13 Specific Frugal Living Tips I Use to Save THOUSANDS

you know I talk really really fast so let's go it's our favorite time of the month what are the tips and tricks I use to save $1,394 and20 cents in the month of April I'm going to tell you starting with the smallest amount of savings and working our way up to the really big juicy ones first tip is the month of April is when my birthday is and so I was on the hunt for birthday freebies however things are different now than they used to be the last time I remember like hunting for birthday freebies I was able to get a single one I got a medium fry at McDonald's that was it and I looked I went on I think it was like the penny hoarder Real Simple Magazine there were a couple websites I went on to that purported to have a giant list of all the birthday freebies you could get but almost all of them required minimum purchases they required me driving long distances to get to locations because there's not a lot of different kinds of stuff in my town or three it required downloading an app and having been active on that app IE buying things at their establishment before the date of my birthday like they had at Dairy Queen so I really struck out I don't know if any of you have had luck recently getting birthday freebies but uh yeah the only thing I could find was uh french fries happy birthday to me second thing month of April uh a lot of people were very excited about the Eclipse which was right here in Maine you could see the full solar eclipse you know what I was doing that day I was at the eye doctor because my baby scratched me in the cornea right right there in the eyeball and so I was in a tremendous amount of pain and I I was I was I was doing stuff there so I got some free samples and some coupons at the ey doctor and I forgot that you can ask for such things when you're at your local doctor's office or your pediatrician's office or your dentist office or apparently your eye doctor if you need to go so I saved $560 and I would have saved another $20 if I didn't lose the receipt because I didn't end up even using one of the over-the-counter medicines they suggested I buy and I would have returned it if I could find my receipt so that's just a a little reminder out there to everyone to have a household place where the receipts go number three uh this is going to be a very obvious one if you've been doing frugal living for more than a hot minute but because I recognize that some people come across these videos and they are newbies they've never thought to save money before when I do polls about where people find themselves in like the financial Spectrum there are people who respond to the polls of people who watch my channel who make lots and lots of money people who were born into actual wealth like actual wealthy people um and if they're watching this channel now I can only assume that either their parents taught them to be wealthy because they were being Frugal or they've fallen on hard times and those kind of people might not know that you should save all of the gift bags you have I'm actually going to be getting rid of some gift bags in the future because I really don't think I need like 30 gift bags from my wedding six years ago I have phased out of the part of my life where a lot of people are getting married regularly kind of given away all the ones I need for that however I still keep all of the baby ones because my friends keep having babies so we got to keep the baby gift bags around don't let them overwhelm you like once you have too many starting to get rid of some of them if you want to go to the store and buy brand new gift bags they're like $5 a gift bag now from what I was looking at at target.com and uh I got three gift bags for I think it was my daughter's birthday was it my birthday but anyhow we save $15 by saving our gift packs number four I did something that was very hard for me and I know is hard for a lot of other people out there I was at the salvage store in town if you've ever been to Maine you might have heard of madens you should have bought it when you saw it at modens the cashier started to ring me up incorrectly and I had to tell them oh excuse me you need to add the 40% coupon to all of these items here and he had to call the manager over and had to have someone go and double check and it was a little embarrassing but it means that I saved $21.60 just from very politely saying oh excuse me this this is ring up incorrectly and number five this is out of order in terms of the numbers but I wanted to mention it since I just talked about this shopping trip at Martens I had to find some new summer clothes over the past six years there have been like a grand total of four or five months when I wasn't breastfeeding or pregnant and so there's been a lot of fluctuation in weight and sizes and clothing I had like three shirts that fit for summertime upcoming and believe me I've been looking at yard sales I've been looking at thrift stores and I haven't found things in my size that were good quality that I was willing to pay C the price they were asking for it so I went to Martin's at the salvage store I can't believe I'm defending only on a Frugal Living Channel what I feel the need to defend my choice to shop at a salvage store doing that did save me $250 compared to if I had bought those clothes actually new six I actually mentioned this Frugal tip in a community post here on the channel I found on the website Groupon which I'll leave a link down below if you've never heard of Groupon there is a code to purchase a year of Costco membership for $40 off which I actually just got my rebate coupon in my email this morning and so I got $40 off on a Year's subscription to Costco which cost $60 normally I have never shopped in costu in my life we just got the first one here in Maine a couple months ago and I'm super stoked to try to go I got a couple really good pieces of advice in that Community post but if you have any others if you're a Costco Shopper and you have any other pieces of advice of like big lost leaders like so far I've heard the rotisserie chicken and toilet paper are two of their big lost leaders that they tend to see at Costco but if you have any more advice for me I would really appreciate it in the comments seven I actually got this idea from watching a video on Kate Caden's Channel she's going through a big declutter spree over there she was saying that while she was decluttering she found money so I'm like man wonder if I can do that turns out I can I found all kinds of stuff what did I