The silence is deafening. Where is the comment love? I don't feel it, people.
I'm kidding, of course. I know it's hard to start commenting on a blog you've been lurking on. I lurk on a few myself...but I'm so nervy, I usually don't have a problem leaving my own two cents, despite being laconic in person. (I'm trying to use my new words.)
So I have a contest to propose to lure some folks out of lurkdom and to get to know some of my readers.
Here it is, are you ready?
If you comment on every post for the month of July, starting today, I will do a drawing and send the winner a free Usborne children's book! How's that? Yes, I've resorted to giveaways. But I figure if you see how great the books are, you might want to host a show or an eShow and get some more books for free! I'll wait to offer a few choices to the winner, depending on the age/gender of the children. And I can only mail it within the 48 contiguous United States - I'm not made of money, you know.
Which brings me to the topic for today: What are you doing to save some money these days?
We've been cutting down on driving, which is tough when you live in a very rural area with two kids. I feel like I'm wearing the house sometimes. When we do drive, we try to take the Taurcedes. Hooray for the company car!
I've also been shopping at grocery outlets a lot more often. There are quite a few of them here in Amish country, and some are better than others, but I've found a few I like. I can't get everything there, and usually have to hit a "regular" grocery store for meats and things, but every little bit helps, and you can't beat an outlet for cereal. I never pay more than $1.99 for a box of cereal.
It's funny - growing up we used to grumble that my parents would buy cereal in bags, or in black and white boxes that said "Flakes of bran with raisins" instead of "Raisin Bran." (And raisin bran was our sugary cereal. We were the ones that bought puffed rice, too. Seriously, is there any cereal out there with less taste than puffed rice? That stuff should be used as biodegradable packing material for shipping fragile things....but I digress.) Anyway, Mom, Dad, sorry I used to make fun of the bags. Now I understand. And I have a few bags of cereal myself.
So how are you cutting corners these days? Do you clip coupons? Buy in bulk? What's your secret? I can use some more ideas.
You don't have to comment before midnight on the day of the post - just at some point over the following days to be entered in the drawing. And don't worry - I have other stuff going on for the holiday weekend, so I won't write again until Monday. But the contest will end at midnight on July 31.
Happy Fourth!
6 comments:
To save money, I shop at the farmer's market as much as I can. It's a lot cheaper than Trader Joes, and a lot fresher too. We also don't go out to each very much anymore. Maybe once a week we'll get pizza or something. This was partly for money reasons, but mostly for health reasons. We actually don't go out much at all and we try to find cheap ways to entertain ourselves. We were bored last weekend so we took Tommy to the San Jose Int'l Airport to look at the big planes. Good and cheap fun. :)
Hey Eileen:
I don't get any comments at all :-(
How do we save money...hmmm. I am not too good on that one. Tom is working over time, he works on his laptop at nights, so we are getting extra money. But we shop at Walmart for stuff, seems to be the cheapest. I take Ryan to the library for storytime, and we check out books there. Thats free. For food shopping, seriously we only spend like $60-$70 bucks a week. We only fill up the gas tank half way, I don't know what that does. But i don't have to drive very far around here, so I fill up maybe once a week and ots only $25. So I guess we are using little money.
Ugg-money is a subject i hate! But to save money I switched to Luvs diapers, I have been buying more and more generic, I use coupons when I can (have you noticed they they don't make coupons for healthy stuff?) I buy the kids clothes for next season on clearance at the end of the previous season and hope that I have made the right size decision. We stopped getting the newspaper and we are thinking of getting a pellet stove to help with heating this winter as oil prices are almost double what we paid last winter. We changed all our bulbs to energy efficent ones, and try and keep the lights off (we have taught the kids about the energy hog so it's a game to make sure the lights are all off). I do try and buy in bulk when I can. We to try and go to free story time at the library and parks that are close by. We stopped buying bottled water- we have a filter in the fridge- I guess I could go on- but the bottom line is that it's a lot of work to save money and live on one income- so I make it my job to find ways to make it work as best I can!
Just wanted to let you know how nice it was to meet you and the fam this weekend. One of the things I forgot to say in person is how much I love your blog! So here you go. My only money saving tip is that we've cut back on meat. It was actually for health reasons and not financial, but I found that it drastically cut our weekly grocery bill. Nice secondary effect!
You know I'm a fan of your blog, Eileen....I'm still trying to get Ray to leave a comment. haha. Food saving tip? I just try to keep my meals simple and cheap but stay on the healthy side, which is hard. Buying store brand items has helped as well.
Well, we DEFINITELY buy the fake cereal. Once a month, we go to the Sharp Shopper. It is the land of fake cereal. And it's all yummy. We do the green dragon and other produce stands . . . but I still feel like groceries are so freakin' expensive! We also switched to White Cloud diapers from Pampers . . . but still could use some tips!
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