around Texas meeting with prospects and I had to buy a phone RIGHT NOW; I highly recommend the take your time approach.
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You guys are blowing my mind, I never considered this as an option.
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Both of last 2 phones lasted just over 3 years. S7 stopped charging reliably and security updates were stopped (I wouldn’t worry for personal stuff but taking work calls through my cell I am more cautious). S5 before that was just slow and entered a boot loop a few times before recovering… my Human found me a good deal on refurb S7s (like $250) so I carpe’d that diem.
Basically I guess I look for signs of impending death before it actually happens? Also keeping timing in mind, like if it’s glitchy/slow/annoying and over 3 years I start looking, before that I might look for repair options.
Not sure if I count as frugal since I pre-ordered the S21 for future proofing reasons 
Hoping I can make it to 4 yrs or even 5!
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Yeah I do way too much hiking/other outdoors stuff to risk total phone failure! It’s a huge peace of mind thing for me to plan ahead, in addition to the cost savings
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So I (former phone reviewer here) try to pay attention to the first signs that a phone is having issues. I take into account age as well as performance and OS. First, I try to address any performance issues myself (usually by clearing shit off my phone) but if the issues return and the phone is around 4+ years old…I know the end is probably coming. So then I look at the next several times of year there will probably be phone sales and I figure out how far I can push it.
Real example:
DH told me his phone was starting to lag and close out of apps randomly in June. I cleared some stuff off and it was better, but not great. It was still closing out of apps but less often. That’s when I went “ok he needs a phone soon.” I thought I might get him one during back to school sales in September, but he said his phone was functioning pretty much the same as it had been after my initial “fix”, so I decided to wait for black Friday. I could probably push it to Christmas or New Year’s sales, but we’re traveling in January and I want one of us to have a new phone for that since mine is quite old so I’ll get him one at the end of November, hopefully on sale!
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This inspired me to make an appointment to get my phone battery replaced. I have a 1st gen iPhone SE and the battery has been crapping out very quickly lately. I’ve had the phone for 4.5 years so a replacement wouldn’t be out of the question, but I’d like to keep my familiar phone as long as possible. Plus I’d be looking at getting one of the minis since I want a small phone and I really don’t want to pay $750+. It looks like the battery replacement is $49 so if that buys me even just another 6-12 months it would be worth it.
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Nice job keeping it running for so long! That’s pretty impressive. I wish tech were sold via subscription with a base chassis and periodic upgrades included.
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I’ve only had one phone that totally died on me, so I always keep my previous phone as a backup. The phone call and text bit always seems to work fine even if all the apps are too slow or not updated enough to use.
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