find um I found a Target gift card that I didn't remember that I had had it was for $10 I found cash in a couple really random places but the big thing I was super excited about is that I found a tent like a camping tent that I think my Eagle Scout brother gave me when he didn't need it anymore and I I literally had on my to hunt for list you know that the the list that I keep of all the things when I go yard sailing or thrift shopping the things that I we actually want or need as a family and so I don't get distracted by all the other findes that you might see at such a lovely place with cheap prices on things but I found a camping tent in my basement and I was about to buy one so cleaning your house having an inventory of the things in your house fewer things in your house to keep track of all good uh uses of your time because you never know what you might have already bought I think to people who've been in their homes longer than I have who've had a chance to let the years accumulate their stuff um but now I'm realizing that it it can happen to all of us so hopefully we'll be doing some at least backyard camping with the kids this year I don't know if we'll make it out to an actual campsite but I mean that's Peak Peak Frugal vacation there right oh I didn't tell you so all told all the stuff that I found in my house tent gift cards cash I I saved $50 by just cleaning oh and speaking of that Target gift card I really wish I had found it earlier in the month so Target once sometimes twice a year will do their um car seat recycling program where if you take an old car seat and you put it in the Box they have at the front of the store they will will take care of it and recycle it and in exchange they will give you a coupon for I think 20% off that you can use on the purchase of specific Big Ticket items in the baby section it's unfortunately not just 20% off at the whole store but still I had I had a baby a year ago baby does not fit in baby car seat anymore and I I needed a new one car seats are actually one of the few things I would refuse to buy used unless it was like a close friend and I knew they had not been in a car accident in the time that that was owned by them because car seats can have their uh warranties voided if they've been in car accidents I it's just not something I'm willing to take a risk with I recognize that that's like a personal thing Choice people can make but for me personally I don't buy used car seats so when I knew I needed to buy a new car seat here's here's where it's Sneaky like six months ago I found an old car seat for free on the side of the road I took it it has been sitting in my garage for 6 months and when was car seat recycling program time I took that and I put it in the bin and I got my coupon for it so I I was going to be getting a coupon however I noticed at Target and I heard the same thing happens at Walmart they are starting to have lower prices for things online compared to when you're shopping in store because they're trying to get more people to use their app or their website I probably to compete with Amazon right so I thought oh my gosh it's lower online so I used my coupon bought the car seat online and then and then it was annoying I waited around until they said actually we don't have it and I had to go home without a car seat until it came to my house a few days later I have since heard from a very nice person in the comments of either one of my videos or my community post that Target will price match online prices in their store Walmart will not so if you see lower prices for things online at target.com you can apparently show it to a cashier and they should be honoring that price that they see online uh if you've tried this hack I would appreciate knowing that too cuz I wish I had known that and could have gotten the car seat that day but I am not uh complaining about waiting a few days for a car seat and I by doing that kind of little runaround saved me $71 compared to the like the price in store for the cheapest car seat I saw was $190 in the in the store they have $24 with the coupon and then another $47 because I bought the car seat online so the more you know all right number nine here in the state of main a lot of people will have two sets of tires they will have their allseason tires and their snow tires snow tires you put on when it's snowy because they'll grip the road better and you don't want to have your snow tires on in the summertime because they do bad things to the road and had actually might be illegal I can't remember but so generally we flip-flop year to year however this year my husband and I made the decision not to switch our at Tires over because he doesn't do a lot of driving for work I have a lot of flexibility being a stay-at-home mom that if if there was a storm I just wouldn't go out that day and because the risk was so low that we would be caught in a snowstorm out while we were driving like we we're home a lot because the risk was so low of there being an issue while we're out driving we decided that that small amount of risk was worth taking for the savings of $75 which is what it would cost to have them put on or taken off and that's one of the interesting things about being Frugal right is you get to decide what risks are worth taking to you like some people wouldn't dare eat leftover food because what if there's germs some people are very willing to take the possible risk of contamination to germs from you the day before or someone else in your family the day before and some people are not and I just think it's really interesting that like Risk is very personal and how much risk you're willing to take can save or cost you quite a bit of money and that's not even talking about like Insurance type risk you might be surprised but the month of April has already seen a few good yard sales for me and I have found a couple things already that I were on my to hunt for list that I was very excited about finding and actually one one that I told my husband when I came home I'm like you're going to think this is weird so firstly I got a Pyrex casserole dish with like like the brand name Pyrex with the little glass lid because I didn't have a casserole dish that had a lid like that and we're doing more hosting of events at our house and I wanted to have I wanted to have one and it was $3 and I thought you know what I can afford $3 especially when you go online and see what they might actually cost I also got a new tripod which my camera is sitting on because my old one broke and now I have one that