Low Hanging Savings Fruit of Late

DD2 had bought me coffee from Costa Rica last March. DH had a customer that imports coffee beans for local Twin Cities coffee shops and gifted a two pound bag of beans. Eight O'clock brand coffee was on sale earlier in the week for insanely cheap. I am stocked up for months with coffee, which makes that an easy area to save other than the occasional coffee meeting I have for work. My thermal mugs will suit me just fine.

I have three days of training this week, but one day lunch is provided by my new union representatives. With my promotion, I'm in a different union now. Another day, lunch is provided by our HR and Exec team for a new agency Change Champions group. I was selected to represent my peers on the committee. I'll have leftover soup that I can place in a thermos along with some veggies and hummus and fruit for the one day of training left instead of the expensive cafe in the training center. I spent nearly $25 on lunch last month at three days of training-crazy when I am trying to save funds for more important priorities. My soup will be pennies since I''m getting  huge 12 cup batch for under $4.00. 

I've gone back and reread some blogs I followed in my early thrift blogging days. There are not tons of ways to save big, but dozens each week to shave pennies and dollars that cumulatively add up. I like my approach theses days. I'm not feeling like I am missing out. Though, I will say the other day someone ordered Thai food through our daily Foodsby delivery and I had a little bit of envy, until I remembered her lunch came in at over $12. Anna over at My Random Thoughts has been indulging me with Thai recipes. I love the Skint Dad UK site. Ricky and Naomi have loads of ideas for fake away, but really good recipes, when you want to taste of take out, but want to control the budget, but also, the ingredients. Meals out, groceries and household items can kill budgets if approached with mindlessness. I'm not a die hard bargain shopper, hate cutting coupons, and often forget to have them with even when I do. But, making choices to eat leftovers for lunch and a second night of dinner help me keep our costs down without doing without. 

Tonight, supper will be a sit down dinner with a bottle of wine from our wine club. We made a decion to cancell. We just were not getting to the meet-ups enough to warrant the monthly cost. However, we have a sizeable stock pile and indulge our wine habit for many months to come. I  feel like we learned a lot and understand when shopping for wine on our own as to what is a good value for our money. Educating oneself is a thrift measure. Even if I buy three $10 bottles of wine a month, the same number we got with our wine club membership, I'll be saving $30 a month. I can put together some basic appetizer and invite a couple or two over and have out own once a month tasting at a time that actually works with DH's work schedule.This is our plan for next Saturday night, and we'll open bottles from the stockpile. 

Plans today are to get caught up with laundry, carefully caring for my our nicer clothes with delicate cycle washes and line or hanger drying. Not replacing basic clothing too frequently is part of my strategy. I want to do another closet purge though, slowly weeding out all but the clothes I really wear, and donating the usable to Goodwill or another group. Basically, I'm focused, not on being miserly, but on not spending money where it doesn't need to be spent. Taking advanatage of little perks when they come like a free lunch every now and then is a free indulgence. Let's get back to money savings basics. how are you saving money every day, helping your bottom line, whie still enjoying a good quality of life?