Category Archives: Frugal Fun

Eating out doesn’t have to be all or nothing

Photo by vox_efx

When times are tough and it’s time to cut back, restaurant meals are often one of the first things to go. We try to keep eating out to an absolute minimum. Cooking at home is not only healthier but also more economical.

Cutting back doesn’t have to mean cutting restaurant meals altogether. We enjoy eating out, and we like to go out once a month. The problem with limiting restaurant meals is that it’s often tempting to go overboard when you do get to eat at a restaurant. Drinks, appetizers, desserts … adding those things can double the cost of your meal.

Eating out doesn’t have to be all or nothing, though. There are ways to keep the costs low and still enjoy the fun of a good restaurant meal. Here’s how:

Go out for lunch.

Prices are often lower, and many restaurants offer lunch specials. If you’re craving a restaurant meal for a low price, lunch is often a better option than dinner.

Drink water.

Alcoholic beverages often cost almost as much as an entree. Even fountain sodas can tack on an extra $2 each to your bill. Ordering ice water with a slice of lemon is not only a healthier option, it’s also free.

Don’t order more than you’ll eat (or more than you should eat).

Restaurant portions are usually ridiculously big. Even if you have the willpower to resist overeating, you’re still paying for food you can’t finish. Many restaurants are now offering smaller portions for a lower price.

If they don’t, I ask if they’ll allow me to order from the kids’ menu. I’ve never had a waiter tell me no. Sometimes they’ll add a dollar or so to the price since I’m not under 12, but most of the time they let me order the kids’ portion at the kids’ price. It’s just the right amount of food for me, and it usually only costs $4 or $5. That’s a huge difference from the regular entree prices of $8-$12.

Order an appetizer instead of an entree.

Appetizers are often just as filling as entrees at a lower price. My husband and I sometimes order one appetizer each and split them.

Take advantage of specials.

A lot of times certain entrees are on “special” for a lower price. Take this opportunity to pay less for your meal and try something new.

Many restaurants also offer special deals like reduced-price appetizers or entrees on certain weeknights. If your favorite restaurant offers specials like this, try to schedule your meals out on these nights.

Fill out comment cards and mail them in.

At the end of the meal your bill often comes with a comment card or survey. I always fill these out and mail them in. In return, I often receive coupons for money off or free appetizers just for giving my opinion. They even pay the postage.

Use gift cards.

If you’re enrolled at MyPoints, there are a ton of restaurants that offer gift cards for points. (If you’re not already enrolled, email me for a referral link!)

Another option is Restaurant.com. They offer “gift certificates” for restaurants at a reduced rate (usually $10 for a $25 gift certificate). They sometimes offer promotions for even more money off, and you can often get $25 gift certificates for as little as $2.

What’s the catch? You have to spend a certain amount on your meal to redeem the gift certificate. You might pay $2 for a $25 gift certificate, but your total bill has to be $35 not including taxes, tip, or alcohol in order to redeem the gift certificate. You’re still getting a $35 meal for $12. Not too bad! Check the site to see if any restaurants in your area offer gift certificates through Restaurant.com.

TGIF Link Round Up – Halloween Edition

Happy Halloween! On the right are the pumpkins we carved last weekend. The scared one on the right was mine. Sorry about the crummy quality. I just grabbed the camera and snapped a picture for posterity. :)

Tony and I have a full night of scary movies and popcorn ahead of us tonight! But first a link round up!

I hosted the Festival of Frugality this week, and it has an appropriately spooky theme. If you haven’t had a chance to browse the best of frugal blogging this week, I suggest you check it out. Lots of great ideas!

And here are my favorite posts from my reader this week:

  • Lynnae at Being Frugal shares her frugal moving tips. We’re already looking ahead to our next move in a year and a half, and I’ll definitely keep these ideas in mind.
  • Mercedes at Common Sense with Money crunches the numbers and uncovers the real cost of layaway offers. Yikes! Very timely as many retailers bring this practice back.
  • Paid Twice offers an interesting perspective about dieting and food costs. I find that one of the number one ways to reduce the food budget is avoiding overeating.

