Orange tic tac's are heavenly, I can eat the whole pack at once. I forgot all about them...thanks for the reminder! :)With my insurance, my dd's meds are 7$ copay wherever I go, Walmart/RiteAid/Shopko, etc.. but I haven't tried Costco or Sam's Club. I use the coupons that the stores have in the ad's almost every week, ie. transfer your Rx to our store and we'll give you a $20 gift card. It's kind of a pain because you can only use 1 every 6 months at each store, so you have to keep track, and I think they're going to make them more strict, like you can't use it if they've ever filled that med before...but for now, it's working and I'm actually making money off of her med's, sometimes I feel guilty, but then I remember that they're the ones sending the coupons, so it's their own fault, I'm just taking advantage.
Drink water. Pop/coffee/juice are all an extra cost, so we drink water. When we do buy something, it'll be frozen juice because it's almost always cheaper. We eat as down to earth as we can, the most natural that we can..this means buying more fruits & veggies from Costco (they have great deals on most produce) Buy frozen fruits & veggies when they're on sale and stock up, sometimes they're more nutritious than fresh and great for when there's not many things in season. We go to local bread stores that offer 'day old bread' at half off. I can get whole grain/fresh bread here cheaper than I can the grocery store...and I get stamps to earn free bread. Unfortunatley, we don't use many coupons because they don't offer many for fresh foods, but we take advantage of any that we can. We eat oatmeal for breakfast (we stocked up when they had it for $1 a can) and now it costs us just pennies for breakfast.
We don't go to the movies either. There are 4 of us, so I figure we could pay $30 to go see a movie, or wait and rent it from Redbox for $1 when it comes to dvd...and even then, there codes online that you can rent for free. It's a movie I know the kids will love & will watch it over and over, we might go see it, but chances are, we'll just wait til it comes out and then buy it and save $15 still. I can't believe how expensive movies are. When we do go to the movie, we never buy snacks there...I know it's dishonest, but I'll always cut up apples, carrotts, or things like that for us to snack on instead of the crap that they sell there.
We sold our suv last year and bought a more fuel efficient car. I can't believe how much it has probably saved us. It still costs us $50 to fill up, but we're probably saving at least $40 each time now.
I do all of my banking online through my credit union. I use the bill pay option and tell them who to pay and when, and I save lots of money on stamps, checks, and trips to the post office.
I've just recently decided to start shopping for clothes at thrift shops. Some things are overpriced, but some things are great deals. As long as you can wash it, who cares if someone as worn it before?
We try to live in a warmer house in the summer & colder house in the summer. I can't believe how hot it's been, but we've been able to keep the a/c at about 78. We open the windows in the morning, shut them later morning, and then open them again later evening. The power bill is still expensive in the summer, but I can't imagine how high it would be if we kept it so cool all of the time. And in the winter...keep it cool and put warmer clothes on.
Don't buy books, go to the library for free! I've spent a lot of money on books through the years and now that I take my kids to the library so often, they hardly ever read the books that they have. As for my books/cd's/dvd's, I've started selling them at bookstores and receiving credit to buy things like Wii games :) because they're so expensive, if I do it this way, I can justify it a little bit better. If you have cd's, make copies of them, upload them to iTunes or your iPod and then sell them.
Grow a garden if you can. This is the first year that I've had a pretty large garden and I'm so excited. We have things like corn, squash, tomatoes, peas, peppers, watermelon, strawberries, etc. I figure for each pepper we grow, we save anywhere from 1-3$ (depending on the color)
Ok, so maybe I got a little carried away...but we've really had to watch our money lately, too, so I'd love more tips on what we could do. I hate having to live paycheck to paycheck and hopefully someday we'll be better off...but for now, we do what we can. Maybe this can help someone else??
