Five Frugal Intentional Spending Things
After giving it a bit of thought, I think that spending with Intention is a better description of my life these days, vs Frugal. I'm not looking to spend less per se, but I am absolutely looking to spend with Intention, or mindfulness if you will.
So here goes-
1) My monthly Housecleaning team (oh how I appreciate not having to clean my fairly good sized home!) leaves out any supplies that need replenishing, and this past week that turned out to be furniture polish. So I added Pledge to my shopping list, and headed to Target to pick up a can, because I find their prices to be consistent and reasonable. However, when I saw the price, now almost $6, I blanched. So though I did go ahead and purchase it, I decided to also check out the Dollar Store. Well, guess what? The Dollar Store carries a no-name furniture polish for just $1.25 a can.
So back to Target went the overpriced furniture polish. I'm now going to start doing the same with the other products that get set out for replenishment, and see if my Housecleaning team finds any difference in their performance. Fingers crossed they judge them as adequate, because there are vast price differences between Target and the Dollar Store for name brand vs no-name brand cleaning products.
2) Along the same lines as above, I returned an unopened container of $4 curry spice to the supermarket after finding a very large selection of 99 cent bagged spices at a Mexican market I recently visited. They not only had 99 cent bags of curry, they also had 99 cent bags of saffron, which I thought was amazing, given that I'd been very proud of myself for finding saffron for just $4 at a specialty Indian market vs twice that amount, and then some, at the supermarket.
I've long shopped for $1 bagged spices at Aldi's, located in their Mexican food aisle, but the selection there is somewhat limited - primarily peppercorns, cumin, paprika and chile powder, so I'm thrilled to have a larger selection to choose from going forward.
My other spice tip is to stop by Sprouts when you need just a small amount of a spice you don't use regularly. They have a bulk spice section where you can scoop out - and pay for - just what you need. As in 5 cents even! Yes, I needed just a single star anise one time, for an Indian dish, a cuisine I don't cook very often because Indian restaurants do it so much better than me(!), so I literally placed a single star anise in the spice bag Sprouts provides, and it rang out at 5 cents.
3) Cancelled YouTube Premium, which we primarily subscribed to in order to stream jazz music channels. I decided to give free Pandora another try recently, after placing YouTube on hold for a month while we were out of town. To my very pleasant surprise, Pandora's jazz channel has very few commercials, and the ones that do run are not obnoxious whatsoever. So an easy and painless $180 a year win for us.
4) More Intentional than Frugal here - Jumped on the June signups email alert from a cooking school near us, as their classes sell out quickly. My husband has a big birthday event in June, and he just loves doing events at this cooking school as they do most of the prep-work ahead of time, plus most of the finishing work, and definitely ALL of the dirty dishes (ha!), leaving us to just show up and cook and have fun. And once the meal is deemed completed, the cooking school team seats us all at long table set with flowers, and serves us. It's fabulous!
Plus, we are encouraged to bring bottles of wine with us to be enjoyed both during the cooking and after while eating our meal. How great is that?
The cost is $90 a person, but that is all in, as in ALL in. Meaning there is no tax added, there is no tipping expected, and we get three full hours of being entertained by the two hysterical chef owners, first while cooking, then while dining. Plus there are always leftovers, which we are encouraged to bring containers for in order to bring them back home.
All this, versus an expensive, rushed, impersonal meal at a noisy, crowded restaurant.
This is what we'll be making and enjoying for his big June event - he's already so looking forward to it, which warms my heart -
Escape to the islands and cook up a Hawaiian Inspired tropical menu full of sweet, savory and sun-soaked flavors!
- Spicy Tuna Tartare on Crispy Rice
- Coconut Sweet Potato Soup with Lime and Ginger
- Macadamia-Crusted Mahi Mahi with Fresh Pineapple Salsa
- Hawaiian Luau-Style Fried Rice
- Chocolate Coconut Cream Pie with Oreo Crust
From a prior cooking event we attended with friends.
We're the couple on the left.
And . . .
5) Planned out my menu for a neighborhood event we are hosting in June, in order to start purchasing the necessary items both 1) slowly over the upcoming weeks, which allows for easy adhering to my grocery budget, and 2) if/when any of the needed items happen to go on sale.
I do this for pretty much all parties and holidays, or any event where I bring food. By making my plan well in advance, I never have to run to the supermarket and pay top dollar. I find it so annoying to put myself in that position, because I feel like supermarkets live to exploit their customers through their here-now-gone-tomorrow sales gimmicks. Not to mention the challenge of buying exactly the correct product in exactly the correct size in exactly the correct combination.
And hence why I'm so loyal to the Trader Joe's and Aldi's of the world. Just give me fair pricing and stop expecting me to jump through hoops in order to obtain a decent price.
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What about you all? Have you done anything particularly frugal or intentional this week?