I hope all of you enjoy your Halloween tonight! Be safe and have fun!

A fabulous, frugal (free!) date

Tonight, Tony and I wanted to get out of the house, but our budget is pretty tight this month. Armed with some coupons, we headed out to have some fun without spending any money.

First, we headed to the mall where I redeemed a coupon for a free pair of underwear from Victoria’s Secret. Honestly, I haven’t made a charge on the card in probably close to a year (other an $2 and some change to buy some mascara purchased with a $10 off coupon. Long story short, I had to use the card to redeem the coupon). They just keep sending me coupons for free stuff. It’s a-ok with me! I rarely have to spend a dime to redeem the coupons, and when I do it’s just a dollar or two for some underwear, makeup, or lotion. Fine by me.

I also planned to redeem a coupon for a free diffusor starter set from Bath and Body Works that’s been floating around the frugal blogosphere. I first saw it at BeCentsAble, I think (linked above). Unfortunately, when I clicked on the link to print the coupon today, I got a message that said the offer was expired. Bummer, especially since the coupon wasn’t supposed to expire until next month! Lesson learned – from now on I’ll print the coupons right away when I see something good!

Finally, we stopped by Barnes and Noble where we browsed some books and redeemed this coupon for a free coffee at the Barnes and Noble Starbucks cafe that I picked up at Nothern Cheapskate and Sense to Save.

We had a great night, and we didn’t spend a single cent! I love frugal dates. :)

Slightly off topic odds and ends

First things first: Tony and I finally buckled down and completed our fall cleaning list today. We were a little late (our original goal was to finish by the end of September), but better late than never, right? I also dug all my fall and winter clothes out of storage and boxed up my summer clothes until next year.

Now I just have to stop procrastinating and finally get around to selling the CDs and books we’re getting rid of on eBay or Amazon. Sigh. One goal at a time.

After our intense marathon cleaning session, we celebrated with a matinee. We always see the last matinee of the afternoon because it’s discounted an additional 50 cents. Only $5.25 a ticket!

Now that our apartment is nice and tidy and the fall candles are burning, I’m ready for the cool weather. Anytime now. Here in North Carolina, it’s still about 80 degrees every day. We tried to turn off the air conditioning last week. I wanted so badly to just open the windows. No go. The temperature climbed to a humid 90s degrees in our third floor apartment. Sigh. Another two weeks of air conditioning for us it seems.

Finally, on a blog-related note, I’m planning to switch from WordPress hosting to another service so I can have more control over my template. I want to make the switch over Thanksgiving weekend so I’ll have a big block of time to devote to making the switch and ironing out the kinks.

Right now I’m doing some research and looking for a good deal on a reliable hosting service. Anybody have any recommendations for me? I just need basic but reliable hosting, WordPress ready, and I’m hoping to pay about $5 a month. Am I dreaming?

Now I’m off to enjoy turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Yum! My apologies for this rambling, all over the place post. It’s just been one of those days.

TGIF Link Roundup: Another birthday lunch edition

Another birthday lunch in the office, which means I’m eating solo today. But it also means I have time to write a post while enjoying delicious leftover stuffed manicotti courtesy of my husband the master chef. Yum!

