Thrifty Thursday........

I wanted this week to revisit some of the posts from 2008 that I had done on saving money.

This first post also includes a link to a quiz to see how financially fit you are.

This second post was written back in 2008 and I still haven't achieved everything......however the points are all still applicable....

I did a couple of posts on saving money on your food bill.  Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Another post on a simple way to save money here

For more Thrifty Thursday posts, pop by Angela's at Tracing Rainbows......

Thrifty Thursday.........

It's 90 days until the 20th of December.  Plenty of time to save a little bit of money without it costing you a lot all at once.  How to do this, well starting from today you put a little bit of money away each day.

If you put $1 away each day you will have $90 saved up to spend just before Christmas.

50 cents/pence per day will be $45 and even 25 cents/pence per day will mean you will have saved $22.50.

I am going to do the $1 per day and that will be more than enough to pay for all the food over Christmas.

We have made a couple of batches of wine so the alcohol is taken care of.  I put $20 away each week for Christmas presents, so this $1 will take care of the food.

Anyone else thinking about Christmas yet?

For more Thrifty Thursday posts, pop by Angela's at Tracing Rainbows......

Thrifty Thursday.........

One way I save money is by using other appliances rather than my regular stove/cooker. I just purchased a new toaster oven back in July and I wrote about it here. It has two shelves so I can cook two things at once; and as there is generally only the two of us it works a charm.

Another small appliance I cannot do without is my crockpot/slowcooker.  That is worth it's weight in gold.  It uses very little electricity and it cooks the cheapest cuts of meat until they are melt in your mouth tender.

I wrote a post a while ago about  the benefits of using a crockpot here. In that post I mentioned I put together a recipe book for the kids using the crockpot while they were in university.  If you would like a copy; it's on a word document, please leave a separate comment with your email address in it, I WILL NOT PUBLISH IT, and I will email it to you.

One of my favourite recipe books for the Slow Cooker, is the "Fix It and Forget It."  Lots of good recipes in there.

My other favourite money saving small appliance is the microwave. The carrot soup recipe I feature on my blog is a favourite of ours and is made entirely in the microwave.  I am lucky enough to own a couple of great Marks and Spencer's Microwave recipe books that I brought over with us when we moved to Canada.  Another recipe from one of those recipe books is sausage risotto, which is really tasty and one that only the British could love, Baked Bean Lasagna!!

Do you have a favourite small appliance in the house?

For more Thrifty Thursday post pop over to Angela's at Tracing Rainbows.

Thifty Thursday

It's Thursday so it must be "Thrifty Thursday," then.......

One thing I do on a weekly basis and have done for many years and have mentioned on my blog before, is put money aside each week for various things.  I put $20 a week in a birthday box and $20 per week in a Christmas box.  So when a birthday comes around, I just take whatever I need out of the box to pay for it.  Again with the Christmas box, as it is much easier putting $20 a week away, than having to come up with $500 or $1,000 at Christmas time to pay for everything.

I also have been putting $50 a week away in another box, that changes its name depending on what I need money for.  This year it is for the wedding; other years it's been for our vacation, and other times it has come in really handy when paying workmen by cash!!!

I do my banking online, and discovered we were charged services charges on our chequing account?  So I spoke to the bank on Tuesday and it seems the bank has decided to up the minimum amount of money we "have" to keep in our chequing account so we don't pay service fees.  So I now have to keep an extra $500 in there at all times.

It however is easier and cheaper keeping the minimum balance in the account than paying the $14.95 a month on service charges.  Plus I can't earn that in interest anywhere else.  So if you like me do online banking, make sure you read any messages when you go onto the site and not ignore them like I normally do!!!!  I was lucky the lady in the bank reversed the fees and will do the same for me during the month of September.  After that though I will have to have the minimum in there.

I also subscribe to three magazines which I pay for on a monthly basis through my MasterCard.  For a while now I haven't been receiving Harrowsmith Country Life, but have been charged for it.  Finally got around to calling the "red and white company!!" and discovered that Harrowsmith Country Life magazine is no longer in business, but the "red and white company," is still charging me for it.  So of course I asked them for my money back!!  Even had to argue about that as they were not going to give me as much back as I wanted!!

I wonder how long they were going to charge me for a magazine I wasn't receiving????

For more Thrifty Thursday participants please pop over to Angela's site.

Thrifty Thursday........

Angela over at Chasing Rainbows is hosting a weekly post that asks everyone to submit tips on how to save time and money during the month of September.

I honestly didn't really know what to write about as a lot of what I do is general everyday stuff that I guess you all do anyhow.

One thing I have learned though is to ask, as if you don't ask you will never get.  Combined with using the Internet it is surprising how much money you can save. We are in the process of renovating the whole house.  At the moment we are concentrating on the new laundry room.

I have been looking for a laminate countertop for our laundry room but due to the fact it is deeper than a regular countertop the pricing on it is double what a regular countertop is.  By emailing various people/stores that sell countertops I discovered a place that will make me one for under $200, saving around $150. 

It will give us the custom look we had wanted at a price that is better on our pocket book.  The tiles we got from the laundry room are top of the line, but the store was selling them off, so tiles that could have cost us at least $3 a tile we got for $1.99.  By asking a trades man who had done work in the house, he put us in touch with his brother who laid ceramic tiles as a side job.  We paid him $600 cash for laying all the tiles in the basement.  That also included him sorting out the floor and getting all the glue off of it, and supplying all the "stuff" to put down the tiles.  Another guy had quoted us $1,200 for the same job.

So for a few phone calls and some time on the Internet I have managed to save over $800 so far on the cost of renovating the basement, just on those three things.

Also shopping at smaller stores can often realise better deals.  I know when we bought the lights for the attic, we fell in love with them, but not the price.  Dh boldly told them what he wanted to pay, it wasn't unreasonable, I think about $50 less and after thinking about it they said no problem.  Not everyone will do that, but it doesn't hurt to ask.  Just remember these people have to make a living, so be fair when negotiating with them.

Planning ahead also helps.  If you know when a certain store holds a yearly sale plan around that.  We got all the insulation for the attic and the basement on year at a big savings, plus we were able to get some gift cards also for buying over a certain amount.

If you know stores have a buy three get one free deal on paint wait until that deal comes on.  You don't have to get the cans tinted at the time, they are generally more than happy to tint at a later date.  Of course there are the "mis-tinted" cans of paint for very little money; can't say I have had much luck with those though.  All these little things add up.

I am sure you can think of many more ways to save money when renovating.