Friday, November 21, 2008

Making Cheaper Choices: the Pizza Example


Living a "frugal" lifestyle involves lots of choices. Sometimes it seems like living on a tight budget takes away all your choices, but that's not really the case. Its often all about perspective and an attitude of creativity, which one has to cultivate. I didn't always have this attitude...and can fall out of it easily.

One example of this recently came up. I was excited about getting a free pizza from Papa John's through Facebook, but come to find out you had to buy an overpriced pizza before getting the free one. I was disappointed and was close to just doing it anyway. It didn't seem like a big deal, especially since we could afford it. It didn't take long to realize that with a little creativity (and being flexible with our "friday" night pizza tradition, we could have just as much pizza, that tasted good (different, but very good) with less hassle for just $3 or so dollars. I even let my usual wheat flour only rule slide for the night and used half white. Daniel and I decided it was the best pizza I'd made so far! Anyway, I was far happier afterwards than I think I would have been if we'd just gone ahead and ordered the not-really-free pizza afterall:)



Here is the crust recipe I use, and if you're wondering, the toppings we used this time were pre-made pasta sauce, turkey pepperoni (a treat from the QFC sale!) and fresh pineapple. Oh and a combo of mozzarella and sharp cheddar cheese. Very tasty!

2 comments:

Sheila said...

You have it exactly right. Living frugally and thinking about our decisions allows us to have a choice. Everyone has choices, but so many don't make the important step of realizing that. In much of my life, I choose to not do things or spend on things that I don't care about so I have the money to spend on the things that I do care about. You have a lot of freedom once you come to understand this.

Frugal Passions said...

I did the pizza deal and it worked out a little different than I thought too. I ordered the free medium cheese pizza but added 2 toppings for it and paid a little over $3. So Kevin and the kids ate pizza for dinner for $3. Still a good deal for us. That stinks that they wouldn't let you do something like that!