One of the things I try to do is save money where ever possible in ways it doesn’t matter to me so that we have the money to spend on the things that really do matter. So I am adopting a weekly habit of my favorite blogger (Kristen over at thefrugalgirl.com) and posting 5 things I did this week that saved me money on the small stuff. Because saving a few dollars a day adds up.

1. We picked up three rolls of wrapping paper from the curbside ‘big trash’ of a neighbor. As my 11 year old and I went for a walk around the block this morning, we found 3 rolls of completely unopened Christmas wrapping paper in the trash pile on the curb! Since we are big on excessive wrapping around here, this was a true win.
2. We used a gift card for dinner on Friday night. Every other week my 11 year old has a music practice right around dinner time, which means one of us has to take him to and from each week, totally interrupting dinner prep. We have started a weekly tradition of taking a gift card from the stash and going out to dinner for cheap/free those nights. This week we went to a wonderful Mexican restaurant we didn’t even know existed until Friday, Blanco Cocina. The food was excellent (I had the sweet potato tacos, and they were amazing!) we got to eat outside on a beautiful evening and best of all, I saved $50 off dinner. Plus, I took all the leftovers home and I got two more meals out of them. Double frugal win.
3. This last week I have focused on using 1 thing out of my freezer every day to either include into dinner or some other meal. This is reducing my grocery bill, and preventing food waste – a major pet-peeve of mine. So far we have used, chicken thighs, corn, kale from the garden, bananas, almonds and a pastry from a fund-raiser I bought from one of my students. Not all at once, of course. But I am making progress towards an emptier fridge and less food waste.

4. I planted seeds. This is a frugal win for later when the harvest comes in. I have a vertical planter on my back patio that I adore and I planted carrots and beets yesterday for harvest in a couple of months. (For the record, I live in the Phoenix metro area, so this is the beginning of the growing season…or one of them. It’s a weird place to be a gardener.)

5. I celebrated over 100,000 miles on my car! One of the most frugal things anyone can do is not buy into the ‘new car’s are better’ mentality. My car is over 13 years old now and just hit 100,000 miles and I am absolutely ecstatic about that! My car has been paid off for a really long time, so right now it’s just maintenance and gas and my car costs are super low.

This exercise is harder than I thought it would be. With any luck, next Tuesday I can have even more excellent frugal wins big and small.

What did you do this week to save money?