Frugal Families Blog

For me, anyway. With 2010, I’ve decided – among other things – to exorcise the spend-demon who seems to have jumped into my body a few months ago. Really, I don’t know exactly when it started, but at some point, I pretty much stopped thinking through purchases before I made them, and just [...]

I’ve been scoping out turkey prices.  Maybe it’s my imagination but local stores seem to have more and more low prices BUT with a minimum purchase!  I used to be able to find .29 to .39 prices without any strings attached.  This year, my best price has been .47 without any minimum purchase and you [...]

My oldest son has taken up fencing.  He’s been using the school’s equipment until I was sure that he was interested and was going to stick with the sport.  Being almost a year into things, I decided it was time to buy him his own equipment.  I picked out the beginner package and upon checking [...]

My family and I went to a neighborhood part a few weeks ago.  I was asking one of our ‘neighbors’ (I use that term loosely because we live in the country where neighbor is a relative term) who works in restaurant supply about obtaining stainless steel lasagna pans for boiling down maple sap in the [...]

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my mom a time or two on this blog.  Or rather, I’ve mentioned her shopping style.  The grocery shopping of my childhood was one of the things I had to overcome in my quest for frugality.  Now, I’m not sure, but I think my mom’s rules were pretty much as [...]

I’ll confess to being an impulsive shopper in the past.  Oh, yeah, especially if I was out with friends on a shopping expedition, or heaven forbid, the “shop till you drop girls getaway weekends.”  Let’s face it, especially when with friends in a party-like atmosphere, it’s easy to get carried away and buy, buy, BUY. 
And [...]

Sooner or later, the lightbulb in my brain was bound to go on.   I’d heard about shrinking products.  Products where the price stays the same, but the size is smaller, so you are actually paying MORE.  But if you don’t notice, you don’t realize it.  Now, I knew bleach containers had not been full gallons for a [...]

  When I used to say that phrase to my parents, I always got the “Well… if everyone was going to jump off a cliff would you do it too?” line.  LOL!   BUT, some things are terrific if everyone’s doing it, and it appears that being frugal is becoming one of those things.  [...]

“Yesteryear” has been on my mind a lot lately.  This is largely because I saw a coupon recently under the heading of “yesteryear” prices.  It was for tuna for .39 a can.  Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you may think “didn’t she do an entry about how cheap tuna prices were?”  And if you thought [...]

Unless I miss my guess, Thanksgiving is just two weeks from today.  In many of the years past – MOST of the years past – this was a time for me to stock up on turkeys.  I remember one year, buying 4 turkeys – two of them were 15¢ a pound, one was 17¢ a [...]