Five Frugal Things.

A favorite part of my day is the

bit of time I take to go down my

"Blog Buddies" list and read

the latest and greatest new posts.

Today, on her blog "Half Dozen

Daily", Carla shared her post she

called  "Five Frugal Things". I

decided to participate. My list:

1. I picked up the conditioner my local store ordered for me. They stock this product and it sells for $10. But when it goes on sale, it's $6. However, they always only have a couple of bottles on hand, so they offered to order me some cases so that I could take full advantage of the sale and stock up. Here's what it would have cost to buy this quantity at full price: 24 full 1 litre bottles x $10 = $240 + tax of $12 for a total of $252. With the sale, I ended up paying a lovely $144 + tax of $7.20 for a total of $151.20. My savings? A grand total of $100.80. Basically, I ended up with 10 bottles for free. A great deal and now my stash is full. I shouldn't have to buy this one indulgence of mine for a couple of years. With hair down to my butt, my conditioner is not just a luxury, it's a necessity but it doesn't hurt so much to buy a good quality product if I can get it at a decent price and buy in bulk. 

2. We went to the store for throat lozenges for my dh's cold and he asked if I wanted a treat. I declined as we had treats at home and there was no point in spending extra money for something we had at home. He agreed and we left the store with just the lozenges. 

3. Our Art Studio will be a fall/winter project that I'm looking forward to. We set aside $800 to purchase lights for the over 400 square feet of space that will be in constant use. Today I spotted an ad from our local home supply store and ended up ordering the lights as they were on sale and a really great sale! The bonus? We could use our store credit card, which is empty, and pay for the lights over the next 8 months, if we want to. I know that many do not advocate using store credit in this manner but for us, this has been a great way to get our materials without any interest or fees and not dipping in to our savings. Whenever we use this option, we take the total of the purchase and break it down to how many weeks the promotion is and then set up our account to automatically debit that amount or an amount we choose (most often this as I like to round up to even numbers and pay off before the end date, thus totally avoiding any interest at all). We also pay each week, making it even more affordable on our budget. Works so well but takes that extra measure of discipline to make it work out. Back to the deal. The lights would have been $734.96 (including tax) but we paid $524.96 (including tax). A savings of $210. But if you take the $800 we budgeted for, we actually saved $275.04. Even better!

4. Today we got a quote on getting our exterior painting done by a company. We'll get 2 more quotes and then choose the one that will give us the best bang for our buck. Part of the quote today include staining our deck. But we just spent $8 on a handy dandy stain applicator for the deck. We asked for that part of the quote for fun. After seeing the $400+ price tag to stain one deck (we have 2 more to do), we decided we'll do the work ourselves. A couple of hours, 2 cans of stain and our $8 tool will save us more than $1,000. Worth the effort!

5. Tonight we made our menu for the week, taking in to account any meetings and rehearsals we have. Then we went online and ordered our groceries. We could have picked them up tomorrow for a fee of $5 but chose to get them on Monday, when the fee is just $3. It's an action packed Sunday and we don't really need anymore food until Monday, so waiting the extra day is saving us $2 on the pick and pack fee, and more for not going in to the store and aimlessly wandering. Our budget for groceries each week is $200 (including household items needed like dish soap). Tonight, we spent $140.20, which includes tax, deposits and the pick and pack fee. Love this service. We order online, the next day we show up at our scheduled time (window of 2 hours), the groceries are loaded into our car, no tips allowed (I would if they would let us), lovely staff, fresh produces, great prices and the time and money it saves is adding up big time. I'm really looking forward to using this service in the winter. It will be so nice to order our food for the week and not have to get out of a warm cold on a chilly day to go into the store. Feels like such a luxury!

To summarize this savings day, our frugal ways have saved us as follows:

* $100.80 for the bulk conditioner buy

* $0 spent on a treat we didn't need

* $275.04 buying our studio lights on sale

* $1,000 to paint our own decks instead

* $59.80 saved by ordering our groceries online

This makes a grand total of $1,435.64 that we ended up saving or will save by purchasing frugally, by not purchasing, by doing the work ourselves and by waiting for awesome sales. 

How was your frugal day?

Any awesome deals or savings to share?