I participated in three carnivals this week:

I have lots of things to share from the personal finance blogosphere this week! All of you have had such great topics lately. Here are the posts I found most inspiring (though I have to tell you, it was rough to pick just a few this week):

  • Everybody’s been blogging about Amy at MotherLoad‘s list of 35 ways to save on groceries. It really is full of fabulous tips, so check it out if you haven’t already!
  • Mercedes at Common Sense with Money wrote about the recent trend of smaller packages without a price drop on certain products. Ugh, I hate this! It’s just so sneaky. Our dog food recently dropped from 20 pounds to 18 pounds a bag, but the price stayed the same. That’s two days worth of meals. I think I’d rather pay a little higher price. I’d rather they were upfront about it.
  • Penelope Pince at Our Fourpence Worth wrote about the benefits of switching to paperless statements. I don’t receive any paper statements anymore, and I love online bill pay. It really does streamline the process of paying the bills, and I can access the statements online for most of my bills anyway. That’s way easier than filing them myself! Safer, too, because it doesn’t leave a paper trail for identity thieves.
  • Mrs. Micah shared her online couponing method. Great tips here for people like me who can’t get the hang of paper coupons!

This weekend I’m committed to making a dent, even if it’s a small one, in my clutter clearing mission. I haven’t decided where to start yet, but my plan is to spend Saturday or Sunday morning every weekend cleaning and organizing until it’s done. I’ll be sure to update on my progress by the end of the weekend.

I’m also looking forward to more hand quilting this weekend. I’m happy to report that I LOVE it a lot more than machine quilting. I hated being stuck behind a sewing machine. Hand quilting isn’t as hard as I expected, and I love that I can do it while relaxing on the couch with my hubby.

Hope you’re all enjoying some nice fall weather this weekend! Forecast says 90 degrees here through next week. Yuck. I don’t know if I can handle another 6 weeks of summer.

Happy Friday!

Being frugal doesn’t mean giving up the hobbies you love

In general, most frugal folks don’t like to admit that the frugal lifestyle deprives them of anything. We pride ourselves in the ability to find ways to get the things we want in life without spending too much money. There are certainly sacrifices involved, but for the most part, we’re able to find creative ways to live a full life on less money.

I’m trying to find balance between frugality and deprivation. It’s tricky to know the difference when you’re just starting out. But I think it’s crucial to balance the two, or you risk resenting your frugal lifestyle and giving up.

I love to quilt. I’ve been doing it to some degree since I was a teenager. It wasn’t until after I graduated college that I got my own sewing machine and started really getting into it. About a year ago, I gave up quilting for my frugal lifestyle.

You see, quilting is an expensive hobby. Compared to the high cost of beautiful handmade quilts, it’s relatively inexpensive. But fabric and thread and other notions can run pretty steep.

Over the weekend, I dug my two unfinished projects out of storage. I’ve put hours and hours of labor into these two quilt tops (one of which was sewn completely by hand), but I stopped short of quilting them a year ago because I deemed quilting a frivolous hobby that would have to wait until we had more income.

Well, now we have more income. I’ve decided that wasting my hard work and the money I already invested in the fabric is more wasteful than spending the extra money to finish them. All of that money and work, and we don’t even have the quilts to show for it?

So I headed to the fabric store and bought batting, quilting thread, and fabric for the backing. Even with a coupon for 40% off the fabric, I ended up spending $30. I’ll have to rework some of our unnecessary spending in our budget to make sure we don’t go over (with my husband’s blessing, of course). But now I have everything I need to complete two beautiful quilts that would cost hundreds in a store. Well, maybe not hundreds, but much more than I paid for supplies.

My point is this: being frugal doesn’t mean giving up the hobbies you love. Is there something that you really love to do that you’ve given up because it’s too expensive? See if there’s a creative way that you can reduce its costs or limit your spending on it without giving it up completely.

For me it was quilting. Rather than giving it up completely, I’ve decided to work it into my budget. Can I afford to spend $30 a month on quilting? Probably. But that seems a little excessive to me, so I’m compromising. I decided to attempt hand-quilting one of them. This will extend the amount of time it takes me to finish it. I’ll be able to enjoy this project longer if it takes me longer to finish.

Because I only quilt for a little while in the evenings, it will probably be another 3 months before I’m ready to invest in the materials to start a new project. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy hand-quilting more than machine quilting, and I’ll be able to extend the time it takes me to finish projects. That way I’ll always have something to work on, but I’ll spend less money.

