My first couponing excursion was a true mess. I was so excited to start couponing. I had done DAYS worth of research on all the “hot deals”. I thought I was all ready to jump right in and well, I DID jump right in – head first, without looking. I think we ALL know how those situations end up, right? In all my research I hadn’t looked at any couponing tips for beginners.
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So, you are interested in living more frugally or you are trying to live more frugally, but are struggling. We have all been there! It is really difficult to go from living one way and then changing things around. It takes conscious thought, planning and some self-control. When my husband and I got married, he was used to not being as thoughtful and frugal with his budget as I was accustomed to. We had both decided to go back to school and move to the beach right after our wedding. With these changes, our finances were going to be particularly tight. So, it was really important to get him into a frugal mindset. Learning how to make frugal decisions is really important. If you don’t learn how to do this, you will likely have failure on your path to living frugally.
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When I first started living by a strict budget, I wondered if that meant “fun” things were never going to be on the table again. Luckily, that is not the case! Ok course, living by a strict budget does mean thinking more about things before spending money. You should build some funds into your budget for “fun” things otherwise you likely won’t have a reasonable budget. And if your budget fails it will be hard to try to stick to it and make it work.
So, if you are looking for a little fun, you may need to find some cheap things to do. Just because we are talking about cheap things to do, that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun. They may, however, take a little more thinking or creativity at first….
I don’t think anyone would disagree that saving money is a GOOD idea. However, many people feel like the can NOT save money. Afterall, if you are in debt or living paycheck to paycheck where are you going to get even more money to put into savings? The fact is once you actually LEARN how to start saving money you will find that it is not as impossible as you may think it is.
When my husband and I first started dating, we were living paycheck to paycheck even though we were already living frugally. We desperately wanted to move to a different state, but moving is super expensive. What we needed was to learn how to start saving money so that we would have enough for our move. We did a lot of traveling for work on the weekends and we had already learned how to travel cheaply and eat cheap while on the road. But at the end of the day it never seemed like we had any money left to save. We needed to do SOMETHING different….
Do you ever do something and think, “wow, how cool/smart/awesome am I that I thought this up“? This was me, about 10 years ago. I made this large crockpot meal, had some leftover broth and decided to make soup. Well, since the first meal I had made was plenty for a few days, I decided to toss that soup into a freezer bag and freeze it for later. Then I thought, well, how efficient of me?! Two meals, both cheap and hardly any time spent. Plus now I have a healthy, cheap meal I can heat up later. GENIUS! Ok, so, turns out I wasn’t the ONLY one with the idea to make freezer meals (haha!) If you are wondering what are freezer meals, let me tell you all the benefits of freezer meals!
Well, freezer meals are pretty much exactly what they sound like. Freezer meals are meals that you pre-make and then stick in the freezer for easy (and fast!) reheating at a later date. Yes, they are as awesome as they sound! A full meal all ready to go – without paying top dollar for junky store “freezer meals” (ya know, those not so awesome tv dinners?).
You can put freezer meals into freezer bags – I splurge and get these Freezer Bags with Zippers. I have tried the other bags that aren’t “freezer bags” and I have tried freezer bags without the zippers. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Quite frankly, the additional money is worth it to me to know that the bags are going to keep my food fresh until I am ready to eat it. If you want to store your freezer meals in containers that are re-useable, that is also totally do-able. We love these Pyrex dishes for storing our freezer meals.
You can take pretty much any meal you’ve made and stick it in the freezer for later. Casseroles, quiche, soups, roasts the list could go on and on.
We have covered what are freezer meals, how to make them. Now why do you want to make freezer meals?
Freezer meals are pretty super duper! Freezer meals can be made super cheap. Of course you could get some expensive steak and cook it up and freeze it and that wouldn’t be so cheap. But, in general, freezer meals can be made very cheaply. Think about this, you go to the store and they have fresh broccoli on sale because it’s in season and it’s DIRT cheap. Well, normally, you’d buy whatever you could use before it goes bad right? Not if you are making freezer meals!
BUY ALL THE BROCCOLI!
Ok, ok maybe not buy ALL the broccoli. But do buy a lot of it. Cook it up and make freezer meals with it. This way you can buy perishable things on sale in bulk. Also, if you LOVE something seasonal, buy a bunch and don’t pay outrageous prices when it is not in season.
Another benefit of freezer meals is time. Freezer meals save SO MUCH TIME! Think about this, if you are cooking a casserole it doesn’t really take THAT much extra time to make two. So, you can make two and freeze one for later. Basically, you can make freezer meals in bulk which will save you so much time.
Last, but not least, another benefit of freezer meals is convenience. Now, let’s be honest, how many times have we run and gotten takeout because it was easier or faster and we were short on time? Takeout (generally) is NOT cheap and isn’t that healthy. But, if you are short on time and you have freezer meals, just take them out heat them up and you’re ready to go!
Now that you are convinced you must make freezer meals, what will you try first?
When I turned 25 my dad bought me a crockpot (or slow cooker) for my birthday. I immediately thought, does this make me officially old? I am getting cookware as a birthday present. I had never used a slowcooker or crockpot before and I couldn’t figure out why he would think of this for me. Afterall, I will admit, cooking in general is not my forte. Well, my daddy is much wiser than I will ever be (he also loves – like I do – things that have a purpose). Since I wouldn’t want anything to go to waste (not using something like this is like throwing someone else’s money right in the trash), I set out to learn about crockpot meals and why I should be making them. I quickly discovered that there are many reasons you should be making crockpot meals and couldn’t believe I hadn’t been making them sooner!
Since that fateful birthday (where I now feel empowered with knowledge instead of just plain ‘ol old), I use my crockpot at least once a week. Seriously, I do!…
I have my own home gym. That sure does sound like an EXPENSIVE prospect, doesn’t it? Well, I can tell you, it doesn’t have to be! When I started putting together my own home gym, I wanted to get the best equipment possible for as little as possible.…
Some girls love to workout their abs, some girls love to workout their legs – THIS GIRL loves to workout her arms! So, I have found the best arm exercises without weights that I can do at home.
I will openly admit that triceps are my favorite muscle. It might be a little weird, but that’s me! I am not really sure why, maybe it’s the cool horseshoe shape they make. Maybe I just don’t want wiggly chicken wings under my arms. …
A few years ago, I started researching eating organically. Eating healthy has always been important to me and so once I knew the benefits or organic foods I knew that I wanted to make the switch. At the time we were on a very strict and very small monthly food budget. As part of our frugal living, we did a lot of couponing (and still do) to make sure that we hit our budget goals.
So, thinking about how to set our new food budget was a bit scary. We could cut some things out and tighten down in other areas to make a little more room in our food budget, but we couldn’t expand it too much.
We needed a way to figure out our average food cost per month. …
I spent several years of my life traveling every weekend. Most times my trips would be several hours one way with the return trip that same day. So, essentially I would need an entire days worth of food on the road. It was really important that I stayed in good shape – so just binging on junk was not an option. I also needed to spend as little money as possible. So cheap food ideas were a must for me.
I spent a lot of time thinking of all the possible cheap food ideas I could use when traveling. It took a little doing, some trial and error. But being the frugal kinda gal I am, I ended up with lots of tips and tricks for cheap food ideas to get my travel food as cheaply as possible. …
