Frugal tips, random ones

Just a few random frugal ideas or tips.

• When you are going to buy something ask yourself if you NEED it or WANT it!!! I really did a doozie and spent $40 on Girl Scout Cookies!! What the heck? Do I NEED $40 in cookies? NO! Does my body or hips need it? NO! Do you children need it? NO! So, this was an opps for me! What have you bought and regretted?
• If it is cold put on a sweater. There is no reason the heat needs to be blasting in the house. I keep our thermostat at 60 degrees, F. At night only.
  
• Shop with coupons. www.thegrocerygame.com is a GREAT website. For only $1 a week or a little bit more for more then one store you can get a list of all the sale items that match coupons for the lowest price of them.
• I do not pay over $1.50 for a box of NAME BRAND cereal! But usually spend only $1.00. If there isn't any on sale, I won't buy it. There are other, cheaper, ways to feed the family breakfast. Waffles and pancakes are cheap and most of the ingredients are ones that are common baking items. I'll post my favorite waffle one later.
• Recycle! I don't know why I never did it before but I just started taking the kids and recycling cans and bottles. They only take ones that have a CRV (California Redemption Value) on them. I rarely drink soda but water bottles are used here and we even can take the cans from the weekly Sunday-night-dinner at my dad's house. The last two times we have gone we got about $4-5.00. This is not much but it makes it where we can get a 1/2 gallon of milk and some other small item. It all adds up!!!
• If you can, try to find it free or cheaper. This applies to everything you buy!!!
• Return things! I recently took a red eared slider to the pet store. We receieved the turtle for free but after having it for two weeks I decided it was too much. The tank got dirty too easy. Baby K and Little D were not only over feeding it but touching it all the time. Turtles can carry salmonella so this then meant me being on top of them washing their hands every time they touched the turtle. Anyways.. I took it to the pet store. We did not buy it here but they do have turtles that they sell. So, they gave me 1/2 the price they'd sell it for for store credit. I spent the $7.50 and got a few guppies for our fish tank. A week later I realized I still had all of our turtle food (all opened containers) and the water treatment stuff. They took this back too. Gave me a $7.99 (plus tax) container of fish flakes!
• Do you where I am going with this? I got 4 fish and some fish food all by 'selling back' stuff that they will use but I didn't even buy there. Ask around!
• If you are out of hand soap use a liquid body wash! Just fill up the soap dispenser and no one will ever know!

Anyways, these are all just random! I'm sure there are lots more to come!