My husband’s expensive hobby is movies. He would go to the theater once or twice a week and rent movies every day of the week in between if we could afford it. His solution is to rent old classic movies at the library for free. His university has a huge selection of quirky classics that he’s never seen before. We haven’t given up the theater completely, though. Every month or two, there’s something we really want to see, so we go to the last matinee on Sunday when tickets are cheapest. We still end up paying $10 for two tickets, but that’s a huge discount compared to the Friday night ticket price ($8.50 per ticket).

Maybe you love photography, but you don’t want to spend hundreds on equipment. Look into a used camera or get creative with the digital editing on your snapshots. Maybe your beloved hobby is scrapbooking, but you can’t afford all the materials. Limit yourself to a reasonable amount of scrapbook spending each month proportionate to your budget, and take a break when you reach your limit. It may take months to complete your projects, but that will just make them all the more satisfying when they’re done.

Above all, being frugal is about finding a way to live the lifestyle you want without living above your means. Get creative. Find a way to make it work. You might be surprised what you can work into your budget if you want it badly enough.

How do you make room in your budget for the hobby you love?

Make eating out the exception, not the rule

Who doesn’t love going out to dinner? Unfortunately, frequent dinners out are not part of a frugal lifestyle. It’s expensive and usually leads to weight gain.

Before I found a full-time job, we avoided restaurants for months. We just couldn’t afford to eat out. Only on very special occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries, did we opt to eat at a restaurant. The rest of the time, we cooked our meals at home.

When I was hired and we found ourselves with more wiggle room in the budget, we decided to cut ourselves some slack. However, I still didn’t want to make it a habit. In the past we ate at restaurants at least once a week. That was costing us over $100 a month!

Our compromise? We eat at restaurants only once a month. On the last weekend of the month, we look at our budget, and if we have room for a restaurant meal, we treat ourselves.

This weekend will be the third month that we’ve followed this rule. So far it’s worked out well, and it’s been a lot of fun. We can afford to fit $30 into our monthly budget for a meal out, and I enjoy it a lot more now that we don’t go out frequently. It’s a fun way to celebrate a successful month and a great incentive to stay on track to make sure there’s room in our budget for it.

We carefully select a local restaurant that we’ve never tried before instead of settling on a chain. In fact, I think we’re more likely to try new things now that we only go out once a month. We were more likely to be complacent about our restaurant choices when we ate out frequently. After all, why not make things easy and pick a chain when we know we’ll have the opportunity to try something new later? Now that we only get to pick one restaurant a month, we choose carefully and try something new.

It’s also a lot easier for us to choose an expensive restaurant if there’s room in the budget, because it’s only a once-a-month expense.

The best part? It’s a lot easier to manage a $30 restaurant budget than $100+.

TGIF link round up: Labor Day Weekend Edition!

Is it really Labor Day already? I’m not complaining … the sooner we say goodbye to summer, the sooner my electric bill goes back to normal. Unfortunately, here in North Carolina, we’ve got another six weeks of summer temperatures and humidity (at least). Ugh. Hopefully September will fly by as quickly as August did!

This weekend also marks the end of our first month of budgeting! I’ll be posting an end-of-month budget round up on Sunday, but here’s a little spoiler: I think it’s been a success! More to come on that later.

We also found out that my husband is getting a raise for his teaching assistantship. Yay! More to come on that later, too.

I participated in two blog carnivals this week. My post on saying ‘no’ to the birthday lunch was featured in the Festival of Frugality hosted by FIRE Finance, and my post on being frugal when temptation strikes was featured in the Money Hacks Carnival. I hope you’ll head over and check them out if you haven’t already.

And now here are the posts that inspired me this week! Enjoy!

