Happy new year, friends! I hope your holiday season was terrific and that 2025 is off to a wonderful start. While things have been busy around here, we’ve still found ways to stay frugal. Here’s what’s been cooking!
1. I got 80 cents off per gallon of gas at my local Exxon!
Our neighborhood Exxon gas station has a deal with Safeway where if you enter your Safeway card number at the gas pump, it will lower your gas price to a certain amount based on how much you’ve spent. Well, in these rather inflationary times I must be racking up the bills, because the next thing I knew the pump was asking, “Price lowered $0.80 per gallon – Y/N?” Reader, I said Y! DO please lower my price, if you don’t mind. As I was virtually on fumes, I got my money’s worth.
2. We’ve got leftovers all over the place. All. Over the place.
Last week, we dutifully worked our way through our Chinese Christmas feast, and this week we’ve had a bounty of New Year’s-adjacent meals to enjoy day after day. First up: Chik’n gumbo on Dec. 30 (which LeeLee just finished for lunch today). Then mushroom tetrazzini on New Year’s Eve (which I finished for lunch today while LeeLee worked on the gumbo!). Then Hoppin’ John and cornbread for New Year’s Day (which we’ll finish for dinner tomorrow night). And then just tonight I made my first New Year’s Resolution recipe, which I’ll tell you all about nxt week! It, too, has yielded copious leftovers, which we’ll attack this weekend. And I haven’t even mentioned the leftover veggie-sausage-egg casserole, which I made for New Year’s Day brunch. Plenty of that, too!
3. I used already-purchased ingredients for my New Year’s Eve feast.
Now, sadly I didn’t have everything I needed for our NYE mushroom tetrazzini, but I did have quite a few ingredients already on hand (veggie broth, chik’n strips and spaghetti noodles, just to name a few), and that definitely helped me defray some costs. I also had bread crumbs on hand but completely forgot to use them on the final dish! I blame the pre-dinner martini. ;)
4. I paused my Huel subscription, saving about $70 a month.
For a long time I’ve been a proponent of Huel, a vegan meal plan that’s packed with protein and great for easy lunches. It was a staple of my weekday lunch program for months. For the past couple of months I’ve rescheduled my subscription since we’ve been so busy over the holidays, but I was getting tired of having to keep up with it and remembering to move the delivery date back another month at a time. So this month I went in and paused it so I won’t lose track. Until I “un-pause” it, I won’t have to deal with rescheduling it or paying a dime. I’m sure I’ll to back to it, but it’s nice to have one more thing off my plate (so to speak)!
5. I spent time this week mapping out my 2025 financial goals – and what it will take to get there.
Granted, this isn’t bearing frugal fruit today, but if I stick to my plan I know it will this year. Like any house, our financial house has some rooms that are company-ready and some that are out of order! My goal this year is to shore up those less-company-ready rooms and keep the better-looking areas humming along. This will require an increased savings rate as well as more aggressive debt paydown of our auto loans, but plans are taking shape for us to make it a reality. I’m strangely looking forward to it!
What do you have on your frugal docket this week – and for the new year? Let’s hear it in the comments!
:)
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