1. Kittens and supplies
We added two adorable kittens to our family: Marya and Sonya. Apparently they are names from Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 (can you tell my daughter is a theatre fan??) A friend of ours was giving them away, so my kids have been patiently waiting for their arrival for 8 long weeks. During those weeks, we have slowly been adding supplies and fun kitten toys to our collection. We lucked out and found a cool scratching post and a collapsible cube at the thrift store for $3 each. Then at a yard sale, we found two cat beds for $1 each and a cat carrier for $10. We are having a blast watching their antics.
2. Organizing = $$ saved
I had to clean out my chest freezer because we were planning on buying a quarter of a beef from my dad and I found some treasures. The best thing I found was 6 packages of bacon! They somehow had gotten shoved to the bottom of the freezer and I had missed them each time I had went looking for them. This saved me money and sanity, because our favorite bacon has been sold out at Sam’s club for the past two months and we were missing that salty, fatty goodness. I also found six pounds of mozzarella and two packages of steak. **Of course the opposite side of this story is the money lost by being disorganized. Like buying a new pair of shoes, when a perfectly good pair was stored away safely in the closet after being bought six months ago on clearance…yes…true story.
3. Textbook rentals
I once again opted to just rent my daughter’s textbooks from Amazon for her college courses. They average out to be just $20 this way and we do not have to worry about selling them again (score!) If we buy them, we risk the college changing their required book selection for the next year, so its really not a given that we can resell them anyways.
4. Credit card reward points
I know I have mentioned how much I love my credit card reward system, but it bears repeating. Over the past few months we have earned $142 just by using our credit card and then immediately paying it off. This is especially nice right now because I can just turn around and use it to pay for all of our back to school costs and it is all free $$. But make sure you pay it off monthly! Interest fees will get you every time.
5. Tuition reimbursement
My husband wanted to complete some computer certificates and needed to take a couple of college courses to help prepare for them. Luckily his company offers tuition reimbursement so we only have to pay a small portion of the costs. That saved us a lot of money considering that we are paying for Emma’s dual enrollment courses out of pocket.
What did you do to save money this week??
The Thrifty Educator 