  • Kelly at Almost Frugal asked what frugal habit would you give up if you could? I enjoy most of our frugal habits. I am much happier and feel like I have way more control over our money and our future now that we’re frugal. The only thing I’d give up is the bare-bones grocery shopping. I would love to buy exclusively organic produce, fancy cuts of meat, and other expensive specialty items. Maybe someday we’ll be able to budget for higher grocery costs, though. Kelly also posted some frugal gift ideas that you don’t want to miss.
  • Christina at Northern Cheapskate asks the question: to Wii or not to Wii? I think we can all relate to this. We scrimp and save so much, then sometimes it’s hard to decide if it’s time to reward ourselves.

I’ve got lost of posts planned for the three-day weekend, so I hope you’ll stop by again before the holiday is over. For those of you heading out of town, have a great holiday!

Planning an elegant wedding reception without spending a fortune

In the past two Wedding Wednesday posts, I discussed getting started on the right track and planning a stunning ceremony on a budget. This week I’m sharing some tips for an elegant reception without spending a fortune.

The reception is usually the most expensive part of any wedding. With catering, entertainment, and venue costs, a typical reception can cost as much as $20,000. My total budget was only $5,000 for the whole wedding, so obviously I had to get a little creative.

The reception is your only opportunity all day to spend time with your guests and thank them for joining you at the wedding, so I wanted to find a balance between frugality and elegance. I didn’t want a wild and crazy party; I wanted a simple, intimate affair where I could spend some quality time with my guests.

Here are some tips for finding that balance yourself:

Look into unconventional reception venues.

I called many places in my rush to book a reception venue before we moved. I was shocked at the prices. Most of them charged a facility fee of $500-$2000 for the space. They also required a minimum catering bill of $1000-$2000, which wasn’t tough to reach with catering packages that started at $20 per person. Yikes. I did the math, and even for my small guest list, I was looking at a minimum of $3,000 for the food and venue alone. That wasn’t going to work on my $5,000 budget.

Out of curiosity, I called a classy little restaurant and art gallery where Tony and I used to eat Sunday brunch. With a gourmet menu and table linens even for brunch, I was pretty sure it would be out of our price range. To my surprise, it was exactly what we wanted.

For $13 per person and no facility charge, we chose 5 of their gourmet appetizers with non-alcoholic beverages included for our guests. We had chicken, steak and cheese quesadillas; artichoke and kalamata spread with fresh bread; mozzarella crostini; Thai-style chicken wings; and chicken sate with peanut sauce. The presentation was gorgeous. The appetizers were replenished throughout the night, so even though we opted to do appetizers instead of a sit-down meal, there was plenty of food.

The best part? There was no down-payment to book the date. This was a huge relief for us since we’d only been engaged for a few weeks and hadn’t had time to save the money for the wedding yet. All of our savings was going to the move, so we were relieved to have extra time to get the money together for the reception.

Part of the reason this restaurant was so affordable and elegant is because it was super tiny. The absolute limit was 50 people with no room for dancing, so they probably don’t host a lot of weddings there. My number 1 priority was elegance, not a dance floor, so this was perfect for me. Holding your reception at a small restaurant is a sure way to save money if you’re willing to sacrifice space for a DJ and a dance floor.

A bonus tip: When you call, don’t tell them upfront that it’s a wedding. Just tell them you’re planning a party for X amount of people. When people hear the word “wedding,” they’re inclined to charge you more.

Skip the sit-down dinner.

This is becoming an increasingly popular option. Many couples are opting for trendy cocktail parties with champagne and appetizers instead of traditional sit-down dinners. I chose to do it this way not only to save money, but because I liked the idea of spending the whole night mingling and sipping champagne instead of spending part of the reception tied to a table for dinner.

If you choose this route, just be sure to order enough appetizers that your guests won’t be starving when the food is gone. We had an unlimited supply, so there was plenty of food.

Don’t let the crazy wedding culture pressure you into paying thousands for an open bar.

I never even considered an open bar. It’s just too expensive. I also didn’t want a bunch of sloppy drunk people killing the elegant mood of my reception. I doubt anyone on my guest list would have been “that guy” anyway, but I wanted a classy affair … not a college kegger.

