What's a frugal trick you've picked up recently?
What's a frugal trick you've picked up recently?
What's a frugal trick you've chanced upon recently?
I accidentally semi-reinvented the "trencher". Basically, in medieval times, food would be served on a slab of bread and that would kinda be the plate. Or, you know, bread bowls for soup and the like.
I have an air fryer, and I've learned I can line the basket in a large flour tortilla, and it generally keeps whatever I'm cooking/warming up from getting the pan too dirty aside from some easily knocked-out crumbs.
I hate washing things, and I hate wasting paper liners, so it lets me cut down on those, and I can just eat the tortilla.
Free Tax USA. A great, cheap alternative to expensive tax filing software ripoffs like H&R Block or Turbo Tax. You can file both state and fed for less than $20. Spread the word so we can steal share from the competition, who I've lost more money to than I care to think about.
And for Canadians, SimpleTax.
Canada/CRA website has a long list of free, donate any amount and paid apps for tax filling.
Now owned and operated by wealth simple if you can’t find it anymore
That there are so many things that you can do|be|have for free outside. There are surprisingly lot of places run by the government/city that can be used at little to no charge.
sidenote: You can borrow DVDs from the library and rip them for free. Real nice.
Pro-tip. Don't try kids movies or shows, scratched up enough that they don't rip.
Eating out isn't exactly frugal but if you are going to get fast food and they have an app I'd recommend using it cause you can get some pretty good deals. I often get half off a meal which makes those rare times I decide to eat out that much cheaper.
I hate it, but it’s true. Rocking a burger & fries for $3 is great especially when you didn’t have to purchase, prep, cook, and have to clean. This isn’t sustainable for many reasons but totally worth it occasionally
Though it kinda sucks when you’re vegan and the animal product stuff is the combo that is discounted.
My local power company is a price gouger… but my state has mandated that we can select our source provider with zero penalties for switching… even between other sources.
It’s not a ton… since the ‘delivery’ fees are straight up highway robbery and not under the control of the outside provider… but it’s still something.
Currently doing research on solar and how much I need to save to afford the up front costs.
I want solar so bad but every couple years when I run the numbers it will take 15+ years to break even. That money is much better spent in insulation and other energy saving methods.
I have no idea if this is feasible for a house, but some folks who do RVing and such get discount used panels/slightly blemished panels and put those on their rigs because they're a bit cheaper than new. There's actually a lot in the market these days, esp. in the west.
Maybe companies won't install solar for you if you're using salvaged/reused panels, or there's some other hurdle, but it might be an interesting idea to poke.
Still cooking my own beans in a pressure cooker, and making bread in a bread maker. Those two things have saved a ton of money.
If only I can convince my family to use a bidet, then we'd probably save $40 a month on toilet paper!
omg, getting others on the bidet train would really help me. My roommates plow through TP like Bolsonaro plowed the rain forest.
Upvote because of random Bolsonaro burn.
I was under the impression that bread makers don't actually save money, they just make better bread for the same money.
When I did the math, it comes out to a substantial saving. Not just bread, but pizza dough, too!
But, there's a nuance. If you're buying small bags of bread flour and those tiny jars of instant yeast, you're going to overspend like crazy.
Large bags of all purpose flour and big bags of active yeast are key. When I compared results using instant yeast and bread flour, nobody in my family could tell the difference 😂
Edit: clarity
I was thinking, "Isn't it usually more expensive to make your own bread?" But then I realized with how inflated grocery prices are now, there might very well be a savings esp. if you can buy flour in bulk or something.
Yes, once bread reached a price that no longer justified the convenience, that was my final straw.
Bulk flour and yeast SIGNIFICANTLY reduce costs, and my machine paid for itself very quickly.
Make my own brown sugar oatmeal. The big tubes of plain instant oats are cheap. I add a spoonful of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. Saves about 50% off the packets. Not much, but it adds up if 2 people have oatmeal every morning.
I see your great idea and raise it with the "lose it" concept...
Have an end of a bread loaf you don't know what to do with? How about the crumbs left over in that bag of cereal or nuts? The next time you make oatmeal, just add them to the pot (cutting up the bread beforehand of course).
Losing it like this makes breakfast more interesting and make use of the (yes minucule) stuff that might otherwise be thrown away.
Your options are many. I like putting chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, hemp hearts, and ground up flax seed in mine.
Brown sugar is usually manufactured by taking white sugar and adding molasses to it. you can save money by doing that yourself, plus it doesn't cake up anymore.
Great idea. My wife was going through those packets like crazy, and that was fine while they were on sale, but not anymore.
We do have plain oatmeal, but I'll float the idea of making our own brown sugar oatmeal!
