Frugal Framnett

Ah, so kozy! Imagine Lorie and I sitting in the basement with the fire going, the wind whipping outside, the outside temperature hovering around 0° F, and it is snowing. Inside we are watching a movie, drinking hot chocolate (with schnapps in mine), and eating popcorn together. Well, that fireplace does more than set a mood.

That fireplace, a Kozy Heat fireplace also serves to help us save on our utility bills and keep the house at a comfortable temperature.
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What is done you may ask? A major home appliance repair. What major home appliance? Our washing machine! We have a Frigidaire FWT647GHS1 front loading washing machine. We bought it back in 2000 or 2001. Early this year it developed problems
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When grocery shopping, that is.

I’ve always heard the theory that shopping the perimeter of the grocery store - buying the fresh foods and not the processed ones - is less expensive overall. Now that my spouse is following a specific meal plan, I’m buying almost exclusively fresh food, when I used to buy a mix of fresh, canned, frozen, and some processed food. And lo and behold, my first week shopping, I spent almost twice my normal grocery budget. Now, some of that was “start up” expenses, foods that I can buy in bulk and use over time, but a lot of it was things I will have to buy on a weekly basis (produce doesn’t last forever, after all). I expected this to be the case, but it begs the question - contrary to popular wisdom, is shopping the perimeter really more expensive?

Source: Why My Perimeter is More Expensive Than My Aisles – I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… (From financial imprisonment to financial independence, a penny at a time. This is one family’s story.)

In the comments section I already explained that she is inviting a question not begging it, but of course there is a larger thought here…

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Yesterday a friend Jerry Ray came down from Green Bay. His purpose? To visit our home under construction to scope out what he can do for stairs.

Well Lorie and I believe we need to take care of those who take care of us. Usually this means a stop at Third Base for some barley pops and either a pizza or sandwichs.

Not this time.

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If I have given you the impression I like to cook, that is good, because I do like to cook. This is pizza III in my current pizza pie cooking kick. This, in my opinion, is my best pizza effort EVER.

BTW, I consider YAPPie Place and similar derivations (e.g. Yappie’s Place) as my intellectual property. (more…)

I’ve Paid for this Twice discusses her shopping store haunts:

I go to three different stores because one is generally cheapest but does not have everything I need (Aldi), one is cheapest on the things that the first does not have (Walmart), and the last runs good sales and I get their flyer in the mail every week to check them out (Kroger).

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Let us ring up another $8.64 in savings. The items we saved on this week are chunky soup, canned tuna, pepperoni, Italian sausage (loose), can chicken broth.Lorie is often using chicken broth for one dish or another, tuna is frequently used in winter casseroles, and the pepperoni and Italian sausage can be put to use in pizza making & spaghetti. So the food we bought we are putting to use right now.

Coupon savings have to date totaled to $34.93 which is nearly 47% of the cost of the newspaper. I figure by the time March rolls around the paper should be paid for.

I was planning on making pizzas for sometime now with the sourdough starter we had, I knew we had some pizza sauce in the freezer, and hard cheeses. In addition, we had a coupon for loose Italian sausage. Then I spotted the coupon for the pepperoni in today’s paper so took advantage of that. How did the pizza turn out?
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Our washing machine during its last use made inordinate amounts of noise in the spin cycle and Lorie noted the drum did not turn like it should, sure enough there was a problem.Well, some googling and my limited knowledge of mechanical things led me to believe a bearing went bad. Well, today that was pretty much confirmed. (more…)

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Higher wine prices boost drinking pleasure – Reuters via Yahoo News

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Free Money Finance beats me to the punch and discusses grocery shopping on a budget. I have been kicking this around but have not yet written it. Free Money Finance notes an interesting statistic about shopping, that is on average, people purchase about $100.00 of goods per hour when in a grocery store. Well this makes sense, most often we do not just hang out in stores.In addition to keeping you in the stores, marketers work to stimulate your buying through the use of colors, product placement, product pricing, display design, etc.Since I have worked in retail I know retail stores do spend a fair amount of resources in designing their stores to get you to buy.Here are the things I have heard or am coming to see as good ways to minimize grocery expenses.

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