I was appalled when I read wedding books that said that cash bars are downright tacky. The thought of couples putting themselves into thousands of dollars of debt for liquor just to avoid being deemed “tacky” really upsets me.

Obviously, if an open bar for your guests is a priority for you, then by all means work it into your budget. But I’ve known too many people who say, “I don’t really want an open bar, but I don’t want people to think we’re tacky.”

If you’re not really into it, then don’t spend the money just because you’re worried about what people will think. This is a good rule of thumb for all of your wedding planning. If you spend money just because the etiquette tyrants say it’s tacky not to, your wedding will end up costing about $30,000 (the national average).

The fact is nobody that cares about you is coming for the free booze. Sure, people like to have a good time at weddings, but the people who matter most (the only ones who should be there, in my opinion) don’t care a bit about what beverages you’re serving. Besides, if they’re only coming for the free booze, do you really want them there?

The restaurant that hosted our reception had a full list of beers and wines that our guests could order in a cash bar system. We bought enough champagne for all of our guests to have a glass at the toast. If they wanted more alcohol, they picked up their own tab.

It worked out beautifully. There was an extensive wine list sold by the glass or by the bottle, so the tables that wanted wine with dinner just ordered a bottle. The wines were reasonably priced and quite good.

Another option is to do a partial open bar by supplying beer and house wine for your guests. Personally, I’m not that into that idea, either. My honest opinion is that the wine and beer served is usually not very good. Most of the time I’d rather shell out the extra money to get a glass of good wine, but the only option is the cheap house wine. I love cash bars, and I think they work out well for everyone involved.

As for full open liquor bars … well, in my opinion asking your guests to buy their own drinks isn’t as tacky as a reception hall full of sloppy drunk people who eventually end up behind the wheel. It’s also not as painful as a $5,000 bar tab at the end of the night.

Make your own centerpieces or decorations (if you have them at all) and keep it simple.

We didn’t have floral centerpieces at our reception. The restaurant supplied elegant white linens and pretty candles for each table. Roses were the only flowers at the wedding, so I bought some rose-scented votive candles and some fancy candle holders for each table. The room smelled like flowers, but the whole thing only cost about $30 with no labor beyond dropping the candles into the candle holders. Simple.

We skipped additional decoration because our reception venue doubled as an art gallery. Paintings and photographs by local artists adorned the walls, and I thought that was much prettier than any decoration I could come up with.

Be your own DJ.

DJs and bands are fun, but they’re also expensive. Because there was no room for dancing at our reception, we didn’t care much about the entertainment factor. Music is important to both of us, though, so we knew we wanted a special playlist for the reception.

We carefully combed through our music collections and uploaded a list of meaningful songs onto my iPod. We chose songs that symbolized different times in our lives and our relationship. At the reception, we hooked the iPod up to some speakers and pressed “play.” It was a personalized playlist for next to nothing.

Find a freelance baker for your cake.

When I started calling around for cake prices, I was disheartened. Since practically everyone was traveling a couple hours to come, even us, we knew that nobody would even be able to take home leftover cake. I didn’t want to pay hundreds for something that was ultimately going to be wasted.

I wanted a traditional cake, though. So I contacted Kacie at Sense to Save to ask who baked her cake, because she was also married in Bloomington. She recommended a friend of a family member who bakes cakes out of her home. She made us a beautiful cake that was exactly what we wanted for half the price of professional bakeries. She also delivered it and set it up for free.

It’s important to get referrals if you’re not going with a professional business, because you really never know what you’re getting when you hire a freelancer. Kacie was pleased with her work, so I trusted that it would be fine even though I paid her before the wedding and never even met her. If she hadn’t been recommended by a friend, I would have requested references so I could speak with other couples who had hired her to bake their cakes.

The grand total for our entire reception including food, champagne, entertainment, decorations, cake, and gratuity was $800. Not too bad for a beautiful evening of food and fun for 50 people.