- We received a rebate on our car insurance this year of $29.46 (and it went right into our travel savings).
- We sold our three antique Japanese tansu, two stainless storage shelves, our dining table and chairs, the girls’ bunk bed set and a few other pieces! We’ll still continue to use them though until the buyers arrive on the island next summer.
- Meiling used her savings and purchased a new iPhone 8 at Costco this week saving $50 off the cost of buying it elsewhere. It wasn’t as big of a discount as Brett got over Thanksgiving for his phone, but still better than paying full price, and there were no additional charges for activation, etc. We are now a 100% Apple family!
- We added an additional $200 to our monthly food budget to cover holiday meals and the addition of two (big) eaters here at Casa Aloha this month, but we finished our shopping and came in just under our regular budget amount! All we have left to purchase is fresh fruit for our Christmas morning breakfast.
- We put $19.43 into the change/$1 bill jar: $2.72 change from Safeway shopping, $4.50 left over from the farmers’ market, $9.76 back from the cable bill, and $2.45 change from our lunch with Meiling at the Ono Charburger on Tuesday.
What frugal wins did you have this week?
The Occasional Nomads 
Nice job on coming under the grocery budget! And its great that you were able to sell the household items but get to continue to use them until next summer!
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We were shocked when the cashier hit the total button at Costco! It was so much less than we expected.
Our friends that purchased the furniture from us won’t be moving over here until next summer, so we’re “storing” it for them until then ;-).
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Yeah, I’m ALWAYS shocked when the Costco cashier hits the total button, but never in a good way. 😀
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That’s a lovely tansu. What a nice piece of furniture! And, excellent work coming in under the grocery budget. I know how tough it is at this time of year, with celebrations & extra family members to feed.
For us, we stuck to the regular plan, and I also redeemed United miles into $175 of gift cards from my most recent business trip.
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We’ve had the tansu for nearly 30 years – it’s a very sturdy piece of furniture! We know the friends that bought it will get a lot of use out of it, and enjoy it as much as we have.
We were shocked by this month’s food total. Between last month and this month, we bought a lot but didn’t overspend. I can’t believe the difference though in how much food w’ere going through with just one girl back home. Both Meiling and WenYu have big appetites.
I think it’s terrific that you can use your miles to earn gift cards. Right now all our Hawaiian miles will be used for travel, but if we have any extra I’m going to see if they offer something similar.
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I was able to switch out a hotel stay in the UK taking place in January to a cheaper hotel saving 300 pounds plus the potential to earn a good stash of IHG hotel points due to a targeted promotion. Other benefit was having $23 of Extra Bucks on my CVS card to put towards purchases.
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Wow! 300 pounds less is a BIG savings! And the CVS savings is no small potatoes either. Very impressive frugal wins! It all adds up.
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You have lovely tansu and great savings as usual. For us, we didn’t spend any money on dining out. My husband baked home made cookies. I’m re-using gift bags that look brand new. We enjoyed visiting the Christmas markets/ holiday fairs that are free to the public.
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You always have great, frugal wins every week. I’m always thrilled to hear about the big wins, but the small stuff adds up too and is equally important.
We are going to go out for dinner the week between Christmas and New Year’s. We rarely go out to eat (usually only for our anniversary or when friends are in town), but the girls want to try a Japanese restaurant in town which should be fun. My repertoire when it comes to fixing Japanese food is very limited, so I’m looking forward to it
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