I took a week off of ol’ FFT last week due to a confluence of work and life craziness, but I couldn’t stay away for long! Here’s a rundown of how I’ve been trying to maintain some semblance of frugality … and one way I totally failed, because honesty is the best policy.
1. We’ve been enjoying leftovers every which way.
Since the start of my Leftover Revolution earlier this year, we’ve been pretty dang good about using our dinner leftovers for a second dinner each week. And when the leftovers aren’t quite enough to yield a whole dinner, we’ve been incorporating the ingredients into salads, rice bowls, or lunches (which aren’t quite as hearty as dinner around here). In fact, the main photo for this post is one of our leftover-yielding dinners: Crock-Pot Hoppin’ John, which has the dual benefit of being a make-ahead slow cooker meal AND a leftover producer that gave us two meals apiece!
2. I continue to fight my medical insurance company to ensure they reimburse me for a vaccine.
I don’t think I’ve written about this here yet so here goes. Last September, LeeLee and I went on a trip to Europe (on points, I might add!), and before we went our doctor encouraged us to get the new covid vaccine, which was just being released. So we went to our local CVS and asked for the vaccine, and our pharmacist told us that because it had just come out, many insurance companies weren’t coding it properly yet so we’d need to pay out of pocket. Normally we’d just wait a few weeks, but since we were traveling internationally we knew we needed it and fast. So, safe in the knowledge we would be reimbursed, we went ahead and got one vaccine apiece, for the ripe old price of $400 all in. (Four hundred dollars. For a vaccine that was supposed to be free.) I immediately filed my claim with United Healthcare and naively waited for it to go through. Nearly a year later, I am still waiting, only now I’ve pulled in a patient advocate and the entire benefits team of the company I work for. I WILL get this reimbursed! Four hundred dollars may not be a lot to some people, but it’s a great deal of wealth to me. And even if it were four dollars – it’s the principle of the thing! I want what I’m owed and I will see that I get it.
3. I’m still doggedly scanning every grocery receipt into Fetch.
I know I’ve talked about Fetch before, and while it’s certainly not going to get me rich any time soon, it IS a good way to get a little kickback for shopping I’m doing anyway. A few seconds to scan yields anywhere from 25 to 1500 points, which I can turn into gift cards along the way. Not a bad payoff for very little work!
4. I fixed the rogue thumping noise coming from my microwave.
When the microwave started making a thumping, grinding sort of noise coming from the turntable area, I feared the worst, but Google came to the rescue again! After a search, I quickly realized that the culprit was in fact gunk (that’s the scientific word) on the little carousel wheels that help the turntable rotate. A few minutes of elbow grease and order is restored. And the microwave purrs like a kitten again!
5. And – last but not least – my Frugal Fail.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I boasted about my walking-shoe return? After I returned the ill-fitting Hokas, I purchased another style, which was much needed (as I’d literally worn the soles off my existing walking shoes). I got a reduced price and felt fine about it. ALL THE WAY UNTIL I was putting some cooler-weather clothes away in my closet and found a brand-new pair of walking shoes tucked away, still in the shoebox, just waiting to be worn. I PROMISE you I’d looked in my “shoe stash” and came up empty! But there they were, smirking at me from their snug little box. So much for that. On the plus side, now I won’t have to buy new walking shoes for a long, long time. Silver linings!
What have been your frugal wins (or failures – be brave and tell us!) this week? Let us know in the comments!
:)