Friday, January 6, 2017

Frugal Friday or How I Saved My Family $600+

Here are a few ways I've saved our family some money this past week.
The last one is a biggie too.  ;-)

* No take-out or eating-out this week.

* Doing laundry during off-peak hours only.

* 1 trip to Weis(PMITA)Markets this week where I picked up 6 discount sticker meat packages, 4 packs of tortillas for $1 each after sale and coupon, $50.93 reg. retail worth of frozen pizzas for $26.88 OOP after sales/points/stacked Qs and 4 containers of Weis brand OJ and Grapefruit juice for 39% off during a sale. (Having all that pizza on hand will help me not get take-out on nights I just can't cook due to exhaustion.)

* I took a small chunk of leftover Xmas roast and with the addition of potatoes, onions, red bell pepper(from the freezer)and spices I turned it into Roast Beef Hash. This along with a large quantity of cheesy scrambled eggs was dinner on Monday night.

* Regular readers will know that our oven/range crapped out on Christmas day which led to the hilarity of having to transport large amounts of food back and forth to my brother in-law's place so as to cook it.


By Xmas evening Hubs was browsing new ranges on his phone and had picked one out that the local big box hardware store could have delivered by New Years for $550 + tax and $75 delivery fee.

Instead I figured out that the lower heating element needed replacing, found the part # and jumped on the internet and ordered it.(You wouldn't believe the price range between websites for said part!) I did splurge an extra $1.60 and have it mailed Priority rate instead of parcel post rate.
The part arrived in 3 days and on New Year's eve between my 2 kids and I(and a You Tube video)we got the new element installed.


And while we had the range pulled out from the wall I got behind there and cleaned.
Now this baby works good as new, both inside and outside!


Cost of part w/shipping.....$16.70
Labor........FREE
Savings from not buying a new range(+ tax and shipping).....approx. $641.00

This past week was an epic frugal win week at Chez Sluggy.

Sluggy

11 comments:

  1. Wow - some small frugal wins to go along with a huge one. Nice!!

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  2. I will admit that I'm lazy at trying to fix things-not trusting my ability. DH is more than willing, but doesn't know when to call it quits, hence no garbage disposal after two or more years. Well done, and YouTube is great for things like that.

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  3. Denise, you did good. Better yet, you did fantastically!!!
    I'm surprised that your husband reached for a new oven so quickly. I thought we women did that. So nice to see such a fantastic example of role reversal. We women can rock it when we want to.
    Good job!!!!!

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    Replies
    1. Cindi, he is NOT handy and his first thought is to pull out the credit card and buy new, not repair.
      We are very different in that way. ;-)

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  4. WOW, yay for you figuring that out. I'll have to remember that the next thing something breaks around here.

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  5. I love it when we women have a great idea! Love that you saved all that money by repairing instead of buying new.

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  6. Great job on fixing it yourselves!

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  7. We had the same problem with our stove about a year ago. Everyone told us to buy a new one but we figured out it was the lower element. My kid and I ordered the part and installed it. It works great. The part cost approximately $25 but saved us from buying a new stove.

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  8. Nice savings! My dad said it's probably the element thats shot in my oven too. It's gas so I'm not to hip on fixing it myself. I.ll probably blow the house up with me in it!

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  9. Good save on the stove. Was it A complicated job to replace?

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