I eat oatmeal daily and may actually do this one.
Pretty basic
Buy in bulk and freeze what you don't need immediately.
I bought one of those giant Costco ground beef packs. I think it was like 10 lbs or something for $30.
I packed it into patties and seasoned it immediately. I stacked them with parchment paper and threw them into the freezer. They turned out great.
I'll follow this up with a recommendation to buy your bread and freeze it. We never go through a loaf or a pack of buns before it starts to go bad. Just grab a few right out of the freezer and pop it in the toaster. Comes out great. Will eventually get freezer burn and have soft spots, but we can usually work through a pack before then.
We put our bread in Ziploc bags (which we reuse) and then into the fridge. A loaf will last at least a month in there. Then it's easier to eat since you don't need to toast it as long
I freeze bread. I go through loafs too slowly otherwise, and they go bad.
Note: If you REFRIGERATE bread, it'll go dry and stale. You actually have to freeze it. I'm sure there's some sort of bread science behind "why", I just don't know what it is.
I'll buy the family pack of ground meat and then just transfer it to three containers where each is about 0.5kg, which matches the required amount for a lot of recipes/kits, like the club house sloppy joes/tacos or hamburger helper.
I'm a sushi lover, and discovered that even regular grocery store salmon is flash frozen to kill any parasites.
despite the science I was a little apprehensive at first, but it's great.
do a little salt/sugar cure and it's great.
Save bones and scraps for stock/broth. I keep 2 large freezer-safe containers in my freezer where I will dump all usable scraps for later. Once they start to get full I’ll plan out a stock or broth with what I’ve accumulated. I’ve been doing it for years and it works great. Soups & stews are a great way to eat frugal to begin with and this help make it even more cost effective
along these lines - no one in my house eats bread heels, so I save them for months in the freezer then make croutons out of them. croutons are easy as fuck to make, hard to fuck up, and add a ton of mmmMmmm to salads, encouraging the fam to eat more salad.
I need to try the tortilla idea. The in laws bought the air fryer so I didn't get a say in it. They use plastic baking sheets to reduce clean up. Creating so much waste. I try to cook in the bottom and then clean it. I might give the wrap idea a go.
Maybe a bit pricey considering how often we use the fryer.
You call also find silicone air fryer liners online!
Hadn't thought about that. Can they take the heat ? We had one for oven before. It was a real bastard to clean. We could never get the oil and crap off it. So kinda defeated the purpose
Citric acid as fabric softener.
Edit: Do NOT use with bleach!
How do you buy it, lemon juice? How do you use it, pour over the clothes?
Powdered. It's in the canning aisle. Still experimenting with the ratios.
As far as use, I've just been dissolving it in water and pouring that into the fabric softener dispenser.
Without sodium citrate, it might not be as good as the real thing (which I have not tried yet). But so far it has helped tremendously in getting rid of buildup.
The water in my area has not been great as of late, and my t-shirts were starting to feel like they had been freshly starched.
Some people use vinegar instead. But it's not good for the rubber seals in the machine, and the resulting odor is unbearable (even when dry).
Talking about clothes....
I like to dress up a bit. More formal than others. So the opposite of fabric softener (I use 25% acidity white vinegar for that): potato starch for crisp shirts.
If you are courageous enough: yes, you can wash suit jackets. Cold, very little detergent, wool cycle, slow spinning. But jackets hardly need that anyway. A good brush gets you a long way. And a spray bottle of Vodka, to freshen up the lining every once in a while (no, you won't smell like a drunkard).
And of course: second hand clothes. Especially the more formal stuff because (way too) few people walk around in suit and tie and only buy them to wear once for some formal occasion and resell them afterwards for ridiculously cheap.
Foraging. Mushrooms be nom.
Only downside is if you didn't grow up with someone showing you the ropes (or you did, but moved far enough away that mushroom species changed), a bad identification can put you in the hospital or kill you.
I didn't get the benefit of anyone showing me this stuff growing up, but I've been very carefully educating myself. Like you said, mushrooms are tasty!
I only started picking mushrooms this year actually. But I'm also very careful and don't pick anything but good newbie mushrooms without risk of dangerous mix ups.
Buying used led bulbs.
They last a long time and only cost a few cents.
I use a single blade safety razor. It saves me so much. I bought a pack of 100 blades for around £20 and they lasted me years before I had to buy more. Also the best shave I've had! I recently started using a shaving brush to save buying foams etc. The one soap bar has lasted over 4 months so far and I'm not even half way through it.
Lastly I started using soap instead of shower gel as I can buy packs of 3 for 99p. Saves me money and all this has reduced how much plastic im using too.