Things I Did Last Week That Were Frugal

Well let's see....

Usually I stick pretty close to a meal plan but last week(Thanksgiving Week)I didn't even DO a plan ahead so I can't even put that down. lol

1.  Our den sofa was a wreck.  Cracked, springs gone and fabric ripped all to heck. Plus the Chihuahua use to like to LICK it so you know it smelled really bad. ;-)
We have needed to replace it for ages.  The Sunday before Thanksgiving I got a special coupon from K-Mart online offering me some really good deals plus an additional discount on some items.  And one of those items was furniture.
Now I wouldn't normally even look at K-Mart to purchase furniture but I started playing around with the online shopping cart and coupons to see what price I could get something down to.
And here is what we set up in the den on Monday evening to replace our sad sofa........

Matching His & Her rocker recliners! lol
We had been discussing just getting a pair of recliners once we pitched the sofa.  After all, we hardly ever have enough people sitting in our house together to warrant buying another big bulky sofa.  This den is quite small so these fit much better and are more comfortable.

These are $279.99 recliners.
And I paid(after discounts, coupons & K-Mart "Shop your Way" points)$302.43 for Both.
So I got them for almost half price.

We went to K-Mart on Sunday to check them out in person(because I would never buy something like this online without testing it out),came home and bought them online with an in-store pick-up.

Before I get bashed for spending crazy amounts of cash(well, for me $300 IS crazy amounts of cash!lol), let me say this--I realize that just keeping what you already have and making do is preferable to spending money on new stuff, but at some point, you do have to breakdown and buy things....as long as you have the money saved up for the purchase.
We try to not-spend until things get to that point.  We also do a good amount of research and comparison shopping before pulling the trigger on a purchase.  Buying on impulse is deadly to your financial health, even if you do have gobs of spare money laying around.  Keep being impulsive and pretty soon those gobs of money are gone. 8-))

2.  Held off buying many toiletries/HBA this year until the Black Friday sales hit at Rite-Aid.  Looking at my spending log I did NO Rite-Aid shopping between March and September of this year.  We have been using up the stockpile of toiletries/many paper goods/HBA/etc. I had gotten at R-A in the last year or two.  There was a tiny bit of Rite-Aid shopping in Jan., Feb. and Oct. but I took full advantage of the sales this past week during Black Friday week to save the most on products I buy there.  In November I spent $14.74 at Rite-Aid and brought home items which would have cost me $397.51 if bought at regular retail.  I don't buy at regular retail but even with the everyday sale prices, I still saved a large sum over sales prices throughout the year versus deep discounts for Black Friday.  Plus shopping at Rite-Aid is NOTHING like braving the hoards at the mall and big dept. stores Black Friday weekend. 8-)

Now once I use up my +Up Rewards on things we need in the coming weeks, my Rite-Aid shopping will fade away into my usual infrequent trips.

3.  I converted spare cash sitting in an account earning basically nothing in interest into gift cards at places we need to spend--home improvement/hardware stores.  This is money that will need to be shelled out anyway over the course of next year for repair and maintenance of our home. (Last year's stack of gift cards went toward purchasing the bamboo flooring we had the handyman service put down in our living/dining room.)  By "spending" the cash now instead of next year, I got a benefit greater than the 5 pennies of interest earned from leaving the cash in a bank--I got +Up Rewards at Rite-Aid that are "money" toward toiletries/HBAs purchased in that store.

4.  I needed to refill 3 prescriptions so instead of having them filled where they were, I transferred them to the K-Mart pharmacy(since I was going there on Monday anyway to get the new chairs)and
received $75 in gift cards for my efforts.   These are meds that don't have any refills so I won't need to go back to K-Mart for further refills if I want to have the new prescriptions filled elsewhere.

5.  We downsized the number of dishes and amounts prepared for Thanksgiving.   Smaller turkey, less sides, that sort of thing.  It kept us from feeling like we HAD TO overeat to get through all that food and most of us only had 1 plate of food this time.  Less food made and bought, less money spent.

And you will be shocked, shocked I tell ya!, to know that the only Cyber Monday shopping I did yesterday was 4 items on Amazon--3 Christmas gifts and 1 book that #2 Son needed.  He told me he needed a certain music theory book so I went ahead and bought 3 gifts in that order to get the free shipping....3 gifts that would have been bought at some point in the coming week anyway.

And another 3 check marks go up on my gift completion list.
Yay!

I really need to sit down this week and make out that list on paper(it's been in my head so far and getting too large to keep there!lolol)and see where I am in regards to finishing all my gift shopping.

So what did you do that was frugal last week?


Sluggy