works and it's very nice and lastly here's the weird one um I bought a terrarium for a dollar and I thought my husband would think it's weird and he's like wait like for Turtles we should get Turtles I don't think we're going to get Turtles honestly I think I'm probably just going to turn around and sell it because I think you could probably get more than a dollar for it if I put it up on Marketplace so I think that's what I'm going to do I think I'm going to flip that one but in total um the value of those three items when I priced it out was $100 I spent $6 for those three items and so that is a savings of $94 you know my good old favorite the buy nothing group they were a big score for me this month one of the videos I'm planning on making in the future has to do with the used clothing inventory as outlined and explained by our favorite Amy decision in the tight wide Gazette I got three kids and gez one of the biggest surprises in Parenthood is just how fast the kids grow and how much of a job it is to manage their wardrobes because you know for adults you might change your wardrobe with the season but you don't have to think about buying a completely separate wardrobe every 6 months and you do for kids at least when they're little like these ones so I'm always trying to keep a lookout for upcoming sizes so I don't hit oh you had a growth spurt you need a new coat now I like to think ahead I snagged two coats from my buy nothing group if I had bought them new these coats would have been $140 total but I got them for free I'm going to add them to my clothing inventory for my kids so I'll know that I have two coats that should be ready to go for next winter if you've never been on Reddit before there is an excellent Frugal subreddit and one of the questions I saw asked recently is what is the thing that you make from scratch or that you do yourself that saves you the most money and of course most people are like agreeing that cooking at home and making your own coffee are two of the biggest savers of money but the third one I was seeing a lot of people talking about is doing DIY projects at home and not like I'm going to make DIY home decor with pallets but like we needed a new garbage disposal my husband and I ever since we've been in this house have recognized that the garbage disposal sounds a bit like a jet engine when you turn it on and I know garbage disposals are very weird to people who don't live in America but they're loud and so we we finally had ours kick the bucket we came downstairs one day and it was just leaking it had like rusted through or something it turns out the garbage disposal was almost as old as I am it was like three or four years younger and so it it was ready it had had its life so we thought about calling a plumber because we when we had a plumber for another emergency about a year ago he priced out what it would cost to replace the garbage disposal I mean I think he quoted the project at $500 total for labor and parts and we didn't want to pay that so we watched a couple YouTube videos and when I say we I mean him my husband my husband watched a couple videos and it turns out that it's actually it's a pretty simple project if you just have a couple basic tools you can change your own garbage disposal there's some very very simple to follow YouTube videos on the topic and so we went to Lowe's and we got in garbage disposal there and we put it in and again when I say we I mean him he put it in himself I held up a bucket at one point and that was my contribution and so because of all his good hard work we saved at least $250 if the plumber has raised his prices in recent times then it would have been would have been more although I recently did find out after the fact that you can also hire a handyman as opposed to a plumber because it's such a simple job that many people can do by themselves you can also a handyman to do a garbage disposal replacement if you were someone like with physical disabilities or something and couldn't B down and do it yourself and they are cheaper than a plumber so ta and finally you guys might not think this one counts I'm not sure but I was very excited about it and I wanted to share it anyway um there is a big fundraiser in our town that does Penny auctions which is you know you you buy like $1 for a sheet of numbers that are all your number and you rip off the little pieces all with the same number and you put them in the buckets if you want to win a prize and I bought five sheets and I put like three and a half of them all in one bucket because because my daughter has been wanting dance lessons and she really wanted to try it we were willing to pay for it we would we would have saved up and and made it work but they this one place in town they will donate one year free tuition of dance lessons if you win in the penny auction and guess who won in the penny auction oh my gosh I was so excited when I got a phone call about it my daughter's been wearing her tap shoes and dancing around the house and we're going to get to go to a recital and it's super cute the total value of dance lessons for a year is uh $378 it's technically not something anyone could do because there's an element of chance right you're you might not win at the penny auction my husband also didn't win the picnic table he wanted at the other auction on the other side of the gymnasium we we knew ahead of time like for a month or two ahead of time that this was an option and I specifically went through this Fair uh my only intention in going to the penny auction was to put things in that bucket and so I'm really glad I'm really glad we won I can't wait all told that is a whopping $1 139420 I think that might be my second best month doing Frugal Living tips I'm also planning if you're at the end of the video you get the secret I've also today was working on a giant Master list of every Frugal tip I've ever mentioned in any one of these how much I save money this month and so maybe in December I'm hoping to have a giant video that talks about all the money I've saved and not going through every single tip again but kind of cumulatively looking for Trends picking out what worked best what didn't now I'm rambling if you enjoyed this type of content and you would like to help support this channel you leave a like on the video that really helps the algorithm and I will see you next week bye YouTube

Channel: Homegrown Hillary

Views: 12,697

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Id: yiVVCPmJXZg

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024