- Brett ordered new glasses at Costco this past weekend. Total cost, including frames, blended progressive and Transition lenses: $255.18. The price the optometrist quoted him for the same features and similar frames: $800+. We love our optometrist, but there’s a reason we don’t buy our glasses from him!
- We were able to decrease our energy usage last month, a good thing because electric rates increased again and energy credits were reduced. As a result, instead of a higher bill, ours ended up 7¢ less than the previous month’s.
- My October bonus from Swagbucks was 820 SB, and I’m now about halfway towards earning another $250 Southwest Airlines gift card. I also purchased another $25 Amazon gift card ‘on sale’ for just 2200 Swagbucks versus the regular price of 2500.
- This past Tuesday and Wednesday it poured rain all day (torrentially at times) so rather than run up our water bill Brett set the car out in the driveway Tuesday morning and by late afternoon all he had to do was wipe it off and voilà! Clean car! The rain almost ruined Halloween, but it let up long enough in the evening for us to have several groups of kids come to the house. We were ready with candy YaYu didn’t want from her stash (Snickers, Peanut M&Ms, and Almond Joys). No money was spent and nothing was wasted.
- We put just $6 in the change/$1 bill jar this week, our leftover from the farmers’ market.
What frugal wins did you have?
The Occasional Nomads 
My frugal tip regarding glasses. I have had great success with trying on various styles of glasses at local stores then ordering that style from Eyebuydirect online. The quality is outstanding and the customer service is fantastic (similar to shoes from Zappos) you can return if you are unhappy with your glasses for any reason with no hassles. My last pair of free form progressive lenses with frame, UV coating was $90.66 I could have added photochromic light adjusting for additional $35.95 if I had wanted to. Highly recommend!
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Thank you for this tip – I will check them out! I have a particular set of frames in mind for my new glasses, or at least a particular color, so if I can find it from them this would be a huge savings. We just found out that we can get the same eye insurance Brett had from his employer (which was excellent) through USAA, so we’re going to check that out and see if it’s a viable alternative since eye wear is something we have to take care of every couple of years, or probably soon, every year.
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That is a wise idea to use the rain as free car-wash. Kudos to Brett. I like all the candy that yayu doesn’t like. Especially the peanut M&Ms.
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We were surprised how well the rain worked, but it was exceptionally heavy on Tuesday and did a good job of scrubbing off the dirt.
YaYu doesn’t like peanuts or coconut, so that’s why we got all of those candies from her. It worked out well this year, and gave us enough to pass out to the kids that came.
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Sorry, I should have written YaYu.
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Nothing too frugal. I was traveling for work so pretty much all expenses paid. We accidentally ate at a much more expensive restaurant than planned (poor research) one of the nights, so I’ll have to cover the difference between that & the cap. The food was super unique & well done, so at least that was lovely. I’ll consider it a pseudo vacation meal. 😉
Otherwise, we did manage to pull together a dinner at home yesterday. It was a Costco lasagna, so not the most frugal choice, but definitely cheaper than eating out.
My only other frugal thing was keeping a close eye on all of my travel rewards & maximizing where possible. I’m hoping that, between all of the flight & hotel points, this trip will have yielded around one round trip flight on Alaska Airlines. All of the points haven’t cleared yet, so stilling waiting to see where it will end up.
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We don’t try to be frugal when we travel, more like careful. We enjoy eating out, and always try to include one memorable “splurge” meal. You did fine.
Meiling asked for lasagna when she was home, but I’m thinking of cheating and buying it frozen at Costco. I haven’t bought frozen lasagna in years though, so we’ll see.
When YaYu’s travel points came in from her trip to China this past summer (on Hawaiian) we got them transferred over to my account, and it put me over the top for mileage for four of us back to the mainland. Meiling and WenYu are both flying Hawaiian next month when they come for Christmas, so I’ll be able to add even more miles! Super excited though that Southwest will be flying to Hawai’i – they’re also going to break into the inter-island flight market which will hopefully break Hawaiian’s stranglehold and lower prices.
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