Saving a few cents here and there can make a big difference at the end of the month. In previous articles, our readers shared their frugal tips. This week, I would like to share a few more tips that parents have submitted. Thanks to everyone who has sent in their frugal hints!
From Juliette:
For all holiday and birthday cards, cut off the front of the ones sent to you and send them back out as post cards to someone else. This also saves on postage.
From Theresa:
For babies who is still on formula, here's a great tip for you busy moms. Pre-measure your formula in a 5 ounce juice jar. Make sure you clean and rinse jar first. Then when you are traveling and your baby needs a bottle just pour it in the bottle and pour water in it. I usually take a 16 oz water bottle with me. Then it all fits in a diaper bag easily.
From Laura:
When making pudding I put in 3 cups of milk rather than 2 cups - the pudding set up just as well (takes a bit longer) and tastes great.
From Ann:
Some people might say that the following tip costs a lot of money but it does save our family a real fortune.
Three years ago we bought a very Big above ground pool . We shopped for months and ended up buying one during the winter whereby we chose an upscale model with the warranty of the even more deluxe models and we paid less than half the price of the cheapest model. Because we bought the model from the previous year and chose an inner liner that was a solid blue color and was considered unfashionable for the upcoming season. Buying in winter also meant we were guaranteed to have our pool installed right before the swim season began.
Another tip we learned is that you do not need to leave the pool filter constantly running you can actually turn it off at night this saves
hundreds of dollars in electric bills.
The pool is a great way to have inexpensive vacations at home too.
Stretch the money you spend on pool chemicals by buying the chlorine in puck format and inserting them into an old nylon stocking which you place into the pool filter basket...this saves you some time too.
We invested in a pool cover which we religiously use every night. We also bought that in the off season. Our 50$ investment has really paid off
we use our pool on days our neighbors don,t use their heated pools. We don't heat ours and the temperature gets up to 93 F!
Here is my other tip for a big purchase item. When shopping for a car we discovered we saved thousands of dollars by leasing a new model car. We compare prices from one dealer to the next and each one tries to outbid the other. We also take the models on the lot and always have ended up with nice cars with a lot of features that we would have never paid extra for.
From Jann:
I wait to buy name brand fabric softener sheets when they are on sale (with coupons if possible). The first thing I do when I get home with the purchase is to open the box and cut every dryer sheet in half. We have actually had a large box of sheets last an entire year! And there were 6 of us -including 3 teenagers at home at the time.
I want to thank everyone for their tips and hints, and please keep them coming!
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