missionfinder
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2007
- Messages
- 176
What the heck is wrong with oatmeal and Craisens? Add some almonds (Costco/Kirkland bag, kept in the freezer) and a splash of Costco milk makes a fine breakfast.
Nothing wrong with oatmeal. Craisins, I got mixed up and was thinking of those yogurt covered raisins. Now, the dried cranberries, I love those on cereal and salad. Sorry about the mix-up
OK, good deals. But is there really enough of those to bring a $300 cart of what you really want down to $60?
Well, the tuna was one example. She received a 50 cent credit on the grocery bill for each can she bought. Almost all canned, boxed, jarred and frozen goods she waits until she can get them close to free or even better when she can earn credit on them. She'll buy enough to last months since these type of items have very long expiration dates. The credits added to the nearly free items are where the huge savings come into play. Also, we use a credit card registered with upromise.com which for some products credits 1% or more towards a college tuition fund for our boys, and that's in addition to the 1% cash-back the credit card earns at the grocery store.
For eating out, we wait until upromise runs a half off promotion for restaurants.com and then buy about $30 dollars worth. Not only do we get upromise rewards, we also get a $20 restaurant credit about $3 - $5, sometimes even better (if the restaurant allows you to buy a $50 credit for instance). The chains typically don't use umpromise because they are already well known, but lots of charming mom and pops do, and we've found some incredibly good hidden gems this way which are so much better than any of the chains like Longhorn, Outback, etc.
That's why I said most of our costs come from meats and fresh items. Even then, we won't buy them unless they are at least half off. One thing we tried to save on.... mixing powdered milk with regular milk but it tasted horrible on cereal! We have, however, found that powered milk works great in recipes and we can't taste the difference.
In the past 5 years we've gone from savers looking forward to retirement in our 50s to supersavers looking forward to retirement in our mid-40s. Mortgage paid off this year in my early 40s. 2nd home is being rented out for the cost of the mortgage. All vehicles paid off in 4-5 years ago and nothing new since then (we'll drive what we have until they aren't worth keeping then buy used again). We can literally get by as a family of 4 for under $40K per year and the rest is socked away for retirement. And... we're living far better than a $40K lifestyle would "normally" give. With my wife's new insurance we're going to be knocking off another $4800 off our annual budget in 2011. We live in a 3 bedroom brick home with 2 car garage, and full office, bricked in sun room, huge front porch, 2 acres of level land, huge shop building out back for my hobbies (hot rods, computers, carpentry), we go out to eat fairly often, and vacation regularly (except this year due to moving and a lot of business travel), plus we have pretty much all the material goods we want. There is little I pay retail for... even for gas I use $1 off $10 and $2 off $20 coupons Murphy oil. Also, other gas companies run promotions... sign up on their web sites for newletters to get them.
Not saying any of this to boast in any way. I'm just showing that it is possible to retire not only early by wisely investing or having a government pension, but one can retire extremely early from frugal living which doesn't appear frugal. Plus, it gets to be a fun game... I get great pleasure knowing I'm saving a buck.
BTW... anyone wanting a deal, Radio Shack has 5 device universal remotes (in store only, not online) which are USB programmable (doesn't say on the box but there are web sites showing how its done) for 97 cents! I'm picking up 2 today.